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lomonaaerenTitle: A New Creation
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Regulus, background pairings
Content Notes: AU, dimension travel, angst, violence, character deaths, present tense
Wordcount: This part 3600
Rated: R
Summary: In one world, Regulus Black was right about the locket being Voldemort’s only Horcrux, and killed the Dark Lord. Years later, Regulus, feted left and right and honored as the Man-Who-Conquered, is drowning in boredom and craving a new challenge. He may get more than he can handle, starting with the appearance of a green-eyed stranger in Grimmauld Place.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Samhain to the Solstice” fics for this autumn, fics posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. It should have four or five parts.
A New Creation
Regulus sighs as he snatches another flute of champagne from the tray floating by at shoulder-height. Honestly, he doesn’t know when all the Ministry’s parties that he was once eager to attend started to seem so boring. He can gossip and flirt and intrigue with the best of them, but…
He’s heard all the gossip. There’s no one he wants to flirt with. All the intrigues are stale.
Sometimes, Regulus can almost see the Dark Lord’s point. The British magical world could do with some shaking-up.
The thought of the reactions he would get if he said that brings a faint smile to Regulus’s face. He wanders over to one of the enchanted windows set into the wall of the Ministry’s ballroom and stares out from it. Normally, the windows are enspelled to reflect visions of nonexistent gardens and jeweled beaches. This one shows an ocean tossing in thick blue waves with pearly crests. At least it’s a little different.
Regulus is watching it when he hears a voice behind him. “Ah, young Master Black.”
Regulus sets his face into a serene expression and turns around. He is not young. He is almost thirty-seven. But he’s not about to show his irritation to the man speaking those words. “Headmaster. A pleasure.”
Albus Dumbledore studies him, not bothering with the smile he uses for everyone else. Regulus stares flatly back. Dumbledore has treated him like a mixture of Potions ingredient about to go rotten and Death Eater about to go Dark since the defeat of the Dark Lord.
Regulus didn’t understand why for years, but now he thinks he does. He and Dumbledore are the only two wizards in Britain—two of only three in Europe, for that matter—who defeated a Dark Lord. But Regulus didn’t renounce ambition and go back to being a humble professor at Hogwarts like Dumbledore did. He entered politics, and although it’s not a path that led him to where he wanted to be, it’s doubtless too riddled with ambition for Dumbledore’s comfort.
Of course, those who think Dumbledore lacks ambition are deluding themselves, given that he’s Chief Warlock and Supreme Mugwump as well as Headmaster of Hogwarts. But Regulus doesn’t try to argue with those people. He dances verbal circles around them until they go away.
“Have you seen the goblet they brought us here to see?” Dumbledore asks, beginning the steps of a dance Regulus knows as well as the waltz.
Regulus sips from his champagne. “Not yet. Have you?”
“Yes. I confess I found it disturbing.”
Regulus arches his eyebrows. While the cup the Ministry excavated from an ancient site that might go back four thousand years or longer could be interesting, “disturbing” is the last word Regulus would expect anyone to use of it. “Ah?”
“The scenes embossed on the cup show a picture of times forgotten, and well forgotten. I will be most eager to hear what you think when you see it.”
“I should come to Hogwarts to talk about it, then.”
“Yes, you should.”
And with that stunning invitation, Dumbledore turns and melts into the crowd. Regulus stares after him, before putting down his champagne on another tray floating by and striding towards the door at the back of the ballroom that leads to the hidden room where the cup is displayed.
He suddenly wants a look at the thing that made Dumbledore eager to talk to him in the school he’s barred Regulus from for twenty years.
*
The room where the Ministry is keeping the goblet has a chipped-stone look, as if just carved out of the rock, but Regulus knows better than to believe that. Thick illusion magic creates a humming noise that can be hard to hear unless you’re listening closely enough. But he can hear it as he steps into the room.
It helps that no one else is around right now. Regulus doesn’t know if people have already come to take a look or didn’t care at all about the excuse for the Ministry’s party.
The cup is large, made of reddish-colored gold, and two-handled, like a drinking cup. Regulus walks closer to it, noting that the handles are made with a gentle curve that makes them look more delicate than the handles on similar artifacts that the Blacks keep at home.
And when he gets close enough, he can see the designs that so disturbed Dumbledore.
Regulus catches his breath and bends over to look. Yes, the Headmaster was right. They are disturbing.
The creatures on the cup are human, but only if you take a wide interpretation of that word. They have arms that curve like the cup handles, and they’re prancing and cavorting around what Regulus are certain are meant to be altars. Laid out on the altars are other figures, ones that are draped in flowing robes. It seems odd that the sacrificers are depicted naked and their victims clothed, but Regulus is more concerned about the fact that there are—
He steps back and casts a charm on his eyes that will sharpen them for a few minutes to look at small things, something he needs more often now as he gets older.
Yes. It’s not his imagination. There are carvings on the cup that go down beneath the surface, at angles that should have been impossible to carve, and something shining moves in those cracks. It’s like looking at lava far beneath a stone surface.
Regulus swallows and lets the charm fade. He doesn’t know who made this cup or left it where they did, and he doesn’t know what it was made for, but he knows that it’s damn strange. And none of the Ministry officials must have looked at the cup in much detail.
For them, as for the guests, it was probably just an excuse for a party.
Regulus takes a step back and studies the cup once more, committing it to memory, and then shakes his head. He knows what the cup looks like now, and maybe why Dumbledore is shaken, but not why the man might have wanted to meet him at Hogwarts.
It seems that he will simply have to wait and see what happens. At least it enlivens his boring life.
*
“Tea, Mr. Black?”
Regulus smiles at Dumbledore. Their smiles are good matches for one another, both polite and small and not a burden on their faces. “No, thank you. I just came from a rather large lunch.”
Dumbledore nods as if he isn’t offended, although Regulus personally thinks that Dumbledore would have tried to slip something into the tea and is probably disappointed he didn’t get the chance. He fixes his own tea, which does smell appealing. Regulus glances around the office. It’s changed little since the last time he saw it, right after he destroyed Voldemort’s mortal form, and came here dirty and sweaty and exhausted. The shelves still chime with odd instruments of silver and crystal that pursue their own whirligig way. The books on the shelves still look a mixture of intriguing and childish. The beautiful phoenix still stands on his perch, watching Regulus with a tilted head.
If you were mine, Regulus tries to tell him without opening his lips, I would have named you something more fitting than Fawkes.
The phoenix only rustles his feathers and turns his head away.
“Ah, now,” Dumbledore says, when he has finished a long sip of the tea. He leans forwards and catches Regulus’s eye. Regulus smiles blandly and looks at the middle of Dumbledore’s forehead. He has no desire to have his mind probed. “So. What did you think of the cup, Mr. Black?”
“Disturbing, as you said. I also didn’t understand why the people doing the sacrificing were naked and the people on the altars were covered in robes. From what I know of the rites once celebrated by our people, it should have been very much the other way around.”
“You know of those rites?”
“Their historical existence? Of course, Headmaster.”
A short silence, while Dumbledore tries to think of something to accuse him of and Regulus tries to keep smiling. Then Dumbledore sighs and unexpectedly gives in. “So do I. And yes, at first I thought, as you did, that it was a remnant of those ancient sacrifices, but the depiction did not fit.”
Regulus nods and leans forwards. “So it must mean something else. What is your candidate for what it means, Headmaster?”
Dumbledore looks and looks at his clasped fingers, frowning. Regulus is about to ask again when Dumbledore lifts his head. Regulus recoils a little at the sight of his face. It’s aged, in a way that it normally never looks.
“I think that the figures in robes being placed on the altars weren’t wearing robes in the way we think of them at all,” he answers heavily. “I think they were Dementors.”
Regulus whistles softly under his breath, thinking back to what he saw on the cup. Yes, if he’s remembering it correctly, he can see why the Headmaster would think that. But it only makes the scenes more mysterious than ever. “We don’t know if Dementors can truly die, from what I understand. Why would ancient wizards be sacrificing them?” He wonders idly if perhaps they did know a way to kill Dementors.
“The figures didn’t hold sacrificial knives except when they stood away from the altar. The human figures,” Dumbledore corrects himself, with a small shake of his head and a tap of his fingers on a box of sweets. The box turns towards Dumbledore, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “The ones closest to it had wands. I think what the cup depicts is the binding of the Dementors to become our servants and the guards of Azkaban, not their deaths.”
Regulus nods slowly. That makes sense. How the binding was accomplished, exactly, is one of the great mysteries of their world. Ekrizdis built Azkaban and may have created the Dementors, but that is different from keeping them there.
“And what do you think it means now that the cup has been dug up? That someone else might figure it out and attempt to undo the bindings? Or replicate them with some other kind of magical creature?”
Dumbledore takes a breath so deep that his beard wavers where it lies over his chest. Then he leans forwards and stares directly into Regulus’s eyes.
“No,” he says. “I’m afraid that it means the bindings may begin to weaken.”
Regulus’s eyes widen. He can’t deny the throb of battle-lust that travels through him. He had one moment of piercing clarity in his life, the day that he killed Voldemort. They’ve been more than hard to come by since then.
But of course, the release of the Dementors would be devastating for ordinary witches and wizards who aren’t as powerful as he is and couldn’t defend themselves from a Dementor gone wild from Ministry control. He adopts a suitably concerned expression. “Why? Just because people might see the illustrations on the cup and undo the bindings?” He has to admit that he doesn’t think most wizards and witches would be smart enough to even understand what the cup shows without instruction from someone like Dumbledore.
Perhaps that’s overly cynical, but Regulus hasn’t maintained his position as a celebrity by overestimating the intelligence of Britain’s population.
Dumbledore looks ancient as he closes his eyes and shakes his head. “No,” he whispers. “I believe that the bindings on the Dementors were perhaps maintained physically, with the burial of such artifacts. We know that the first bindings after Ekrizdis created the Dementors were established in the sixteenth century, and they favored such spells attached to objects then.”
“And if they’re dug up—”
“The Dementors could be free.”
*
“Master Regulus is home.”
Regulus smiles absently at Kreacher, whose voice is full of deep satisfaction, as he sits down on his bed and pulls off his boots. “Yes, Kreacher. And I promise that I’ll spend all day at home tomorrow.”
He doesn’t need to. He has more than half a dozen invitations, some more pressing than others, to luncheons and teas and parties and “private meetings.” The last don’t interest him. They’re nearly always people who either want to find some way to resurrect the Dark Lord or turn Regulus into a Dark Lord, because some people have nothing else to do with their lives.
Regulus sighs and tosses a boot into a corner, then slumps back into his bed. He never took over the master suite of Grimmauld Place after his parents died, preferring the bedroom that he lived in as a child. Even now, the silver decorations of snakes have the power to hiss soothingly and comfort him. It’s a sound that he fell asleep listening to for many years in the Slytherin dormitories.
The truth is…
The truth is, none of it interests him. Not anymore.
When he was a younger man, fresh from his defeat of Voldemort, of course it was pleasant to be feted and celebrated and toasted and invited everywhere. But nothing ever matched that moment of clarity that still shines like crystal in Regulus’s mind, the moment when he killed Voldemort and knew he had accomplished something.
What does sitting across a table from someone and eating delicate sandwiches accomplish? Nothing much. Nothing real. Nothing important.
Regulus closes his eyes and listens to the hissing of the snakes. Kreacher is fussing at him about his other boot, but he knows Kreacher will take it off for him. For the moment, Regulus is more interested in escaping into dreams, where sometimes he sees something fascinating or beautiful.
The waking world holds so little of that for him, these days.
*
A tremendous boom echoes all through Grimmauld Place, and Regulus jolts back to his feet with his wand in his hand, breathing hard and scanning every corner of the room for enemies.
There’s no one in sight, of course, and Regulus can feel that the wards are fine. Kreacher would have appeared by now if something had fallen to the floor, to reassure Regulus if nothing else.
But there is…
There has to be something. Regulus knows the feel of that boom, if not what caused this specific one. A powerful spell has fallen, somewhere. And if it’s not the wards on Grimmauld Place, what is it? Why did he feel it here? They don’t have any close magical neighbors.
Regulus turns in a slow circle, and pauses. Is there a deeper patch of shadow in the corner by the window, or is he imagining that?
He draws his strength slowly into himself. If there is an enemy here, then he doesn’t want to alert them by sending out a pulse of magic too quickly. It could tell them how strong he is, and how best to fight him. The shadowy figure isn’t moving right now, anyway.
Then it does.
And by the quick, gliding motion it uses to come towards him and the feeling of cold that begins to sap strength from his limbs, Regulus knows that it’s a Dementor, and suspects he heard their binding falling apart.
Part of his mind thinks that and wonders how in the world a Dementor got here so fast from Azkaban, even as he sags to his knees. The cold is making its way to his heart. He never learned to cast a Patronus. There was always other magic that was more important. And what did it matter after he defeated Voldemort? The Dark Lord who might have recruited Dementors to his cause was dead. The foul things were bound to Azkaban. Regulus would never go there…
His thoughts are scattering. Dark, cold water suffuses him. He hears his own screams as the Inferi draw him towards the lake.
He can’t resist. Even knowing that something much worse than an Inferius awaits him, even screaming at himself in his own mind to fight his way back to his feet and flee, he can’t move.
The Dementor’s foul breath scrapes Regulus’s face.
And then from behind him a voice cries, “EXPECTO PATRONUM!”
The words shudder through the room, stronger and deeper than even the collapse of the Dementor binding. The creature shrieks and recoils, and suddenly Regulus can breathe again, and remember that he’s here, alive, and not drowning in foul water with rotting hands gripping him.
He rolls to the side and snatches up his wand, turning to see the combat.
Regulus has seen a Patronus before on occasion, when someone demonstrated them as a party trick at a Ministry gala, but never anything like this. A silver stag so solid that it seems to be made of metal, if metal could have a living form, has driven its antlers straight through the Dementor. The Dementor is fading, writhing, screaming. Part of Regulus rejoices with vicious satisfaction that the creature who tried to eat his soul should suffer such a death.
The rest of him whirls around so that he can stare at the figure standing in the corner behind him.
But the figure is already moving, ripping open the door of Regulus’s bedroom and running out. The wards Regulus layers himself behind when he sleeps seem to make no difference to his rescuer. Then again, neither did the wards on Grimmauld Place itself, Regulus thinks distantly as he chases after the wizard or witch.
His rescuer is running down the stairs, taking them two at a time, and obviously knows his or her way. His, Regulus thinks, after seeing the short, shaggy hair when a stab of moonlight comes through a window and falls on the figure.
That just makes Regulus more curious. He and his brother haven’t spoken in ten years. Sirius could run around Grimmauld Place like this, but he wouldn’t have been able to get through the wards.
Of course, Regulus does still have advantages that no stranger can match. “Kreacher!” he calls.
There’s a loud crack, and his loyal house-elf Apparates into places in front of the runner.
“Stand aside, Kreacher!”
It’s a young man’s voice, which also fits with the slightness of the runner. And it’s astonishing that he knows Kreacher’s name. But Regulus knows his elf is loyal to him alone—
It’s more than astonishing when Kreacher bows and steps out of the way. The figure reaches the front door while Regulus tries to shoot a Stunner at him and misses, wrenches the door open, and bolts out.
He does turn briefly to look back when he’s near the edge of the wards, and Regulus sees another flash of moonlight off glasses and bright green eyes that seem familiar somehow.
Then the stranger Apparates.
Regulus curses under his breath as he leans against the open door. Damn, he hasn’t run like that in years. And already the adrenaline is crashing and making him suffer for feeling so much. He’s really out of shape compared to the day that he faced Voldemort.
“Why did you step aside, Kreacher?” he asks, in the quiet, threatening tone that Kreacher should know means Regulus is upset with him.
“He was once Master here.”
Regulus turns around with a dropped jaw. He would have tried to smother the expression before anyone else, but Kreacher has known him too long.
“What do you mean? He was one of our ancestors reincarnated?” There have been stories about that, but Regulus doubts that someone would come back with all their memories intact. And why would someone like that randomly show up and save him from a Dementor?
“No. He was not being a Black, Master Regulus.”
“Then it’s impossible that he could have got through the wards,” Regulus snaps.
“He is being a Black by inheritance, Master. Not by blood.”
Regulus frowns. That’s possible, but it’s also beyond strange that someone like, say, Grandfather Arcturus or Uncle Alphard would have left Black property or money to a stranger. Uncle Alphard left all his money to Sirius anyway, as far as Regulus knows.
Aunt Cassiopeia, though…she’s old and mental enough to have done something like this, and to have designated someone as her heir and turned over keys to the wards even though she’s still alive.
Regulus sighs. He will have to ask her in the morning. Assuming that she’s alive if a Dementor came after her.
Regulus carefully starts weaving the new wards around the house, the ones that got torn by the Dementor appearing in his bedroom. He knows they’ll keep out Dementors now. They were the reason that he was confident he could face one down. All he has to know is that one’s coming for him, and it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t know the Patronus.
Well. It didn’t matter.
Regulus grimaces. He doesn’t like owing a stranger a Life-Debt. He doesn’t like the wider implications of what happened if the Dementor binding has collapsed. He doesn’t like not knowing how a Dementor got into his bedroom, or the stranger.
But he can feel a tingling strength making its way down his limbs and into his heart, starting a smile on his face and a spring in his step as he walks up the stairs, calling for Kreacher to bring him a Dreamless Sleep potion. There’s certainly no way that he’ll sleep without one.
At least this is interesting.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Regulus, background pairings
Content Notes: AU, dimension travel, angst, violence, character deaths, present tense
Wordcount: This part 3600
Rated: R
Summary: In one world, Regulus Black was right about the locket being Voldemort’s only Horcrux, and killed the Dark Lord. Years later, Regulus, feted left and right and honored as the Man-Who-Conquered, is drowning in boredom and craving a new challenge. He may get more than he can handle, starting with the appearance of a green-eyed stranger in Grimmauld Place.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Samhain to the Solstice” fics for this autumn, fics posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. It should have four or five parts.
A New Creation
Regulus sighs as he snatches another flute of champagne from the tray floating by at shoulder-height. Honestly, he doesn’t know when all the Ministry’s parties that he was once eager to attend started to seem so boring. He can gossip and flirt and intrigue with the best of them, but…
He’s heard all the gossip. There’s no one he wants to flirt with. All the intrigues are stale.
Sometimes, Regulus can almost see the Dark Lord’s point. The British magical world could do with some shaking-up.
The thought of the reactions he would get if he said that brings a faint smile to Regulus’s face. He wanders over to one of the enchanted windows set into the wall of the Ministry’s ballroom and stares out from it. Normally, the windows are enspelled to reflect visions of nonexistent gardens and jeweled beaches. This one shows an ocean tossing in thick blue waves with pearly crests. At least it’s a little different.
Regulus is watching it when he hears a voice behind him. “Ah, young Master Black.”
Regulus sets his face into a serene expression and turns around. He is not young. He is almost thirty-seven. But he’s not about to show his irritation to the man speaking those words. “Headmaster. A pleasure.”
Albus Dumbledore studies him, not bothering with the smile he uses for everyone else. Regulus stares flatly back. Dumbledore has treated him like a mixture of Potions ingredient about to go rotten and Death Eater about to go Dark since the defeat of the Dark Lord.
Regulus didn’t understand why for years, but now he thinks he does. He and Dumbledore are the only two wizards in Britain—two of only three in Europe, for that matter—who defeated a Dark Lord. But Regulus didn’t renounce ambition and go back to being a humble professor at Hogwarts like Dumbledore did. He entered politics, and although it’s not a path that led him to where he wanted to be, it’s doubtless too riddled with ambition for Dumbledore’s comfort.
Of course, those who think Dumbledore lacks ambition are deluding themselves, given that he’s Chief Warlock and Supreme Mugwump as well as Headmaster of Hogwarts. But Regulus doesn’t try to argue with those people. He dances verbal circles around them until they go away.
“Have you seen the goblet they brought us here to see?” Dumbledore asks, beginning the steps of a dance Regulus knows as well as the waltz.
Regulus sips from his champagne. “Not yet. Have you?”
“Yes. I confess I found it disturbing.”
Regulus arches his eyebrows. While the cup the Ministry excavated from an ancient site that might go back four thousand years or longer could be interesting, “disturbing” is the last word Regulus would expect anyone to use of it. “Ah?”
“The scenes embossed on the cup show a picture of times forgotten, and well forgotten. I will be most eager to hear what you think when you see it.”
“I should come to Hogwarts to talk about it, then.”
“Yes, you should.”
And with that stunning invitation, Dumbledore turns and melts into the crowd. Regulus stares after him, before putting down his champagne on another tray floating by and striding towards the door at the back of the ballroom that leads to the hidden room where the cup is displayed.
He suddenly wants a look at the thing that made Dumbledore eager to talk to him in the school he’s barred Regulus from for twenty years.
*
The room where the Ministry is keeping the goblet has a chipped-stone look, as if just carved out of the rock, but Regulus knows better than to believe that. Thick illusion magic creates a humming noise that can be hard to hear unless you’re listening closely enough. But he can hear it as he steps into the room.
It helps that no one else is around right now. Regulus doesn’t know if people have already come to take a look or didn’t care at all about the excuse for the Ministry’s party.
The cup is large, made of reddish-colored gold, and two-handled, like a drinking cup. Regulus walks closer to it, noting that the handles are made with a gentle curve that makes them look more delicate than the handles on similar artifacts that the Blacks keep at home.
And when he gets close enough, he can see the designs that so disturbed Dumbledore.
Regulus catches his breath and bends over to look. Yes, the Headmaster was right. They are disturbing.
The creatures on the cup are human, but only if you take a wide interpretation of that word. They have arms that curve like the cup handles, and they’re prancing and cavorting around what Regulus are certain are meant to be altars. Laid out on the altars are other figures, ones that are draped in flowing robes. It seems odd that the sacrificers are depicted naked and their victims clothed, but Regulus is more concerned about the fact that there are—
He steps back and casts a charm on his eyes that will sharpen them for a few minutes to look at small things, something he needs more often now as he gets older.
Yes. It’s not his imagination. There are carvings on the cup that go down beneath the surface, at angles that should have been impossible to carve, and something shining moves in those cracks. It’s like looking at lava far beneath a stone surface.
Regulus swallows and lets the charm fade. He doesn’t know who made this cup or left it where they did, and he doesn’t know what it was made for, but he knows that it’s damn strange. And none of the Ministry officials must have looked at the cup in much detail.
For them, as for the guests, it was probably just an excuse for a party.
Regulus takes a step back and studies the cup once more, committing it to memory, and then shakes his head. He knows what the cup looks like now, and maybe why Dumbledore is shaken, but not why the man might have wanted to meet him at Hogwarts.
It seems that he will simply have to wait and see what happens. At least it enlivens his boring life.
*
“Tea, Mr. Black?”
Regulus smiles at Dumbledore. Their smiles are good matches for one another, both polite and small and not a burden on their faces. “No, thank you. I just came from a rather large lunch.”
Dumbledore nods as if he isn’t offended, although Regulus personally thinks that Dumbledore would have tried to slip something into the tea and is probably disappointed he didn’t get the chance. He fixes his own tea, which does smell appealing. Regulus glances around the office. It’s changed little since the last time he saw it, right after he destroyed Voldemort’s mortal form, and came here dirty and sweaty and exhausted. The shelves still chime with odd instruments of silver and crystal that pursue their own whirligig way. The books on the shelves still look a mixture of intriguing and childish. The beautiful phoenix still stands on his perch, watching Regulus with a tilted head.
If you were mine, Regulus tries to tell him without opening his lips, I would have named you something more fitting than Fawkes.
The phoenix only rustles his feathers and turns his head away.
“Ah, now,” Dumbledore says, when he has finished a long sip of the tea. He leans forwards and catches Regulus’s eye. Regulus smiles blandly and looks at the middle of Dumbledore’s forehead. He has no desire to have his mind probed. “So. What did you think of the cup, Mr. Black?”
“Disturbing, as you said. I also didn’t understand why the people doing the sacrificing were naked and the people on the altars were covered in robes. From what I know of the rites once celebrated by our people, it should have been very much the other way around.”
“You know of those rites?”
“Their historical existence? Of course, Headmaster.”
A short silence, while Dumbledore tries to think of something to accuse him of and Regulus tries to keep smiling. Then Dumbledore sighs and unexpectedly gives in. “So do I. And yes, at first I thought, as you did, that it was a remnant of those ancient sacrifices, but the depiction did not fit.”
Regulus nods and leans forwards. “So it must mean something else. What is your candidate for what it means, Headmaster?”
Dumbledore looks and looks at his clasped fingers, frowning. Regulus is about to ask again when Dumbledore lifts his head. Regulus recoils a little at the sight of his face. It’s aged, in a way that it normally never looks.
“I think that the figures in robes being placed on the altars weren’t wearing robes in the way we think of them at all,” he answers heavily. “I think they were Dementors.”
Regulus whistles softly under his breath, thinking back to what he saw on the cup. Yes, if he’s remembering it correctly, he can see why the Headmaster would think that. But it only makes the scenes more mysterious than ever. “We don’t know if Dementors can truly die, from what I understand. Why would ancient wizards be sacrificing them?” He wonders idly if perhaps they did know a way to kill Dementors.
“The figures didn’t hold sacrificial knives except when they stood away from the altar. The human figures,” Dumbledore corrects himself, with a small shake of his head and a tap of his fingers on a box of sweets. The box turns towards Dumbledore, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “The ones closest to it had wands. I think what the cup depicts is the binding of the Dementors to become our servants and the guards of Azkaban, not their deaths.”
Regulus nods slowly. That makes sense. How the binding was accomplished, exactly, is one of the great mysteries of their world. Ekrizdis built Azkaban and may have created the Dementors, but that is different from keeping them there.
“And what do you think it means now that the cup has been dug up? That someone else might figure it out and attempt to undo the bindings? Or replicate them with some other kind of magical creature?”
Dumbledore takes a breath so deep that his beard wavers where it lies over his chest. Then he leans forwards and stares directly into Regulus’s eyes.
“No,” he says. “I’m afraid that it means the bindings may begin to weaken.”
Regulus’s eyes widen. He can’t deny the throb of battle-lust that travels through him. He had one moment of piercing clarity in his life, the day that he killed Voldemort. They’ve been more than hard to come by since then.
But of course, the release of the Dementors would be devastating for ordinary witches and wizards who aren’t as powerful as he is and couldn’t defend themselves from a Dementor gone wild from Ministry control. He adopts a suitably concerned expression. “Why? Just because people might see the illustrations on the cup and undo the bindings?” He has to admit that he doesn’t think most wizards and witches would be smart enough to even understand what the cup shows without instruction from someone like Dumbledore.
Perhaps that’s overly cynical, but Regulus hasn’t maintained his position as a celebrity by overestimating the intelligence of Britain’s population.
Dumbledore looks ancient as he closes his eyes and shakes his head. “No,” he whispers. “I believe that the bindings on the Dementors were perhaps maintained physically, with the burial of such artifacts. We know that the first bindings after Ekrizdis created the Dementors were established in the sixteenth century, and they favored such spells attached to objects then.”
“And if they’re dug up—”
“The Dementors could be free.”
*
“Master Regulus is home.”
Regulus smiles absently at Kreacher, whose voice is full of deep satisfaction, as he sits down on his bed and pulls off his boots. “Yes, Kreacher. And I promise that I’ll spend all day at home tomorrow.”
He doesn’t need to. He has more than half a dozen invitations, some more pressing than others, to luncheons and teas and parties and “private meetings.” The last don’t interest him. They’re nearly always people who either want to find some way to resurrect the Dark Lord or turn Regulus into a Dark Lord, because some people have nothing else to do with their lives.
Regulus sighs and tosses a boot into a corner, then slumps back into his bed. He never took over the master suite of Grimmauld Place after his parents died, preferring the bedroom that he lived in as a child. Even now, the silver decorations of snakes have the power to hiss soothingly and comfort him. It’s a sound that he fell asleep listening to for many years in the Slytherin dormitories.
The truth is…
The truth is, none of it interests him. Not anymore.
When he was a younger man, fresh from his defeat of Voldemort, of course it was pleasant to be feted and celebrated and toasted and invited everywhere. But nothing ever matched that moment of clarity that still shines like crystal in Regulus’s mind, the moment when he killed Voldemort and knew he had accomplished something.
What does sitting across a table from someone and eating delicate sandwiches accomplish? Nothing much. Nothing real. Nothing important.
Regulus closes his eyes and listens to the hissing of the snakes. Kreacher is fussing at him about his other boot, but he knows Kreacher will take it off for him. For the moment, Regulus is more interested in escaping into dreams, where sometimes he sees something fascinating or beautiful.
The waking world holds so little of that for him, these days.
*
A tremendous boom echoes all through Grimmauld Place, and Regulus jolts back to his feet with his wand in his hand, breathing hard and scanning every corner of the room for enemies.
There’s no one in sight, of course, and Regulus can feel that the wards are fine. Kreacher would have appeared by now if something had fallen to the floor, to reassure Regulus if nothing else.
But there is…
There has to be something. Regulus knows the feel of that boom, if not what caused this specific one. A powerful spell has fallen, somewhere. And if it’s not the wards on Grimmauld Place, what is it? Why did he feel it here? They don’t have any close magical neighbors.
Regulus turns in a slow circle, and pauses. Is there a deeper patch of shadow in the corner by the window, or is he imagining that?
He draws his strength slowly into himself. If there is an enemy here, then he doesn’t want to alert them by sending out a pulse of magic too quickly. It could tell them how strong he is, and how best to fight him. The shadowy figure isn’t moving right now, anyway.
Then it does.
And by the quick, gliding motion it uses to come towards him and the feeling of cold that begins to sap strength from his limbs, Regulus knows that it’s a Dementor, and suspects he heard their binding falling apart.
Part of his mind thinks that and wonders how in the world a Dementor got here so fast from Azkaban, even as he sags to his knees. The cold is making its way to his heart. He never learned to cast a Patronus. There was always other magic that was more important. And what did it matter after he defeated Voldemort? The Dark Lord who might have recruited Dementors to his cause was dead. The foul things were bound to Azkaban. Regulus would never go there…
His thoughts are scattering. Dark, cold water suffuses him. He hears his own screams as the Inferi draw him towards the lake.
He can’t resist. Even knowing that something much worse than an Inferius awaits him, even screaming at himself in his own mind to fight his way back to his feet and flee, he can’t move.
The Dementor’s foul breath scrapes Regulus’s face.
And then from behind him a voice cries, “EXPECTO PATRONUM!”
The words shudder through the room, stronger and deeper than even the collapse of the Dementor binding. The creature shrieks and recoils, and suddenly Regulus can breathe again, and remember that he’s here, alive, and not drowning in foul water with rotting hands gripping him.
He rolls to the side and snatches up his wand, turning to see the combat.
Regulus has seen a Patronus before on occasion, when someone demonstrated them as a party trick at a Ministry gala, but never anything like this. A silver stag so solid that it seems to be made of metal, if metal could have a living form, has driven its antlers straight through the Dementor. The Dementor is fading, writhing, screaming. Part of Regulus rejoices with vicious satisfaction that the creature who tried to eat his soul should suffer such a death.
The rest of him whirls around so that he can stare at the figure standing in the corner behind him.
But the figure is already moving, ripping open the door of Regulus’s bedroom and running out. The wards Regulus layers himself behind when he sleeps seem to make no difference to his rescuer. Then again, neither did the wards on Grimmauld Place itself, Regulus thinks distantly as he chases after the wizard or witch.
His rescuer is running down the stairs, taking them two at a time, and obviously knows his or her way. His, Regulus thinks, after seeing the short, shaggy hair when a stab of moonlight comes through a window and falls on the figure.
That just makes Regulus more curious. He and his brother haven’t spoken in ten years. Sirius could run around Grimmauld Place like this, but he wouldn’t have been able to get through the wards.
Of course, Regulus does still have advantages that no stranger can match. “Kreacher!” he calls.
There’s a loud crack, and his loyal house-elf Apparates into places in front of the runner.
“Stand aside, Kreacher!”
It’s a young man’s voice, which also fits with the slightness of the runner. And it’s astonishing that he knows Kreacher’s name. But Regulus knows his elf is loyal to him alone—
It’s more than astonishing when Kreacher bows and steps out of the way. The figure reaches the front door while Regulus tries to shoot a Stunner at him and misses, wrenches the door open, and bolts out.
He does turn briefly to look back when he’s near the edge of the wards, and Regulus sees another flash of moonlight off glasses and bright green eyes that seem familiar somehow.
Then the stranger Apparates.
Regulus curses under his breath as he leans against the open door. Damn, he hasn’t run like that in years. And already the adrenaline is crashing and making him suffer for feeling so much. He’s really out of shape compared to the day that he faced Voldemort.
“Why did you step aside, Kreacher?” he asks, in the quiet, threatening tone that Kreacher should know means Regulus is upset with him.
“He was once Master here.”
Regulus turns around with a dropped jaw. He would have tried to smother the expression before anyone else, but Kreacher has known him too long.
“What do you mean? He was one of our ancestors reincarnated?” There have been stories about that, but Regulus doubts that someone would come back with all their memories intact. And why would someone like that randomly show up and save him from a Dementor?
“No. He was not being a Black, Master Regulus.”
“Then it’s impossible that he could have got through the wards,” Regulus snaps.
“He is being a Black by inheritance, Master. Not by blood.”
Regulus frowns. That’s possible, but it’s also beyond strange that someone like, say, Grandfather Arcturus or Uncle Alphard would have left Black property or money to a stranger. Uncle Alphard left all his money to Sirius anyway, as far as Regulus knows.
Aunt Cassiopeia, though…she’s old and mental enough to have done something like this, and to have designated someone as her heir and turned over keys to the wards even though she’s still alive.
Regulus sighs. He will have to ask her in the morning. Assuming that she’s alive if a Dementor came after her.
Regulus carefully starts weaving the new wards around the house, the ones that got torn by the Dementor appearing in his bedroom. He knows they’ll keep out Dementors now. They were the reason that he was confident he could face one down. All he has to know is that one’s coming for him, and it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t know the Patronus.
Well. It didn’t matter.
Regulus grimaces. He doesn’t like owing a stranger a Life-Debt. He doesn’t like the wider implications of what happened if the Dementor binding has collapsed. He doesn’t like not knowing how a Dementor got into his bedroom, or the stranger.
But he can feel a tingling strength making its way down his limbs and into his heart, starting a smile on his face and a spring in his step as he walks up the stairs, calling for Kreacher to bring him a Dreamless Sleep potion. There’s certainly no way that he’ll sleep without one.
At least this is interesting.
