And so it began, Remus' ludicrous running from the law.
It all started off exceedingly well when he managed to apparate into a shadowed alley way, so close to a muggle skip he almost fell into it. Coming suddenly face to face with the hunk of metal made him immediately fling himself backwards, knocking his elbow painfully as he went.
'Merlin's saggy ballsack,' Remus hissed under his breath, rubbing his funny bone as he righted himself.
He had never been very good at apparating, having splinched himself badly several times in the past. He feared this stumbling start did not bode well for his future as a fugitive from the Ministry of Magic.
As he turned to leave, Remus realised he was being watched by a muggle builder. The man was leaning against the opposite wall with his arms crossed, smoking a cigarette. Remus' head was immediately filled with panic, followed by a tiny, tiny thought about how good looking the man was. The muggle was stood outside in the icy morning air wearing nothing but a white t-shirt, and his arms were tanned and firm, even in the middle of December.
Remus was taken aback by himself. Here he was, running for his life, but he still had time to feel flustered by men with arms like they were chiselled from marble.
He realised he was staring and was about to open his mouth to explain away his sudden apparition into the alleyway, before the man looked down at his cigarette with a frown, shrugged, then put it out with his boot and disappeared into the building behind him.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Remus straightened his clothes and headed out onto the main street. He had meant to apparate somewhere just behind Kings Cross station, but he had ended up several streets away.
He only had some vague idea that he needed to get out of the capital city. With the floo networks being watched, unregistered portkeys being both trackable and illegal, and his apparition skills leaving a lot to be desired, Remus had conceived that the only way to accomplish this was by muggle train.
The thought of retreating into the muggle world was not unappealing to Remus. He knew he looked a little rough around the edges, but his coat was a muggle one and had been quite expensive when his dad had bought it for him just after Hogwarts. With his plain trousers, shirt, brown jumper, and black gloves, he looked sufficiently unremarkable. He could blend in with muggles easily, and he was more familiar with the muggle world than the average witch or wizard. He felt confident he could use this to his advantage.
Money was an issue, as it always was. He did not have the time or the nerve to walk into Gringotts to exchange the measly number of sickles and knuts he had in his pocket for muggle money, but he still had his wand.
Despite it being the off-peak time of half-past eleven on a Wednesday morning, the station was still as busy as always. A vast crowd of harried-looking muggles were standing in the foyer looking up at the train time announcement boards.
Remus found a spot and perused the boards himself. A jaunt to the north seemed like a safe bet, as far as Scotland if he could manage it. It was far away certainly, and also in the direction of Dumbledore. The old man had always said Remus could go to him for help, and although that was more easily said than done, both logistically and in terms of Remus' pride, Remus did not really know what else to do.
Having located the relevant train service, he found that a fast train to Edinburgh was leaving in twelve minutes. He contemplated using a simple spell to pickpocket the money he needed to buy a ticket. Petty theft seemed like a nice way to initiate himself officially into the sphere of the criminal underworld, but there was always the chance he would get caught.
Wanting to get away quickly and quietly, Remus instead opted for using a Confundus charm on the unsuspecting ticket salesman to trick him into believing Remus had already given him the money. By the time he had managed this he had but four minutes to spare.
Making use of his long legs, Remus sprinted for the right platform. The guard was just closing the gate and attempted to stop him, but Remus dodged past him and jumped onto the train just as the signal man sounded the all-clear.
As Remus boarded the train, the signal man glared at him through the window, and Remus noticed that despite his expression he was particularly good looking too. Remus felt heat rising in his cheeks, and he wanted to scream at himself. What was the matter with him, getting so flustered by a beautiful face every five minutes? He could only put it down to his heightened emotions and hoped it would quickly pass and he would start focussing on more important things, like how to run for his life.
Remus made his way down the train carriage. It was nostalgic, catching a train at Kings Cross, even more so when he discovered the train cars were divided into compartments rather than the more modern individual seats.
The first carriage was packed to the brim with muggles, so Remus moved on to the next, and the next, without finding a single seat free. He did not fancy having to squidge himself in with the family of seven, or with the two old couples who gave him a haughty look as he peered through the glass door. Finally, in the fourth carriage he managed to find a compartment that had just one other person inside, sitting on the left-hand-side of the door.
Remus knocked on the window and pulled open the sliding door. 'Do you mind if I sit in here?' he asked, nodding at the opposite seat.
The person was reading a newspaper, and when they lowered it, Remus came face to face with yet another gorgeous man. He gave Remus a mildly confused look, but then shook his head and went back to reading his paper.
Feeling self-conscious, Remus headed straight to the window seat on the opposite side of the carriage and fixed his gaze resolutely out of the window as the train made its way out of London.
Remus now had approximately four and a half hours to sit calmly in the carriage and figure out what the hell he was going to do next. He wondered if he should take another train once he got to Edinburgh, go all the way up to somewhere like Galloway perhaps, and lay low for a while. Or perhaps it was best to apparate straight to Hogsmead, walk up to the school and demand to see Dumbledore that very night.
Part of him was worried there would be Death Eaters at the gates. Dumbledore would never switch sides, of that much he was certain, but how far had You-Know-Who's teeth sunk into the running of the school through his influence at the Ministry? Would Death Eaters be surreptitiously patrolling the streets, the pubs, or the forest? Remus did not want to rush in without a plan. There was too much at stake.
He was also concerned about how much of a head start he had on the aurors. Would they try to trace him?
Remus felt a stab of guilt in his stomach when he thought of how he had left Regulus lying there all alone. The barman would be the one to find the body, or would it be a cleaner, or another guest in an adjacent room? Perhaps the body would not be found for days and would be left there to fester and rot.
Who would be the one to find Remus' body when the Death Eaters inevitably caught up with him? Would they bury him, or destroy his remains? Would he be one of those people who just went missing one day, forgotten and insignificant?
As he looked out at the drab brown fields and trees of the wintertime English countryside, Remus felt a bubbling, sobbing panic at the thought that no one would be left to truly mourn him. His old family and friends would simply think of him with pity.
They would sigh and say, 'Well, it was probably for the best.'
'What kind of quality of life did he really have anyway?' they would nod to themselves.
Remus imagined his father hearing the news and breathing a deep sigh of relief, and immediately he wanted to cry.
Glancing over at the other man in the carriage, Remus noticed that he had been watching Remus out of the corner of his eye.
'Do you mind if I smoke?' Remus asked, trying to push back down the tears he felt springing up in his eyes.
The other man blinked and shook his head quickly before going straight back to his paper.
Feeling self-conscious again, Remus stood up to crack the window open and then pulled his fags and lighter from his pocket. He took comfort from the click of the lighter, the hiss as the paper singed and lit, and the first, long pull of the smoke as it filled his lungs. It was all so practiced, so calming, the motion of the drag, the sweep of his hand as he set it back down, the release of smoke as he tilted his head up towards the open window.
Remus could feel the other man's eyes on him again, but he did not look over. Instead he reached into the inside pocket of his coat and pulled out Regulus' little black book.
The book was small enough to fit into the palm of his hand, and was mostly full of Regulus' small, neat, cursive script. Remus had planned on starting at the beginning, but none of the pages seemed to be in any kind of order, and, contrary to Remus' expectations, the notes were neither comprehensive nor particularly legible. Several times he had to reread parts or squint to identify a certain word or letter.
The book was like a cross between a personal diary and an academic journal. Remus came across several pages that presented to him Regulus' quick and vicious wit, including several jibes about blood purity, and so called "half-breeds".
Regulus had by no means completely reformed himself in the aftermath of becoming a werewolf. He had apparently only objected to the violent means that the Death Eaters used, rather than for the reasons they were using them. Remus completely skipped over several pages when Regulus was ranting about his hatred for werewolves, even when the date at the top of the page made it clear that he was at that point one himself.
Regulus made absolutely no reference to being a werewolf that Remus could find, except the name of a woman who Remus suspected was the woman who had bitten him, and a neat log of each full moon he had experienced.
Moving on, Remus was drawn to a section about the cave that Regulus had previously mentioned.
I went with Kreacher to the cave – the locket was there – I was right!
But the potion I drank made everything go horribly wrong…
Regulus then went off on a tangent, waxing lyrical about how awful the cave had been, how it had felt like death incarnate, and how the twisted fingers of inferi of all things had attempted to pull him down into the water and Kreacher had only at the last minute apparated them both to safety. He had not even made it clear if he had managed to get the locket or not. Remus was not sure he believed that there had been actual inferi at the scene, but he became so fully absorbed in the tale that he felt sorry for the fact that Regulus had never put his efforts into becoming a writer.
Remus was disappointed when the passage cut off suddenly and went off on another tangent of Regulus congratulating himself on sending You-Know-Who a provoking note, telling him his plan to make You-Know-Who mortal once more.
Remus was left completely non-plussed by this. How stupid Regulus had been to send it and reveal his plans. Why would anyone in such dire straits as Regulus had been send You-Know-Who a note stating plainly that he was trying to kill him?
And what did Regulus mean when he said that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was not a mortal man… the very idea did not bear thinking about.
It was just as he was contemplating this, when Remus came across a page marked by a folded corner and a worn edge. The title at the top read:
The 39 Steps to Make a Horcrux
Remus was unfamiliar with the word, but what followed were a set of instructions that seemed to dictate the process of creating such a thing. As Regulus transcribed:
I have a copy here of the pages as I found them in the book from 1677, as kept by the Dark Lord. They are instructions for making that dark artefact that even the ancient ones deemed abhorrent. This looks to be a 1600s translation of a much older manuscript. I intend to look for more information, but I fear there has been little if not no new literature on this topic in the last two hundred years.
Regulus had made a copy of the page of a book, sticking it into his own notebook with a permanent sticking charm. It was a list of instructions, and was tiresome to read, not just because they were vague, confusing, and incomplete, but the s's and i's were written archaicly and the spelling was unstandardised.
The more Remus was able to read, however, the more he grew disgusted.
*Hereincloſed, preſently, thirty-nine ſteps to inſtruct for preſerving a fraction of the ſoule, thus:
To beginne, yf the ſoule of the ſawolberend ys ſhared wyth another as ſuch that ſentiment connects them, that perſon muſt be killed or caſt aſide.
Yf, here upon, a being comes to you and ſpeaks as a friend, they muſt be caſte aſide.
Murdre, foule and deſyſive, ſhall be committed by the ſ awolberend whoſe ſoule ſhall be ſplit; ſuch a quantity needed ys one ſoule, encaſed witheen one body, divyded by death.
From what Remus could understand, it was talking about splitting somebody's soul. The instructions made an unpleasant dread come over him, only in part because of the required murder. Skimming through the long list of thirty-nine instructions, phrases like "bones ſhall be dried and powdered" and "aſh of lung, heart and flesh" caught his eye, and he felt a chill sink over him.
He stood up quickly and closed the window, but as he sat back down his eyes caught the final paragraph.
As completed, the fragment and the feorhbryce are distincte; yf the feorhbryce feels pain of their magick ſtill, there has been a miſtake; the item wille erode and the feorhbryce will die.
Yf succeſs is grantyd, the feorhbryce has eraſed the ſoule of the forþgeleóred; the feorhbryce has beaten Death.
Remus tapped the ash from his cigarette into the ashtray on the windowsill and took another drag. He could hardly believe it. Thirty-nine steps to create a horcrux. Thirty-nine steps to destroy a soul and replace it with a piece of your own. It was a crime against nature, sacrilege against everything it meant to exist on Earth as a living thing.
He was not even sure he knew yet what a horcrux was entirely. To cut out someone's soul… it was not possible. Was the horcrux this item that was spoken of, that then prevented the bearer from dying?
Remus already believed in souls, otherwise there would be nothing for dementors to take from a person. When consumed by darker thoughts during the long winter nights at Hogwarts, Remus had sometimes indulged in his own form of masochistic study and read about the history of werewolves. There had been horrible tests done where werewolves were purposefully given the dementor's kiss to identify the existence of a potential soul. The results of that particular experiment had been "inconclusive", which Remus suspected meant the witches and wizards had not liked what they had found out.
The idea of eating someone's soul was vile, but he had never considered that humans could do it just as much as dementors could. The idea of a horcrux was appalling. Remus had never thought much about where people went when they died, if they went anywhere at all, but it seemed that to make a horcrux one did not simply kill a person, but erase them, from past, present, and future, this life and the next. To do that to someone felt like the most evil thing he had ever heard.
And still Regulus had written more:
The dark Lord trusts no one, but he has always had a ring that he has paraded around before his followers. He claims it was an heirloom of the Salazar line of which he is the only living heir – I know this to be a lie as the Gaunts, the last heirs of Salazar, bred themselves into extinction. My family can only dream of such an achievement—ha!
The Dark Lord rarely takes the ring off, but I have had one chance to examine it and it is the real antique he claims it to be. It is in fact quite beautiful, but I suspect it is already a horcrux. I must hope he decides to hide it somewhere. How like the Dark Lord it would be to wear a horcrux as an accessory.
I note how much contempt I now use to speak about the Dark Lord – I am well and truly cured of that infatuation—!
He is obsessed with himself, and power, and obsessed with looking and being powerful. How agreeable it is to know that his end is now to be orchestrated through my hand—!
A new page was started, with a slightly different shade of ink:
He will make seven horcruxes—!
The idea has come to me just this night. All this time, I have presumed he only intended to make one, but now I believe that the Dark Lord has much bigger plans in mind.
Living forever – he is obsessed.
But it only just fell into place for me tonight when the Dark Lord chose six death eaters to accompany him on his mission. Someone dared to ask why, and the Dark Lord said he needed the power of seven. Power again, you see.
Seven as a number is known to be magically powerful. It is only a hunch, but I am usually right about these things. He will make seven horcruxes, if he hasn't already.
The locket - in the cave.
The ring - on his person.
That is all I know. There is no pattern yet.
The more Remus read, the more he believed Regulus to the utmost. Regulus' Dark Lord had committed a truly depraved act. It would be enough to turn anyone on their head and make them run for the hills.
You-Know-Who now essentially had at least three lives, two back-ups should his current body and soul be defeated. It was worse than Remus could have ever imagined. He had been expecting to read details of some secret weapon Regulus had discovered, some ancient spell to thwart evil, because had not Regulus said that he knew a way to defeat You-Know-Who? This was not a way to kill him, but even more proof that the monster could not be killed.
His fag burnt down to the butt between his fingers, and he stubbed it out.
Remus had been right to run as soon as he could. He could see now why You-Know-Who was doing all he could to stop this information getting out.
And like Regulus surely had, Remus now felt the desperate need to tell somebody else. He could not let this information die with him, if and when the Death Eaters caught up with him.
But could he put someone else in danger like that? Regulus had quite thoroughly thrown Remus' life away for him.
He needed to tell Dumbledore. He alone could stand his ground against You-Know-Who. Would Dumbledore believe Remus if he turned up out of the blue and told him this far-fetched tale? Would showing him Regulus' notebook be enough, or would Dumbledore simply laugh and throw Remus out of the school?
Lowering the book into his lap, Remus realised that his hands were shaking. He did the only thing he could think to do and lit up another cigarette.
If you want a translation of the archaic English:
*Hereinclosed, presently, thirty-nine steps to instruct for preserving a fraction of the soul, thus;
1. To begin, if the soul of the sawolberend is shared with another as such that sentiment connects them, that person must be killed or cast aside.
2. If, here upon, a being comes to you and speaks as a friend, they must be cast aside.
3. Murder, foul and decisive, shall be committed by the sawolberend whose soul shall be split; such a quantity needed is one soul, encased within one body, divided by death.
As completed, the fragment and the feorhbryce are distincte; if the feorhbryce feels pain of their magic still, there has been a mistake; the item will erode and the feorhbryce will die.
If success is granted, the feorhbryce has erased the soule of the forþgeleóred; the feorhbryce has beaten Death.