"He was not being kind or generous. As certainly as he had known that the doe was benign, he knew that Ron had to be the one to wield the sword. Dumbledore had at least taught Harry something about certain kinds of magic, of the incalculable power of certain acts."

- J. K. Rowling, The Deathly Hallows, Chapter Nineteen

Chapter 15: The Devil's Backbone

Once contact had been made, it was a thing that lived between them, something they nurtured slowly, but carefully, each afraid of being the one to push the other a bit too far.

Sirius would brush Kara's hand as he walked past, or kiss her template as one of them left in the morning. Kara's hands would brush his back as she maneuvered around him at the counter, trying to reach the next ingredient of their meal.

And they weren't trying to hide it, either. Tonks and Kingsley, after witnessing one such idle moment, rolled their eyes at each other. Arthur surveyed them over his pint surreptitiously, then reported it to Molly, who sent Remus an owl declaring the pair "slower than a flobberworm crossing the Andes".

But it had been awoken, and there was no putting it back to sleep. It was only a matter of time.

*HP*HP*HP*HP*

On a gloomy Saturday at the beginning of October, Sirius faced his ancestral home, Kara beside him.

All around the deserted square in which Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place was situated, limpid signs of the season were going up, stilted attempts at decorating for Halloween. They drooped in the wind and wet air, which was so half-hearted it couldn't be bothered to actually rain.

Sirius' stomach roiled. He hadn't even managed tea that morning, a fact Kara had wisely not commented on. The Halloween decorations only made it worse.

He'd used to love the holiday. Now the reminder of that joy was only another loss. He'd roused himself, two years ago, but then it had seemed fitting to avenge James' death on the night he'd been betrayed. But last year, and this...the ghosts and ghouls and pumpkins only made Sirius want to crawl someplace dark, with his own ghosts.

Having spent so much of his life there, part of him wasn't quite ready to let go of them yet. He couldn't blame the Dementors this time. This was all him.

A hand at his back, through too many layers to be cold, but he knew it wasn't warm in this weather. Nothing was. The pressure was enough.

He wasn't alone, not even with the ghosts he was walking in to meet.

He nodded, and Kara followed him.

*HP*HP*HP*HP*

The wards his parents had set up fortunately hid his efforts at dismantling them from idle passersby. It took him and Kara nearly forty minutes to get through, and when at last they stumbled into the dust and dark of the entrance hall, he was more alert, but thoroughly irritated.

He opened his mouth to call out, and Kara's hand closed over it.

"Your mother's portrait," she whispered. "Unless you really want to have it out with her."

Part of him did, but arguing with a painting was a pointless exercise.

"You said Kreacher is still alive?" he whispered back.

She nodded.

"Kitchen. Down and to the left," he directed.

They made their way quietly, leaving the tumbling remains of dust in their wake. Kara's hand held fast to his elbow, and he wasn't quite sure which of them she meant to reassure.

Though he entered it cautiously, the kitchen, like the rest of the house, seemed abandoned. He stood there a moment, his hand on the doorknob, Kara so close behind him he could feel her warmth through his cloak.

It was almost enough to distract him.

He found he was out of patience.

"Kreacher!" he demanded, raising his voice just enough to feel commanding, not enough to waken his mother, down the hall behind them.

There was a crack! and then there was a house-elf, old, thin as wire, and wearing a rag so filthy it made the memory of Sirius' old prison seem positively cozy.

Sirius tried to keep his disgust from his face. Kara had suggested this would be easier if Kreacher cooperated.

Kara moved around him, into the kitchen, and crouched down in front of Kreacher. "Hello," she said. "My name is Kara."

Kreacher looked as if he wouldn't have cared if she had been the Queen of England. "Master has come home," he said, returning his attention to Sirius.

"That's right," Sirius told him. "I'm looking for something, but then I'm leaving."

"Master was always a disappointment to Mistress," Kreacher mumbled. "Now he has not even the grace to reclaim the home of his ancestors. Master leaves it in ruin."

"I'm considering burning it to the ground, actually," Sirius said coldly.

Kreacher wailed. "NOOOO! Not Mistress' home! Not the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black! Master has been a stain on his family since he was born! Now he would destroy all that remains of them!"

"That's right, and good riddance!"

"Sirius!" Kara said sharply.

"And now he brings a Mudblood in...Oh, what would Mistress say? Her halls, her carpets polluted!"

Sirius took a step forward, a violent one, but Kara stood up and between them.

"Kreacher," she said quietly. "We want you to tell us about what happened to Regulus. About the cave...and the locket."

Kreacher stared up at her in something like awe and horror.

"Do it," Sirius commanded him.

*HP*HP*HP*HP*

Half an hour later, Kara was crouching beside the house-elf again. "Kreacher," she said softly. "I do not think Regulus meant to set you an impossible task. He knew this locket was important, but I don't think he really knew why. And so...he couldn't have known how difficult it would be to destroy. There are only a few ways."

Kreacher, who had been crying, loudly and messily, now had an entirely different expression on his face as he stared at Kara. "Does...does...M-Mistress know how?"

Sirius was quite certain Kreacher had been about to call her a "Mudblood" again, and was equally certain Kara knew it.

"Yes. And I promise you we will see it done."

Kreacher burst into further tears and threw his emaciated arms around her. She patted him on the back, awkwardly, and looked up at Sirius with a grimace.

"He's all yours if you want him," he told her mildly.

*HP*HP*HP*HP*

They left the house and any decisions about its eventual fate behind them shortly after. Sirius, upon Kara's suggestion, had ordered Kreacher to the school kitchens. Kreacher hadn't been happy about it, but had gone. They would need to let Dumbledore know exactly what they had sent him, when they met him later that night.

Sirius didn't know what to think. The house was a thing he did not want to deal with, and they had two, three Horcruxes to destroy that night, and time to kill in between. He wanted...he wanted...

Not thinking too hard about it, he slid an arm around the shoulders of the woman walking next to him, and she slipped hers around his waist.

"This locket is...insidious," she explained quietly. "Whatever thoughts you are thinking...they may not be entirely your own."

"What thoughts are you thinking?"

"That I should have found a way to break the curse sooner. That I should have found a way to save Lily and James, to convince Dumbledore to keep you out of prison. That even now I am abandoning people back home, people who might have spent the last twenty years wondering what happened to me. That I'm a liar. That no matter what choice I make, it is selfish, and I will fail. That I still don't know how to help Harry, and that last piece..."

He crushed her to him. He didn't try to kiss her, not now, but he held her against his side, heads bent together, the damp air finally gathering into rain.

Weariness seeped off of her, and he realized she'd been a prisoner too, if in an entirely different way.

"I think..." he said, "I think we should go home, get some dry clothes and the ring, and go to the school. We can spend the rest of the day with Remus and Harry."

She nodded against him. Wrapping his other arm around her now, he Apparated them both home.

*HP*HP*HP*HP*

Dumbledore tucked the items away safely, reluctant, as they were, to tackle them with the school awake and moving about. He already had the diadem in his possession. They would need Harry, as well, to open the locket, and they might as well involve Remus, if only to have another warden in the room while destroying such dark and dangerous things.

Kara and Sirius knocked on Remus' door half an hour after arriving at the school, and, after greeting them with surprise, he made them some tea, noting they both looked a bit...unlike themselves.

Harry was summoned, and Ron and Hermione followed, and they passed an enjoyable rainy day indoors.

But the gloom of Grimmauld Place, of that morning, and of the locket, never quite left either of them.

It was eight o'clock when they made their way past the gargoyle and into Dumbledore's office.

"Ahh, just in time," he said, rising from his desk. "I trust you enjoyed your day with us?"

There was a silence, and Remus and Harry looked at each other uneasily.

"I...Can we get this over with?" Kara asked, twitching her shoulders.

Dumbledore nodded. "Yes, my dear. I am sorry." He looked up at Remus and Harry. "How much have Sirius and Miss Thrace explained to you?"

They shook their heads.

The headmaster sighed. "You understand, I think, that we are guarding this information closely for a number of reasons. Voldemort left several objects behind...objects he imbued with some of his own power. You have already encountered one of them, Harry."

"Tom Riddle's diary."

"Correct. Sirius and Kara have been tracking down the others. And, one of them, we will need your help to open."

"Mine? Why?"

It was Kara who answered him. "It belonged to Salazar Slytherin, Harry. It only opens to Parseltongue."

Dumbledore opened the cabinet he had stored the items in earlier. "I suggest we start with the locket."

Kara picked it up, set it in the center of the floor.

"We'd better be ready." She glanced at the Sword of Gryffindor.

It was something in his bones that made Sirius step up to it, take it out of the case it was kept in. He had never touched the Sword. Kara had wielded it. So had Harry. He had never thought to. It was...a symbol to him, not a weapon. A piece of history. They had wands, didn't they?

But when his hand closed around the hilt, he knew this was the right choice. He looked at Kara. Her eyes were wide, understanding something he wasn't seeing.

"This is going to get ugly," she told him.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean...when the locket opens...we will be able to hear...the things it is telling you."

An out. She was warning him, giving him a chance to have someone else face this. Let someone else be...exposed.

He wasn't in Gryffindor for nothing. He raised the Sword. She nodded to him.

"Harry," she said, guiding the boy forward. "I want you to open it, and then get back, fast as you can, behind Remus and me. This thing is very nasty."

Dumbledore had been watching the proceedings with interest, letting Sirius and Kara guide themselves and the others through it. Sirius wondered at that, at how hands-off he was. Wasn't the defeat of Voldemort his pet project?

Then again, the things he didn't know about Albus Dumbledore would likely fill libraries, and it was too late to wonder. Harry had taken another step towards the locket, and his lips were moving, but no human sound was coming out...

The locket sprang open, hissing, growling, and Kara snatched Harry back roughly, shoving him behind her. Remus sprang forward, wand out, and Sirius gripped the Sword's hilt with both hands.

"I have seen your heart. What is left of it."

Sirius froze.

"I have seen the shriveled bits of your soul. Do you think the Dementors' Death is always quick? Do you really think you escaped?"

"Sirius..."

"You belong to them. You belong to their world of sorrow and despair, and you will never truly leave it, because you know. You know you deserve to be there."

A cry, somewhere, elsewhere. The room had faded around him. He saw nothing, heard nothing but that voice.

"A disappointment to your family, useful only in that you would keep their darkest secrets. A way to indulge your uncle's appetites without exposing them."

He felt as if he'd been slapped. He'd never told anyone...

"Your family must have known, must have seen even then. They must have seen how worthless you are.

"You failed your brother. You never even questioned why he'd died.

"You cannot keep the woman. She does not belong to you, and eventually even she will see you for what you are, and will leave you. You have always known.

"You failed when it mattered most. You killed your dearest friend. And what have you now? So much talent, such a handsome young man...wasted away so that the outer shell reflects how worthless you are within."

Failed. What was it about that word? He'd heard it earlier that day...heard Kara say it.

She was afraid she had, would fail.

She'd heard the locket say it to her.

And he remembered, in some quiet corner of himself, that he had been warned about this locket, and what he would face.

He remembered, too, that though he had failed, though he had let James and Lily down, it wasn't a reason to give up. He had broken out of Azkaban to keep fighting. Because Harry had needed him.

Harry still needed him.

He knew despair, knew it like a brother, but what he didn't know was how to stop fighting.

He had not stopped fighting, all those long years in Azkaban, and he wasn't about to stop now.

Each step closer to the locket felt like an effort, but he no longer heard the things it was saying to him. He was too focused on the Sword in his hand, on the enemy before him, on the desperate, impossible task of destroying it.

It was not the first impossible thing he had done, and it would not be the last.

Without a cry, or a shout of defiance, or so much as a grunt, Sirius brought the Sword up...and down. Once, twice. And then it was done.

The fog - real or imagined - cleared, and he found himself facing Harry, and Kara, and Remus on the other side of it.