The Devil May Care

The Devil May Care

By Dimgwrthien

Remus wiped the last of the blood from his neck, coughing slightly as he rasped, “What about Regulus?”

Sirius’ face remained set as he stared at the locket in his hands. His mouth hung open before he realized Remus spoke to him. “He - I remember him having this at some point. I think it was when I last saw him and he was wearing it. I asked him about it -” Sirius fell into the nearest chair, eyes still wide. “This is it…. Why did he have it? Did Snape tell you?”

“All he said was that you would know what it is. He said to destroy it, then.” Remus’ hand wiped along his mouth, showing a line of blood dripping from his lips.

Harry watched the entire conversation with something bordering on interest. His brows furrowed as they delved deeper into the unknown waters of the past.

“Should we trust that? I mean, he did kill Dumbledore -” Sirius began. Remus’ look chilled him as his friend gave him an angry stare. “Remus, just think about it -”

“You’re the one who needs to think about it. He told us where it is. We need to destroy it, or else -”

“Or else what? What, Remus, could happen from not destroying it?” Sirius placed the locket down on the wooden table and another light reflected around it.

“You don’t know what it’s going to do.”

“My Death Eater brother had it last,” Sirius snorted. “The mention of Death Eater should clue you into his stupidity. It’s only something someone gave him -”

“I knew Regulus well enough,” Remus answered quietly. “He was too into his parents’ opinion, not stupid. He would not take something that would endanger all of us. I say we trust Severus on this.”

Before Sirius could answer, Harry told Remus, “It doesn’t look dangerous. Why not keep it around for a while and then see if it does anything. We can decide what to do after that. It can’t hurt.”

“Yes, it can. Harry, if this is something Voldemort wants, for example, he will not stop following us until he gets it, and that’s risking your own life.”

“I’m safe enough,” he answered, frowning. “I’m with you two.”

Remus bit back a reply and simple shook his head. “Harry, we care too much about you to -”

“I’m safe here,” Harry repeated quietly.

“Back on the topic,” Sirius interrupted as Harry turned away from Remus, “I know that Regulus only got this a while before he died. It’s not too old, really. Where did he get it, though?”

“He was a Death Eater when he got it?” Remus asked, trying to wrap his mind around what happened.

“I think so,” Sirius answered. “I know that he took a while to die, too. Is Snape trying to imply something about him getting it from Voldemort? I can’t see him handing out necklaces to all of his Death Eaters.”

“I don’t think Snape was implying that,” Remus answered. “I think he was only implying that it’s relating to Voldemort. Why would Voldemort have a locket, though?”

“It has a snake on it,” Harry murmured, staring at the golden item before them.

Sirius craned his neck to see the winding snake creating the letter ‘S’. “It does…. S… for Slytherin?”

“S is for Slytherin,” Remus agreed, finding it hard to rip his gaze from the locket. “I think so…. Voldemort was a Slytherin, wasn’t he?”

“Are they related?” Harry asked.

Sirius shrugged. “Maybe they are. If we could find anything else… Remus, where did Snape tell you to get this?”

“His house,” Remus answered quickly. “It’s easy to get to if you want to look -”

Glancing at Harry, Sirius answered, “It’ll be safe to just get there and back to look for something else. I think we can chance it for a while.”

Remus grabbed his fallen cloak and wrapped it around his shoulders as Harry and Sirius did the same. They ventured outside into the snowy wind, eyes stinging once more in the frigid cold. Harry gripped Sirius’ hand tightly and held on as they Apparated there.

The house remained as untouched as before. Remus pulled open the door, lighting his wand and entering first. The only difference from when he entered before was the pile of floorboards that had been ripped up. Sirius made his way straight there, Remus holding the wand over him so that they could see.

Reaching inside the hole in the floor, Sirius pulled out some more wood, still glancing inside. Harry sat a bit away, giving him a curious look.

“What are you looking for?” he asked.

“I have no clue,” Sirius answered, pulling out a handful of dirt this time. He stared at the dirt in his fist and turned to Remus.

“That’s not the same as outside,” Remus answered slowly. “This is too red to be it -”

Taking out another handful, Sirius searched through the dirt, repeating the process until his hand froze over the small pile. He pulled out a small scrap of parchment and unfolded it carefully. The yellowed paper looked so old that it almost crumbled in Sirius’ hands.

S. S. -

I know that you already know what this locket means. It means both death for myself and the Dark Lord. I am asking you to keep it, as a friend, so that it can be destroyed as soon as possible. I am positive the Dark Lord is going to find out I took it soon.

I am only asking for you to keep it safe. Please do not destroy it until you have told my brother. I don’t want him to think I died without any sort of purpose in this.

R. A. B.

Sirius’ eyes remained wide well after he finished reading. He handed the letter silently to Remus, who paled once he read it.

“He… he did it, didn’t he?” Remus asked quietly.

Shrugging, Sirius remained staring at the old parchment. “It sounds like… it sounds like Voldemort put himself into this.”

“We’ve heard about Horcruxes,” Remus whispered. Harry frowned as he tried to understand what they said. “I’m so lost as to what he really did.”

“We at least know Regulus did something right for once.” Sirius folded the letter and placed it in his pocket. “Should we look around more?”

Remus ran a hand through the small amount of remaining dirt under the floorboard and brought it back up, another slip of paper in his hands. This one looked much larger than the other, as though from a book. One edge was frayed. Unfolding it, Remus read it aloud.

“Horcruxes are an unspoken of art that contains the splitting of a human soul and distributing one half to an item or creature. This enables the soul-breaker to become ‘immortal’ for as long as one part of the soul remains. To destroy the person, all parts of the soul must be destroyed.

“The art was discovered by Salazar Slytherin, one of the four founders of Hogwarts. Legend is to be taken as his attempt to gain immortality to outlive the other founders to purify the school. He killed his entire family, including his mother, father, and wife. Only his son remained living as he was able to create one Horcrux from the murders.

“The rest is ripped off,” Remus finished, holding the paper numbly under the wand light. “I wonder where he could have gotten this from. Like it says, no one speaks of Horcruxes anymore, and no one uses them.”

“Looks like Voldemort did, though,” Sirius mumbled. He took the slip of paper from his pocket again and folded it in his hands until one side started ripping along a crease. “We have to destroy it then? How?”

“Exactly what I was wondering,” Remus muttered, leaning against a wall, still reading the paper over and over again.

“Can’t you use a spell to - to blow it up or something?” Harry asked. “It’s not too hard to do, right?”

“The problem is the risk that’s taking,” Remus answered. “We could end up missing limbs or dead from trying anything before we know.”

“It’s a risk worth taking,” Harry replied defiantly, starting to stand up. “If we have to kill Voldemort, then we can risk it, right?”

“No,” Sirius snapped. “We’re not going to -”

“I’ll try,” Remus whispered, dragging the locket from his pocket. “It’s not too much of a loss to us. We’re destroying part of Voldemort, only at a small risk -”

Sirius eyed him warily. “No, Remus. We’re not trying. I refuse to let you get hurt like that just to get rid of half of Voldemort. It’s not going to help.”

“It will in the long-run.”

Remus had already placed the locket down, away from Harry and Sirius. Wand pointed at the locket, he murmured a spell under his breath, waiting for the resulting explosion. When it did not come, Remus moved closer to the golden item.

“Maybe it needs a certain spell,” Harry told him, also moving in. Remus continued to wave his wand, muttering different spells under his breath.

“Get the paper out again. Maybe it has something in it.” Sirius motioned to Remus, who pulled the sheet of paper from a pocket and unfolded it again.

“Nothing we didn’t read already,” he answered after scanning it over again. “It looks like someone cut off the bottom, though. If could just be that the entry was only a half page -”

“Pettigrew,” Sirius muttered, standing up and pulling both Harry and Remus with him. Harry gave him a curious look before Sirius answered, “He ripped it off, I know it. He saw the note and noticed what it was, but didn’t want Snape to kill Voldemort.”

It took only a minute to reach the house again, Sirius fuming as he stormed in and found Pettigrew’s unconscious body on the floor again. Pulling out his wand, he muttered a spell, breathing heavily.

Light blue eyes opened and blinked up at him as Peter woke up. His gaze never wavered, though his eyes did widen.

“Sirius -” he started, but Sirius’ long fingers wound their was around his throat.

“Did you rip up any part of a paper?” he growled.

Eyes betraying his answer, Peter shook his head. Sirius’ grip tightened almost to the point of asphyxiating Peter. Finally, the man forced a nod, hitting Sirius’ fist with his jaw. Throwing him back as he let go, Sirius pulled out his wand and pointed it at Peter’s heart.

“Sirius!” Remus scolded, stepping forward. “If you kill him now, you’re not getting anything else out of him!”

Sirius glanced at his friend for a moment, almost laughing at the words. Since he met Remus, the man had been kind and caring for ever, yet grim in his aspect of life. He knew that Remus was aching to join him and to kill Peter, but only stopped him because of Harry. His gaze fixed on the young boy whose green eyes were fixed on Peter with an angry glare.

Finally, Sirius let his wand drop. Remus shook his sleeves back and raised his own wand. “We’re keeping you alive - for now, at least,” Remus told Peter, voice carefully steady. “Not because it’s what friends would do, but because it’s going to help us. We aren’t going to promise you anything except, possibly, Azkaban. You couldn’t ask for anything better, could you, Peter?”

Before the man could answer, Remus’ wand flicked and he fell unconscious once more. He turned back, giving Sirius a grim look as he placed the heavy locket onto the table.

“It was ripped,” he summarized lamely, sighing. “Which means it’s lost and we’re unable to get it now that Severus is gone -”

Sirius bashed his hand into the table once, letting out a short growling noise. Harry picked up the locket that Remus had left out. In his hands, it felt heavier than he imagined the gold to be, as though an extra weight settled on it. It was certainly brighter once in his hands than he had ever seen it, and the chain left like soft sand against his hands, barely grainy. In all truth, he found the locket to be beautiful with the golden snake winding across the surface.

“Wouldn’t someone else know?” Harry asked. “I mean, wouldn’t Voldemort have to learn about this from someone else? You said that the things are mainly banned, so most books wouldn’t say a thing in them.” He shrugged, feeling the chair slid around his fingers as he moved. “Someone has to know how to destroy it.”

Remus glanced at Sirius, who frowned in return. “Who would he have known?”

“Hundreds of people,” Remus answered lightly. “Voldemort would have met a hundred people in his life, half of which could be dead, and the rest refusing to ever speak of it again. Imagine revealing the fact that you told Voldemort how to become immortal. You would be an outcast.”

Harry held half the locket in each hand, tugging it sharply, but it did not break. Digging his fingernails into the groove along the middle, he tried to force the sides to fall open, but they did not. “Sirius,” he said, raising his voice slightly. “Can you open this?”

Sirius gave him an odd look as though forgetting his was there, and took the locket, tugging the sides. When they did not open, he raised his wand, waving it several times before turning to Remus. “It can’t open. Does that mean anything?”

Remus’ brow furrowed. “Maybe opening it would count as breaking it.” He took the locket, inserting the very tip of his wand into the groove, muttering more spells under he stopped. “It wouldn’t be this hard to open unless there was a good reason to keep it closed.”

“No one wants Voldemort soul in their house,” Sirius muttered. “Here, let me try again -” He repeated what Remus did, but to no avail.

Harry reached out a hand to take the locket again, holding it in one hand as he reached for his wand with the other. Inserting his wand inside the groove like the two adults did, Harry moved his wand slightly, not even using a spell when it fell open.

Remus watched him in amazement. “Harry, how did you -?”

Shrugging, Harry pulled the sides open to their fullest extend, pulling out a small slip of parchment and unfolding it slowly.

Concido.

The scrawled note read very clearly on the otherwise clear parchment. Harry passed it up to Remus silently as Remus took the locket in his hands, laying it on the table. Sirius’ eyes widened.

“Concido,” he murmured, waving his wand once. The air around the locket glowed blue for a moment as though splitting the molecules in the air, but then they quickly became clear again as the locket shattered into a hundred pieces. Remus fell against the nearest chair, wincing as he hit the back of it.

Grabbing Remus’ arm, Sirius got him back onto his feet. “Are you alright?” he asked a second after, examining his friend quickly.

“Just hit the chair,” Remus answered, slightly. “I didn’t think it would have that much of a blow.” He winced again as he rubbed his shoulder.

Harry stared at the remains of the locket, reaching a hand out towards them, but Sirius grabbed him by the wrist.

“I don’t think we should touch them directly,” he told Harry, almost glaring at the pieces. “They could have an effect afterwards.”

“I’ll get it,” Remus sighed, giving Sirius a side-ways look. “Honestly, you’re becoming paranoid. Why you aren’t an Auror beats me.”

He tried to pick up the pieces but drew away quickly, holding his hand cradled to his chest, eyes wide as he stared at them.

“What?” Sirius asked quickly, still holding Harry back.

“They burn,” Remus answered simply; when he held out his hand, Harry could see it redden before his very eyes. “I think we should leave them.” He turned to Harry, still holding his limp arm in the other. “Harry, how did you open it?”

“I just put my wand in it.” When Sirius and Remus continued to give him blank looks, Harry continued. “Remember when we got my wand and Mr. Ollivander said my wand was connected to Voldemort’s? Well, maybe only someone who had something similar to him could open it. I just thought that and tried, then it opened.”

Sirius settled into a chair, elbows on the table, eyes staring at the smoldering pieces. Then, he began to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Remus asked, sitting down next to him, pressing on his arm as though to stop the pain.

Laughter dying down enough to speak, Sirius answered, “We did it! We destroyed part of Voldemort’s soul!”

“That’s great, but it’s not funny,” Harry told him, smiling.

“We’re the people he hates most, and we did more than he expected,” Sirius answered. “A traitor pureblood, a half-blooded… well, you, Remus… and the Boy Who Lived.”

“The Boy Who Was Loved,” Remus added, grinning slightly. Harry’s cheeks reddened as Sirius wrapped him up in a hug.

“And your brother,” Remus added. Sirius froze.

“Regulus did it all, too.” He smiled. “Maybe he wasn’t as stupid as I thought.”

“And I believe you owe Severus an apology,” Remus whispered.

Sirius nodded, still holding Harry tight. “I think that could wait until I’m dead, though,” he answered. “I think I could make it up to him when this is all over.”

“It’s just half a monster left.”

The End.