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Part Five

“We did think that perhaps the cup being dug up somehow released the Dementors, my dear boy. But you think it was your travel from your dimension? Or that perhaps the cup had nothing to do with it?”

“I really don’t know, Headmaster. I don’t know how the Dementors were bound in my world.”

Harry’s hand is clawing the table as if he wants to tear out splinters of the wood and eat them. Regulus sits close by, watching, and wondering why this meeting with Dumbledore seems to affect Harry so badly. He was all right with his parents, and upset with Sirius, but only for a few moments. He was joking with him by the time Dumbledore arrived at the Potters’ house.

And now Harry is back to hunching his shoulders, bowing his head, avoiding Dumbledore’s eyes as if he’s afraid that the man will wrench thoughts out of his mind. Well, it’s probably true that Dumbledore, no matter what world he lives in, has developed his Legilimency.

Regulus decides to interfere, the way he did earlier with Sirius. “Why do you assume Harry knows, Dumbledore?”

The man glances at him. Regulus smiles at the bridge of Dumbledore’s nose. “You’re on a first-name basis with him?”

“I showed up in his bedroom in the middle of the night. Why wouldn’t he be?”

Dumbledore looks startled. He glances back and forth between Harry and Regulus and seems to read more there than Regulus is comfortable with. But he nods. “My apologies, dear boy.”

“It’s fine. But I still don’t know the answer to your question. I don’t know anything about cups or other artifacts being buried to bind the Dementors.” Harry is restless, shifting back and forth in his seat as though he wants to get up and pace. Regulus wishes he would. All the energy bound into Harry’s frame has to go somewhere. “I don’t even know very much about being the Master of Death.”

Harry did tell his parents and Sirius and Dumbledore about that, despite Regulus’s reservations. Regulus shrugs a little as he thinks of it. Harry is very open, and probably Regulus will just have to deal with that.

It isn’t enough to drive him away from Harry’s side, anyway.

“You have something to say, Master Black?”

Dumbledore has decided to focus on him and twinkle again. Regulus gives him a faint smile. “I don’t know that it matters how the Dementors were freed. I don’t think we can put them back just by burying the cup again and hoping for the best. Or by sending Harry back to his world, either,” he adds, because he’s sure that Dumbledore is considering that option.

“What would you suggest, then, my dear boy?”

Regulus sighs and shakes his head. “Save that form of address for the ones who deserve it, Headmaster. I think we should destroy the Dementors. Harry’s Patronus can do it. We’ll have to think up something other than just flat-out destroying them, of course, because they would probably flee once they realized what we were doing. But I think it’s the best plan.”

“We need Dementors to guard Azkaban,” Sirius says, deciding to jump in.

“Why?”

Sirius stares at him. Regulus props his elbow on the table and smiles back at his brother.

“Because otherwise the prisoners would escape,” Sirius says, apparently deciding that he possesses common sense. He’s talking to Regulus in a gentle, condescending tone. “And the people who are there deserve it.”

“No one deserves it.”

Harry’s voice is harsh, and sparks are falling from the end of his wand. He seems to notice that a moment after Regulus does, and gets himself under control, but he’s shaking his head, eyes locked on Sirius’s.

“No one deserves that,” he repeats. “In my world, my version of Sirius went to prison for twelve years. He was innocent. He managed to hang on to more of his sanity than most of the prisoners did, but he was still damaged. Not even the Death Eaters I met who were in the prison for murder deserved that. Not even Umbridge would deserve it.” He clenches his right hand.

“Why would Minister Umbridge go to prison?” Sirius asks.

“Minister Umbridge?”

Harry sounds horrified the way he hasn’t by the fact of dimension travel or his parents being alive or anything else. Lily leans forwards. “Harry, what happened? Who was she in your world?” Her hand rests on Harry’s shoulder and squeezes. She looks ready to murder the Minister if she needs to to make sure her baby boy is safe.

Regulus can appreciate that, for all that he thinks Harry would rather hurl himself into danger than hide behind other people. He and Regulus are alike in that respect.

“She was a high-ranking flunky,” Harry says, his voice hard and distant. “The Minister in my world, Cornelius Fudge, sent her to Hogwarts to take over the Defense position during a year when Dumbledore—my world’s version of you, sir—couldn’t find a professor for it. She took over the school and terrorized students. She thought I was lying about Voldemort coming back and made me carve words about not telling lies into my hand with a quill.”

Regulus opens his mouth. Nothing comes out.

He knows now what the faint letter-scars on the back of Harry’s hand are, but that doesn’t make him feel less sick.

Lily blinks, hard, and reaches out to clasp Harry’s wrist as if having to remind herself that he’s here and not bleeding from an enchanted quill in some other world. Harry gives her a faint smile and touches her hand gently.

“Why did that happen?” Dumbledore whispers, sounding horrified. “Why would my other self—I can envision worlds where I did different things, but in any one where I became Headmaster of Hogwarts, why would I allow a child to be tortured?”

“You were thinking of the war against Voldemort, sir. I had a connection to him that sometimes allowed him to see through my eyes, for reasons none of us understood. And he was a Legilimens. So you were afraid that he might read your mind. You avoided me.”

Regulus admits with part of himself that he’s glad to see Dumbledore look so stricken, but the rest of his attention is on Harry. Harry is listening with a patient air as Lily tells him over and over again that she’s so sorry.

No wonder Harry doesn’t want to let his parents or the other adults handle the Dementors. It’s more than simply the fact that his parents died at a young age. It’s that he’s been handling basilisk and murderous professors and torture instruments all by himself for years, too.

Regulus faced Voldemort and had terrible parents, but he also grew up spoiled and knowing that his parents would handle things like Ministry inquiries into their illegal wards and spells. He didn’t have to do that himself. He had a well of strength inside himself that he proved when he faced Voldemort, but he had the chance to use it like that partially because he didn’t spend it on other things.

This is…

Regulus doesn’t have words for the suffering that he wishes he could inflict, or for the suffering Harry has endured.

Harry catches his eye and gives him an exasperated look. Regulus stares straight back. This is not normal, and he won’t pretend it is.

Harry rolls his eyes and glances back at Dumbledore. “I don’t blame you for the actions he took, sir. Either he,” he adds, probably because he can see Dumbledore getting ready to ask the question. “That was another world. I’m glad this one has had the chance to be peaceful. Envious, too. But it means that I get to know my parents, and get to know other people I never met or can see in a new light, so that’s nice.”

He smiles at Sirius, who’s silent and huddling on the other side of the table as if the confession of what Harry has faced has unmanned him. James is beside him with his head bowed. Neither of them has words. Neither of them has faced something like this, Regulus thinks with sudden scorn.

Oh, Sirius was abused by their parents, there’s no denying that. But he wasn’t tortured. And he got to go to a safe haven with the Potters when he was sixteen, and James’s parents treated him well before that.

It sounds as though no one has treated Harry well.

“Why did no one take you away from my sister?” Lily whispers, sounding as saddened as though she stood by herself and did nothing while Harry suffered. “Surely there must have been relatives left of James’s who could have done that, or even just kind people within the wizarding world who weren’t related to you.”

Harry sighs. “If there were any Potter relatives left, I never met them. And I had to stay with Aunt Petunia because you—I mean, my mother sacrificed herself for me, and there was protection on me as long as I lived with a blood family member.”

Regulus wonders if Harry catches Lily’s flinch when Harry distinguishes his mother from her. It’s confusing, he has to admit. It’s true in some ways, not true in others.

Regulus does feel qualified to ask, “You said something about a connection to Voldemort.” Sirius still flinches at the name, like a child, but James leans forwards as if glad for the distraction. “What was that?’

“Yes,” James says, frowning. “And if Dumbledore in that world knew about it, then why didn’t he free you from it?”

Harry’s mouth turns down, and he looks at the tabletop. Then he looks away. “It’s not something I feel comfortable talking about right now,” he admits, looking shifty for the first time since Regulus met him. “Can we concentrate on plans to take down the Dementors instead?”

The Potters don’t look happy about it, but they let the conversation be steered back to that. And Sirius and Dumbledore look positively relieved that no one is judging them for the crimes of their other selves any longer.

Regulus watches Harry, though, and sees the shadows in his eyes.

He wants to know. He thinks it might even help Harry to talk about it.

See? Regulus asks, addressing an invisible Sirius who listens to him. I can be altruistic, when I want to.

*

“What’s this?”

“Firewhisky. Have you never seen it before?”

Regulus keeps scorn out of his voice at the last possible moment. With the way that Harry grew up, denied the magical half of his heritage for years, it’s entirely possible that he never has. Or at least not close enough to know what it is. Regulus doesn’t believe he never heard about the older Gryffindors drinking it.

Harry glances back and forth from the square, flame-colored bottle, with its stopper shaped like a flame, to Regulus. They’re back in Grimmauld Place, sitting in the library from which Harry took books. Regulus was surprised when Harry wanted to come back here instead of staying with his parents, but he didn’t question it. It works well for his purposes.

“What are you planning to do, get me drunk and have me tell you my secrets?”

“You don’t have to be drunk to talk about those,” Regulus says dryly, and Harry flushes. “No, it’s because I think there are things it would do you good to talk about, that you even want to talk about, but you’re keeping them caged up. This way, you can have some liquid courage.” Regulus takes the stopper out of the bottle and pours whisky into two cups. “And I’ll tell you anything about me you want to know.”

“What if I want to hear about Sirius?”

Regulus swallows down bitterness. Everyone always wants to hear about Sirius, how he’s doing, whether he’s enjoying life with his pet shop, whether he’s fucking James Potter…

But Harry isn’t from this world, and can’t know the record Regulus has with answering questions about his brother. He simply tilts his head. “If you like.”

Harry accepts the cup of Firewhisky and sips at it, then chokes. Regulus smiles and sips his own. “Yes, it takes some getting used to.” The heat seems to punch him in the stomach, and he sighs as it flows down his throat.

“Were your parents foul to you? The only thing I really know about them is the portrait that Walburga put on the wall in the Grimmauld Place in my world, and she just shrieked and yelled at everyone.”

“Yes, that sounds like dear old Mum.”

“Did she have a portrait here?”

“She tried,” Regulus says, and smiles a little as he remembers how she looked at him when he told her to shut up. There were no consequences to that when she was a portrait. “I had Kreacher move her to one of the old houses that I never use anymore.”

“Does Sirius use them?”

Harry’s eyes are full of hunger for a relationship he must have been denied, given that his godfather was in prison for twelve years. Regulus shakes his head. “No. He decided he wanted to leave behind every member and reminder of his family when he ran away to stay with your father. I don’t think he’s set a foot in any of them since then. He even left all his robes and Muggle posters behind.”

Harry closes his eyes. “Could you not call James my father?”

“Well, all right,” Regulus says, after a stunned moment. “Can I ask why not?”

Harry takes a larger gulp of his Firewhisky than he probably should, and chokes and splutters. But the eyes he uses to look at Regulus are sober and haunted. “My—my parents died when I was a baby. It’s wonderful to see them, in a way, but they’re also not really mine. I hear my mother dying when there are Dementors near. That’s the way I remember them, not older and with lines in their faces.”

“And that’s why you didn’t want to stay at their house for the night?”

Harry shrugs and stares down into the Firewhisky. “What would you do if I said yes?”

“Only that I understand.”

“How could you? You grew up with living parents.”

Regulus lets words that he’s never spoken before rise to his lips. “I grew up with parents who hated my brother.”

Merlin. It seems that everything comes back to Sirius even for him, and he hates the bastard sometimes.

Harry goggles at him. “I don’t—Sirius didn’t talk about you a lot, in my world, but he made it sound as if you were the favored son of your parents. Or at least your mother. He didn’t say much about your dad.”

Regulus shrugs and also swallows more Firewhisky than he probably should. But he knows that Harry won’t go around telling his secrets to anyone else. “Favored son doesn’t mean much when they hate your brother. When they tell you that you should be careful or you’ll end up going the same way as him.”

“Merlin. I’m sorry.”

Regulus looks at Harry, really looks, and sees someone who’s suffered more than anyone else he knows—certainly more than James Potter and Sirius—but still manages to feel compassion for someone else’s wounds. Maybe it’s only someone who’s suffered as much as Harry who can do that.

Regulus says softly, “Thank you. It—I loved Sirius, in my way, but it was hard after he went to Hogwarts. When he was at home, he and Mother screamed at each other, and I comforted him afterwards and held him when he cried. When he went to Hogwarts, he Sorted into Gryffindor, and it was like he decided that was the only place he could belong. He didn’t belong at Grimmauld Place with me anymore.”

“Did he ever belong here?”

“He was my brother. Not just their son. But when he went to Hogwarts, he decided to stop being both.”

Regulus pauses at his own bitterness. “But we aren’t talking about my maudlin past, right? You wanted to talk about Sirius.”

“I thought we were.”

Harry’s eyes have gone opaque. Regulus sips some of his Firewhisky, pours more, and sighs. “Yes, honestly, we probably were. I’ll never be over my brother choosing Gryffindor over Slytherin, it seems. Or, honestly, it would have been fine, but he decided that he had to turn against everything that was Slytherin, and that included me when I came to Hogwarts.”

Harry sips the last of his Firewhisky and motions for more. Regulus sends the bottle floating over to him with a wave of a wand. Harry’s voice is subdued when he speaks again. “I was almost put into Slytherin.”

“You were? The son of two of the biggest Gryffindors to ever be in that House?”

“I never knew them.”

Regulus sobers, as much as he can when he’s drinking Firewhisky and has just been handed another shocking revelation. “True. I—suppose that’s one of my limitations, even knowing that you come from a different world. All I can see is the Potters I know, and think of how they would have raised a child.”

Harry closes his eyes. Then he says, “I think the Dementors might be drawn to me because of the Hallows.”

That’s the end of the private part of the conversation, then. Regulus is sort of glad. It was more lacerating than he expected. He nods. “That’s what I thought, but if so, what can we do about it? I doubt that throwing them away would work.”

“No. I already tried.”

“You what?”

Harry opens his eyes, and there’s a gleam in them that might not be just the Firewhisky. “Why wouldn’t I? The only thing I wanted was the Cloak, since that was my family’s heirloom, and I would have been willing to get rid of it if it meant getting rid of the others. But they just came back. I tried burning them and throwing them away and dropping them down a deep hole and Apparating away from them and blasting them apart and several other things the morning after I escaped from here. It didn’t work.”

Regulus whistles. It’s yet another surprise that Harry doesn’t want to be Master of Death, but he should have expected that. “Well. Then I suppose we’ll have to use the Hallows as weapons against the Dementors.”

“How, though?”

Regulus is pretty drunk, on revelations and Firewhisky, or he might not have suggested what he does next.

“The Master of Death has power over death. That’s what all the legends say. They’re just not always clear about what it is—”

“Convenient.”

“But what if you could command Dementors to die? Just fall dead?”

Harry stops and stares at him. Then he reaches for the Firewhisky bottle again. “I thought I could already kill them, with Prongs.”

“The stag. Right.” Regulus suppresses the temptation to ask Harry to conjure the Patronus in the middle of the drawing room. “Well, maybe because you can do that, you can’t command them to die. But I read a legend once that said the Hallows were seeking tools.”

“What does that mean?”

“The Cloak seeks out the highest safety in a room; it’s possible to hear someone underneath it, but the Cloak somehow acts to reduce the chances of that. The Resurrection Stone seeks the spirits of the dead. The Elder Wand seeks out a wizard with high power to wield it.”

“I’m not a wizard of high power.”

“Fifty dead Dementors beg to differ.” Regulus waves a hand at Harry, a little horrified when he sloshes whisky over the rim of the glass. “But anyway, l-listen to what I’m saying. What if you could command the Hallows to find a way to kill the Dementors? Seek it out and deploy it?”

Harry is frowning. “Why don’t I seek an answer to why they’re following me?”

“Because we already think we know that. I mean, we think we already know that.”

“We might know that.”

Regulus shrugs. “What’s more v-valuable, an answer to that question or an answer to the way to destroy them?”

Harry swallows more Firewhisky without answering. Regulus has almost forgotten his own suggestion, happily buzzing with warmth, when Harry abruptly sets down his glass and says, “It has to be worth a try.”

And he takes the Resurrection Stone and the Invisibility Cloak and the Elder Wand out of his pockets and lays them down on the delicate ivory table next to his seat.

Regulus can’t help leaning forwards. In the end, the Stone is a bit of a disappointment, a mere pebble with the symbol of the Hallows etched into the top. The Elder Wand is shorter than he expected, and odd bumps run along it that are probably supposed to be elder berries. It looks like a clumsy bit of carving, though.

The Cloak, though… that shimmers with power, and when Regulus reaches out and runs his fingers over it, he can feel the magic nipping at his fingers. He’s not sober when he speaks again, but he’s certain. “Let the Cloak find it.”

“You think? I was going to use all three of them together.”

“I would like my house standing in the morning,” Regulus says with gravitas. “The Cloak is the one that finds safety. Tell it to seek safety for you, that you want to be safe from the Dementors. The Wand would find you power, and the Stone the dead, but I don’t think either of them would be much use right now.”

“No,” Harry says softly. “You’re right.” He picks up the Cloak and holds it, wrapping it around his arms. Regulus watches in fascination as they disappear. He’s only once seen James Potter’s Cloak in operation, and that didn’t seem as powerful as this does. Maybe it’s just because the Cloak is an awakened Deathly Hallow in the possession of the Master of Death, united with the others.

“I feel silly asking it for something,” Harry admits, after a few minutes of sitting there with invisible arms and his eyes closed.

“Well, do it anyway. Do it aloud,” Regulus suggests, because he does want to hear it.

Harry breathes out. Then he says, “I think the Dementors are following me because of you lot.” Regulus snickers at the idea of addressing the Deathly Hallows as “you lot.” “I want to find a way to destroy them forever, or at least detach them from me. Show me how to do it.”

Soft starlight encircles the Cloak in a whirlwind of radiance. Regulus lifts his hand in front of his eyes, squinting, as the light grows brighter and brighter, and then beams out around them. He winces in anticipation of hearing breaking windows and splintering wood.

But only silence descends. And cold.

Regulus lowers his hand and turns around, now expecting to see Dementors massed behind him. But there’s no despair, and no flashes of the lake or the reaching hands of the Inferi in his memories.

Instead, he and Harry are no longer in Grimmauld Place. They stand in a meadow of deep blue grass, with a night sky arching overhead. Regulus automatically tries to pick out the familiar patterns of stars, his namesake and Sirius’s, and his skin crawls when he realizes that he can’t do so. These stars seem random and purposeless.

“What the hell.”

Regulus glances over his shoulder. Harry is standing behind him, staring in all directions. Overhead hang the feathery branches of a dark blue tree, and behind Harry is a pond, although Regulus is only sure of that because of the soft lap of water on the shore. Wind rustles past them and stirs the branches of the tree.

“Where are we?” Harry demands.

“How the hell should I know?”

“You suggested asking the Cloak!”

“You’re the one who asked it!”

They glare at each other for a few seconds, and then Harry turns around. Regulus turns at the same moment, drawing his wand, glad he has it. He’s heard what Harry has: the grass shifting around the shoulders of something large. But he can’t hear its tread or anything similar, which is worrying. It reminds Regulus of the way a great cat would approach.

Then the beast comes out of the shoulder-high grass on the other side of the pond, and it is a great cat. Or, to be more precise, a Nundu, from what Regulus can make out in the dim starlight and the light that’s beginning to shine from their wands and the Cloak. It pauses, apparently as startled to see them as they are to see it.

Then it crouches.

“I blame you for this,” Harry tells Regulus, sounding cross, just before the Nundu leaps.