Last time: Voldepants called Narcissa and Peter for a word about the Black brothers, plotting. Also, Narcissa is pregnant and pretending she can put it on the back burner until the end of the war.
Previous last time: Regulus told Sirius about the Horcrux he stole and they are heading to Hogwarts to deal with it.
Hello, it's me! 'Been a long time, uh.
So, after having lost my hard drive to the terrible doom of DEATH just as I was getting ready to start this story again, I spent a few more months working (again and anew) on the 6 months of notes I'd lost (and I'm not finished, but). Now I have a functioning Sorting document to display the percentage of each House in a character's personality, several docs on different aspects of the HP universe (within my interpretation of it), AND an ever-growing family tree of 3648 people on Family Echo.
Here's chapter 33.
Chapter 30: Legacy of magic
Argus Filch was the one to greet the brothers at the Entrance Gates.
It was not a bad choice, in fact, to charge the squib with door duty when the teachers were otherwise occupied, as he did have a very weak magical imprint for the gates to recognize and absolutely no reason to ally himself with a group of blood supremacists who, generally speaking, saw squibs as blights on their family trees. The wards built into the walls prevented any kind of attempted magical intimidation, so that took care of any threat to comply.
Oh, for more dubious guests – such as parents with suspicious hobbies – it was a better idea to send a teacher, but since those were on appointments only, well. A teacher would be there, anyway.
It was, however, a perilous choice to have Argus Filch, who'd started working as caretaker at Hogwarts in 1969, greet Sirius Black, Marauder extraordinaire who'd started school in 1971.
The caretaker glared at the man giving him a large and fake smile, and Regulus decided he was better off not getting in the middle of that.
"Lord Brat."
The Filchs had been a mildly influential pureblooded family since the end of the eighteenth century, marrying their daughters, notably, into the Houses of Flint, Drennan, Nott and Rosier, and having wives from the Campbell family and the Houses of Crouch and Gaunt. Regulus knew that, because his brother liked both genealogy and pointing out how most squibs came from lines that had been "pure" for generations – Sirius hadn't been afraid to put it into writing in the last summer home.
Of course, today was a different matter – the oldest child of the caretaker's generation was the caretaker, so a squib, and both his siblings had married outside of pure blood.
All that to say, the man knew exactly what he was doing when calling Sirius with something that sounded like "Lord Black" but really wasn't.
Sirius' smile widened.
"Please, you can call me Black, like in the good old days."
Right. Of course Sirius wasn't one to take outrage because of that – he was most likely entirely aware of the resentful depths of their acquaintance, and knew how infuriating his answer would be for the squib.
Filch scowled – Sirius pretended this was the normal way to have small talk – glanced at Regulus – whose smile was perhaps a tad forced – and finally behind them before opening the gates.
"Well, come on. I don't have all day and the Headmaster is waiting for you."
The walk through the grounds and to the castle was silent enough, though Filch kept throwing hard glances at Regulus' brother as if suspecting him of some disruptive trick – fair enough, considering.
They got to the Entrance Hall a bit after three o'clock and the caretaker left them to fend for themselves with one last suspicious look – Sirius probably didn't make things better, waving goodbye cheerfully with an innocent smile that looked so out of place Regulus couldn't help but remember how his brother would only ever do that on purpose. Generally after having gotten away with some bullshit no one could prove he and his friends had done.
"Well, that was fun."
Regulus raised an eyebrow.
"For a certain definition of fun. I'd call it more heavily uncomfortable on my end."
They side-stepped a group of slytherin fourth years who gaped at them and that Sirius entirely ignored, Regulus on his heels – wondering passingly how the house dynamics had evolved since the 70s. Back then, there had been a hard core of blood extremists at the top of Slytherin, a good fifth of blood purists, a silent majority who ranged from I-don't-care to I-don't-want-problems, and a last fifth who actively isolated themselves from the first two groups. Regulus, himself... Well.
But for now...
"Sirius, where are you going? The Headmaster's office is that way."
Which his brother should know, he'd been up there at least four times from what Regulus knew.
Sirius didn't slow down, steps confidant and very much what you'd expect from a pureblooded lord with a goal in mind – because he'd never gotten rid of that, because the assertive stride wasn't and had never been the problem, even if it was characteristic of their station.
Regulus hadn't understood, back then, that his brother wasn't rejecting absolutely everything they were – that it wasn't hypocrisy that had him standing in a manner befitting of his name and yet denigrating some of their core beliefs.
Things were different, now.
"Nope, the fastest way to the gargoyle from the Entrance Hall is through the third floor. Goody-two-shoes like you who barely got to see the interior of the Headmaster's office wouldn't know, but James' and my combined expertise allowed us to find out the staircase to the Headmaster's tower can be accessed on all floors, from various places across the castle. Most likely, it's been enchanted with runes and dimensional magic."
Regulus snorted as they started their way on the stairs to the second floor.
"Combined expertise, is that what you call it?"
Sirius paused, turned around and waggled his eyebrows.
"Experience calls expertise, does it not?"
Regulus bit his lower lip not to laugh – there were students about, and he was officially an amnesic with reason to particularly get along with his estranged brother. They resumed their ascension.
"Any idea where your son is right now?"
Not sure what Sirius was angling for, his younger brother frowned, trying to remember Alshain's timetable – which he knew fairly well, as they'd received in on Monday morning and he'd promised to explain all the subjects to his wife. They'd gone through it once before, but he hadn't remembered the teachers back then and it wasn't like Amanda was likely to remember everything in one try.
"He's in group B, so... Nothing right now, and Flying at three and a half. With Hufflepuff... or Ravenclaw, maybe."
To allow shared classes – it was, considering how enclosed one House could be on itself, a necessity – Hogwarts used a system in which each class was divided between two groups, A and B, and some lessons were paired up with the same group from another House – up till sixth year, where the groups only depended on who continued what subject.
"Why are you asking?"
"Well, I told you to go and see your son, after we deal with the thing-that-shall-not-be-named. Might be useful to know where he's hanging out to push you in that direction."
Bypassing the surprisingly apt moniker – because it was better kept a secret, and it was housing a shred of the Dark Lord's soul – for the horcrux they were bringing to Albus Dumbledore, Regulus retaliated.
"I've had more hours with my son than you with your godson, shouldn't I be the one pushing you to see Potter?"
At the moment he said it, the younger brother realized he probably wouldn't do that anyway, because there was something else he'd rather push Sirius into – meeting Alshain. That, and also Sirius wasn't sharing where in the school Harry Potter was likely to be found, knowing not to volunteer that information, and Regulus wasn't certain he wanted to end up near the Potter boy quite so fast. Who knew what Sirius had told the teen about him...
Sirius, unaware of that realization, countered:
"You haven't seen him in person since he learned who you really are. He's probably hearing a ton of rumors this week, and sadly some are truer than either of you would like."
Regulus winced. He didn't particularly want to explain to his son that he had, once upon a time, joined a terrorist organization hellbent on murdering people like his mother – but he'd have to anyway.
"...I yield."
"Of course you do."
"Oh, keep your smug face out of my view!"
"I'm walking ahead of you, you can't see my smug face."
"And you aren't denying that you're making a smug face right now."
The bickering died down. Regulus went back to thinking about Slytherin in his Hogwarts years, to wondering how it was for Alshain – his son wasn't a pureblood, even if he was a Black, and that...
It could be both a good thing, because he'd be less interesting to the shadier characters in the House, but it would also be a bad thing, because he wouldn't have the protection inherent to Regulus and Sirius' blood status.
"Any idea who's in charge of muggleborn duty, these days?"
Sirius barked a laugh, but it sounded just a bit off – whatever was making the question amusing to him was tainted by the implications behind the answer, most certainly.
"Harry's barely aware there are more than ten students in Slytherin in his year, and he has no reason to even know muggleborn duty is a thing. But I think Theodore Nott is on it, half-heartedly maybe, and considering his brother I'm not sure what to make of it, and for the girls it's Agnes Monkleigh."
Muggleborn duty was, basically, two slytherin pureblooded students, boy and girl, who took it upon themselves to manage the few muggleborns who got Sorted in their House each year. They basically offered protection against bullying, explanations on wizarding ways, and mediation with the rest of the House. They were expected, on the other hand, to make the muggleborn Slytherins more tolerable to those who didn't care for them.
There were various reasons to volunteer for muggleborn duty – because you wanted the influence of shaping the lives of others, because you cared and had to make it easier for them, because someone had to do it if you didn't want things to degenerate in the common room. Uncle Alphard had done it and had only laughed when people asked, letting them make their own assumptions; Andromeda had said she was doing it for the influence – except she'd eloped with a muggleborn afterwards, so.
During Regulus' second year, no girl had wanted to take the mantle amongst the first years, and it had been complicated for the sole muggleborn first-year girl even with the older girls on muggleborn duty pitching in.
Regulus blinked, wrenched out of his thoughts as he went back through what Sirius had just said.
"What about Adrian Nott?"
The man had been one year ahead of Sirius at school, and the most Regulus could say about him was that he'd disappeared, with strong suspicions of murder, not long after Lord Nott had started asking of Adrian that he joins the Death Eaters – and it wasn't filicide, from Lord Nott's surprise.
Then again, less than a year later the Notts had another son despite their age.
"Yes, what about him, I wonder?"
That... wasn't an answer.
"Do you know something about what happened to him?"
"Why would I know anything about it?"
Regulus wished he could see Sirius' face as he was purposefully evading his question – and not even making it discreet. But Sirius was ahead of him, and anyway, he could probably keep his poker face longer than Regulus had gone by "Cadfael".
The younger brother sighed, and decided to drop it – for now. If Sirius did know more than he let on there was no point trying to get it out of him here, where others might overhear them.
They stopped at the gargoyle guarding the passage to the Headmaster's office – and Sirius was right, of course he was, it wasn't the same corridor as the one Regulus had taken the one time he'd had a talk with the Headmaster at the end of his seventh year.
Sirius threw a "Shock-o-choc" at the gargoyle, and the wall opened behind it, letting them pass and take the stairs.
Albus Dumbledore was waiting for them behind his desk, his eyes set on one of his silver instruments – Sirius could say with confidence he had no idea what most of them were, and even the enchantometer on the back shelf had a weird look to it, like it had been modified on demand.
The old wizard's eyes snapped away from his device and onto them after a few seconds of awkward silence, during which the thing's arrow had been alternatively turning on itself and pointing vehemently at Sirius.
Considering which of the two brothers was keeping the horcrux on him, Sirius was starting to wonder if perhaps Dumbledore hadn't guessed what they were here for.
However that could happen.
The old wizard smiled at them and gestured towards two armchairs – which had seen so many students, maybe even Sirius and Regulus themselves if they were that old – for them to sit in.
Regulus did just that, his eyes wandering to Dumbledore's shriveled hand – he'd seen it earlier in the day, but hadn't had the focus to wonder about that...
Sirius, him, kept standing and placed himself behind his intended seat, both of his hands on the back of the armchair, feet anchored on the floor.
The headmaster raised his eyebrows, but didn't comment. Not on that, at least.
"What could have brought you here so soon, Mister and Mister Black?"
Both brothers winced at that, and the old wizard gave a soft smile.
"Pardon me, Sirius, Regulus. But I am wondering what brought you to me when I was at your home less than two hours ago."
The innocent smile reappeared on Sirius' face and his brother eyed him dubiously.
"Well, apparently someone was waiting for me to be more... approachable... before fessing up to what got them missing seventeen years ago. Or, more exactly, to why they almost got themselves killed. You know, what kind of... trinket... of Voldemort they'd stolen from its hiding place."
The look he got from the older wizard – all above-the-rim of his half-moon glasses, eyebrows arched, head tilted to accentuate the effect – proved he didn't really need to say much more and Dumbledore had perfectly understood what he was going on about.
The headmaster let out a deep breath.
"...Are you implying Regulus here has one of the enemy's horcruxes?"
Sirius' hands left the back of the armchair-he-wasn't-sitting-in to accompany both his shrug and his yes-indeed expression.
So Albus Dumbledore refocused on his other guest – the unassuming, as much as a Black could be so, younger brother.
As Headmaster, the old wizard made a point of meeting with each student at least once, generally at the end of their seventh year if he'd never seen them before. Some he met in his office, as he'd done with Regulus Black, and others he met wherever they unexpectedly crossed paths alone if he felt they'd be more at ease.
Of course, the years following Tom's rise to terror had changed the nature of those interviews for some students – most of them Slytherins, but not only. At that point, it had been more about determining who was the more at risk – or a risk, some would argue – and providing advice that would most likely go ignored, though not unheard. Some, at the very least, had remembered his words afterwards.
Maybe, in a way, it had been too late for that when they'd remembered – but then again, it had stilled their wands, it hadn't been too late for the deeds they hadn't yet done.
Identifying them – those who weren't all bluster, those who didn't seem like it but would surprise everyone else – was something, at least. Trying to reach out, well. He couldn't force them to do anything, especially not to reconsider their choices, so the most he had been able to do was stress the risks and point the door they might want to use if their hopes and beliefs didn't turn out the way they thought they would.
Regulus Black's interview hadn't been quite that alarming. Oh, certainly, he had believed in all of it, in blood supremacy and even in Voldemort's crusade in particular – but it was obvious to anyone with eyes that he wasn't cut for the kind of deeds such a crusade asked of its followers.
If anything, Albus had thought that his family would see this and deter him from officially joining, knowing that would get him killed – and it very much had, as far as his parents had known.
Maybe Regulus had gone behind their back and asked Bellatrix Lestrange instead, and she certainly hadn't had any qualms about putting him in danger, failing to see that he wouldn't be an effective soldier because she wanted more of her family on her side.
Regulus Black had disappeared, barely an adult, before the end of summer had even come.
Today... Today they knew him to be alive, and that inferi had been involved. Earlier, Albus had confirmed his suspicion that the memory loss was at the very least exaggerated, and Sirius' statement confirmed it had been a mutual decision on the part of the Black brothers.
They were, the two of them...
Different.
Brothers, of course – they did look alike, Sirius a true portrait of his entire family, and Regulus just a bit left of it, less pale and rosiee, with features like a cleft chin inherited from his father and grandfather, but that had never been a permanent part of the Black package.
And yet.
Where Sirius was ruthless, unafraid to be the sacrificial lamb in his own schemes, and entirely dedicated to his beliefs, Regulus appeared as less likely to manage true cruelty even with a perfectly justified reason, more likely to become dissatisfied when confronted with the truth of fieldwork and the compromises brought by reality – where upholding a principle might mean putting others on the back burner.
The Black brothers wouldn't be able to bear the same roles in a war, and maybe that had been the Death Eaters' mistake with Regulus: they had tried to make a Sirius Black out of him, thinking he wouldn't change his mind when faced with the truth of their actions.
Albus wasn't going to complain, of course – not when it had apparently brought them another horcrux, not when it had pushed the man too far, when it had gotten him out and back to his brother, not when the other side was the one making mistakes.
"Could I ask what pushed you to... recuperate... that horcrux from its owner's hands, Regulus?"
The young man – not so young, now, thirty-five years old if he remembered right, but to Albus Dumbledore that was still young, less than a third of his own life – looked a bit hesitant, though not like he was reconsidering his confession.
More like he wasn't at ease with the reveal itself, with what it meant for him. With the words he'd have to choose, the details he'd rather keep for himself or divulge.
Albus waited, unbothered.
Stealing an horcrux from under Voldemort's nose when acutely aware of the potential consequences and while not being profoundly courageous to begin with had more than earned Regulus Black the right to keep some things close to the chest.
The young man eventually made a decision, eyes fixed on the claw-footed desk rather than on Albus himself.
"I... I wasn't very good at most of the... things... expected of..."
There the young man bit his lower lip, looking like he very much didn't want to say it – but they knew it, all of them, and saying the words wouldn't change anything to that knowledge.
"Expected of you?"
The merikosiaveler chose that moment to go whirling noisily before pointing aggressively at Regulus' brother again, whose head shot away from the window to squint at the silver arrow denouncing him as having an unnatural amount and nature of souls about him. No point wondering where the horcrux was, then.
Albus taped the silver instrument with his wand, and the arrow slumped down, inactive.
"Sorry about that. You were saying, Regulus?"
The young man eyed the merikosiaveler for a moment, before going back to stare at the desk.
His voice, however, was more assured when he spoke again.
"The acts expected of a Death Eater. Of course, I was young and not yet graduated for most of that time, so it wasn't like they were expecting me to do raids every week. No one really said anything when I excelled more at tasks like intel gathering, information sharing or dark magic research..."
"That only lasted a time, I suppose?"
A grimace.
"I graduated. Things... changed, and I still couldn't bring myself to... Anyway. I had doubts, but mostly they were doubts about myself. Then the Dark Lord asked for a house-elf. He left Kreacher to die. But Kreacher survived, and I wanted to know why... Why he'd do that. I researched some more from what Kreacher told me, and I convinced myself he'd hidden a horcrux.."
A pause, and Regulus looked up from the desk, right back at Albus.
"The Blacks... We're not squeamish when it comes to dark magic. Or even the Dark Arts. We have a predisposition for it, really, and even if I'm not that remarkable compared to the rest of the family..."
That had his older brother snorting, and Regulus scowled at Sirius as a result.
"What?"
"Well, I wouldn't put 'not having remorse and reservations about performing acts of cruelty' as a brilliant and positive trait of character for me and Bellatrix."
The younger brother glared at Sirius, who looked ready to add other names to that budding list of the most prominent dark wizards – by nature when not by acts – in their family tree.
"I was going more along the lines of 'I'm better at this than most but some people here are even better and we all know it', if you want to know."
Before a whole row of brotherly bickering could start – on the dubious matter of the Dark Arts, no less, but maybe that was what you got for being private to a Black squabble – the headmaster coughed politely.
Both brothers closed their mouths – words at the ready for the interrupted bickering – and looked back at Dumbledore. Regulus Black looked a bit sheepish – just a bit – and his brother was licking his lips, as if ready to pounce – but not actually doing it.
The younger Black shook his head.
"My point was, we're positively familiar with dark magic, much more than any other family in Great Britain, maybe in the whole of Europe. Our reputation rivals the Ametepe Clan, the Estevez family or the Wabealo clan on it being our family magic. We have facilities with casting dark magic, relative immunity to its mental effects, and an almost instinctive understanding of its working."
What Regulus was saying was true, so no one saw fit to contradict him – or snort in derision.
He continued on.
"For all that, we don't just do anything and everything with dark magic, just because we can. There are some... things... no one in the family would care to do, not without a very good reason, and even then, only some of us would dare. My research, by leading me to horcruxes, also sent me to Grandfather Arcturus and to the manor's library. When he understood what branch of dark magic I was looking into..."
That had been the moment Regulus had realized that his grandfather had suspicions about his nighttime activities. The way Arcturus had pinched his lips, how his eyes had narrowed.
Regulus had also been struck, for the first time, with the realization that for all their shared ideology, his grandfather had never vocally supported the Dark Lord's cause.
He still didn't quite know what to make of that, seventeen years later.
There was more he could have told, more reasons for Regulus to change his mind about the Death Eaters and their master – how the Dark Lord had no regard for his followers even when he did believe in the purity of their blood, how purebloods had been dying off because of their cause, how he'd come to think that muggles didn't deserve to be tortured and murdered even if they were inferiors, how so many people on his side seemed to relish in their "necessary" evils...
All those reasons had been true, back then. Regulus hadn't yet spent any real time with muggles, free of the narrative most of his extended family believed in – so it hadn't been about the other side being "right". Not yet.
But the strongest push? That had been finding Kreacher, the house-elf he'd entrusted to the Dark Lord, struggling for breath and full of nightmares when he'd called him back home. It had been looking into what could warrant such treatment – oh, Regulus hadn't expected the Dark Lord to be kind to Kreacher, but he'd thought he could count on the tiniest amount of respect for his follower's property – and finding out how far the Dark Lord had been willing to go to get to his goals.
How even loyalty wasn't protection enough against casual cruelty.
Regulus didn't doubt that the Dark Lord believed in blood purity – but in no way was the Death Eaters' master acting on principles. He'd have sooner destroyed their entire society, purebloods included, than accepted that not all purebloods cared that much about their blood status – and only then would the Dark Lord have rebuilt a society as he saw fit, based on the few survivors of his purge, certainly. As long as those didn't stop agreeing with him, of course.
All this was true today too.
Albus let the silence be for a moment – before rising from his seat and walking around his desk.
"I see. Will you show me that horcrux, then?"
It was the older of the two Blacks who moved, as expected.
Sirius, a bit too aware of the dark tendrils echoing around his heart because of continued exposure to Voldemort's horcrux – teeth and fangs bared, darkness unwilling to let a different poison insinuate itself in its body, and very few dark artifacts had ever warranted such a reaction in all his life – let the locket dangle over the desk for a moment, then decided to just put it down.
Obviously, however the locket was supposed to affect humans, his own darkness wasn't going to let it pass, but that didn't mean he felt comfortable, thrumming with dark magic and promises of retribution – beyond what was his default state.
The headmaster took a careful step forward, wand at the ready.
"Any kind of protective mechanism? Ill-effects from touching it?"
Sirius saw his brother grimace from the corner of his eye.
"Aside from the anti-apparition wards, the weakness payment, the inferi-filled lake, the invisible boat and the potion of despair? Mostly, we couldn't manage to get it open, me, Kreacher, Sirius."
Dumbledore's eyebrows jerked up in something that resembled amusement, and the old wizard lifted his blackened arm to let Regulus have a better look at it.
"Ah. I might have something for that particular problem... Personally, I was met with suspended curses, a compulsion charm and a gangrene malediction upon contact."
Sirius let his brother stare at the shriveled limb, himself all too aware of Regulus' own gained scars – the scar on his left cheek could never be hidden, not without layers of perception charms, polyjuice potion, or a mask. Well, that, or a moody teenager's haircut.
Still. He might better speak up.
"If anyone's interested, I can feel the dratted thing hiss at me."
Regulus blinked at his brother – obviously he wasn't feeling it, but then again Regulus had never been quite as much of a Black as Sirius was, all things considered – and the headmaster turned to look at him with deliberate slowness – like he'd caught something intriguing in Sirius' words, but wasn't quite sure what to make of it yet.
"You can feel it hissing at you?"
"I mean... I'm attuned to dark magic and there's something nasty inside this locket? Not just the horcrux, but probably some dark enchantment too? My black, shriveled heart is basically humming with 'don't try to measure yourself with us, peasant' and that only happens when I'm too close to something dark trying to influence my psyche. Azkaban was fun that way, especially after I started declining physically and I had less control over myself. I dreamt I murdered Aragonde Flint the next cell over at some point, could have ended up doing it if she hadn't been moved to another cell and... Not the point here."
Maybe he was going too far with the "black, shriveled heart" thing, if the look on Regulus' face was anything to go by. Then again, how else was he supposed to summarize the whole firstborn Black-strongest-echo-in-decades package he'd been handed at birth? That thing that made him inhumane in some ways, a dark wizard by nature regardless of his own choices, a Black before anything else?
The echo, the core found in all Blacks – personality, looks, family magic, flaws – was always stronger in firstborns – Mother, Grandfather Arcturus, Aunt Lucretia, Grandfather Pollux, Bellatrix, Sirius – and Sirius was, unfortunately, saddled with the most concentrated example of it in remembered family history.
Regulus, by comparison, wasn't half as echoey – about as much as Andromeda, a tad more than Narcissa. He most likely didn't even recognize the feeling of "Oh, a Black" they got whenever they crossed paths with family, not for what it was.
Turned out you weren't supposed to recognize the deepest nature of your relatives inside of yourself when you were present in the same room. Who knew? Certainly not Sirius before his second year at Hogwarts, when he'd mentioned it to James and his best friend had looked at him like he'd announced he'd rather be in Slytherin, actually.
All that to say, even his younger brother couldn't wholly understand how attuned Sirius was to dark magic, but he'd still gotten the point the moment his older brother had said "black, shriveled heart".
Albus, him, was looking for one of his instruments, one that would allow him to counteract most dark enchantments long enough to know what they were dealing with. If the older Black brother was right – and he did have a complicated family history with dark magic – and something nasty was guarding the horcrux beyond its previous hiding place, it would be a good idea to let it show itself without actually interacting before trying to destroy it.
"Ah, there they are!"
Two silver contraptions had his attention – the first one a little wooden ring that could force most locking mechanisms open, physical or magical, and the second one that looked like a minimalist frog sculpture, all empty space and wire-thin structure – and it would leap like one on top of a dangerous object, jailing any dark enchantment within the borders of its structure for a limited time thanks to the rune-carved citrine stone. How long the delay brought by Isa would last was dependent on the strength of the offending magic.
Knowing Tom, it probably wouldn't work long.
They were lucky it was just a locket, and not something bigger, Albus thought as he brought the frog-like instrument to his desk – Slytherin's, at that, but that was a thought for another time, for a stroll through some old memories he'd been thinking of looking back on.
He'd still have to open the locket, and for that he had to touch it – but, how convenient, he already had a damaged hand to sacrifice if anything went wrong.
The gangrene malediction he'd been struck with when he'd reached for the resurrection stone didn't work quite like actual necrosis – Albus could still relatively move his arm and fingers. He'd lost fine control, of course, and doing anything with that arm was painful and tiring, but he could open a locket with some effort.
The real danger of that malediction came when it reached vital organs, killing them in a few minutes and in excruciating agony. Normally it took less than a day to get to that point – but Albus had gotten to Severus about six hours after the fact, and they'd staunched its progress before it could get past his elbow.
The potion stopping the malediction from spreading, though, would lose potency as he'd continue taking it. The gangrene malediction would slowly but surely advance, and one day...
"Sirius, please, stand here and look over the process. This instrument will grant us some protection from whatever you are sensing besides the soul fragment itself, but it will not last forever and we need to figure out a countermeasure before the frog's time runs out. Regulus, this..."
The old man moved towards the glass case where he'd put the Sword of Gryffindor after the young Potter had retrieved it three years before, amused for a moment at the idea that he was offering a Slytherin to use Godric Gryffindor's relic. Regulus Black wasn't much of a Gryffindor at all – no more, at least, than most people in other Houses were, because no one fit into only one Hogwarts House and most had traits from at least three different groups in various degrees – but he had brought them one of his old master's horcruxes, and he had endangered his own life to do so.
The enchantments on the silver sword might recognize the younger Black's hard-bought bravery, and magic itself would appreciate the thief of a dark artifact being the one to ultimately destroy it.
Albus handed the weapon to the young man, who struggled a bit with its long reach and sharp edge – but still managed to hold it steady without maiming any of them.
"I..."
Regulus stared at the legendary sword in his hands – thoughts full of Slytherin's Locket waiting for its destruction on the headmaster's desk, of the relic the Dark Lord had chosen for his piece of soul.
One more thing lost to his hunger.
Of course, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named hadn't planned to have his horcruxes destroyed – that was the very contrary of why you made a horcrux in the first place – so it wasn't like he was purposefully laying waste to wizarding history.
How much had been lost because of his folly?
Regulus had started looking through what had happened after his disappearance – he already knew what had happened before, the murders, the attacks and the destruction, he'd been part of it, even. So, so many deaths to add.
Two weeks after his memory loss, Sarika and Priyansh Patil had been killed because they'd both married muggles, leaving behind them widows, one son, one step-daughter, grieving siblings and nieces and parents. No one had seen Obsidian Thomas since 1980 – Regulus had been in Slytherin with him, Thomas had been the best transfiguration student in their year. Edgard Bones, his wife Magdalene, their two children and some of the guests to Bones' birthday party had been murdered in the Bones ancestral home, left to find for the rest of the family. The last of the McKinnons in the middle of 1981. Two of the Prewett heirs less than a month later – the House of Prewett was now headed by Lady Esther Prewett, and after her the family would become the House of Elffire, after her son's surname.
The late Lord Potter, of course.
Sirius, and the entire House of Black, forgotten for more than a decade – in Azkaban, without memories, disowned, only Narcissa had kept her life amongst the younger generation, but she was a Malfoy by Name, so she could in no way represent their family.
That was only for the purebloods, for the next two years until the Dark Lord's fall, for what Regulus had managed to find out in the last month. There were countless more victims, some unnamed and unknown, muggles, muggleborns, halfbloods, newspaper articles lost to the frenzy of death and fear – the last two years of Voldemort's first reign of terror, the worst of that time.
Regulus adjusted his grip on the sword of Gryffindor, took a step closer to the desk – to the locket, to the horcrux he'd lost his memories for, to the little frog-like contraption waiting for the first threat.
"I'll do what's needed."
It was just one more thing the Dark Lord had promised them he'd protect – their legacy of magic – and had instead brought ruin upon.
The headmaster nodded, standing right on the other side of the desk, damaged hand adorned with the wooden ring and reaching for the dark artifact the three of them were aiming to destroy.
"Alright, then. Brace yourselves."
Nothing happened when the old wizard touched the locket itself – no lightning-fast curse, no wave of unease – and nothing happened, either, when he moved to open it. The frog remained where it stood, citrine gem glowing faintly, unable to lock on a target to incapacitate.
Mostly because the locket remained closed.
Sirius made a face.
"Right. We couldn't open it last year, and apparently we still can't today, not even with your... ring of thievery. I must say, I was promised a dark enchantment and I'm almost disappointed. Almost, because dark enchantments are a pain when you're the intended victims, and we would have been the intended victims."
Albus put the locket back on the desk, and sighed.
"This is the first time this ring failed in its design, at least for an object of this size. I'll have to think on it, though I am starting to discern several possibilities... Will you take Slytherin's locket back to Black Manor?"
The brothers shared a look as the younger of the two put the other founders' relic back in its glass case. The older one holstered his wand and grimaced
"As long as you have somewhere to keep it safe... I think we'd rather not."
Regulus nodded, agreeing entirely with Sirius. He had seen enough of that locket.
Albus cast one last look at the tainted heirloom before escorting his guests out of the tower.
"I should manage. Sirius, on the matter, I'd appreciate if you could ask Miss Rowle to contact her friend, Jane Mauss, in my stead. I wish to discuss some theories with her, about a number of things that the average witch cannot see the way Miss Mauss does."
Sirius blinked, unsure of who the headmaster was talking about, but decided to let that slide for now – they'd had enough excitement and disappointment for the day, surely, and Eleanor could tell him about her friend herself.
"Of course. She'll give you her answer Friday night, I suppose."
A small smile, and the headmaster wished them a good evening.
Regulus didn't comment – didn't ask – about what was on Friday night.