Harry Potter: Fire Lord Black

Kreacher spoke slowly at first, as if each word had to be dragged from cold water. Long ago, when Regulus still believed the lies fed to him by his family, the Dark Lord asked for a house-elf. Regulus, proud and obedient and desperate to prove himself worthy of a name that had done little but crush him, offered Kreacher. The Dark Lord took the elf to a cave by the sea.

"It was terrible, Young Master," Kreacher whispered. "Cold. Dark. The lake was black, and things moved beneath it. Dead things. Inferi. In the center was a stone basin filled with green potion, thick and foul. Beneath it lay a locket. Slytherin's locket."

Voldemort had forced Kreacher to drink the potion. The elf described it with shaking hands: burning pain, visions, thirst so violent it became madness, the sense of being torn open from the inside while the Dark Lord watched without concern. When the potion was gone, Voldemort placed the locket in the basin and left Kreacher to die. He did not understand house-elf magic well enough to know that an elf ordered to return could still escape.

Kreacher returned to the Black house broken.

Regulus noticed. Perhaps not immediately. Perhaps he had been trained too well not to see servants until guilt made blindness impossible. But when Kreacher told him what had happened, something in Regulus changed. He learned what the Dark Lord had hidden. He understood enough to be horrified. The locket was not merely a treasure or a relic. It was something fouler. Something protected by suffering and death.

"Young Master Regulus took Kreacher back," the elf said. "He ordered Kreacher to guide him to the cave. The sea was raging that night. The cave smelled of salt and rot. Young Master looked at the basin for a long time. His face was white. Then he laughed. Not happily. Never happily. He said, 'How pathetic.'"

Edward could see it too easily. Regulus standing before the basin, seeing not only Voldemort's cruelty but his own foolishness reflected in it. Pure-blood glory. Family honor. The great cause. All of it leading to a stone island in a black lake, a servant tortured, and a boy realizing he had given loyalty to a monster who valued him less than a tool.

"He told Kreacher the order," Kreacher continued, voice breaking. "Take the locket. Leave. Destroy it, at any cost. Then he drank the potion himself."

Edward's hand tightened around the bedsheet.

Kreacher began to cry openly. "It should have been Kreacher. A servant dies for his master. That is proper. But Young Master Regulus took the basin and drank. Sip after sip. It hurt him. It hurt him so much. He fell to the stone and shook. His mouth bled where he bit himself. He kept whispering. Kreacher could not hear everything. 'Pathetic,' he said. And... and another word. A name, perhaps. Too soft. Too broken."

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Isabella, Edward thought, and pain went through him like a blade.

"Kreacher took the locket as ordered," the elf said. "Young Master commanded Kreacher to leave. Kreacher obeyed. But Kreacher looked back."

The ward seemed to grow colder.

"The Inferi came out of the lake. Their hands were black and wet. They caught Young Master Regulus by the legs and pulled him down. He did not fight as he could have. He was too weak. His hand reached toward where Kreacher had been. His mouth moved. Kreacher could not hear. The water closed over him. There was no body. Nothing to bring home."

Silence followed. It was not empty. It was full of lake water, green poison, and a young man's final unsaid word.

Edward stared at nothing. His father had not died gloriously before witnesses. There had been no song, no banner, no clean duel under sunlight. He had died in a cave, poisoned, alone except for a house-elf he saved and the dead hands dragging him under. He had died fighting the monster he once served, and the world had not even known enough to call him brave.

That hurt more than Edward expected. Regulus had never known him. Edward had never known Regulus. Yet the grief was real. Blood was not everything, but it was not nothing either. Love, even inherited through absence, could still wound.

Kreacher wiped his face with both hands. "Kreacher tried to destroy the locket. Kreacher tried everything he knew. Fire, blades, smashing, curses. Nothing worked. The locket would not break. Kreacher failed Young Master Regulus. Failed him and hid the thing away like a coward."

Edward turned his head. "No."

Kreacher looked up.

"You survived because he ordered you to survive. You tried because he ordered you to try. Failure is not the same as betrayal." Edward's voice was hoarse, but steady. "You were alone with something made by Voldemort. Even grown wizards fail at less."

The elf trembled harder at the name, but he did not look away.

Edward pushed himself higher against the pillows. His body still ached from the memory backlash, but the weakness felt distant now. The past had not given him peace. It had given him direction, which was often less pleasant and more useful.

"The dangerous thing Father left me," he said. "It is that locket."

Kreacher lowered his head. "Yes, Young Master."

"Where is it?"

"Hidden in the old house. Kreacher kept it safe, though Kreacher could not destroy it."

Edward looked toward the window. Sunlight pressed through frosted glass, thin and cold. Somewhere beyond the hospital walls, people were living ordinary days, wasting them properly. He envied them for a moment. Then the envy passed.

His mother had died to turn darkness into flame. His father had died trying to tear one secret from Voldemort's immortality. Whatever the locket was, it had cost too much to remain hidden in a cabinet because everyone was too afraid to touch it.

"When I leave St. Mungo's," Edward said, each word clear, "you will give it to me."

Kreacher bowed his head, tears falling again, but this time there was something like relief in them.

"Yes, Master."

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