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Part Two

"Regulus?"

Regulus opened his eyes slowly, and then spent a minute rubbing them. He had been having a strange dream that involved dark waters closing over his head while someone held him down, and it took him a moment to remember that was a memory, not a dream, of the way he had died.

Thought he was dying.

But while it was understandable that the lake would linger on his mind, he wasn't dead. He was here, with Kreacher staring at him with shining, luminous eyes. A friend, now, not a servant. As much a wizard as Regulus was a house-elf.

"Did something happen?" Regulus asked around a yawn.

"There is being a letter from your cousins."

Regulus sat up, a little concerned. The last thing he had heard from the Malfoys was that they were all doing well, and Narcissa had been freed from not only her possession but also the Black madness. It seemed like a bad omen that there would be another letter so soon.

But it wasn't like he could ignore the news, so he took the letter from Kreacher and opened it.

Henry would like to speak to you on a matter of justice to do with the Black family.

Regulus took a deep breath and crumpled up the note. It was Lucius's handwriting, and didn't need a signature. He was shaking a little.

He had met his young cousin for whom they had all sacrificed so much—sort of. It had been little more than a quick greeting and a smile before Regulus had left to go to Grimmauld Place and take charge of the wards.

But he knew what this meant. There was only one thing that Henry would want to talk with him about, and his tastes in tea or robes didn't cover it.

Sirius.

"Thank you for coming, Cousin Regulus."

"It's no problem, Henry."

Cousin Regulus was a younger man than Harry had had the first impression of, but then, Mother and Father had told him about Regulus somehow surviving and not aging under the lake. He nodded to the couch in the sitting room behind him. "Shall we sit down?"

Regulus smiled and settled on the couch. "Thank you, Henry."

Dobby popped in with the tea, giving Regulus a curious look as he did so. Then he froze with his mouth hanging open.

"Dobby?" Harry asked. He'd never seen the little elf react like that. "Are you okay?"

"This is not being a wizard," Dobby whispered. "But he is not being a house-elf, either. What is you being?"

Regulus cleared his throat and reached out to take a cup from the tray that Dobby was holding. "I suppose I should say that I'm a wizard who is bonded to a house-elf. Maybe the first one who's had a true bond in centuries."

"Is this about the way that you blended with Kreacher during the confrontation with the Horcrux?" Harry asked.

Regulus flinched at the word "Horcrux," but he nodded. "We could see the bonds in everything when we were joined like that," he said, and his voice was low and full of awe. "We could see the emotional connections between family members, but also the connections between atoms—"

"Wait, you know about atoms?"

"They were part of ancient scientific thought long before we split from Muggles," Regulus said mildly. "Although no doubt there are differences between the theories. But yes, Kreacher and I could see those connections. And there was such a profound sense of belonging that I thought of myself more as one being in two bodies than as two."

"You are still being part of a greater being," Dobby whispered. He was shaking.

"House-elves have powers that we don't really know or understand."

"Well, I imagine the elves do."

Harry cracked a quick smile. "All right. I was talking about magical humans. They could cure the Black madness. They did it for Mother and—Cousin Sirius." He paused. "Do you think that's part of the power of sensing bonds?"

"I imagine so. Kreacher and I managed to sever the Horcrux from the locket, and then from existence." Harry thought that Regulus had a right to sound proud, which he did. "I wouldn't want to say what exactly it was like in the language of magical theory, though."

"That's fine. I've never studied magical theory, and it's not really something I'm interested in, anyway." Harry shifted, clenched his fists together, and licked his lips. "Do you think—do you think that you could sever someone's emotions from their memories? From their actions? A person?"

Regulus stared at him. Then he said, "I assume you are talking about Sirius."

"Yes," Harry said hoarsely. He could almost feel the disapproving gaze of his parents on the back of his neck, even though neither of them was here. He knew that they wouldn't approve of what they saw as mercy to Sirius.

Regulus stared into his teacup for a moment. Then he whispered, "I thought his life was forfeit. What would this do?"

"I'm hoping to destroy his obsession with me. If he doesn't have that, or any motivation to try and come after me or stay close to me, then I hope my parents will consent to send him back to Azkaban."

"Not free him?"

"No." Harry winced when he saw the way Regulus recoiled from him when he said that word. He closed his eyes and spent a moment controlling his temper. When he looked at his cousin again, he said quietly, "I'm never going to free him. I—can't forgive what he did to me to that extent."

"I don't think your parents would be happy with him being in Azkaban, either."

"No. But putting him back in hell on earth would be enough for me, honestly. And my parents said his fate was up to me to decide. They won't interfere if I decide that I want him in Azkaban. The only thing they would do is demand some assurance that he won't escape."

"How can you give that to them?"

"I was wondering if you could take other things from him. His ability to transform into a dog, for example. That was the only thing that allowed him to escape in the first place."

"I—you're ruthless, Henry."

Harry swallowed an icy little bit of hurt, and just inclined his head. "Thank you."

"It wasn't a compliment. The Dark Lord is ruthless, too."

"What else would you have me do?" Harry snapped, and maybe some of the ruthless strength that Regulus had talked about was in his voice, because suddenly he was speaking in a way that made his cousin stare at him with his mouth open. "He's been in prison. He broke out and came after me again and again. He got himself possessed by a Horcrux, and the only thing that stopped him was your utterly unexpected bonding with a house-elf! He tried to use a necromantic ritual to change me back into a Potter! He kidnapped me when I was a baby and cost me twelve years with my family!"

Harry broke off, panting. Regulus watched him, blinking.

Harry closed his eyes and said softly, "This is the only thing I can think of that might spare his life. If he's essentially a different person with no means to break out of Azkaban, then maybe he'll live."

"I think he might not prefer such a life."

"His motivations and wants don't matter to me anymore, Cousin Regulus."

Regulus opened his mouth, closed it. Then he murmured, sounding defeated, "Is there any way I could speak with him? I promise, I'm not going to try and break him out of his cell or persuade you to spare his life if you don't want to. I just want to—see him."

Harry thought about it. He knew that Father would be resistant, but Mother, despite the fact that she blamed herself for Sirius being in the Manor in the first place, might champion this. She was the one who had really been the gladdest to see Regulus, and wanted him reconciled into the family.

"Yes," Harry said. "All right."

Sirius looked up as the door of the cell opened. He hadn't expected visitors at all. The only "people" he had seen since he was imprisoned here were house-elves who popped in to bring and remove the trays of food he got.

But now—

Now his brother was stepping through the door, which immediately resealed behind him with the clunk of heavy wards. Sirius scrambled to his feet and stood staring. He knew his jaw was hanging halfway down his chest. He didn't try to help it.

"Hello, Sirius."

"I wasn't mad," Sirius whispered. "Or not mad all the way. You did survive."

"Yes."

"Why did—why did you leave me here?" Sirius swallowed. He wanted to say a lot of things, but that was the thing that bubbled to the top of his mind, and which he thought his brother might be able to actually answer.

(His brother. Sirius had gone so long thinking that his whole family was dead, it felt as though someone had rammed a Bludger into his skull).

"Because you deserve this."

Regulus's voice was hesitant, and deep with sorrow, but his eyes said that he hadn't come to release Sirius. Sirius slumped back against the wall next to his cot and shut his own eyes. "Why are you here if you didn't come to free me?" This cell didn't have any Dementors, but it was still a torment, after twelve years in Azkaban and then two of a limited freedom.

"Because I wanted to see you."

Sirius snapped his eyes open. "We have nothing to say to each other."

Regulus went still in a way that Sirius hadn't expected. He hadn't realized there was some kind of burning fire in his baby brother until he spoke the words that might have extinguished it.

"Is that really the way you feel?" Regulus asked quietly, studying him. "If it is, then I'll leave."

"No, I—" Sirius clenched his fists. Since the damned Malfoys had put him here, he didn't really know what to say. He knew what he had done, and horror and shame gripped him whenever he thought of being possessed by the locket Horcrux. But he also thought that the Malfoys were Dark bastards, and his brother had been a Death Eater.

"How did you survive?" he asked abruptly.

"I'm still not entirely sure, but something about the place where I nearly died seems to have preserved me in a state somewhere between death and life. I woke up all the way when I felt the ritual that called on the Black family to purge the Horcrux from Henry."

"And you didn't come and tell me?"

"You were possessed by that point."

"Who—who helped you out of the lake and got you—back to yourself?" Sirius gestured vaguely at Regulus, not sure Regulus would understand what he meant, but his brother was nodding before Sirius had finished speaking. One of his more annoying mannerisms, Sirius thought.

"Kreacher."

"Kreacher?"

Regulus stared at him in silence for a moment. Then he said, "Kreacher was the one I went after the Horcrux for—the locket that ended up possessing you. The Dark Lord would have killed him. I went after the Horcrux, replaced it with a fake locket, and told Kreacher to destroy the real one. I planned on dying."

"For a house-elf."

Regulus abruptly drew himself up, and something glimmered in his face that Sirius had never seen there before. It didn't make him look like their father, even though Sirius had the distant impression that it should have. "And you? You stole your cousin's child for a lark. For a laugh. You're the reason that Henry ended up with abusive Muggles. You're the reason that he nearly got turned back into a Potter, and had to suffer immense pain. You're the one that got your cousin possessed, and nearly killed another."

Sirius felt as though someone had reached into his soul and yanked on the threads so that they got tangled around each other. He wanted to speak, he wanted to say things, but all the words seemed inadequate.

Finally, he got out, "Not a lark."

"What?"

"I took Harry so that Lily and James could have a child. Their marriage was disintegrating because they'd been cursed on the battlefield. Infertility."

"Who the fuck cares?"

Sirius stared at Regulus with his mouth hanging open. He knew he looked stupid, but the little brother he remembered had never sworn. He'd even scolded Sirius for swearing sometimes, as if he were Sirius's father. He'd said there were better ways to make the point than swearing.

Sirius swung into anger. "I cared! They cared! And they loved Harry, they did, Lily's love was powerful enough to defeat You-Know-Who when he came to kill Harry—"

"And he spent twelve years with Muggles who hated him. And I care that Narcissa and Lucius and Draco suffered because you couldn't keep yourself under control long enough not to steal a child."

"I care more about James and Lily than any of them!"

"They're fourteen years dead, Sirius."

Sirius folded his arms. "Still true," he muttered, knowing he sounded sulky, and not caring. Why didn't Regulus see? When Sirius had had to run away from home, his Gryffindor friends had become his family. He would have done anything for them. They mattered a lot less to him than an accident of blood did.

Maybe he could make his brother understand, at that. "You should understand me. You have Kreacher."

"What?"

"You care more about him than you do about me," and Sirius tried to keep the bitterness from his voice at that realization, "or most witches and wizards. Why can't you understand that I would choose James and Lily over Narcissa?"

"Because it involved stealing a child."

From the implacable look on Regulus's face, he wasn't going to get past that. Sirius sighed loudly and flopped back to lean against the wall. "Fine, if you just want to scold me, you might as well leave."

But Regulus lingered, his eyes sweeping up and down Sirius and clawing against his skin. Then he shook his head. "I'll have to tell Henry it won't work."

"His name is Harry. And what are you talking about?"

Regulus ignored his statement about Harry's name entirely. "He wanted me to see if there was a way I could sever your emotions from him, the way house-elves can sever people from the Black madness. Then you could be put into Azkaban without any risk of escape."

Sirius lunged forwards until he banged against a glimmering ward that he hadn't realized even ran down the middle of the cell between him and the door. Sirius grasped the bars that had appeared, ignoring the way that the skin on his hands burned, and snarled, "I would rather die than go back there."

"That's precisely what you're going to do, Sirius, unless you can convince Henry, and his parents, that you're no longer a danger to him."

"They can kill me. It doesn't make them right!"

"It makes them more right than you are. I thought—but never mind." Regulus turned his back and strode out of the cell.

Sirius closed his eyes and tried to wrestle himself back under control. His mind felt clearer without the possession of the locket, it was true. And he had accepted that it was possession, and not just a useful legacy from his ancestors pointing out the correct path for him.

But he still felt an anger burning low down in his belly.

Why couldn't they understand that Harry had been Lily and James's child, and they had loved him, whatever Sirius's faults might have been?

"I don't think there's anything I can do for him."

Harry blinked at Regulus, who had flung himself down on the couch in the sitting room and practically barked the words, before he jammed the small biscuit filled with chocolate that he'd grabbed into his mouth. Harry leaned back in his own seat and looked back and forth between Regulus and the tray.

"Nothing?" he asked, when Regulus scowled at him and reached for another biscuit.

"Nothing."

"But if he's free of both the madness and the possession—"

"He's not mad," Regulus snapped. "He's not possessed. He's just an utterly stubborn arse who's fixated on his dead best friends. And on your being their child because they couldn't have children."

"Did you tell him that doesn't matter?"

"Of course. He just said that it matters to him."

Harry closed his eyes and spent a moment rubbing at his forehead, at the place where the scar no longer twinged the way it had when he was a Horcrux but he was still prone to headaches. "And if that's the case, then I don't think you can just sever him from his emotions or his obsession with the dead."

"No." Frustration simmered in Regulus's eyes, and Harry thought with a jolt of what would happen if this were Draco, consumed with some obsession of his own. "He wouldn't be himself anymore if that happened. It's probably also true that he wouldn't try to escape Azkaban, but I think you were looking for some happy ending where he could live, exist as himself, and somehow get past you. Not where he's an automaton."

"Shit," Harry murmured, and bowed his head.

"Are you all right, Henry? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make it sound like I was dumping the whole burden on you—"

Harry waved him off. "It's not you. It's all right. Well, it's not all right, but it's not your fault, either."

"All right. Do you think I could get the recipe for these biscuits from Dobby?"

Harry smiled faintly. "He'd probably be happy to oblige you." He called for Dobby.

While Dobby was excitedly explaining to Regulus about how to bake the biscuits, Harry looked out the window. It showed him a view of the gardens and the Quidditch pitch. Draco was swooping after a Snitch and then looping back again and again as it managed to escape him each time.

Harry sighed.

"I truly am sorry, little cousin."

Harry turned back around with a shake of his head. "Not more than I am. He's your brother, and just someone who might have been my godfather in another lifetime to me. I really did hope things will work out."

"What are you going to do with him?"

Harry swallowed. There was only one answer that had occurred to him if Sirius couldn't be severed from his emotions and receive a trial for trying to turn Harry back into a Potter with the necromantic ritual.

"You don't want to know."

"He's still my brother."

"I'm going to use him as a sacrifice to the Great Serpent."

Regulus's hand paused on its way to his mouth with yet another biscuit, and he stared at Harry in horror.

"Why would you do that?" Regulus finally whispered.

"How much do you know about the Great Serpent?"

"Let's assume I know nothing."

Harry nodded. He had his hands locked on his knees, and he was practicing the kind of deep, calming breaths that Healer Letham had told him about. It wasn't helping that much.

"The Great Serpent used to protect my family. It's the reason that some Malfoys were Parselmouths, and one of the reasons that we came out of conflicts like the one with the Weasleys with our money and reputations intact. Maybe it even had something to do with Father getting his lie about being under the Imperius believed." Harry grimaced, because that was distasteful, but all he could do was keep going forwards and making sure that he went some way to making up for the sins of his ancestors. "But its influence has waned in the last few decades, maybe centuries, because we stopped worshipping it. It only responded to specific entreaties, like my father sacrificing the diadem to it, or asking it to protect me so that I could worship it in the future."

"That—makes sense. But it doesn't make sense why you would sacrifice someone who's from another family entirely to it."

"The Great Serpent introduced itself to me recently." Harry rubbed his hands back and forth on his knees, then stopped when he saw the way Regulus looked at him. He probably understood that Harry was wiping off the sweat, and Harry felt a little embarrassed being that understood. "I'll be able to do great things when I have years of worship and service to it behind me."

"But?"

"For the great thing I need to do now—to defeat Voldemort—I need to give it a sacrifice. I don't have enough time serving it built up for it to just do that because I'm its—priest."

Saying that gave Harry a weird feeling, but he was coming to accept that he was, essentially, that to the Great Serpent. He hoped he wouldn't have to say it often, though. It made the conversations all strange.

"But why not just sacrifice the last Horcrux to it? Whatever that is."

"Do you have any idea where the last Horcrux is? Or what it is?"

"Of course not."

Harry nodded. "Neither do I. And we conducted a ritual in the past so that we could see where the Horcruxes were, but although it told us there were seven, the rays of light that led away from it were too long to see the ends of. And we could only do that ritual because we had a Horcrux in our possession at the time. We don't now. We destroyed it."

Regulus raised a trembling hand and pressed the back of it against his eyes. "This is so much to take in."

"I know."

There was more silence. Harry ate a few of the biscuits and wondered if Dobby would let him bake some of his own. They were pretty good.

Regulus finally stirred and focused on him. "I was thinking about whether it would be better to sever Sirius's emotions and obsessions from him after all."

"And?"

"And I think existing as a shell of a person would be worse for him than dying. And going back to Azkaban would definitely be worse."

Harry gave him a tired smile. "I know. I wish things were different, that he could just give up on trying to make me into a Potter, or seeing me as his godson. I wish that one of the letters he wrote to Mother had been the truth, and he just wanted to get to know me as his cousin." He swallowed. "But that isn't the case."

"So."

"So I use him as part of a sacrifice that will at least serve the purpose of defeating Voldemort. I can make it a painless death that way."

"I thought your parents had left his fate up to you. Can't you just give him a painless death anyway?"

"It would lead to bad feelings between me and my family. I'm not willing to do that just so that he can die painlessly."

"And?"

"And what?"

"I know that you have more than one motivation. I can practically see it hovering behind your eyes."

Shit. Harry wondered if he should try to learn more Occlumency. He leaned back in his chair and said, "He made me suffer. He subjected me to twelve years of abuse at the hands of Muggles, and he also made me suffer when he used that stupid necromantic ritual. He tried multiple times to kidnap me, he got my mother possessed, and he caused my father to have to swear me into service to the Great Serpent. That worked out better than Father thought it would, but he had to do it on the spur of the moment. And that's not even mentioning the suffering Mother and Father and Draco went through when I was kidnapped."

"What are you saying?" Regulus whispered.

"If I just killed him and didn't use him as a sacrifice, I wouldn't want to kill him painlessly. I would want him to suffer."

Regulus stared at him as if dazed. Harry looked back. It had taken him a while to admit this about himself, but—

It was true.

"But if you use him as a sacrifice, you can convince yourself to kill him painlessly? How does that work?"

"His death would serve a purpose, then. It would be for something higher than the revenge I'd want to take otherwise. So yes, I wouldn't mind killing him quickly if it would mean that I would get something other than revenge from it."

Regulus breathed out, his eyes locked on the wall behind Harry's head. Then he looked back at him. "You're kind of scary, Henry."

"Thank you."

"I don't know if it was a compliment."

Harry shrugged. That was better than saying things Regulus knew weren't compliments. "You have to understand that I've thought about this carefully."

"In the three whole days since all of this happened."

"Yes," Harry said, sharply enough to make Regulus sit up and pay attention. "I have to do something. Both because my parents will demand it, and because I don't have long before I have to go back to Hogwarts. And do you think that Father and Mother are really going to keep Sirius alive until the summer without doing something to him?"

Regulus lowered his eyes.

Harry nodded, glad that Regulus understood everything Harry was trying to say. "I don't want to kill him, particularly. But I don't want him to escape punishment for what he did, either. He's done enough of that. And this is the most useful thing I can think of for him to do, and a good reason for him to die quickly and quietly."

"I don't want to be there."

"You don't have to be."

Regulus nodded jerkily and stood. "I think I'll go now."

"All right, cousin. Thank you for coming."

Regulus paused with his hand on the door handle long enough that Harry thought he would turn around and issue some scathing condemnation. But instead, he only whispered, "I wish it hadn't come to this," and exited.

Harry closed his eyes and sat still, only nodding a little when Dobby asked if he wanted more tea. He did open his eyes when he heard someone else enter the room, but it turned out to be Mother, who took her place on the sofa across from him and gave him a speaking look.

"I thought—Regulus thought it was wrong," Harry whispered. "But I let him speak to Sirius, and he didn't accomplish anything."

"Of course not. Sirius's obsessions are too deeply rooted."

"Did you try talking to him?"

"I would have murdered him out of sheer contempt for his stubbornness."

Harry smiled despite himself, and got up to walk across the room to her sofa and sit down beside her. Mother kissed his forehead and draped her arm across his shoulder.

"Try not to be too harsh in your judgment of Regulus, dear one. Sirius is his brother, and I think part of him did believe that they would resume a bond as though nothing had happened. The rest of him knew better."

"He—compared me to Voldemort."

Narcissa clucked her tongue. "It might help to know that, mentally, Regulus is only a few years older than you are. He went into that lake and stayed there without life experiences of any kind for sixteen years. It's not surprising that he would talk as though there is some other solution when in fact there is none."

"You don't disapprove of my plan?" Harry had told her and Father yesterday.

Mother bent her head, a small smile on her lips. It wasn't the kind of cold or sadistic smile she would have displayed before being freed from the Black madness, but it wasn't warm and gentle, either. "You know my stance."

Harry nodded. Mother thought that a slow death by torture would be best for the kidnapper of her son, but she was willing to accept another death, as long as it would do something for Harry.

"Then we'll do it soon," Harry whispered. "The half moon is tomorrow."

"If you feel you are ready, Henry, then you will be."

Harry tucked himself close to her side. Tomorrow he would have to be a worshipper of the Great Serpent and a strong killer, but today he could be a son who was just happy that his mother was there.

Even if she did insist on Dobby fetching him a more substantial meal than biscuits.