[From Samhain to the Solstice]: A New Creation, Regulus/Harry, R, 6/8

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Part Six

Regulus laughs aloud.

He can feel the crystalline sensation starting to life in his mind, the same kind of sensation he felt when he faced off with Voldemort in the battle that destroyed the Dark Lord.

This is what I wished for, he thinks, as he rolls ahead and flings a Blasting Curse at the Nundu. It lands next to him and roars as the curse hits it. Regulus hopes it’s in pain, although that might be foolish to hope for, given its sheer size and power.

This is what I hoped for.

Well, not a Nundu specifically, not exactly. But something more important than endless galas and parties and politics? Yes.

Regulus supposes he should have realized before this that he would only find such clarity in the heat of battle.

He dances back and glances underneath the Nundu’s belly in the moment before it whirls towards him with wide-spread claws and opening mouth. Harry is all right, having rolled aside at the same time, and he’s tucking the Cloak away in a robe pocket with a determined expression.

Regulus nods to him, and then targets the nearest of the Nundu’s paws with another Blasting Curse. It roars harder this time, and then lowers its head and crouches like a smaller cat stalking a bug. Its jaws gape wide.

Regulus sees a faint eddy of something darker in the blue night air, and promptly slashes his wand in front of him, raising a shield that can repel Potions fumes and flung poisons. It should work on a Nundu’s poisonous breath.

It doesn’t. Regulus has to hold his own breath and roll aside again. But it’s all right, it’s exhilarating, and either the buzz of the Firewhisky has burned off completely or it’s just transmuted into his laughter. Regulus can’t stop laughing, breathless though he is when he scrambles up on one knee.

“You’re mental, you know that?” Harry yells at him as he hits the Nundu with a bright blue spell that makes lightning crackle over its fur.

“At your service!”

Regulus charges the Nundu from the front, drawing its attention away from Harry. It rears back and claws at him with one enormous paw. Regulus ducks and comes up under its chin, clinging for a moment to the black fur, and aims his wand at the underside of its jaw. He speaks the spell aloud, since he hasn’t cast it enough to master it silently.

“Retro ferrum!”

Technically, it’s meant to turn aside a blade in an enemy’s hand, but Regulus has used it successfully before to deflect flung metal missiles, and he’s taking a chance that it will work on a beast’s fangs, too.

The gamble pays off. The Nundu yowls and snaps at him with fangs that have broken all along the side of the jaw that’s closest to Regulus. Regulus lets go of its fur and rolls away again, coming back to his feet and turning to see what Harry’s doing.

In the breathless moment he snatches before he has to turn back to the battle, he sees that Harry has soaked the Nundu’s paws with water. Regulus has the chance to wonder what good that will do before Harry calls up a gust of howling wind and turns the water to ice. The Nundu stumbles heavily as it once again tries to bring its head down, probably to breathe out that poison again.

“Good choice!” Regulus calls, and then one of the free forepaws smashes into his side.

He goes flying. Worse, he smashes into the tree with the feathery branches that they were standing underneath before. Regulus lands hard and badly, feeling something snap in his left arm and wheezing as the air leaves him.

He does his best to get up right away, even as his arm gives way beneath him. On the one hand, he’s worried about the Nundu’s breath potentially finding him while he lies there helpless.

On the other, he’s also worried about Harry.

“Hey!”

It seems to be Harry yelling, and at the Nundu. Regulus manages to stand after a moment of fighting through the pain, and sees Harry using wind to blow the poison away. Regulus grimaces. He should have thought of that. He’s too used to shields, which are used in duels, and not the wild chaos of a battle like this.

But the laughter is still bubbling in his throat.

He recognizes the wand motion Harry is making and does have the chance to duck his head, wrapping an arm around his face, in the moment before Harry flashes an overpowered Lumos directly into the beast’s face.

The Nundu makes an odd squealing noise, as if it’s upset by the indignity of such a spell as much as anything else. Then it lashes out. Harry draws a pained breath, something Regulus knows and understands without looking.

I have it bad.

He thinks that, and he also thinks that if the Nundu has hurt Harry, he’s going to kill it, butcher it, and sell it on the black market in Knockturn Alley for as cheap a price per slab as possible.

“Regulus!”

At least Harry still has his lungs, then. Regulus lifts his head from behind his arm and blinks. The Nundu is lying still on the grass in front of Harry, and although it seems to be breathing, it’s clearly unconscious.

“What did you do to it?”

“Stunner.” Harry turns to him and eyes him in concern, like laying a full-grown Nundu low with a Stunner isn’t something that deserves more explanation. “I heard one of your bones break when you landed.”

“You can’t hear that.”

“Sure you can, when it’s really loud.”

A shadow crosses Harry’s face, and Regulus wants to find out how he knows that and then murder them. But he’s more concerned with his arm at the moment, which really is starting to hurt. He grimaces and touches his wand to it, casting a subtle pain-relieving charm. It’s the only one that he’s ever really mastered, given that his opponents would notice if he reacted like that after a bout of intense dueling.

“Do you need something to stabilize the arm?”

“I think I can manage,” Regulus says, but he smiles at Harry to let him know that the intention is appreciated.

Harry nods and steps back, apparently healing what the Nundu did to him. Then he pulls the Cloak out of his robe pocket. Regulus goes about casting the charm for a sling, looking at Harry out of the corner of his eye.

If this were anyone else, he might be convinced they were about to put on the Cloak and run away, leaving him alone here and vulnerable to creatures like the Nundu. But Regulus instead is absolutely relaxed, convinced he can trust Harry.

That’s sort of stupid of me.

As he finishes slipping his arm into the sling, he realizes that Harry is shaking the Cloak out and talking to it like it’s—a toddler who won’t go to bed or something.

“…asked you to find us safety from the Dementors, and this is where you bring us? Are you trying to get me killed so that no one is the Master of Death anymore? I don’t think that’s a smart idea, because Regulus would probably just pick you up, and the wand, and travel back to his world, and get the Stone…”

Regulus grins through a dizzy flash of appreciation that Harry feels comfortable enough to call him by his first name.

Quite possibly I have it bad.

Quite possibly, there are better times to have this revelation, so Regulus ignores it and clears his throat softly. Harry looks up at him, face set in a frown, and gives the Cloak a final shake that unfurls it and makes it drape to the ground.

“Did you figure out why it brought us here?”

“I’m just getting a feeling of protest from it, and contentment, as if it did exactly what I told it to do.”

Regulus pauses and tilts his head. “Wait a minute. I think I read something once…when I was bored out of my mind and reading books about the origins of Dementors because I was so bored…”

“You couldn’t have mentioned this before now?”

“It was only for one afternoon before Mother let me out of my room,” Regulus says, frowning at Harry, and sees the flash of outrage in Harry’s eyes that he knows is for him. For a moment, he lets it fill him with a warmth greater than the Firewhisky, and then goes on. The memory will escape if he doesn’t. “Some people thought Ekrizdis—”

“Wait. The one who created the Dementors?”

“That’s what I was about to say. Some people don’t think he created them. They think he drew them in from some other world, much the way the Hallows might have drawn you to mine, and bound them to ours.”

“So…” Harry looks around at the dark blue grass and trees, the lapping water, the endless starry sky. “This might be the world they come from? A world of endless night?”

“You don’t know it’s a world of endless night, we haven’t seen a sunrise,” Regulus protests, but he thinks that the words are right even as they settle into his bones. Yes, the sun doesn’t rise here. And although the countryside seems too tranquil to be a place that Dementors are native to, it also would have seemed too tranquil to be home to a Nundu ten minutes ago.

“Hm.” Harry spins his wand. “And you think that we might find something here that can kill the Dementors? Or render them harmless?”

The Cloak bounces excitedly in Harry’s arms.

“I wasn’t asking you,” Harry snaps, staring down at it.

Regulus feels another smile pull at the edges of his mouth, and he nearly doesn’t care that he’s standing in another world, wounded. Well, no, he cares, but that’s because he likes it. He likes being here with this insane Master of Death who talks to the Hallows as if they’re misbehaving Crups.

“Whatever,” Harry says. “I suppose that if I asked you to lead me to it, you wouldn’t be able to do that?”

The Cloak rises stiffly into the air, as if a different person is wearing it, and then extends like a banner deeper into the plain of blue grass that the Nundu came from, across the pond.

“…Huh.”

Regulus doesn’t manage to contain the grin that floods across his mouth this time. “Come on, let’s go before it changes its mind.”

And before the Nundu wakes up.

*

“This sort of reminds me of walking through the Forest of Dean with Ron and Hermione.”

“Your friends?”

Regulus keeps his voice gentle. He and Harry have been walking, following the Cloak’s insistent pointing, for what feels like hours. It can’t be, though, or he would be more tired. Or maybe it’s just the exultation of being with Harry that keeps him on his feet and even keeps his broken arm from hurting too much.

Anyway, the point is, this is the first time in the time they’ve been walking that Harry has spoken.

“Yeah.” Harry stops for a second to look up into the sky as if seeking his own familiar stars, then shakes his head and keeps walking. They’re in the middle of a vast plain of shorter grass now, which at least should let them see most threats coming. “Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger.”

Regulus nods, not surprised that a Potter is friends with a Weasley. It seems like something that James and Lily’s son would have done here, if they’d had one. “And Granger is a Muggleborn?”

“Yeah.” Harry frowns at him.

Regulus raises his right hand. “It’s all right, Harry. I’m not a blood purist.”

“Why not? You became a Death Eater.”

“Yeah, when I was young and stupid. And then I defeated Voldemort and learned that all sorts of people were cowards and arrogant and would try to take advantage of me for my fame. Purebloods were no different than Muggleborns in that respect.”

Harry squints at him as they move a little further away from a white flower that swivels to follow them. “You aren’t a blood purist because you think tons of people are terrible.”

“Well, yes.”

“That’s not the way it’s supposed to work.”

“That’s the way it frequently does.”

Harry looks down, but he can’t disguise his smile.

Regulus feels as exhilarated as he used to when he won at Quidditch.

*

“What is that?”

Harry’s voice is hushed with something that might be awe. Regulus only shakes his head, because he doesn’t know himself. What looms in front of them is superficially a giant white rock that resembles a piece of quartz and might sparkle in the sunlight—if there was sunlight here—with a glare bright enough to blind.

But what they can feel is something else altogether.

Regulus has to clench his teeth against the vibrations in his soul, against the magic pulling and tugging at him. He can hear voices whispering past his ears. The magic wants to understand him. Regulus can feel the sheer temptation to give in and tell it all his secrets. He knows the rock will drink them in eagerly and keep them safe.

The temptation of being perfectly understood…

Then Harry turns and looks at him, and Regulus reminds himself that he has far more of a chance to be understood by a human being than a rock.

“The Cloak’s sleeve has fallen, so this is what we were supposed to find,” Harry says, and frowns. “I just don’t understand how it’s supposed to defend against the Dementors, or destroy them.”

Regulus eyes the Cloak in Harry’s arms. It radiates a distinctly smug aura. “Well, it seems as if it wants you to figure that out on your own.”

“Okay, then,” Harry says, and studies the rock again.

Regulus walks away to the side, so that he can see the rock from a slightly different angle. It’s too big to walk all the way around, and the glimmers of gold and silver that flash back from it in the low wandlight are distracting. Regulus narrows his eyes and looks in several different directions, at several different facets.

“Oh.”

Regulus turns around alertly. He’s already learned that it’s not the best idea to ignore Harry when he makes sounds like that.

Harry’s hand is shaking as he reaches out to touch the rock. “It’s—the Hallows are speaking to me.”

Regulus quells his doubts about that. He doesn’t have to speak the same cutting truths here that he has to when he attends galas and the like, simply to quell the feeling of disappointment. He nods encouragingly.

“The Dementors weren’t creatures of despair, when they were in this world, where they belong,” Harry whispers. His hand caresses the stone, and Regulus winces internally, thinking that the facets will slice his flesh open. But it doesn’t happen. Perhaps the Hallows make Harry immune. “They were the children of the rock. It stands here, unique in this world, and it created the Dementors so that nothing else had to be unique. So that nothing had to die alone.”

Regulus clears his throat in the silence that descends. It’s—odd. He doesn’t want to think about it much. “So you think that the Dementors got corrupted when Ekrizdis drew them into our world?”

“Your world.”

“The one you came from had Dementors, too.”

“Yes.” Harry blinks and looks at him. Regulus catches his breath sharply. Harry’s eyes are now faceted like the quartz rearing above them, shining with a depth of light that makes Regulus’s heart ache.

“But dimensions and worlds aren’t the same thing,” Harry continues in a musing tone. “I thought they were. But one world is cut through with many dimensions, like the layers of an onion. Our world is separate from this one.”

Regulus smiles, and tries his best not to look Harry in the eyes for too long. “So Ekrizdis did corrupt them?”

“Yes. He wanted to create guards that would never let prisoners escape. He reached out and found the Dementors, but he didn’t understand what they were.” Harry lays his hand on the stone again. There’s a pulse from deep inside it, and a questioning note that seems to hang in the air like wind. “All he cared about was that they would never abandon someone they were assigned to watch. He took the stone’s place in their lives. And they became twisted and corrupted, sucking out the souls of the prisoners he assigned them to guard, trying to unite with them in the moment of death, as they’d once been able to do without effort.”

In the silence that follows that, Harry bows his head. Regulus thinks he might be weeping.

Regulus would normally despise someone who did that, someone weak enough to show their emotions so openly. Let alone someone who would weep for Dementors after being a target of them for years.

But anyone strong enough to fight a Nundu and survive a sudden relocation to another wor—dimension and become the Master of Death without even intending to is stronger than Regulus can ever be. He steps up to Harry and wraps his good arm around him. Harry leans against him without any self-consciousness.

Regulus bows his head. There’s a slight thrum of magic drifting up from Harry, which might be the Cloak’s influence, and might just be Harry. It’s incredible. He’s incredible. And something fragile and hovering in Regulus settles, at peace.

Harry might be the only person in all the worlds, no matter how many there are, who could ever understand him.

Harry leans hard into him one more time, and then draws away. His eyes are glassy as he glances at Regulus.

“They’re drawn to me because I’m the Master of Death,” he says. “And they weren’t in my original dimension because I wasn’t the Master of Death then, before I came here. Or just for a few minutes before I died. I don’t know.” He shrugs jerkily. “They think—they think I can take the stone’s place. Tell them what they’re supposed to do. Restore their original purpose to them.”

Regulus takes a deep breath. He wants to say that Harry shouldn’t feel compassion for Dementors who stalked him and tried to kill him, but that would be too close to saying that Harry shouldn’t feel compassion for Regulus, who’s delighted that Harry ended up in his dimension, so he doesn’t say it.

Instead, he murmurs, “Do you think you could?”

There’s long silence before Harry nods his head.

“Do you want to?”

A longer silence. Then Harry says, “Does it matter whether I want to or not? It’s the right thing to do.”

Regulus swallows. He’s heard people talk about the right thing all his life, and the only time he’s known for sure that he was doing it was when he went after the Horcrux and faced Voldemort.

Harry does the right thing as naturally as he breathes.

It’s something Regulus frets about and envies and is in awe of. It’s something he worries he might get tired of if he spends too much time around Harry.

But he burns with the desire to do it anyway.

“I think you should, if you want to and can,” Regulus says, and turns a little so that he’s looking into Harry’s eyes instead of down at him. He’s taller than Harry, but not by much. Harry has survived so much that he seems taller, anyway. “But it’s not something that anyone else can make the ultimate decision for you on, because no one can force you to do it.”

Harry blinks. “What?”

“No one else can force you to do it,” Regulus repeats patiently. “You’re the Master of Death, not the rest of us, and the Hallows won’t force you to do it, or they probably would have already. They didn’t even point out the truth about the Dementors until you asked.”

Harry stares at him with wide eyes. Regulus stares back, unsettled. He doesn’t know what was so remarkable about what he said, and some of the explanations he can think of are rather saddening.

But then Harry nods abruptly and says, “Yes, I want to do it. Yes, you’re right, no one can force me to. I’m choosing this.”

He looks happy, for some reason. Regulus wonders if it’s as simple as having a choice when he didn’t have a choice about coming to Regulus’s dimension, but loses that thought as Harry draws the Elder Wand, looks thoughtfully around the blue grass before the white stone, and says, “We’ll have to prepare, though.”

“Why? Can’t you just call them?”

“They probably won’t transform back right away when they come home. Which means we’re going to be surrounded by that sense of despair and cold, and a lot worse than normal.”

“Worse than the numbers you already faced?” Regulus doesn’t understand. “It shouldn’t be that hard. Your Patronus already destroyed a large number of them.”

Harry winces. “Yeah, because I didn’t understand what they really were.”

“I wasn’t blaming you. I just don’t understand, either. What about the numbers?”

“I know. And I know.” Harry takes a deep breath, and his smile catches the edge of the wandlight. “And we have to be prepared because I’m going to call all the Dementors home, Regulus. All the ones that are spread across every dimension of our world. All the ones that every version of Ekrizdis ever called and corrupted. There might be millions. A billion, maybe? We have to be ready.”