This Spiral Dance

Chapter 6: The Blackest Tale

"So Kreacher went to the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord didn't tell him what they were to do, but took the elf with him to a cave beside the sea. Beyond the cave there was a cavern, and in the cavern was a great black lake and a boat with which to traverse it. They reached an island and then they came to basin full of a potion. The Dark Lord ordered Kreacher to drink it all, and he did so because the will of his master was for him to follow the other wizard's directives."

At this point the narrator broke his tale, his eyes not on the taciturn listener before him but rather on the grandfather clock that dominated the room with its gothic ghastliness. Out of all the rooms in Grimmauld Place, the library on the third floor was the one in which he favoured ending his evenings, even when he did nothing but stare at the countless shelves filled with thick, well-kept volumes. He could swear he knew every title by heart, even those belonging to books he had never opened.

After a beat, he began again. "The Dark Lord dropped a locket into the empty basin before refilling it with the same concoction and sailed away, leaving the agonized elf to his own devices; yet Kreacher managed to come back to this house because those were his orders. It wasn't until later that his young master asked Kreacher to lead him to the cave."

"Did you asked him to drink the poison?"

There was no accusation or disapproval in the inquiry, but Regulus felt insulted all the same as he shook his head in negation. Although pureblood wizards - and Blacks in particular -were not known for being overly caring about the magical creatures bound to their service, loyalty meant something within a ancient family. Blacks protected their servants, even if only to slaughter them themselves. Furthermore, he had always been fond of Kreacher; what Slytherin wouldn't be, after spending such a large part of his childhood and adolescence practicing his spells on the adoring elf? He wouldn't be able to buy his redemption with Kreacher's death, even he was just one elf. Gods, how tired he was of the blood on his hands! Would he ever stop feeling it contemning his very essence?

"I couldn't ask him, when I so strongly suspected the second time around he wouldn't survive. I would have drunk it myself, but Rookwood and Lucius were there, hidden among the shadows. I knew when I saw them that I had been marked for death." Who else would the Dark Lord send to execute him, if not his cousin-in-law? Treason was a taint to be cleared within the family. And Rookwood had been the one to assist in Regulus' initiation, so it was his responsibility as well.

"I was lucky they judged me unworthy of a quick death. After torturing me, they left me for dead, and Kreacher, who I had commanded to return here, came back to rescue me." The cunning his elf had demonstrated on that occasion still evoked pride in Regulus. He had ordered Kreacher to leave him, but he hadn't considered forbidding the elf to return for him. Nor had he expected, in spite of the transparent veneration his servant had often proved toward his masters (Regulus and his mother, at least), that Kreacher would of his own accord strive to save him.

Regulus regarded Severus with more attention, but the other man looked back with a contemplative air about him which gave nothing away. "No ironic commentary, Severus? It's most unusual from you."

"I was in doubt as to whether to commend you for your idiocy or pity it in silence. You certainly brought it up to new heights with this asinine idea." Oddly, the snark came across as amused more than insulting, and the smirk firmly in place on the other man's mouth was unmistakably complacent. Mind you, Severus seemed to be in a better mood lately - more relaxed in a way that could have escaped an untrained eye. Regulus wondered if it could have something to do with whatever had persuaded Severus to bother coming to Grimmauld Place for their weekly check-in rather than allowing Regulus back into the castle. Charity had written about Harry Potter, of course; she helped her aunt to treat him whenever there was any need.

Severus had been so reserved about the two new presences at Hogwarts that Regulus felt fairly authorized to speculate, with all the time he had on his hands. With the Potion Master before him, it was the unspoken which mattered the most. The youngest Black could remember, from what he perceived as ages ago, Avery and Mulciber's unconcealed disdain for the time Severus spent on a certain red-haired Muggle-born, right before a grand scene when the other Slytherin had publicly snapped at her by insulting her origins. It was shame the whole matter had held so little interest for his still-childlike self then, because now Regulus found it engaging.

Relieved that the general mood of this conversation wasn't turning as grim he had expected, Regulus emptied in one gulp his glass of Firewhisky, uncaring of the faint scowl of disapproval his chosen confidante sported as his black eyes remained focused solely on Regulus.

Black eyes...Muggles never had completely black eyes, just as they hadn't yellow, silver, or violet eyes, unlike wizards and witches. No wonder Severus had never raised suspicions regarding his bloodline, in spite of his virtually unknown last name...no wonder it had never occurred to Regulus to guess until it was too late.

The vicious burning of liquor down his throat helped to dissimulate the uneasiness of everything, for him at least.

He hadn't ever spoken to a living soul except Kreacher of that horrible day, and he had never revealed what he knew about the Horcruxes at all. Those secrets had been with him so long that sharing them spurred in Regulus relief and regret alike: he had buried them at the very centre of himself, and their loss left him coping with a gaping hole.

"You must have given them a reason to suspect you."

Regulus inclined his head, considering yet again the question he had posed to himself time and time again.

"There was something strange in the air at that time, an odd excitement shared by both Bella and Lucius. I - I tried to talk to Narcissa about it, but she possessed little information, although she desired even that little. At last she gave in, at my insistence, and I learnt that the Dark Lord had entrusted Lucius with a treasure - a diary, blank but capable of independent thought."

Severus gave him a sharp look, his expression no longer impassive but hard. "How do you know what qualities the diary possessed? Did she show it to you or tell about it herself?"

"I - yes. She knew very little about the item, so I asked her to let me examine it. She was so afraid, when we turned its empty pages, just to have that cursed object demanding to know who we were...I couldn't ask Narcissa for more than she had already done that night. I had seen where Lucius kept it and I knew I should have to come back for it before going after the locket."

"Have you done it?"

"I never had the chance to go back to Malfoy Manor without my cousin-in-law being present - and then, as more time went by, I began to wondering whether I could accomplish the feat without endangering Narcissa. So I resolved to destroy the locket and wrote a letter for Sirius, charmed to reach him only after my death. He wouldn't have shared my scruples."

In retrospect, it was very clear to Regulus that his actions had been dictated by sheer impatience to end a charade that was eating him from within. Had he merely been searching for way to justify his death, giving it the purpose his life had lacked? Had he always been such a coward, even when he had sought to rise above his mistakes? Perhaps his attempts to distance himself from his past had only pushed him into emulating his brother's most senseless, reckless daring. He was more than a bit surprised that he hadn't been mocked by now for this blatant error.

"Narcissa wouldn't have confided in her husband about your curiosity, regardless of her distrust of it."

"No. But maybe there were surveillance spells of which she was unaware that gave us away." It wasn't in the deeper nature of his cousin to create conflicts when she could avoid them. Narcissa was particularly good at turning a blind eye to what she disliked witnessing, and her memory could become very selective about unpleasant events. She hadn't enough loyalty to the Dark Lord's propaganda to risk a family member for its sake, regardless of how well she was able to parrot it for her own convenience. Narcissa would have kept it quiet.

"Or perhaps the diary itself has revealed your visit to Lucius your visit. Have you confounded it?"

Regulus shook his head in negation, his cheeks reddening a little at the other man's snort; he found it difficult to tell where the faults of his own schemes ended and Severus' paranoia began.

"Why didn't you go to Dumbledore with this information, in all the time you were at Hogwarts? You must have expected I would tell him about it. Unless you think I'm still faithful to the Dark Lord, but then it would make no sense for you to have this conversation with me."

Regulus waved the notion away and stretched back in the dragon-leather armchair, resisting a sudden impulse to reach for Severus' still invitingly full glass.

"It isn't easy to explain, and I'm not proud of it, but after the war was over I felt lucky enough to have escaped Azkaban to not take the further risk of revealing other details of my experience as a Death Eater. People were so sensitive about everything concerning him. I've imprisoned myself inside this house, able to care about nothing. I've willed myself to forget, to believe as everyone else did that he wouldn't rise again. But I did know better and I couldn't lie to myself again and say I was right. Not after you started your treatment on me and I started to care again. It was like coming out of a daze. I realized I couldn't postpone the locket's destruction any more, nor could I trust anyone else with the task. I hoped I would heal enough to go on my own, but I haven't fully recovered yet."

His own willingness to wait so long disgusted Regulus. They had told him that his depression was among the most crippling side effects of the damage inflicted on his nervous system, but he had sworn he wouldn't hide behind his weaknesses any longer. For better or worse, he was done looking for excuses for himself.

"Dumbledore...he's always been certain the Dark Lord would return." It was the only sentence that passed the Potion Master's thin lips. His face had frozen; his gaze became so absent that it was a wonder someone indeed lived behind it.

Regulus wondered if Occlumency would help Severus Snape to deal with the horror of this new knowledge more than it had helped him, but then he hadn't mastered the art as well as Snape had.

So Dumbledore had known about what Tom Riddle had accomplished in his terrible madness.

"Has he never alluded to those Horcruxes to you?"

For a moment or two Severus seemed so absorbed by his inner contemplations that Regulus nearly gave up on receiving an answer, but then the other man seemed to come back himself at once and said a dry "No" before swallowing his drink. With the buzzing warmth induced by Firewhisky in his body, Severus allowed his mind to collect shards of things seen and heard over the previous years and finally coalesce them into a larger picture, which he intensely disliked.

The lightning-shaped scar on the forehead of the Boy-Who-Lived...could it be more than the mark of erratic sacrificial magic? The prophecy he had overhead once seemed to acquire a completely different, twisted meaning in light of his recent discovery. Had Potter Jr been assigned a kinder fate after all?

"Even if I can't do it alone, I will finish what I started this time around. I'll participate in whatever is decided to do about the locket."

Severus nodded numbly, forcing himself to temporarily put aside his suppositions, however intellectually intriguing they might be.

"Tell me more about the poison stored inside the basin."

**

Two hours later Severus was sitting in the Headmaster's office at Hogwarts, relaying all the knowledge Regulus had poured into him. Albus listened in apparent calm, his fingers caressing his long white beard with an irritating rhythm.

"You knew it all," the Slytherin accused at last, but the Headmaster just murmured tiredly, his untwinkling eyes closed.

"I suspected."

Because he hadn't expected the old strategist's confidence, Severus wasn't offended by his reticence. It didn't make it any easier to ask what he had to. "Do you suspect the Longbottom boy is another Horcrux?"

"It would explain some things. His grandmother writes to me that she has seen the boy hissing to a garden snake. Rather friendly."

"When did this occurr?"

"A year ago, more or less."

"Were you going to tell me?" Snape didn't like being kept in the dark, especially where the eventuality of that madman's return was concerned, and the lighthearted jibe that followed only furthered his aggravation.

"Why, Severus, I thought you wished not to be bothered with little Neville until you had to. If I'd known you felt responsible for him as well, I would have informed you."

Damn those twinkles and that hideously satisfied twitch of his lips.

But then the old man went on to more serious matters and the rest was quickly forgotten. "I'm more concerned about the diary than the locket. It won't be a simple matter to gain access to it."

"No," Severus sighed. "Lucius will be out of London next week. I think I'll be able to convince Narcissa to give it to me willingly." He didn't offer the reasoning behind his intended persuasion and Albus didn't press him, although for a moment it seemed as if he wanted to comment.

"Act as you believe it's right. I'll go with Regulus once the draught to counteract the poison is ready."

"You'll have it by the next waning moon."

**

"There will be warm and dry snowflakes falling from the ceiling of the Great Hall and suits of armour enchanted to sing carols. Twelve trees with the most strange, wonderful, glittering decorations you can imagine. You'll love Hogwarts when Yule comes," Lily said softly into her son's ear as she tucked him into his Infirmary bed after having sat with him to tell his goodnight fairy tale. Even if Severus had told her no results would be evident before the treatment progressed to include all the medications, she couldn't avoid seeking signs of some type of improvement. It was dangerous, because expectations could set her up for a greater disappointment, but some temptations were just too sweet to resist.

She combed his bushy black hair with loving fingers, pushing the most rebellious locks back from his forehead, and placed a kiss on his cheek. "Sweet dreams, Harry," she whispered, noticing with a glance at the clock that she was late for dinner. After tiptoeing out of the Hospital Wing, she quickened her pace on her way to the Great Hall and was surprised, upon turning the corner, to come face to face with Severus Snape.

Lily drew back and he mirrored her action, bringing a grin to her lips. "Severus! I didn't think I was that late!"

"For dinner? No, they've just begun." In truth, he didn't care much for company right now - too many thoughts, too much time spent pushing a certain Dark Lord out of his immediate thoughts. He felt as if someone had turned back the clock on him without warning.

"You aren't coming?"

"I have no appetite."

She could see something was off with him, but there was no way to pinpoint it with any precision. He looked distracted, yet it was more than that....

"Are you all right?"

"Fine. Will you excuse me?"

He departed before she had a chance to reply, taking off with long, unhurried strides. Lily looked after him, frowning and trying to remember whether she had done anything that might have unintentionally offended him. Then she shook her head, mocking her egocentrism: just because she knew so little of his private life didn't mean she should suppose his world revolved around her. They weren't so close that she could expect him to spill his secrets to her. Severus had always been a very private person. She hoped his concerns weren't grave.