In the Headmaster's office, Professor Dumbledore — dressed in a moon-white nightgown, a simple grey tasselled cap on his head and a pink bow tied at the end of his beard — sat across from Draco Malfoy, who was still in his school robes.
"I must be frank, Draco — while I am always glad to see you, I genuinely did not expect you to be quite this efficient. It has been less than twelve hours since we said goodbye, hasn't it?" Dumbledore asked, blinking sleepily.
"Believe me, sir, I would not have been rude enough to wake you at this hour unless it was urgent." There was an edge of tension in Draco's voice.
"Too important to wait until morning?" Dumbledore yawned, with every appearance of genuine goodwill and no sign of irritation at being woken by a student.
"It can't wait," Draco said. His voice carried something that was almost, but not quite, excitement.
It was the small hours of the morning. He was simultaneously exhausted and wound tight. He was aware that no respectable wizard disturbed another at this hour — that he ought, at the very least, to have held on until dawn.
But there was something inside him that would not be silenced, and it had completely burned through his patience.
This could not be left until morning.
"That makes me considerably more curious," Dumbledore said, straightening up in his chair. "Tell me."
"I believe I've found where a Horcrux is hidden," Draco said, steadying himself and pressing his hands flat on his knees.
The aged eyes sharpened at once. "What did you say? Where?"
"Before I explain — I need you to send for Sirius Black. Only he can help us with this." Draco's brow furrowed slightly. He had not wanted to involve the man any further than was absolutely necessary. But there was no other way.
"You have a talent for suspense." Dumbledore studied him.
Draco said nothing, and did not move.
The old man turned and murmured something to Fawkes, who had been dozing on his perch. The phoenix opened one bright eye, spread his scarlet-and-gold wings, and launched himself out through the office window like a flame caught in a draught.
When Sirius Black arrived at the Headmaster's office — pushed in a hospital wheelchair by Madam Pomfrey, wearing a hospital gown and a thunderous expression — Dumbledore was calmly brewing a pot of tea.
"Ah! Poppy, excellent timing. Can I offer you a cup?"
"You most certainly cannot!" Her voice, sharp enough to wake the portraits, was a stark departure from her usual measured bedside manner. "At four in the morning, instead of allowing the patient to rest, you've had him wheeled through cold corridors in the middle of the night!"
"Oh, Poppy, I do hope a professional of your calibre thought to apply a Warming Charm," Dumbledore said, entirely unruffled.
"Of course I did," Madam Pomfrey said, in a slightly mollified tone. "It is the very least a competent Healer would do."
"Thank you, Poppy. I'll give you a full explanation presently. For now, I must ask for a few minutes of privacy." His tone, though gentle, left no room for argument.
Madam Pomfrey glanced at Draco — taking in the shadows beneath his eyes and the drawn look of someone running on no sleep and too much adrenaline — hesitated, and then withdrew.
Sirius lounged in his wheelchair with studied nonchalance. One arm was in a sling; a healing cut ran along the side of his face, already mostly closed. His hair had been trimmed since Draco had last seen him — shorter, neater, less like something that had survived a decade of neglect — and his cheeks had regained some colour. He looked up at Draco and Dumbledore with the unfocused air of someone recently woken.
"What's this about?" He glanced between them with an ease that was either genuine or very well-performed.
"We need your house-elf," Draco said, watching him carefully. "Kreacher."
That, at last, produced a real reaction. Sirius Black looked genuinely startled.
How in the name of Merlin had his wretched house-elf caught the attention of a Malfoy? He glanced at Dumbledore, who was turning his wand between his fingers with great deliberateness.
Dumbledore met his gaze and gave a single small nod.
Sirius pushed himself out of the wheelchair without ceremony, limped to the fireplace, seized a handful of Floo Powder, and stepped into the bright green flames.
The Headmaster's office settled into an odd quiet. The grandfather clock ticked with the unhurried persistence of something that had been counting seconds for centuries. The constellation models drifted overhead in their slow, complex patterns. Somewhere behind the cabinet, the Pensieve emitted a faint, rhythmic bubbling.
Dumbledore drank his tea and thought. He glanced at the pale boy across from him at intervals — quiet, tightly wound, staring fixedly at a single upright tea stalk bobbing in his cup.
Sirius stepped back out of the fireplace shortly after, Kreacher shuffling in his wake.
Kreacher was exactly as Draco remembered from his past life: barely half a man's height, loose skin the colour of old candle wax, enormous bat-like ears sprouting tufts of white hair, clothed in a filthy tea-towel that had seen better decades. It shuffled behind Sirius with the appearance of obedience and the reality of simmering contempt — Draco did not miss the flash of undisguised loathing in its eyes each time it glanced up at its master.
Sirius dropped back into his wheelchair, looking as though proximity to the house-elf was a specific kind of endurance test. "Right. I've brought it. Enough mystery — what exactly do you want?"
"I have some questions for Kreacher," Draco said, studying the elf.
Kreacher, apparently oblivious to being the subject of the conversation, drew a rattling breath and began to mutter in its low, bullfrog-like rasp: "Waking decent people at ungodly hours, dragging Kreacher out in the dark, to sit with blood-traitors and the Malfoy brat who lives off the grace of the noble Lady Narcissa —"
"That's enough. No muttering, no insults." Sirius's voice was sharp. "Draco Malfoy has questions for you, and I order you to answer them honestly. Do you understand?"
Kreacher bowed. Its lips continued to move silently, no doubt completing its interrupted train of thought for its own satisfaction.
"When we last spoke," Draco said carefully, leaning forward slightly, "you mentioned the young master's belongings. Were you speaking of Regulus's belongings?"
A pause. Kreacher lifted its head and fixed Draco with a gaze of pure, undiluted hatred.
"Yes," it said.
"What belongings?" Draco pressed.
Kreacher's expression clenched as though the question itself caused physical pain. It clutched at its own throat, staring at him, saying nothing.
"Hand away from your throat," Sirius said flatly. "Answer him."
"A gold locket." Kreacher squeezed the words out as though they were being extracted from somewhere it would have preferred to keep sealed, and closed its eyes as though the admission itself was a form of betrayal.
A locket. Just as I suspected. Draco's pulse lurched against his ribs. This is in all likelihood the Slytherin locket.
Across the desk, Dumbledore set down his teacup with quiet precision. His blue eyes, attentive and suddenly very sharp, fixed on Kreacher through his half-moon spectacles.
"What gold locket?" Sirius, who had been watching proceedings with growing impatience, leaned forward in his wheelchair. Real interest had overridden his pretence of indifference. "Where did it come from? What did Regulus have to do with it? Kreacher — tell us everything you know. Everything about that locket and everything about Regulus's connection to it."
The house-elf began to sway. Its hands trembled. When it spoke, its voice carried a quality of anguish so dense that it filled the quiet of the early-morning office like smoke.
"Young Master Regulus was always a credit to the family. He understood what the Black name meant, what his noble blood meant. For years he spoke of the Dark Lord, the one who would bring wizards out of hiding, who would make Muggles and Muggle-borns know their place…" The swaying grew more pronounced. "At sixteen, Young Master Regulus joined the Dark Lord's service. He served with such pride. Such honour. Such happiness."
A pause. The elf seemed to be bracing itself.
"Then — one day, a year after he joined — Young Master Regulus came down to the kitchen to see Kreacher. He said the Dark Lord needed a house-elf for a task. The young master trusted Kreacher. He told Kreacher to do whatever the Dark Lord commanded — and then to come home safely."
The gasps were becoming sobs. Sirius, jaw set, said quietly, "Keep going."
"Kreacher went to the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord took Kreacher to a cave by the sea — inside, a great underground cavern, with a black lake and a small boat. On an island in the middle of the lake was a basin, and the basin was full of potion. The Dark Lord made Kreacher drink."
The elf shuddered from head to foot.
Dumbledore sat very still, one hand resting on his beard, his expression deeply inward.
"Kreacher drank. While he drank he saw terrible things. He felt as though he was burning from the inside. He drank all of it, and the Dark Lord placed a locket in the empty basin and filled it again with the potion. Then the Dark Lord took the boat and rowed away. He left Kreacher alone on the island."
Kreacher's voice had dropped to almost nothing. It seemed to have retreated to somewhere inside itself.
"Kreacher was thirsty. Kreacher went to the edge of the island and drank from the black lake. Dead hands came up from the water. They dragged Kreacher under."
The silence in the office was complete.
"How did you escape?" Dumbledore asked, in barely more than a murmur.
Kreacher raised its head. Its eyes were red and wet and staring.
"Young Master Regulus sent Kreacher home," it said, pulling the words out slowly. "The young master ordered Kreacher to return, so Kreacher came home."
Draco could imagine it — the house-elf thrashing in the black water among the dead, Inferi closing in, and then the pull of a direct order from its master reaching down even there and dragging it back through space.
"And what happened when you got back?" Sirius had abandoned all pretence of detachment. He stared at the elf with the fixed intensity of someone who had, perhaps, just understood that this story was going somewhere he had not previously imagined. "Did you tell Regulus? What did he do?"
"Master Regulus was very worried," Kreacher said, its voice reduced to a cracked rasp. "He told Kreacher to stay in the house. Not to go anywhere. Then — one night — Master Regulus came to Kreacher in his room. He wanted Kreacher to take him to the cave. The same cave."
Draco could picture them clearly: the elderly house-elf and an eighteen-year-old boy, making their way by night back to the cave that the Dark Lord had believed utterly impenetrable. The irony was extraordinary. Voldemort had never imagined that the creature he had used and abandoned there, the being he considered beneath notice, would one day walk its master back through every obstacle he had laid down — because a house-elf's knowledge of where it had been was not something occlusion or enchantment could block.
Kreacher knew the hidden entrance. It knew how to call the boat. Under its guidance, Regulus had rowed back to the island, to the basin, and to the locket.
But why? What had Regulus understood that had sent him back?
"He didn't make you drink the potion again?" Sirius asked, his voice rough.
Kreacher let out a sound like a wounded animal — a long, keening sob. It shook its head frantically, its ears swinging back and forth with a sound like cracking leather.
"Young Master Regulus had brought his own locket," Kreacher said, tears and mucus running freely down its ancient face. "He told Kreacher to wait. He said: when the basin is empty, take out the Dark Lord's locket and replace it with mine. Take it home with you, Kreacher, and destroy it." Its voice collapsed into broken wailing. "He drank the potion himself. Kreacher made the switch. And then Kreacher watched as the hands came up out of the lake. As they pulled Master Regulus under the water."
The unsolved mystery of the Black family — the disappearance of Regulus, the question of what had become of him, the stories and theories and silences that had accumulated around his absence for over a decade — had been answered.
"Good God." Sirius exhaled. It came out like something being let go of after a very long time. "That absolute idiot."
The words were not unkind. Draco caught something raw underneath them.
He himself was finding it difficult to order his thoughts. He had known, in an abstract sense, that Regulus had defected. What he had not known — what no one had known — was the shape of it. The deliberateness of it.
There were several theories that circulated in pure-blood circles about Regulus's end: that he had committed some error and been quietly disposed of; that he had lost his nerve and tried to leave, and been killed for it; that he had fled or met with some accident. All of them had had one thing in common — they cast him as passive, as someone to whom something had happened.
The truth was entirely different.
He had chosen this. He had gone back to that cave knowing what it held, knowing what drinking the potion would mean, and he had done it anyway.
Regulus Arcturus Black had been eighteen years old. One year older than Draco had been in his previous life when everything had ended. He was barely more than a boy — a newly adult wizard who had walked into the service of the Dark Lord at sixteen, realised what he was serving, and decided, in the end, that something had to be done about it.
What had it cost him, to carry that knowledge alone? To say nothing — not to his mother, not to anyone — and simply go?
In one of the portraits on the wall, Phineas Nigellus Black, onetime Headmaster of Hogwarts, had his hands pressed over his face. Large tears ran silently from between his fingers, and his voice, cracked and barely audible, said: "My poor great-grandson."
"You brought the locket home," Dumbledore said, calmly, into the silence. He addressed Kreacher with the particular focused precision of a man who understood that the grief in this room could wait, but the information could not. "You said Regulus ordered you to destroy it. Were you able to?"
"No." The word scraped out of Kreacher like something being torn. "Kreacher has tried everything. Every method Kreacher knows. Nothing leaves a mark on it. The enchantments on it are too many, too powerful. Kreacher believes it can only be broken from within — but Kreacher cannot open it." The old elf shook, shoulders heaving. "Kreacher has failed. Kreacher cannot carry out the young master's order. Kreacher cannot destroy it."
Dumbledore's brow furrowed, very slightly.
Kreacher wept. "After Master Regulus disappeared, the mistress was destroyed by grief. And Kreacher could not tell her. The young master had forbidden Kreacher from telling anyone in the family what had happened in the cave. He could not break that order. He could not."
Then Kreacher went very still.
Its eyes opened wide.
"Kreacher has made an error." The words were a whisper, and then not — they rose into something high and frightened. "Kreacher told Master Sirius. Master Sirius was cast from the family long ago, so Kreacher thought — Kreacher believed — he was no longer a member of the family. But Master Sirius is now head of the family. Which means —"
The old elf's face twisted with a sudden, absolute horror.
"No," it said. "No, no — Young Master Sirius is still family — Kreacher disobeyed the young master's orders —"
It lunged for the fire poker standing by the hearth.
Draco had seen it coming. He threw himself across the elf's path, pinning it to the floor before it could reach the iron. Kreacher shrieked and thrashed beneath him, spitting curses under its breath, clawing at the stone.
It was, objectively, one of the most revolting experiences of Draco's life. The smell alone was extraordinary. But the secret Kreacher held was worth considerably more to him than his dignity or his robes, and he kept his weight on it.
"Kreacher — I command you to stop," Sirius said, his voice cutting through the noise. "Do not move. Do not make a sound."
Kreacher went still.
Draco pushed himself upright and took a careful step back. The old house-elf lay on the cold flagstones, tears running steadily down its sagging cheeks, making no sound at all.
"Kreacher," Draco said, very precisely. "Where is the locket now?"
Kreacher ignored him. Its chest heaved in silence.
"Stand up," Sirius said quietly, "and answer him."
Kreacher got to its feet. It raised its head and fixed Draco with a look of such concentrated malice that it was almost impressive.
"It was you!" it spat. "The Malfoy brat! You took it!"
Every eye in the room turned to Draco.