Chapter 205 - Sirius's Remorse — Heartbreak

Regulus's fate made Praeris think of Draco. She couldn't help it. This was what Draco looked like if he had made a different choice.

The same absolute trust in family. The same dependence on his mother. The same fear of what the Death Eaters' work actually meant. The same, even down to being a Slytherin Seeker.

Except Narcissa loved her son more than Walburga ever had. And Draco was more, in Sirius Black's words, soft than Regulus. He would never have had the courage to betray Voldemort. Not in a million years.

Praeris had known from the start that Draco was a bastard. Just not a bastard to her. He wouldn't dare.

It was like what Fleur Delacour had said to Molly Weasley: her beauty alone was enough for both her and Bill.

For Praeris to find someone smarter, stronger, and more decisive than herself to fall in love with, was she looking for a lover or a rival?

Maybe some people's true love really was a perfectly matched opponent.

But the difficulty level was absurd. Was there actually anyone like that among her peers? And even if there were, Praeris would only want to become stronger than him and win. By that logic, the moment she beat him, it would be over. His strength would no longer match hers. Grounds for a breakup.

Sirius Black's emotions had finally settled enough for him to remember why Harry had come.

"Is this a task Dumbledore entrusted to you?" Sirius Black asked, his voice flat with grief. "He wants to confirm whether Regulus actually destroyed the real Horcrux?"

Harry blinked like he'd been caught off guard. "More or less..."

Right. Dumbledore.

I never told Praeris what happened that night. So how did she know I went with Dumbledore to retrieve the Horcrux?

I didn't even know Dumbledore was taking me until that same evening.

The thoughts came fast and tangled. One moment Harry thought Praeris simply knew everything. The next he thought Dumbledore must have told her the plan in advance. Then he wondered, maybe Dumbledore hadn't died at all.

Otherwise, why didn't Praeris ask about the Horcrux the very first time I came to find her?

On the day Harry had forced himself to accept Dumbledore's death, the phoenix inside him had burned away to nothing, leaving only ash on the ground. But right now, something stirred in those ashes. A bare, featherless phoenix, blinking open its eyes.

"After I graduated, I never saw Regulus again." Sirius Black's voice was rough. "Even at school, we didn't speak. I didn't know he'd become a Death Eater back then, but I knew he worshipped Voldemort. Knew he walked into the dark willingly. So..."

So Sirius Black had looked at his brother and seen nothing worth looking at.

"Kreacher!" Sirius Black's head came up sharply. "Regulus's things — Kreacher was the one who kept them."

Where was Kreacher? None of them knew. Not Harry, not Praeris, not Sirius Black.

After the incident at the Department of Mysteries, Dumbledore had laid out the stakes plainly and persuaded Sirius Black to reach some kind of peace with Kreacher. A full reconciliation was never going to happen. The most master and servant had managed was out of sight, out of mind.

But regardless, after Orion, Regulus, and Walburga died one after another, Kreacher and this house had both passed to Sirius Black. The elf had no choice but to obey him.

"Kreacher!" Sirius Black called into the empty air.

A crack. A thin, small house-elf appeared before all three of them. Its body was shriveled, its skin pale and deeply wrinkled, draped in a filthy rag. It looked at Sirius Black with eyes full of loathing.

"Master." Kreacher bowed, barely, and said in a snide, sing-song voice, "The young master has brought filthy creatures into my poor mistress's noble home again. Oh, my poor mistress! Who knows what dreadful things they'll do to the Black family's house and treasures this time!"

"Again?"

Praeris caught the word immediately. She had no particular feelings about being called filthy. She'd heard far worse.

Kreacher turned its venomous eyes on her. "Kreacher does not like the madwoman's mongrel spawn. If the mistress knew a madwoman was living in the mistress's house, how bitterly she would weep!"

Harry shot to his feet. "I won't have you talking about Ms. Puri and Praeris that way! Ms. Puri was nothing but kind to you!"

That went without saying. Praeris had never once seen Ms. Puri be unkind to anyone. Without Harry's outburst, she wouldn't even have connected the word "madwoman" to Ms. Puri at all.

Harry wasn't Kreacher's master, so of course he couldn't control it. Kreacher stiffened its neck and kept going, spitting venom at Prim Purnell: "The madwoman has polluted the mistress's house! The madwoman likes women —"

Praeris's fingers slid along the wand tucked in her sleeve. Her eyes narrowed slowly.

"Shut up!" Sirius Black shouted, then looked at Praeris with something uneasy in his expression. "Actually —"

"Thank you, but this isn't your place to comfort me or explain anything. Is this really so surprising?" Praeris's voice was calm. "Let Kreacher answer my question. What do you mean by 'again'?"

Sirius Black said sourly, "That's entirely because I threw out my mother's portrait. It's been holding a grudge ever since."

Something flickered in Praeris's eyes. "What Kreacher is saying is that someone you brought in touched the Black family's treasures. Not you yourself. Do you understand?"

Harry actually had a thought of his own on this. He wondered if maybe they had thrown something out during the cleaning. But Praeris seemed to be working toward something, so he kept his mouth shut.

Sirius Black turned to the elf. "Kreacher. I order you to answer every one of Praeris Prince's questions truthfully."

"Yes!" Kreacher's agreement was deeply reluctant. "Mundungus Fletcher! That thief! He stole the noble Black family's most precious treasures!"

"Kreacher." Praeris's voice softened. "I know you hate us. But consider: everything here now belongs to Sirius Black. Don't make that face."

She kept her tone steady and clear. "Sirius Black inherited all of it. Only he has the right to reclaim what was taken. Don't you want the Black family's treasures back?"

Kreacher seemed caught by the logic, muttering to itself: "Kreacher does not like mongrel spawn speaking to Kreacher. But Kreacher must protect the Black family's treasures."

Praeris ignored the venom attached to the words and said simply, "Tell me. What exactly was stolen?"

"Miss Bella and Miss Cissy's photographs. My esteemed mistress's gloves. The Order of Merlin, First Class. Goblets with the family crest. And — and..."

Kreacher stopped.

"And a locket." Praeris said it quietly, almost offhand. "That's right, isn't it?"

Harry looked up in shock. He had no idea how Praeris had known to expect the locket.

"And the locket! The honored Master Regulus's locket! Kreacher failed! Kreacher did not carry out the young master's orders!"

The last word was barely out before Kreacher wheeled and threw itself at the wall. Harry moved on pure instinct, lunging forward and slamming it to the ground. At the same moment a spell hit Kreacher and locked it still.

Harry shouted for Sirius Black, and Sirius Black said, "Kreacher. I order you not to harm yourself."

"That damned Mundungus!" Sirius Black's voice cracked with fury. "Does he think I'm dead!"

"First: Mundungus is already dead." Praeris said, perfectly level. "Second: you were no different from dead here before. It's not as though you cared what happened to this place."

The raw hatred in Kreacher's eyes flickered. Just for a moment, a thin sliver of something like approval showed through. It made Praeris wonder if she'd been too cutting.

"Did you see Mundungus steal those things?" she asked. Kreacher broke into a storm of curses, weeping and wailing and shrieking all at once.

The story came out in pieces.

It had happened the day after Dumbledore died. On the night Dumbledore "died," nearly every combat-capable member of the Order of the Phoenix had been called to patrol Hogwarts. And that night, every enchantment Dumbledore had laid on the house stopped working. Winnie's magic was still active, but it covered only a fraction of what his had. Not enough.

While the Order members were at Dumbledore's funeral and the house stood unguarded, Mundungus Fletcher had slipped inside and taken everything he could carry.

Kreacher had tried to stop him. It was too old. It couldn't. Mundungus had laughed in its face and walked out.

So the Slytherin locket had been here all along. Sitting in the Black family's own house.

"I remember now!" Harry smacked his forehead. "I've seen it — the first time I came here! In the glass-fronted cabinet by the fireplace!"

He remembered a dull, tarnished silver box engraved with writing he hadn't been able to read. Ancient runes, maybe. If Hermione had seen it then, she might have known.

Praeris took a slow, deep breath. She felt the full weight of it settle over her. "Has Dionysus poured so much wine into your skull that there's no room left for thought?"

"I'm very sorry." Harry dropped his head. "That was two years ago. I genuinely don't have a memory like yours."

All three of them sighed at the same time. It was hard to blame Harry, really. Plenty of people search for their glasses while they're already wearing them.

If blame was going where it belonged, Sirius Black was the more deserving target. His contempt for Kreacher, his distance from Regulus, it had cost him everything he might have known.

Sirius Black closed his eyes. "Tell me everything. About Regulus. About the locket. All of it."

And so it came out: the story of a young man whose ideals shattered, and who walked willingly toward the end.

Voldemort had borrowed Kreacher from Regulus, used it as a test subject, ordered it to drink the potion in the cave. Through the agony of it, Kreacher had held onto nothing but Regulus's single instruction to come home, and it had Disapparated out of the Inferi's reach.

Voldemort had probably never imagined Kreacher would survive. He had nothing but contempt for the weak, the cowardly, and the small. Peter Pettigrew. Winnie. Kreacher. All the same to him.

Kreacher brought the news back to Regulus. Regulus went quiet. Then strange. Then he took Kreacher back to the cave.

Regulus drank the potion himself. He swapped the lockets, pressed the real one into Kreacher's hands, and walked into the lake.

Both Praeris and Harry lowered their heads without meaning to. There was nothing to say about Regulus's sacrifice. Nothing adequate.

Sirius Black shot to his feet. A sound came out of him, strangled and raw and not quite human, and he drove his fists into the wall. Again and again, until blood ran down the stone.

Kreacher had not been able to destroy the locket. Of course it hadn't. It was a Horcrux. And it had no one left to turn to. Regulus had forbidden it from telling Walburga. Orion had died that same year.

"This is the price of your arrogance." Praeris shook her head at Sirius Black. "You did what you believed was right. But did you ever understand your brother? Did you ever actually look at what was inside him? Do you know why he wouldn't go with you? Why he made the choices he made?"

"And Peter Pettigrew, did you truly treat him as a brother, or as a follower who trailed behind you? Did you ever know what was in his heart? You looked down on Kreacher. But Kreacher understood your brother better than you did. At least it could see that Regulus was hurting."

Praeris was certain of one thing: on the day Sirius Black left home, Regulus had not been calm. But Sirius Black hadn't looked. He had only ever wanted Regulus to be brave in the particular way he understood bravery. As if bravery were the same shape for everyone.

A lion running down prey is brave. A python fighting an eagle is also brave.

Harry couldn't let her keep going. Sirius Black looked like he was being taken apart from the inside. "But Mundungus is already dead," Harry said quickly. "How do we find out where he took the locket?"

That question was what finally made Praeris, for the first time in her adult life, find thinking genuinely painful.

She pressed her fingers to her temple and hissed. "We need to figure out where Mundungus usually sold the things he got his hands on..."

"Knockturn Alley!" Harry nearly jumped out of his seat. "Borgin and Burkes!"

Praeris shook her head. "Not there. I was just there not long ago. What is your fixation with Borgin and Burkes?"

Harry slumped back down. "What if Mr. Borgin already sold it..."

"Borgin never even laid eyes on the locket." Praeris held back the urge to roll her eyes.

"How do you know that?"

"Just assume I know everything."

"Then do you know where the locket actually is?"

"That's a fascinating question. If I knew, what exactly would I be sitting here thinking about? What to have for dinner?"

Praeris and Harry went back and forth, quick and sharp, filling the room with noise.

Across from them, Sirius Black had gone quiet. The burning had finally banked. He looked down at Regulus's locket resting in front of him, and something settled in his face, like a decision made that couldn't be unmade. Slowly, he reached out his hand.

➤ Next: Reunion