Night Crossings

Author's Notes This was written for the HP_Tarot fest on livejournal, for the card the Page of Wands, using the Waite interpretation, "Dark young man, faithful, a lover, an envoy, a postman. He is unknown but faithful, and his tidings are strange." Thanks to sociofemme for beta work, and lore for encouragement.

Night Crossings

The ring pulled him. He felt its closeness to life and warmth and followed it back.

He couldn't quite get there. He was certain this place he came to wasn't real. Parts of it were too crisp and parts too vague, and they changed and moved at unpredictable intervals. It was rather like the time that Severus had tried substituting wormwood for ava pepper in a dreaming potion. They had all twitched at shadows for days.

A young man was there, his face twisted in horror and regret, as he forced poison down Dumbledore's throat. Inferi and slobbering werewolves prowled around them. Regulus felt an immediate sympathy for the him -- the dreamer, this must be the dreamer; this must be a dream -- and so was surprised when the young man was suddenly closer and could see his features. James Potter? He was in a nightmare with Potter? Potter had nightmares such as this?

It was hard to remember. He had split his soul for the sake of remembering a locket and a lie, but memories were more elusive when he tried to recall details of a pupil not in his circles at school -- at least he remembered that Potter was that. He was very close to Potter now, without having moved, as if his study had drawn him in. Apparently, he had startled the young man out of his grotesque vision, because they were suddenly in a bed, at home -- at his home. It was the blue guest room, and the familiarity gave him back his name. Regulus. Regulus Black. He, Regulus Black, was sitting on the bed, one leg folded in front of him and the other draped over the edge. Potter's eyes were locked on him as he pushed down the covers enough to sit up, showing worn, ill-fitting pajamas that hung in folds around his thin frame. The locket -- not the one he had stolen, but the one that his grandmother had given him, the one he had left in its place -- hung from around Potter's neck. The scene still wasn't real, because it faded out at the edges.

"Sirius?" Potter breathed, reaching out to touch. His hand twitched back an inch short of Regulus's cheek, perhaps at the astonishment that must have filled his face.

The scene shattered. Regulus had only a moment to see the ring on Potter's outstretched hand before he, the bed, the locket ... all were gone. His awareness, however, was not. This was new. He remembered, with merciful distance, the visit he had received from his cousin Bellatrix, who had demonstrated to him exactly how ties to blood kin were expected to compare to loyalty to Lord Voldemort. Between that and the first pull of the ring there was nothing.

He could not fathom what Potter could be doing in his parents' house, and in such shabby clothing. Neither made any sense. His parents were not active enough in their causes to keep a prisoner for Voldemort, nor would Number Twelve make an effective prison. Had he a body and three dimensional space, he might have slapped his forehead when the answer hit him. Potter had not, of course, been sleeping in the house -- he had been dreaming of doing so. A memory of the dream's end called forth an unmanifestable smirk. Potter fancied his brother, it seemed, though why he might want to meet him as a waif -- and a year or two younger, even if no time had passed at all, Regulus realized -- in his parents' forbidden house was unknowable. Perhaps it was just that 'forbidden.' Regulus recalled his brother's friends, like his brother, as invariably drawn to the places that were put off-limits.

Now that he had returned once, Regulus had more of a sense of time. He couldn't go back of his own will, which was frustrating, now that he knew that it worked and remembered why it mattered so much. He tried to occupy himself with theorizing about why he could not return. Perhaps Potter had removed the ring? Or perhaps he was wearing it still, but awake, and the waking world was too far away for Regulus to feel the thin bond between awareness and a torn soul.

He remembered that clearly. Destruction had never come easily to him, and through a series of activities that he could discern were designed to harden the new recruits, he had always managed to be the one further back, or busy with some other matter, rather than the one who wielded the wand or knife at the end of things. That could not, of course, remain unobserved indefinitely, and he had not been surprised to be given a target of his own, in time, and told to prove himself. But for the nature of the target, he might have fulfilled the demand, but it had been impossible. His cousin's loyalty might be to the Dark Lord, but his was to Wizarding tradition, and he had seen, by then, how this self-styled lord betrayed it. Armed with knowledge stealthily acquired, he had set his own exercise of proof, and rather than incapacitating his partner and guard, felled him with two whispered words, turned his blooding to his own ends, and so ensured -- he hoped -- that his knowledge would not be lost.

Potter might, indeed, be a fortunate point of contact.

In the stultifying void, he had almost forgotten that he was waiting when a new sense of elsewhere, like the tingle of blood returning to a long-pressed limb, reached him. He was there more rapidly, this time, and there was more defined. Potter, it seemed, had some training in dreams. Still, they were in the bedroom, with Potter in the worn pajamas, and a strange agglomeration of himself and Sirius sitting stiffly in front of him. Regulus slipped into its place, and the phantasm dissolved from around him, so he was the one facing Potter.

The young man was more direct, this time.

"Are you Sirius?" he asked bluntly.

Regulus raised an eyebrow. He and Sirius looked alike, to a fraternal extent, but enough so to confuse strangers, not his brother's best friend. Perhaps the dream distorted his appearance. "Of course not," he replied. He smirked. "But you're James, aren't you? Do you dream of dear Sirius often?"

"Naught to naught," the stranger shot back. "James was my dad."

Regulus felt his eyes widen. That long? He had expected someone to find the ring much sooner. He looked at the stranger's fingers and saw it -- a smooth band of amber, shot with fiery fractures and carved at the top with a star, on the second finger of his left hand.

James Potter's son. That made the man a stranger, but his ties to the house no less mysterious. Regulus studied him -- a youth nearly his own age, a year or two younger at most, and just as prematurely hardened, from the way the lines set around his eyes as he glared in return. A disturbing awareness came to Regulus with that contact, and he shrank back. He could feel the Dark Lord's taint on the stranger -- an aura of power turned to evil, far too familiar, yet still entirely new, for he perceived it in a manner that he could not conceptualize. This new sense was something less concrete than scent, but with just as much sway over the emotions. He wondered if it were peculiar to the disembodied.

"Does that upset you?" Potter the Younger taunted. "Who are you?"

Regulus knew better than to give information to a potential enemy. He composed himself, settling more comfortably on the bed and wishing that he could feel it. "Just a ghost," he replied, shrugging negligently. "Do you have a name, Potter, James's son?"

Potter shrugged in turn, a self-conscious, imperfect copy of the gesture. "Why should I tell you, if you won't tell me? We've been here for ages, and I've never seen a ghost before." His eyes traced the walls, and suddenly they were in the drawing room, with Potter still, incongruously, in his pajamas. "Though you'd think there would be loads."

Regulus wished he could touch things. He would have liked to have stroked the velvet of the couch beneath him as he thought, but it did not have any perceptible substance. He suspected he could sink through it with a slight exertion of will. "We don't tend to die with things left undone."

"But you did," Potter extrapolated triumphantly. He frowned. "So did Sirius, but he hasn't come back!"

The exclamation was tinged with resentment, which Regulus noted with interest as well as surprise.

"Do not begrudge him his peace," he chided, and the young man lowered his head.

"What do you care?"

The sulky retort contrasted with his chastened aspect, and Regulus realized that the query was more clever than sincere. If he said why he cared, he might reveal his identity.

"It is not seemly," he answered instead.

Potter opened his mouth, but before he could press or dissemble, a girl's clear voice called out a word that refused to identify itself to Regulus's otherworldly mind, and with a whoosh that resembled floo-travel they were back in the bedroom, and then Regulus was nowhere at all.

The void had dimensions now. It extended away to all directions, including down, so while Regulus still did not have form without Potter to look at it, he had location. That was progress.

While the time, also, extended away, he mused on the matter of Potter the Younger. He didn't know how James Potter's son might have ended up serving Lord Voldemort, but then again he didn't know how James Potter's son might have ended up poor -- even in his dreams his clothes were worn and ill-fitting. The two must be related, certainly. Perhaps he been disowned for politics, like Sirius in reverse? Though he and Sirius had not been entirely at odds, judging from Potter's desire to have Sirius in his place. Perhaps James had done something to drive Sirius off? He needed a theory to plan an approach, and he sought for one desperately.

Order, he chided himself. List all reasons, and then consider the arguments.

He had never been adept at such exercises, and they were harder without quill and parchment, but he did his best.

Known: Voldemort's essence hangs about Potter the Younger like cheap aftershave -- no, like mildew on Grandfather's books. Potter is his, and most probably Marked as such.

Money: Potter rejected his father, or his father rejected him, or the family lost their money -- perhaps because Voldemort won?

Potter's presence in the house: Either my parents took him in (is that possible?) or Sirius reconciled with my parents and took him in. Addendum: My parents lost the house, and Sirius took him in -- Voldemort lost? My parents lost faith in him after my execution?

He tried to fit these together, but without notes, it was like doing a jigsaw puzzle from memory.

Potter the Elder married that Evans girl, didn't he? So the boy would be a half-blood. The Dark Lord would still take him if he was adequately ashamed of what his father had reduced him to -- there was Severus, after all, and Ravi. Not my parents, though -- they're not so flexible.

Like turning the right piece at the right angle, he suddenly saw how to make it all fit together.

But if he was a bastard, that could explain everything -- unacknowledged, or acknowledged but ranking under a legitimate half-blood brother or sister ... he'd hate James Potter, who might cut him off. And if Potter the Elder didn't acknowledge his by-blow, Sirius would be furious, and might bring him here if he'd reconciled with our parents -- or even if he hadn't, and then the boy wouldn't know him well.

He recalled suddenly that Potter the Younger had implied that Sirius was dead. For a moment, he closed his eyes and remembered his last several meetings with his brother. Fights, all of them. Sirius. I hope your life was happy and your end quick.

Regulus managed to get himself to the ring, after that, or at least he thought he had. He had a sensation of motion, and imagined that he might be on the swinging arm of someone walking briskly. Several times he thought he heard voices, but it may have been just his strained imagination, seeking to make something out of nothing. Nature abhors a vacuum, he wanted to say, but he had no way to make sound.

When Potter's life pulled him back again, it was not to speak. He doubted the dreamer even knew he was there. It was a busy dream, again, but tending more towards humor than horror, at least at first glance.

He seemed to be in a cluttered attic, from the slant of the unfinished roof. Potter was there, with two companions -- a bushy-haired girl and a red-headed boy. That detail was part of the dream aspect; there was not enough light that hair color should have been discernable. They were standing in a defensive curve, facing outward and forward, with Potter front and center. As Regulus watched, a brass floor lamp advanced on them, its hinged arm swinging threateningly back and forth. The girl hit it with a Corrosion hex, and the hinge froze shut. Regulus laughed quietly. To his delight, a faint sound emerged, even though Potter had not properly integrated him into the dream.

A velvet drapery, hung with silk fringe, attacked next, swooping through the air to descend on the three. While it was still a yard above them, Potter hit it with a Cutting hex -- one that Regulus knew well. He wondered who had taught it to the boy. They threw off the fragments of thick fabric in time to use them to shield against the next attack -- faceted crystals that pulled loose from a chandelier and flew at them like a hundred glass darts. The boy picked up a walking stick, widened it into a Beater's bat and knocked crystals aside. The girl pulled the missiles together and fused them into an inert glass globe that fell to the floor and rolled down the uneven boards. They moved forward.

Here, the dream started to change. The chandelier hopped forward, turning into an iron cage as it came. The boy was pulled into a trunk. Potter lunged for the trunk, but when he opened it, he did not seem distressed that the boy was gone. He reached in to the empty space and pulled out a small golden cup, full of dark blood, and lifted it in both hands. At that, the girl, now trapped in the iron cage behind him, screamed.

Regulus did not blame her. If Potter was tainted, the cup was evil.

Potter turned, throwing the blood, and it dissolved her cage as if it was acid, leaving her untouched. He opened his arms as the girl stumbled forward, reaching for him. The boy appeared lying between them, pale as death. He reached up a hand soaked in blood.

The dream ended.

Regulus thought he had shadows, now, as well as motion and mutterings. He still wasn't sure if this was a regenerating life or the onset of madness, but he was glad of the next change to something clear, if not real. Again, he found himself in the blue room, sitting on the bed. He had a sensation of the tattered duvet, this visit, although it did not sink beneath him. Belatedly, it occurred to him that Potter had an extra blanket pulled around his shoulders, so the room must be cold. He could not feel that either, but then again, it was only a dream.

Potter looked tired, and his face had a touch of that weariness that comes from doing things you know to be evil. Regulus felt sorry for him, and older, although they appeared to be close to the same age.

"You don't have to do what he says, you know. Dying isn't so bad."

The young man's annoyance had a touch of amusement. "How would you know? You're here."

"Point."

Regulus had a new reason to want to be physically manifest, now. He wanted to lay his hand on his companion's arm, and offer comfort with warmth.

Potter looked down and pulled the shining locket from the folds of his pajamas, so it dangled in front of the white skin of his neck. "This is yours, isn't it?"

For a moment, Regulus considered denying it, but he decided the effort was doomed to failure. Potter had probably found a picture, by now. "It was."

The young man cocked his head, looking at him with a surprising amount of sorrow in his study. Well, Regulus justified, I am dead, as far as he knows.

"Regulus?"

Regulus acknowledged the name with a nod.

"Why'd you do it?"

This was the opening he had hoped for. Regulus leaned forward. "He doesn't understand," he said intently. "Whatever the Lord may say, he doesn't understand. It's all about killing to him; have you seen that, yet? His appetite for destruction?"

Potter opened his mouth as if to argue, but then shut it, his lips squeezing tight together, and nodded.

"This does not enhance our position. He promises to restore the glory of the old families, but what he does, in reality, is to drive us further down. The problem is not blood, itself, although it is easy to feel that way. The problem is the destruction of our culture, and alienating the neutral only accelerates that. Not to mention how many of us have died. On a matter of blood alone, we are still losing, and whatever he has promised you, he does not care."

Potter the Younger appeared to be thinking carefully about this thesis. Regulus could almost see him placing events within it.

"So you believe Voldemort does not benefit the cause of purebloods?" he phrased back, and Regulus nodded eagerly.

"Precisely. In point of fact, he kills purebloods as readily as Muggles. And that might be understandable if it were within tradition, but consider the importance of family." Recalling that this Potter was most likely an unacknowledged bastard, Regulus amended that quickly. "Family as it should be. He sent me against my brother. What sense does that make, for either breeding or tradition? An old family has two sons, and at least one of them must die? There is no value to it, and it breaks apart the culture even among his supporters. Family should be inviolate."

"Your parents threw Sirius out."

Regulus shook his head. Had the brash oaf actually claimed such a thing? "They did not. Sirius ran away. They did reject him afterwards, and I will not argue that that was right, but he was the one who left."

Potter looked decidedly less receptive at that.

"Did you try to kill him?"

"Have you been listening to me at all? Of course not!"

Slowly, the young man nodded. "So he had you executed."

Regulus shuddered. "Yes. By Bellatrix Lestrange, a cousin of mine and a true believer, to show me how much greater regard he was due than mere blood kin. It gave me some comfort -- though not nearly enough -- to die with the proof that my judgment was sound."

Potter the Younger grimaced. "I know Bellatrix. She killed Sirius."

Regulus closed his eyes. Lord Voldemort had achieved his execution after all, and he had died for nothing -- no. He had not.

"Was it quick?" he asked.

It was Potter who reached out to him, this time, momentarily surprised when his hand went straight through to the bedclothes. "Yes," he said.

Regulus could say nothing more. The ring had passed through him, and the evil he had wrought, like a mirror of the boy's taint, cut along its path.

"Sorry," the boy said faintly.

Regulus was back in the void, but it was no longer a void. It was dim shadow, and he could hear low, choked breaths nearby. The sense of evil about the ring distressed him. He knew, of course, that a Horcrux was, by nature, extremely Dark, but it is one thing to know and another to feel. Making the thing was logically no worse than the murder he had used for it -- less wasteful, even -- but he discovered that he did not want to admit the act to anyone.

He did, however, need to use it, and he needed to regain some degree of independent motion, if not corporeal form. That was all the more urgent because he didn't trust Potter the Younger with his information. If the young man went to Lord Voldemort, Slytherin's locket would be retrieved and hidden again.

Accordingly, he strained his will to regain access to something -- the ring, Potter, or the blue bedroom, trying each in turns. While working on the ring, he even willed himself to accept the ring's nature, and while working on Potter, to put aside his fear of Voldemort. A moment after giving up on all of them, he made it through, with a sensation of falling so strong that it disoriented him to be right side up. He was back in the blue room. The light was dim, and Potter was asleep in the bed. Slowly, turning in place, Regulus comprehended the truth -- this was the real room, not a dream. He looked down at himself, and he was real -- as real as any ghost, at least -- transparent and floating, but formed without the dreamer as witness.

Regulus began to investigate. His new senses -- this awareness of natures that had replaced touch -- shivered unpleasantly as he moved about the room. The taint of the Dark Lord soured the air like ... mildew, he decided, was indeed the right analogy. Nor was it all coming from the young man on the bed. Regulus drifted back and forth across the room, like a hound seeking for a scent. There! On the table by the wall, under a murky mirror, were several items -- it must be coming from one of those.

He willed himself closer.

One item was a small golden cup with handles on either side -- the same, Regulus realized, as in the last dream. That might have been spun from memories, then. Some of the sense of Lord Voldemort came from that -- even more than he felt on Potter. Next to the table was an ornate reading stand, dark with age, and that, also, had his taint on it.

Regulus examined the heavy bronze tassels and the elaborately carved base. When he realized the supporting figure was not, as he had thought, an eagle, but rather a raven, he shot back a foot.

This thing felt like Lord Voldemort because it was Voldemort -- or rather, a part of his soul. Closer examination of the cup -- without even spectral touching -- showed that it was engraved with a badger. "I wonder --" he began, but then stopped as the words came faintly to his ears. He pivoted, but the sleeper only stirred and settled.

He drew nearer, his heart leaping as he saw a note on the bedside table.

Dear Harry,

Ron is feeling better, now, but his memory is still shaky. I've gone out to buy groceries and will be back by two.

Love,

Hermione

Regulus looked at the windows. They were, indeed, dark from pulled blinds. Now that he was looking for it, he noticed the grey light leaking in around their edges. With a satisfied smile, Regulus lay down on the bed beside Potter the Younger -- presumably 'Harry'. He stayed up on one elbow, watching him. He could still feel the ring, but while disturbing, the sense of evil there was no longer a shock. Underneath it, he could feel his other half, longing to be stitched back to him. His readings had suggested that was possible -- that the soul could reunite, if imperfectly, little worse than other murder's souls -- but none gave a method. More conventionally, life was drained from a victim to give the half-soul power, but that seemed far worse to him than normal killing -- he had killed an enemy, a danger; people did that all the time, even if they shouldn't. Stealing life.... It was rumored -- though such things were often mere myth -- that a pure soul provided more power, but he knew he couldn't bring himself to do it that way. He wasn't sure that he could do it at all, even if he found someone he considered completely unworthy to live. Certainly he could not use this Potter, who felt somehow good and true at his core, and yet sullied enough to draw him to help.

Potter stirred. When he first opened an eye, he flinched back, but he settled almost immediately.

"Oh, it's you," he murmured.

"Yes."

"Good. I'm still asleep, then." His eyes, after fluttering closed, flicked more fully open. "Except I'm not."

Regulus responded with a satisfied nod and the disarming smile that he had had in common with his brother. "Yes. I seem to be getting the hang of this ghost routine." He was tempted to ask who Hermione was, but that would make it obvious that he had been poking around the room. "I'm not quite sure why I'm haunting you, however. You must be important."

"Perhaps it's the locket," Harry suggested, lifting it. "The way it was hidden may have kept you from returning before."

He looked distressed as he said it, but his eyes were still actively searching Regulus's face. Regulus knew what he must want -- information about Slytherin's locket. Unwilling to give that to a Death Eater, Regulus took refuge in another response. He leaned over the strained face and hovered his lips over the real ones there, feeling the warmth of them. Harry stayed very still.

When Regulus returned to the height of his side and elbow, Harry let out a shaky laugh. "Thought you were all about the breeding, Regulus."

"I'm all about the pleasure, as well." And affection, he thought, but did not say. "I would touch you, if I could."

Harry studied him for a moment.

"Might let you, too," he said. With that, he closed his eyes and lay his head back on the pillow, although his breathing stayed fast and shallow. Regulus wished he could curl up to him, warmth to warmth.

"Let me help you," he whispered.

Without opening his eyes, Potter laughed. "You can't help --" His eyes flashed open. "Where is the locket?"

Regulus wasn't too surprised. Harry seemed a bold sort. Perhaps that explained his affinity for Sirius.

"I don't remember," he lied. "But more is coming back. I just need to grow stronger."

Harry seemed to accept that. He had probably never met a new ghost.

"I won't move to another bedroom, then," he promised, "or put away the locket. The combination might be important."

Over the next week -- he tracked the time by a calendar that he found in the kitchen -- Regulus managed to return regularly. He always manifested in the room, first, but if Harry was sleeping, he would start with a foray out into the larger house. He found the girl and boy of the attic dream were real and living there. There was no sign of any of his kin, and the portraits seemed unable to see him. Always he returned to the bedroom, and sat on the bed beside Harry. Often Harry woke, and then they talked. Regulus talked about the damage Lord Voldemort did to Wizarding culture, using such arguments as he thought might appeal to a disenfranchised pureblood, but Harry, though he never disagreed, said little in response. Harry would provide vague details about his life: he was living here with friends, but they were on a mission and out of touch with everyone else; he had inherited the house from Sirius, but hadn't known him as well as he would have liked; he was seventeen and had left school after his sixth year. He would get very detailed on stories of no significance, such as raids on the kitchen, but Regulus was certain that he was deliberately withholding any detail that might reveal his alliances. Occasionally, he would ask about obscure hexes, and slip in a question about Horcruxes or Lord Voldemort's history. Regulus grew fonder of him, but also, to his horror, began to wonder if the puppy had ambitions to supplant the Dark Lord. When the silences grew awkward, he filled them with spirit kisses, and Harry -- he had admitted to the name -- would close them with a sigh.

On his seventh such venture, papers and drapes fluttered as he returned to the room. The duvet sank slightly as he settled into his place by Harry's side.

"Regulus."

He had thought Harry was fully asleep, but apparently, it had been fitful, if real. "Good evening, Harry."

"I think it's closer to morning," Harry said. "I'd wondered if you were coming."

"I doubt I could stay away." Emboldened by his earlier signs of progress, and having tried every trick of subtlety, Regulus decided to resort to blunt surprise. With no preamble, he asked:

"Have you ever killed, Harry?"

Harry looked stricken. "Once," he whispered. "But I'll have to again."

Regulus nodded. The look on Harry's face made him feel older and wiser -- capable of helping. "I found it very difficult," he admitted. "I did it only once myself."

"Once? But you --" Harry closed his mouth tightly. Regulus had almost had something out of him.

"I was on several raids, yes," he said, guessing at the doubt. "I always found ... other things to do. It was that reluctance that led to me being set at Sirius. I was told I must prove my mettle." At Harry's disgusted snort, he nodded. "My feelings exactly. What does it prove but brutality? And you?"

"I ... it was a fight. Technically, I only bound him, but if I'd cared at all, I would have seen that it would make him fall. He broke his neck, and I didn't much care, until later, when I was home, and calmed down." His face was tense, and he shivered. "Then there was reading it in the paper."

Regulus remembered that -- accounts in the Daily Prophet that made him wonder what purpose all this violence served.

"Did it accomplish anything?" he asked gently.

Harry was suddenly defiant. He raised his head. "Yes," he declared, and turned away.

Regulus shivered. On impulse, he reached an intangible arm over Harry, as if he could hold him here, in the tattered remnants of innocence. His spectral hand, though, fell across Harry's, and the ring jolted against his finger. The room fell away.

On his eighth venture, he ran into an unexpected problem -- the door. As he threw his hands up to cover his nose, his hip made painful contact with the edge of the table, and he yelped. Harry sat upright in bed, his wand flying to his hand.

"Just me," Regulus called, trying hard to sound casual. He couldn't turn, or Harry might notice that he wasn't floating. How did I not notice that I wasn't floating? Instead, he watched in the mirror and hoped his red nose wasn't perceptible from across the room.

"Oh." Harry yawned and lay back down again. "'Kay. Come...."

After the fading of his voice, Regulus waited for a count of one hundred. Slowly he turned, and even more slowly, began to cross the room. Harry's wand was still by his hand.

Having been discorporate for so long, he was unaccustomed to having to regulate the force of his footsteps. Several times, he froze, certain that he must have made enough noise to wake a sleeper. Harry, though, apparently trusted him enough to have solidly dropped off again, and he reached the bed unseen.

The wand, now. It was lying on the covers, a mere inch from Harry's open hand. Slowly, Regulus stretched his own hand out. Some wizards and witches had a sense of when their wand was touched, and he set motion and incantation in his mind before closing the final inch.

The wood was warm and alien in his grasp. He jumped back, just evading Harry's reflexive grab. "Restringerio!"

Wide leather straps ropes shot out of the end of the wand and towards Harry. The boy tried to evade, rolling back for the safety of the far side of the bed, but one caught him around the chest, pinning him down to the mattress. While he was struggling with that, the second and third straps caught his ankles, and the fourth and fifth his wrists, so that he was bound spread-eagle to the bed posts.

"Sorry, Harry."

As Regulus took his usual place, Harry spat at him. "You snake! You're working for him, aren't you? I should have known!"

Regulus wiped the frothy saliva away. "For whom?" he asked, even before he cast the cleaning spell on his face. Information on whom Harry considered an enemy could be helpful. Regulus leaned over his warm body towards his left wrist. The touch of his side to Harry's chest startled him with its intensity.

"Voldemort," Harry responded angrily, as if he meant it, "just like you always did."

"Don't you dare speak to me of Voldemort!" Regulus responded, furious that Harry would lie to him. "Do you think I can't perceive his stink all over you?"

Lunging into the reach, he shoved up Harry's sleeve ... and stared in surprise at the unmarred skin of his forearm.

"Did you think I was a Death Eater?" Harry's voice went high with apparent hysteria. "Me? Who do you think I am?"

"Potter's natural son, I had assumed." Regulus tried to recalculate the information he had. How could Harry be unmarked?

"Natural?" Harry curved his neck and shoulders up as much as he could. "As opposed to what, adopted?" he asked incredulously. "The way I look?"

"As opposed to legitimate."

He didn't have to ask if that was wrong. Harry was sniggering.

"Potter married Evans," Regulus said angrily, "and a half-blood would not be in this house. He also had money, and you clearly do not. Did you run away? Is that why Sirius helped you?"

"Too bad for you! I'm a half-blood, and I am in this house. Sirius left it to me. My Mum and Dad are dead."

"If Sirius -- " Regulus looked down. "Mine are too, then." He wasn't exactly surprised, with no sign of them in the house, but it hurt.

"Yes." The word was brusque, but the triumph had left Harry's voice. Regulus threw his hands up in exasperation.

"Couldn't you have told me this after the third or fourth hour that I spent trying to convince you not to follow Voldemort?"

"Was that what you were trying to do?" Harry flopped back, letting his head sink into the pillow. "I thought it was some ghost obsession thing. Wait a moment -- you're not a ghost."

"And you still have his taint coming from you. Explain that!"

He expected Harry to try to bargain for the information, but he merely jerked his head to the side.

"See the scar on my forehead?"

It would have been hard to miss, Regulus thought, rolling his eyes. He'd assumed it was from a bad fall. "Of course."

"That was from Voldemort. He meant to kill me, and that happened instead. Sometimes it's a link, of sorts. I hate it."

Regulus eyed the scar speculatively. After a moment, he leaned forward and set his lips to it, but the feeling there made him quickly jerk away. "That is the source. I may, perhaps, have wasted much time distrusting you ... but I am not convinced."

"God!" exclaimed his captive. "This is bizarre."

"Bizarre?"

"I ... to have someone not know me -- to not know I am Voldemort's enemy."

"You have a small collection of Horcruxes."

"To kill him. They're his. He is the other person that I must kill."

Regulus felt his eyes widen. "You intend --" He stopped, as the room swam. He was losing his place here. He needed more power, more control. He needed --

He flicked the wand towards Harry and undid the binding on his right hand. He was just able to move the wand over him before his hand lost substance. The length of wood fell onto Harry's stomach.

"Wait! Tell me what you --"

Voice, face, and room were gone, and consciousness quickly followed.

After a long rest, Regulus managed to return, and he was once again corporeal. The space outside the windows was black. He lay down beside Harry and woke him with kisses. He did not remember kisses ever having been like this before. The slightest press of lip to lip was overwhelming to him, now. Harry moved hungrily under him several times before waking enough to twitch away.

"Who?"

"Regulus." Regulus brushed his cheek against Harry's. The contact felt so good. "I'm sorry I distrusted you. Can we work together? I know things."

Harry squirmed away, turning and flicking on the light on the way to sitting. "Not so fast. It's not like I trust you. How did you get here?"

"I don't have a lot of control over it..."

"Don't play dumb. You're not a ghost."

Regulus sighed. Of all the options open to him, confessing seemed the most likely to succeed. "Not entirely. I found out about the locket --" he gestured at the substitute hanging from Harry's neck, "-- and some other things. When I was given the assignment to kill Sirius, I knew I would be killed. So I stole the locket first."

"And?" Harry pressed, unwilling, for once, to be put off by the mention of Sirius.

"I made a Horcrux of my own."

Harry jerked back in revulsion. "Setting up your own immortality?" he taunted.

"No! Understand, I knew I would die! I didn't have anyone I trusted with the knowledge of where the locket was. I needed to be able to get back to tell someone, and as you noted, my family isn't inclined to return as ghosts. What we do, we do." Harry looked like he might be listening, albeit reluctantly, so Regulus continued quickly. "I had a guard -- he said a partner -- someone to ensure that I killed Sirius. I killed him instead -- it was a logical move -- and I used the death for that. I didn't live to see another sunset."

Harry settled, legs to one side, and sighed. "I'd like to trust you, Regulus. You can see, though --"

"Just let me lead you to the locket," Regulus pleaded. "You can decide about more after that. I know things, though. I saw some of his notes."

"What is your Horcrux?" When Regulus hesitated, Harry pushed. "Tell me that, and then I'll trust you for the location of the locket."

Regulus surrendered. "The ring," he said, gesturing to Harry's hand. "That's what brought me here. Not the locket."

Eyes wide, Harry brought his hand up to examine the ring. He set his fingertips to it, as if to pull it off, but stopped, an oddly shrewd look crossed his face. "No protections?"

"None."

"What if I smash it?"

"Then you have lost a valuable source of information."

"But I shouldn't allow such an evil, should I?"

Regulus looked steadily into his eyes and hoped with all his might. "One cannot end evil," he said; "one can merely counter it. I have done my evil, long ago. Let me help you counter it, and more."

Retrieving the locket from the steeple was laughably easy. There was one frightening moment when Regulus became corporeal half-way through the flight back, and he had to grab on to Harry's broom for dear life. If Harry hadn't been a brilliant flyer (Regulus couldn't help but recall the curses the Slytherin Quidditch team planned for his father), they might both have been dumped off, but he managed to roll with the lurch, and then tilt the broom and hover, so that Regulus could get properly astride. Regulus had wrapped his arms around him in giddiness and gratitude, and when Harry looked back, they had ended up kissing -- their first truly mutual kiss -- until each had one cheek chilled by the gusting wind.

Back at home, they came into the kitchen. "Butterbeer?" Harry asked brightly.

"If you don't have brandy."

"Right, I don't," Harry laughed, as he came back with two bottles and set one in front of Regulus. "Bet you have the tolerance of a fourth-year by now, anyway." He sat at the massive table, at corners to him, and lifted his bottle. "Cheers."

"Cheers," Regulus answered sincerely. The butterbeer was the first thing he had tasted since his death. It was marvelous. Harry summoned apples from the pantry and they had a feast.

Setting aside his core, Harry unlooped the bag -- Erumpet hide, on Regulus's advice, from his belt and set it on the table. "So ...."

"Yes?"

"Sorry to talk business so soon, but you said you knew more."

"Ah." Regulus was surprised to find himself disappointed. He had been caught up in wondering if the night might go beyond kisses. Surely, he chided himself, bringing down Lord Voldemort was more important than any potential lover, however appealing a mix of danger and vulnerability. "Yes." He collected his thoughts. "He planned on seven -- seven pieces, that is, so six Horcruxes. There is also a book -- a diary --"

"I've taken care of that one."

"Ah. There is a ring, very old --"

"Dumbledore got that one."

His heart sinking, Regulus raised his arms to the sides in surrender. If the goal had been his life, he might invent a quarry, but that had not been what had driven him to this. You don't get what you want if you chase something else halfway there, he told himself firmly. Still, that didn't mean he couldn't phrase things as positively as possible. "Then my only use to you is a strategist. You already have the artifacts of Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, and he never could seize Gryffindor's sword or hat from out of Hogwarts. I don't know what he might have done for the last one. I am, however, familiar with how he works, and might be able to deduce a hiding place from an item."

"Well, Dumbledore thought the last one was his snake, and she's not hidden, just protected. I'm not sure, though." His elation consumed in worry, Harry settled into a glum study of a new bottle.

Regulus frowned. "A living Horcrux? A bit risky. They cannot be protected in the same way."

"You mean we can just kill her, like any old venomous thirty-foot snake?"

Regulus laughed. "The Lord retains his fondness for excess, I see. Yes, precisely. Were we to capture her, we could even exorcise the spirit from her body." He cocked his head to the side. "Presuming, of course, that you were unwilling to harm such a lovely venomous thirty-foot snake." he added dryly.

"Right. I'm fond of Hagrid, but not that much like him," Harry retorted. He almost smirked, but it wasn't quite enough to counter the name of the groundskeeper.

"Good god. You must have been a Gryffindor."

"Couldn't you tell?"

"I couldn't. You're a bit too sly."

Harry laughed. Regulus watched him start to say one thing and then change his mind. "Thank you," was the substitute. "From a Slytherin, I expect that's a compliment."

"It is indeed," Regulus answered, leaning forward, "as irritating a chase as you led me, never giving away a thing."

"Oh, was that what all your kisses were for?"

"Oh no." He closed the distance. "Those were for you."

It was two butterbeers and a dizzying sensual interlude later that they got back to business, more or less. They had progressed to a thick rug in front of the drawing room fire, and Regulus had his head in Harry's lap. Harry hadn't objected when he'd laid it there.

"Don't suppose you know how to destroy them?"

Although their last words had been about the Forbidden Forest, Regulus knew what he meant.

"It all depends on the protections -- and Dark Lords are by definition, ruthless." Regulus, with Harry's fingers threading idly through his hair, was too relaxed to dissemble. "I don't know about the protections on the bookstand. I do know about the cup, and honestly can't see how anyone could survive destroying it. Can you trick an enemy into doing it?"

"Regulus!" Harry chided. "Of course not!"

"What if we fed them to the snake? Kill two Horcruxes with one stone, as it were?"

Harry sniggered. "Elegant! But I don't think I could make her. She's a familiar, as far as I can tell. And there's no one but Voldemort who deserves that."

Regulus sighed. He supposed he could have used more moral compunctions, at Harry's age, but this one was damned inconvenient, under the circumstances.

"What about the Veil?"

"What?"

"You said my brother died just by ... by passing into Death. What if we just Leviosa'd the lot through there." He paused. He'd just used an incantation as a verb, something he found repulsively vulgar. "Yes, brandy would have been a bad idea."

Harry laughed, and then settled down to the question. "The problem is, I don't really know. Everyone says he's dead, but they don't know either. And I have no idea if the Veil would get rid of the fragments of soul, or if it would just be all these objects someplace where we could never destroy them."

Regulus prepared himself, and did the second bravest thing he had ever done in his life. "I could ask."

"What?"

"Well, there are spells to talk to the dead, right? But they're not very reliable. Except, I'm half dead, really -- or maybe a little less, now -- so I should be better at it. I can try, at least."

"What if you can't get back?"

There was no point in admitting the thought terrified him. Regulus shrugged. "Then you're no worse off, are you?"

Despite looking unhappy, Harry slowly nodded. "All right, then."

He sounded miserable. Regulus found himself stretching up to kiss him, and watching his lips part slightly as he curled down in welcome....

"Harry?" a voice called. "You need to stop talking to yourself! Honestly, if --"

The door knob turned. Desperate, Regulus managed to wrench himself into a discorporate state. Harry stared. The door opened, and the bushy-haired girl stepped halfway through and stopped, nearly falling as someone behind stumbled into her. "Harry?"

"It's okay," Harry answered, although he was still flushed. "Hermione, Ron, come meet Regulus. And see what we've got!" He grabbed the Erumpet-hide bag and opened it, levitating the locket out for display. "Don't touch!"

Neither of his friends seemed to need the warning. The girl -- Hermione -- was firing identifying spells at the glint of gold from a cautious distance. Only when she was satisfied did she turn her attention to Regulus, who had moved from the floor to the couch. Once again, he could not take comfort in the feel of the pile under his thumb.

"Regulus Black?"

"You a ghost?" the redhead asked. "Oh, sorry. I'm Ron. Weasley," he added, apparently as an afterthought.

"Pleased to meet you, Ron." After rising and bowing slightly, as in his state he could not shake hands, Regulus turned to the girl. "And you, Hermione."

She folded her hands across her chest. "I'm Muggleborn."

Regulus shrugged gracefully, suppressing a desire to ask if Muggles crossed their arms in greeting. "I can hardly object, when I was just --" He stopped himself just in time, before the revealing words came out. Harry laughed at his sudden halt, and Hermione looked annoyed, but her posture softened.

"Just what?" Ron demanded.

"Never mind," Harry answered, with a glance at Regulus. "I don't think he minds all that much, anymore, Hermione. He'd pretty much given up on Voldemort before he died, remember. Be polite."

In an unknown time in the middle of the night, when Regulus could touch again, and each new sensation pushed back the worry as to why he was getting stronger, with Harry not weakening, Harry raised the matter again.

"Do you mind that I'm not a pureblood?"

"You are you," Regulus answered, "and thus perfect, Harry." He was surprised to find the words nearly sincere. Not perfect, no -- no one was -- but good enough for anything, he was sure, adulterated blood or no. Harry confirmed his opinion by tightening his hold and kissing him again. He pressed his body closer to Regulus than he ever had before, and while Regulus knew he would have scoffed at this demure a contact at the time of his death, now it was overwhelming.

"You are intoxicating," he whispered, and Harry's laughter bubbled out against his neck.

Planning the séance went more quickly than Regulus would have chosen. His nights with Harry had progressed, slow caution only heightening each new step, and he found himself with a theory for his new strength. Perhaps life, he mused, could be shared as effectively as it could be seized.

In less than a week, he found himself in Harry's candlelit bedroom -- not warm in his bed, but lying chilled in a charmed circle, with incense blurring his senses. Harry chanted harshly in the distance. For good or ill, he was gone, possibly back to where he had come from, and he needed to force himself to think fiercely of Sirius, rather than desperately of Harry.

There was a confused sense of pushing through a crowd, without feeling or sound or anything that Regulus could name, and then, with a wrench, the mist formed into a cheery, unpretentious sitting room, complete with his brother, who embraced him and thumped him on the back as he had never done in all their lives.

"Regulus!"

Alarmed, Regulus stepped back. "This isn't real."

"Well, of course not," Sirius scoffed casually. "I am, and you are, but you're making it into something you can understand. Brilliant that. If you don't embellish, you should get something true out of it." He cocked his head curiously. "You're alive."

"Sort of." Regulus wasn't going to explain that one, but he thought he saw a flash of disappointed understanding cross his brother's face. He had to be wrong, though. Sirius would have pounded him into the imaginary floor if he even suspected. "Harry sent me."

"Harry." There was indisputable disappointment there. "Tell him I love him, will you? And I'm sorry I was such an idiot about things. With you, too."

Regulus wondered if the last phrase was one of his embellishments.

"Sit down," Sirius invited. "Tell me what Harry has to say."

Regulus sat at one end of the couch, and Sirius sat at the other, half-facing him. Oddly, it felt comfortable, which was even odder than the rest of it. Regulus had to force his mind back to his business.

"As it happens," he said, "Harry finds himself in possession of a number of --" He stopped himself before saying "Horcruxes." Sirius wouldn't know what that meant. "...objects that each contain a piece of Voldemort's soul. He needs to destroy them, that Voldemort can die."

"And you're all for this, are you?" Sirius questioned. His face cleared before Regulus could answer. "Sorry. Habit. Go on. They're difficult to destroy, then?"

"From 'very' to 'fatally' -- yes."

"Is there something I knew that might help him?"

"Not exactly." Regulus ran a finger along the weave of the couch. It felt like velvet, not broadcloth. "Harry told me how you died -- falling through the Veil." He looked at his brother's face, at that, but Sirius was only listening carefully. "We thought that if we threw the objects through, that might do. The pieces of soul might become ... separated from the objects, and unable to truly return. However, if we are wrong ..." then that's the end of that solution, and Harry might become too obsessed with bringing you back to care.

Again, Sirius appeared to hear his thoughts. "It might be sufficient," he answered slowly. "I am certainly truly dead -- but perhaps part of that is that death held more appeal for me than life." For a long moment, Sirius thought. Finally, he reached forward and touched Regulus in the center of his chest. Regulus felt a horrible pain, as if his heart had seized, and Sirius responded with the predatory smile that Regulus had no trouble matching to him at all.

"Shh." Sirius soothed the spot with a slow stroke of his hand, and the pain vanished. "It shouldn't kill you. I just needed to find out if it was possible." He straightened. "Bring the objects to the Veil. Do not touch it, nor let Harry touch it, but call me from the other side. When I have responded, throw the horcruxes through -- my friends and I will take care of them."

The cheery room dissolved in a tide of mist and a hard kiss to his forehead, and Regulus was lying on Harry's floor, gasping with pain.

"Hermione!" Harry bellowed. "Here. Now!"

Hermione told him that he'd had a heart attack, and she really ought to be taking him to St. Mungo's, not feeding him soup and hot cocoa, but there was the complication of him being dead, officially.

"Thus any state may be considered an improvement," Regulus quipped, a bit unsteadily.

Unconvinced, Ron glared at him, much as he had -- to the best of Regulus's memory -- since he and Hermione had rushed in to find him on Harry's floor. "Why aren't you dead?"

"I'm sure your healing spells are just fine, Hermione," Harry soothed. "The important thing is that Regulus has information about destroying the Horcruxes."

Once he had delivered his message from the dead, Regulus didn't have much to do with the planning. Harry and his two friends, as in the dream of the attic, worked as a frighteningly efficient team. Regulus helped slightly with the research, but so many things had been moved, or even destroyed, that his knowledge of the library was frustratingly out-of-date. He was spending enough time with a body that he occasionally ate now, and when he did, it was often with all three of them. His nights, though, he spent in Harry's room, if he spent them anywhere at all. On the fourth morning, Ron demanded to speak to Harry; the two left together and returned with Ron less vocal, but no less hostile. Hermione, in contrast, seemed to regard him with fretful distrust, and any charm he expended on her made the matter worse. At first, Regulus was afraid they would reject the plan. They did not. However crafty they were at getting in and out of buildings, their trust in Harry was a Gryffindor thing, strong and uncomplicated.

At last, the four of them were in the Ministry building, trying to negotiate the chaos -- no, Regulus decided, arcane organization -- of the Department of Mysteries. Regulus was astounded that they found the Veil before any Unspeakables or Aurors showed up with wands blazing. Still, there they were, with cup and locket and lectern floating after, and there it was, on a stone dais at the bottom of a dimly-lit circular well of steps, hanging from a ruinous stone archway and fluttering slightly. It was hard to believe that such a frail thing had overcome his brash brother. Regulus paused at the top of the steps, feeling as if an invisible audience were filling the ranks of stone benches, and he and Harry stared at each other. Regulus didn't know what Harry was thinking, but he was building up his nerve.

"I'll pull you back if you try to go through." Distrustful or not, Hermione meant the promise for both of them. Regulus could feel the sincerity in her words. He took a step down, and was surprised that Harry did as well. When he looked over in wordless inquiry, Harry reached out and interlaced his fingers into Regulus's hand.

"Together," he whispered, and that single word was more than any tentative midnight touch.

"Harry!" Ron exclaimed, but Hermione shushed him. Regulus paced slowly down the awkward steps with Harry at his side. There were a lot of steps, and it was all too easy to imagine falling.

From closer, the tatters of the Veil seemed more like the motions of tendrils, and he could hear the faint whispering of every friend he had ever lost. Harry's grip on him tightened, and his face was white; he half-looked like he wanted to step forward. Regulus could feel the attraction, but his repulsion was greater.

"Easy," he said to Harry, his voice low, but clearer than the whispers. "You're staying with me."

In response, Harry nodded, his face forming into a mask of stubborn ferocity. He let go with his hand, but just as Regulus was about to grab it back, he felt Harry's arm wrap around his waist. Regulus pulled him close, and Harry held him tight in return. "Call Sirius," Harry commanded, between clenched teeth.

Regulus would not step any closer, but he raised his head. "Sirius!" he called. "Brother! Come, as you have promised." He was afraid, as he had been the last two weeks, that he wouldn't be able to tell when Sirius had heard him, even if he did hear and somehow respond.

The Veil fluttered more. Abruptly, the tenor of the whispers changed. The enticing voices were still there, but over them was a murmur like a rough party, or a gathering on the verge of becoming a mob -- cheerful, but with an edge of violence. Regulus knew.

"NOW!" he shouted. Harry whirled and turned his wand on the floating treasures. They came rushing through the air so quickly that Regulus and Harry had to stumble to the side to avoid the heavy lectern. Hermione gave a little scream as they tottered, holding to each other to impose balance. They steadied. Over Harry's shoulder, Regulus saw the gold cup reach the Veil, seem almost to pause as it met the frail-looking fabric, and then plunge out of sight. He had a momentary fancy of gorging lions, and then the whispers resumed.

He and Harry had been clinging to each other, but now Harry pulled back, trailing his hand from shoulder to arm until his fingers stroked over the back of Regulus's hand. He was looking down, and Regulus realized that his attention centered on the ring on his own.

Melancholy settled over him like a shroud, but this had been, after all, borrowed time.

"You may throw that through as well," he whispered. "Such evil should be brought to an end."

Harry looked up at that. Slowly, he pulled the ring off, stroking the curve of it with his thumb. Regulus nodded his resignation and prepared to step back, but Harry caught at his hand.

"Evil cannot be ended," he quoted softly. He slipped the ring onto Regulus's finger, and it felt like the world came a little more into focus, the dim room took on a little more depth. "You can only counter it ... and I bet that's easier to do when you're alive."

Then and there, Regulus kissed him, and Harry returned it wholeheartedly, his friends' presence notwithstanding.

"Let's go home."