When Harry pushed open the door to Amanda’s room, it opened to an entirely different environment than it had been when they’d left. There were now piles of heirlooms and valuables on every available flat surface. Oddly, everyone who was supposed to be here, including Amanda, was gone now.
Except for Ron, apparently, because in the next moment Harry saw the very top of Ron’s ginger hair peeking out from behind an overloaded armchair.
“Hey Ron, where’d everyone go? And what’re you doing?” Harry asked curiously.
Ron sat up in shock, whipping his head around until he caught sight of Harry. Then he made steady eye contact and said, “Oh, uh, Hermione was able to free Amanda in a jiffy once she knew what was wrong, and now they’re all off looking for Amanda’s friend, who is also trapped in a painting somehow,” he shrugged skeptically. Then he grinned broadly as he said, “And I’m currently looking through all this expensive stuff that just appeared out of nowhere! Man I love Hogwarts-“
“You’re so stupid,” Ginny said as she nudged him with her foot. She had walked over while Ron was talking.
“No, you’re stupid,” Ron immediately said back, tossing something small from the pile in front of him at her.
Ginny stuck her tongue out at him, easily caught the item, and dropped it back onto Ron’s head. “And stop playing around! This is Harry’s stuff.”
“How was I supposed to know that?” Ron protested. “It all just started appearing out of nowhere!”
“Guys, it’s fine, nothing was damaged and we’re-”
Harry was interrupted by the sudden pop of apparition and the appearance of two loudly fighting house elves.
“Dobby was told to bring all the valuables from Master Harry Potter sir’s house!” Dobby squeaked angrily as he tugged on a chain of some kind. Kreacher was holding tight to the other end, and he didn’t budge at all when Dobby tugged on the chain.
“This is Master Regulus’s locket, and Kreacher won’t let the nasty brat get his hands on it, no Kreacher won’t,” Kreacher said angrily, and with that last word he gave a yank on the locket.
Instead of resisting the pull, though, Dobby must have leaned into it, because he then collided violently with Kreacher. Kreacher fell to the ground, and Dobby quickly scrambled to his feet, taking advantage of Kreacher’s brief moment of shock to yank the locket out of his hands.
Dobby quickly ran over to Harry and shoved the locket into Harry’s hands. “Dobby has put all the valuables Dobby could find at Master Harry Potter Sir’s house in this room!” he said, a little breathlessly.
Harry stared bemusedly at the locket, then at Dobby who was smiling up at him, then at Kreacher, who had now climbed to his feet and was glaring angrily at both Harry and Dobby.
“That is Master Regulus’s,” Kreacher said, and stamped his foot on the ground. Under his breath, he muttered, “Not nasty half-blood master’s, no, not at all.”
“Kreacher is a bad elf! Kreacher should not speak of Master Harry Potter sir like that!” Dobby said, then looked anxiously at Harry. “Dobby has to go dust furniture, but once Dobby is done doing that, Dobby can deal with Kreacher?”
“Uh,” Harry said, “that’s alright, I’m sure we’ll be okay. Thank you for the help.”
Harry couldn’t quite imagine what Dobby’s idea of dealing with Kreacher would entail, but given the things he’d tried to inflict on himself back in Harry’s second year, he could only assume that Dobby meant something violent. As furious as he was with Kreacher, the thought of actually hurting Kreacher was unthinkable to him.
“Master Harry Potter sir is too kind,” Dobby said happily, and then hugged Harry around the knees before he apparated away.
Harry was still holding the locket. He looked around the room at all the piles of accumulated heirlooms, and then back at Kreacher, who only had eyes for the locket in Harry’s hand. “What is it about this locket that’s so special? There must be other things of this ‘Regulus’s’ here too, but you’re not fighting over anything else,” Harry said.
Kreacher huffed and shook his head.
“Mate, you have to order him to tell you. Remember? He’s an asshole. And, like, should you be holding that? If Kreacher likes it, it’s probably evil, or at least dangerous,” Ron said.
Harry did think that the locket had a malevolent feel to it, but he was also reluctant to set it down, because he suspected that the only reason he was still holding it was because Kreacher couldn’t simply attack him to retrieve it. “I’m not setting it down till Kreacher tells me what’s so important about it,” Harry said to Ron. Then to Kreacher, he said, “I order you to tell me everything you know about this locket.”
He hoped that was enough to make sure Kreacher couldn’t hold back information, but he was pretty sure it wouldn’t be. He already knew all too well just how good Kreacher was at interpreting orders as he wished.
Harry half-wished Hermione was here to help word the questions, but the other half of him knew she wouldn’t be happy about him upsetting Kreacher like this. But he agreed with Ron- the locket was probably dangerous, and not something he should just let Kreacher have. Especially since Kreacher would probably run off with the locket as soon as he got his hands on it, and the task of getting Kreacher back to question him further would be annoying.
And Harry had a gut feeling that they needed to know the story behind the locket.
Kreacher muttered indistinctly under his breath then said, “The locket is gold and imprinted with emeralds in the shape of a snake curled into an ‘S’.”
Harry groaned; he should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.
Eli had come forward to stand next to Harry. “Ask him how and where this ‘Regulus’ got the locket,” he said quietly to Harry, not breaking eye contact with Kreacher.
Harry wondered how Eli knew the right way to question Kreacher, but he set that aside for later in favor of repeating the question to Kreacher.
Kreacher started rocking back and forth on his feet,grabbing his ears, twisting them in as he rocked. Just when Harry thought he was going to have to add ‘and that’s an order’ or something similar, Kreacher burst out, “Master Regulus was a proper son of the House of Black. He talked for years of the Dark Lord and the good work he was doing.”
Harry’s jaw fell slightly open in shock, but he quickly closed it and refocused on Kreacher, waiting to hear how this related to the locket.
“Then one day, a year after he became a Death Eater, Master Regulus came down to the kitchen to see Kreacher. Master Regulus had always liked Kreacher and the Dark Lord had required an elf. And Master Regulus had volunteered Kreacher for this honour.”
It was a struggle for Harry to not interrupt with a million questions, but he held his silence. He had a feeling that if he interrupted Kreacher now, he would break the flow of the story now flowing out from him, and it would be difficult, if not impossible, to get him to resume it.
“Before Kreacher left to go to the Dark Lord, Master Regulus told Kreacher to be sure to obey the Dark Lord and to do anything he said. And then, he ordered Kreacher to come home afterwards. Then Kreacher went to the Dark Lord and the Dark Lord didn’t tell Kreacher anything and took Kreacher to a cave beside the sea. And beyond the cave there was a cavern, and in the cavern was a great black lake.
“There was a boat that carried the Dark Lord and Kreacher to a rock in the middle of the lake. On a pedestal in the center of the lake was a basin full of p-potion. The D-Dark Lord made Kreacher drink it all. Kreacher drank and drank and it burned and it made Kreacher see terrible things. Kreacher cried out for Master Regulus and the Dark Lord laughed and laughed and laughed at Kreacher.”
Harry shuddered. He knew the laugh Kreacher was talking about- his nightmares echoed with it.
“When the potion was gone, the Dark Lord put the locket into the basin. Then the Dark Lord filled the basin with more potion and sailed away. Kreacher needed water. Kreacher needed water so desperately that Kreacher crawled to the lake and drank the water. And hands, dead hands, came out of the water and dragged Kreacher under the surface...”
“How did you get away?” Harry asked, in a horrified whisper, unable to help himself.
Kreacher raised his head and met Harry’s gaze with his large, bloodshot eyes.
“Master Regulus told Kreacher to come back,” he said, as though it were obvious. “And when Kreacher got back, Master Regulus was very worried about Kreacher. Very worried. Master Regulus told Kreacher to stay hidden and disappeared. Later, Master Regulus came back and seemed very strange. Very strange. And Master Regulus told Kreacher to take him to where Kreacher had gone with the Dark Lord.”
Harry was glad that he hadn’t stopped the flow of the story with his interruption, and was once again riveted and anxious to find out what happened next.
“So Kreacher did. Master Regulus gave Kreacher another locket, just like the one the Dark Lord put in the basin. And Master Regulus told Kreacher to put it in the basin, once it was empty. And to make sure Master Regulus drank all of the potion in the basin.”
Kreacher took in a deep, shuddering breath, as though he was about to dive underwater, and then plunged ahead, continuing his story.
“And he ordered — Kreacher to leave — without him. And he told Kreacher — to go home — and never to tell my Mistress — what he had done — but to destroy — the first locket. And he drank — all the potion — and Kreacher swapped the lockets — and watched . . . as Master Regulus . . . was dragged beneath the water . . . and . . .”
“Stop! Stop Kreacher,” Ginny interrupted, sounding choked up.
Harry jerked his head in a single nod and said, “That’s enough Kreacher, thank you…” he trailed off as Kreacher heaved a sob.
“Kreacher should not be thanked. Kreacher failed Master Regulus. Kreacher is a bad elf.”
Harry could only imagine what kind of evil things Voldemort could have done to the locket, and he certainly didn’t want to try and sell it to someone who could trigger some kind of latent trap and possibly get hurt.
“What have you tried to destroy it with?” Harry asked.
“Everything Kreacher could think of,” Kreacher said desperately.
“Like– what though?” Ginny asked. “Because we could have some ideas that you haven’t tried yet.”
Kreacher gave Ginny a baleful look, but complied anyways. Harry thought that he was desperate enough to destroy the locket that he was willing to talk with them.
“Kreacher smashed it with rocks as large as dragons, Kreacher dropped into a volcano at the center of the Earth, Kreacher dropped it from the greatest heights imaginable, Kreacher dropped it into a vat of the most noxious substances, Kreacher sawed at it with dark knives,” Kreacher rattled off, pausing as he ran out of breath.
Ginny said, “Huh,” sounding faintly impressed.
Harry turned the locket over in his hand. It was clearly unmarked, despite all Kreacher’s efforts to destroy it. Harry had no idea how they were supposed to manage this.
“Wait,” Ron said, “did you try stabbing it with a basilisk fang? Because that worked really well with the other undamageable dark artifact we ran into, right Harry?”
Harry hit his face with his free palm.
“Kreacher has never had a basilisk fang to try with,” Kreacher said, perking up a little. “Is there a basilisk fang here?”
“There is in the Chamber of Secrets. Can you go there and bring back a basilisk fang, if I describe where the Chamber is?” Harry asked.
Kreacher nodded.
“It’s under the dungeons, but we access it through a sink in the second floor girls lavatory. There’s a snake on the tap that causes a corridor to appear that leads beneath the school. Once there, it’s pretty straightforward to follow the pipes, past the cave-in, to the chamber where the basilisk’s corpse is. Is that enough for you to find it?” Harry asked. He wasn’t sure what else he could say to help Kreacher locate it, so he certainly hoped it was.
Kreacher nodded again, then disapparated without a word.
“What the hell,” Eli said flatly.
“Uh,” Harry said, and exchanged glances with Ron and Ginny.
“I don’t even know where to begin asking questions,” Eli continued. “There’s just too much I don’t know.”
Harry realized then that Eli had only found out who Voldemort was a couple days ago. And here he was, embroiled in something he never even asked to be a part of, just because he had known a good place to meet. It had already been nice enough of Eli to show them a place to meet, but he’d also stayed for the meeting when he probably had better things to do.
And then, when Hermione had challenged him to prove his brewing skills, he’d seemed happy to rise to the challenge, even though the context of the challenge was that he’d be the one to brew Felix Felicis.
Kreacher’s story had been pretty harrowing to listen to, and Eli hadn’t had an opportunity to opt out of hearing it. Harry felt a brief pull of guilt before he did his best to shake it off and respond to Eli.
“Does it help if I clarify that the ‘Dark Lord’ Kreacher mentioned is Voldemort, the one I told you about the other day?” Harry asked tentatively.
“A little, but, I don’t even know,” Eli said.
“Well, uh,” Harry said, not sure where he was going with this yet, “you know the DA, well, a lot of our mission is to teach people how to protect themselves from Voldemort and, uh, this thing with Kreacher wasn’t planned, but if you don’t want to be this involved with the club, or, like, with fighting Voldemort, then please don’t feel pressured to stay.”
Harry hoped that was coherent enough.
Eli frowned slightly and looked around the room, first at the piles around the room, and then at Harry, Ron, and Ginny in turn.
Harry shifted uneasily; he hoped Eli would choose to stay with them. He seemed nice, not to mention very talented at potions, which could come in handy. And if he wasn’t eligible for NEWT-level Defense, then he could probably benefit from the defense lessons, even though Harry was the one giving them.
Then Eli said, “I think, if you’ll have me, I’d like to help out?”
Harry gave him a wide smile and said, “We’re happy to have y–”
Then Kreacher reappeared, holding a basilisk fang gingerly by the root, thus interrupting Harry.
Harry heard Eli mutter, again, “What the hell.”
It took Harry a moment to switch gears back to what they had been doing before Kreacher had left, but once he remembered, he said, “Great! Now we just need a flat surface to set it on and to open it.”
“Oh no,” Kreacher moaned, “Kreacher could never open it either.”
“Really?” Harry asked. He focused his attention on the locket he was still, probably somewhat ill-advisedly, holding and began to try and open it. Like Kreacher had said, it refused to budge. Harry turned it over again and stared at the snake on the front of the locket. “Do you think Parseltongue would work?”
“That was hissing, mate,” Ron said.
That was probably as good a sign as any that it required Parseltongue to open. Thinking back to the chamber, Harry hissed, “Open.”
The locket sprung open and Harry caught sight of a pair of malevolent eyes in the panes of the locket before he slammed it onto the ground, holding it open in place. “Kreacher!” he called, frantically.
Then a voice hissed from out of the locket.
“I have seen your failures, and you are worth nothing.”
Kreacher screeched a blood-curdling war cry and launched himself at the locket, the business end of the fang first. Harry flung himself out of the way as Kreacher planted the fang first in the eye in the left pane, then in the eye in the right one.
There was a dwindling scream from the locket that quickly petered out.
In the aftermath, all Harry could hear was Kreacher’s harsh breathing. Harry was seated on the floor, a meter or two away from Kreacher, his hands and feet planted on the ground for stability. Kreacher was now kneeling over the shattered locket, still clutching the fang. A quick glance over Harry’s shoulder told him that Ron, Ginny, and Eli were staring at both Kreacher and the locket in shock.
Then Kreacher got to his feet and triumphantly said, “Kreacher did it! Kreacher destroyed the Dark Lord’s locket!”
Harry also got to his feet, but he still didn’t quite know what to say. He honestly didn’t even really know what was going on, everything had happened so quickly. One moment they were getting ready to sort through piles of stuff for things to sell, and then they had been destroying something that had belonged to Voldemort.
He turned around to share a bewildered look with the others, just in time to see the door open.
Harry was going to get whiplash if things kept happening this quickly.
Hermione stepped through the opening and said, “We’re back! How’s… everything…” Then she trailed off as she took in the scene in front of her.
Harry could only imagine what it looked like to her. The piles of clutter, Kreacher still holding the basilisk fang aloft, the smashed locket on the ground. It must have been quite the scene.
Luna pushed her way around Hermione and into the room. She took a moment to look around and then she said, “Oh my, Amanda won’t like this.”
They really had destroyed Amanda’s peaceful, orderly room in no time at all. There were several of them though, so if everyone agreed to help and they all worked quickly, it shouldn’t take too long to get through everything.
To the room at large, since Harry didn’t want to assume anyone would be willing to do work, Harry said, “Would you guys mind helping sort through everything? It’ll go much faster with everyone helping out, and we can catch you up on everything that’s happened once we’ve got the room back to normal.”
Harry was incredibly relieved when there was a chorus of agreement.
“Alright then, can everyone split up? We’re looking for anything with value that we can sell. Kreacher, will you take everything we don’t want back to Grimmauld Place? You can do what you want with it from there.”
“Kreacher can do that for Master Harry,” Kreacher said reluctantly, finally lowering the arm holding the basilisk fang aloft. He cleaned the fang and slipped it into his tattered pillowcase, then vanished the destroyed locket.
Everyone else in the room spread out to start going through the piles of stuff. Before Harry got started, though, he asked Kreacher, “Can you get that locket back if we need it? I might need to show it to Dumbledore at some point.”
Kreacher said, “Of course Kreacher can get it back. Kreacher was just cleaning the mess.”
“Oh, well, thank you,” Harry said, and turned to a nearby pile to begin sorting for expensive-looking things.
With all six of them sorting, they were quickly able to reduce the numerous sprawling piles to a single pile in the middle of the room that was composed of only the most expensive things. Dobby had been very helpful, but didn’t have a good eye for what was valuable and what was not.
Kreacher had also, shockingly, been helpful, walking around and giving advice on what to do with what, then sending the discarded things back to Grimmauld Place. Every time he sent something back, he became briefly more enthused, but every time they decided to keep something to sell, he grimaced and lost some of his enthusiasm.
Harry added this to his growing list of things to worry about later.
Despite this, he was still like an entirely new elf, and it was pretty obvious why. Kreacher must have been tormented all these years by his inability to destroy the locket. All that on top of being forced to witness someone that he actually seemed to like die in what sounded like a horrible way, it was no wonder he’d become twisted and bitter in his grief.
But now that Kreacher was free of his last order from Regulus, maybe he’d be happier. Harry hoped he would be, at least.
Maybe Harry ought to try and get rid of the portrait of Walburga Black, just to make sure she didn’t keep messing with Kreacher. He’d have to try and remember for the next time he went to Grimmauld Place.
They were down to a single pile left in the corner of the room, when an unfamiliar voice said, “Ha! Your room is definitely worse than mine was! Look at all that clutter!”
Harry turned and saw that not only was Amanda back, but she had brought someone else along with her. The friend was the one who’d spoken, and she was dressed similarly to Amanda in that she was wearing a fitted man’s suit, only it was in a warm brown tone, where Amanda’s had been charcoal. Also like Amanda, she was wearing spectacles, but that was where the similarities ended.
Amanda was standing in shock, her eyes flickering as she glanced at each out of place item in turn. Harry shifted guiltily; he’d hoped to have everything out of here before she returned, since he’d forgotten to ask her permission to do this in here.
“We’ll have all this stuff out of here really soon,” he promised her.
Amanda’s gaze landed on Harry, and it sharpened in anger up until he took half a step back from her. Then her look shifted to something softer and she said, in a gentler tone than Harry had expected, “Please make sure you do.”
Harry knew he’d just be crowding the others if he went over to join them in sorting, so he asked Amanda, partially to distract her and partially out of genuine interest, “And who’s your friend?”
“I am Hannah Nettle, and I can introduce myself,” said the other portrait primly, and then she stuck out her hand.
Amanda smacked at Hannah’s hand and said, “You idiot, we’re in a portrait, we can’t shake hands.”
“Right, right. Sorry, it’s a reflex,” Hannah said. “It’s just been so long since I’ve talked to anyone at all. I was in the Potions classroom until Slughorn retired and Snape redecorated. Then I ended up stuck in a storage closet for decades!” she concluded, sounding very offended.
“So, did the same person who painted you paint Amanda, then? Because you were both stuck in your frames?” Harry said curiously.
Amanda and Hannah exchanged an amused glance.
“We painted each other,” Amanda said.
Hannah added, “And neither of us knew how to do the spell to let us connect with the other Hogwarts portraits, so we were stuck in our frames. I still cannot believe the goddamned spell was right there in Hogwarts, A History! Nobody reads Hogwarts, A History.”
“Nobody except our new favorite person, Hermione,” Amanda said.
Hermione perked up from where she was finishing off the last piles. She walked towards them, an armload of heirlooms in her arms, and set the items down in the main pile of things to keep.
“I heard my name?” she said.
Amanda said, “We were just talking about how you freed us.”
“Ah, it was nothing. Just a spell I’d seen in Hogwarts, a History,” Hermione said.
Harry rolled his eyes. Hermione truly loved that book.
“That’s it!” Ron declared from the center of the room.
Harry turned to see, and Ron was right. The only heirlooms left were in the pile in the center of the room.
Harry honestly had no idea what to do with all the heirlooms now that they were done. He hadn’t thought this far ahead. They definitely couldn’t leave them here, but Harry didn’t know how to go about selling things like family heirlooms.
“Ah- Kreacher? Could you put this stuff somewhere separate from the rest of the things at Grimmauld Place?” Harry asked.
“Kreacher can,” Kreacher said, and vanished with the pile. He was still hesitant, but he did it.
To the others Harry said, “We’ll have to figure out how to sell everything some other time.” He cast Tempus and saw that it was getting close to curfew. “We probably ought to head to the common room.”
The others agreed and began to file out of the room.
Before he left, Harry said, “It was nice to meet you both, Amanda and Hannah.”
“Maybe we’ll see you around the castle, now,” Amanda said, and Hannah waved at him.
Harry slipped out of the room and gently closed the door behind him. The others were all deep in conversation and heading down the corridor. Ron was talking with Eli, probably about all the questions Eli had had earlier, and Ginny was saying something to a riveted Hermione and Luna, probably a recap of what they’d missed.
Harry quietly fell into step behind them, perfectly happy to be left out of the conversation. He had plenty to think about, after the chaos of the evening. So much of it seemed to come back to his second year and the events in and around the Chamber of Secrets.
Down in the chamber, the diary had nearly succeeded in forming a new body by pulling strength from Ginny’s soul. And Harry thought that he remembered the diary, Tom Riddle, specifically saying that he had put his own soul back into Ginny. That meant that part of Tom Riddle’s soul had initially been in the diary.
And Tom Riddle had also confirmed that he was one and the same as Voldemort.
Both the locket and the diary had belonged to Voldemort, and the locket had also shown some degree of sentience– it had spoken to Kreacher before he destroyed it, and Harry had seen a pair of eyes in the panes of the locket when he had opened it.
The locket must then be another piece of Voldemort’s soul. Harry couldn’t fathom why Riddle would have wanted to tear his soul up, or how many times he had done it, or how he had even stored pieces of his soul into objects, but it was obvious to Harry that the soul pieces had to be destroyed. He resolved to ask Dumbledore about the locket and the diary when the Headmaster came back to Hogwarts.
Harry took a deep breath and then released it, trying to calm himself. Hopefully Dumbledore would know more, and more importantly, be willing to tell Harry about everything. Because Harry still did not trust Dumbledore to be entirely open with him. Especially not now that he had disappeared without a single word to Harry since the scene in his office after Sirius died.
But there wasn’t anyone else Harry could trust with this, so he resigned himself to waiting until Dumbledore was back to learn more about what Voldemort had done.
Because Harry knew, in an instinctive gut-feeling kind of way, that the knowledge of what Riddle had done lay behind one of the few doors that were sealed against Harry’s wanderings through Voldemort’s mind. And even Harry wasn’t reckless enough to try battering one down. He was far too worried about what would happen if Voldemort realized he was there to try something that risky.
As this train of thought ended, Harry’s thoughts refocused on his friends and the hallway around him. He was happy to have this chance to simply exist in the company of his friends for a little while, leaving behind his worrying thoughts of the war and Riddle’s mind.
That night Severus lay in his bed, still processing all the events of the evening. This was the first chance to really think that he’d gotten all entire evening. Everything from when he’d shown Harry and his friends to Amanda’s room, up to the moment when he’d finally gotten to lie down in his bed with the curtains firmly shut, had been practically non-stop motion.
First, Longbottom had brought up the topic of Felix Felicis. And Severus had known almost immediately that he would have to become more directly involved. For the first time though, Severus had had the option to not do the brewing. No one knew that he was as good at brewing as he was, and he could easily have gotten away with feigning ignorance and simply not participating.
And it was, perhaps, for that very reason that Severus had been so eager to volunteer.
He had also assumed that since Harry was the Potter and Black heir, he’d easily be able to put forth the money for the ingredients. And a significant part of Severus had gotten excited for the chance to brew Felix Felicis, specifically. This would be the first time he’d ever had the resources—monetary, temporal, and motivational—to go through with this laborious potion.
Then Granger had demanded that Eli prove his brewing skills, and Severus had known it was a bit ridiculous for him to be so smug about being better at brewing than a group of teenagers half his proper age. But the moment he’d finished the potion and known, as he always did, that it was perfect, was truly exquisite, he couldn’t help but feel proud.
Remembering the moment he had finished the potion, however, also reminded him of the odd scene with Harry and the stained clothes.
Severus now acknowledged that Harry hadn’t been raised like James Potter, that he’d grown up in the muggle world. And this did explain why Harry was more likely to have stained clothing than the others. Except for Granger, who had also grown up in the muggle world, but Severus got the feeling that she was fastidious enough to not stain her clothing too often.
So having a stained shirt or two on hand would have been perfectly reasonable, only then Harry had asked for the rest of the potion to use on even more shirts, if they could have even been called that.
Because the shirts that the house elf had retrieved would be more accurately labelled as rags. Severus was perplexed as to why Harry even owned them. Between the Potter and the Black fortunes, and Harry’s obvious willingness to donate copious amounts of Black heirlooms to the Felix Felicis fund, there was no way that Harry was strained enough for money to justify wearing rags.
Then Severus’s thoughts turned to the next part of the evening. When they had returned to Amanda’s room, Severus had been mildly disgusted by the piles of things cluttering the room. This had been tempered, somewhat, by the knowledge that it was there to be sorted through and sold, but it had been an aggravating reminder of the silver spoon Sirius Black had had in his mouth growing up.
And then Dobby and Kreacher had appeared, fighting over one artifact in particular. Initially, Severus had merely been irritated at the disruption. But then his interest had been piqued by Kreacher’s declaration that the locket had belonged to ‘Master Regulus’.
Regulus had been in Slytherin in the year below Severus, and nothing at all like his brother. He’d been as much of a Dark Arts fanatic as anyone would expect a son of Walburga Black to be and had accordingly become a Death Eater not long after Severus himself.
So when Kreacher had chosen this particular locket, of all the heirlooms, to save, well, Severus had been curious.
Then Harry had quickly proven his inexperience with interrogation, because his first question had had a loophole a kilometer wide in it, and Kreacher had taken obvious advantage of that fact. Since Severus’s curiosity had been piqued, he had decided to feed Harry questions to ask Kreacher, to make sure they obtained the information they wanted without having to endure hours of gradually more specific questions.
However, he had not expected his first question to cause Kreacher to spill the entire story. But it seemed as though once Kreacher had started, he had been unable to stop until everything was all out in the open.
And what a story it had been.
When Severus had gotten up that morning, he had not expected to witness the destruction of one of the Dark Lord’s horcruxes.
But that was clearly what the locket was. It had been placed, from what Severus could tell from just Kreacher’s descriptions, behind intense protections crafted by the Dark Lord himself. Severus had seen the eyes in the locket panes, and that, combined with the sibilant voice, had forcefully reminded Severus of the Dark Lord. Specifically, the Dark Lord Severus had known during his first few years as a Death Eater.
Not the horrible snake-man hybrid the Dark Lord was now.
Rather, the still somewhat-handsome man the Dark Lord had been during the last few years of his first reign of terror. Severus rather spitefully enjoyed how hideous the Dark Lord was now, which was thanks to Pettigrew’s utter incompetence.
The Dark Lord really ought to have chosen someone better to carry through the resurrection. Severus was fully aware that the Dark Lord’s options had been limited, but relying on someone like Pettigrew for something as important as the resurrection ritual was its own sign of insanity.
And really, there were an awful lot of those signs.
Then Severus realized that he was able to think these thoughts without having to bury them almost immediately out of fear that the Dark Lord would call him.
The Dark Lord…
Why was Severus still calling him that, even in the sanctity of his own mind? The monster was certainly not a lord, and Severus was no longer subject to his mercy– so long as he stayed safely in Hogwarts, that is.
Voldemort.
There was a certain power in calling the monster by the name that would once have resulted in being subjected to the Cruciatus Curse.
And, Severus knew that both Dumbledore and Harry used the name, too. They would probably prefer it if Severus used it. And of course, it made no sense at all for Eli to call him anything but Voldemort, since that was what Harry had called him when he had given Eli his history lesson.
Severus had not expected, in the slightest, that spending time with Harry and his friends would lead to making an actual difference in the fight against Voldemort. But he had to admit that, even excluding this evening, Harry and his friends were making a fairly significant difference.
The DA meeting had been actually useful. Harry had taught the students a spell that could one day save their lives, and he had taught it in such a way that they stood a shot at remembering it. Severus certainly wasn’t going to forget the antics with the beach balls any time soon, and he doubted any of the children were going to either.
And then this evening had happened, and Severus was no longer as upset about being trapped with the Gryffindors as he had been. Because both the help he had given Harry in questioning Kreacher, and the help Severus had yet to give in the brewing of the Felix Felicis, felt more satisfying than anything else Severus had done in years.
Of course, Severus had spied for the Light, but while that was fulfilling, in some ways, as a way to atone for his mistakes, it was so fraught with danger and terror that it never quite managed to make him feel whole.
And now that Severus thought about it like that, he realized that helping Harry, beyond begrudgingly keeping him safe, was likely a far more effective way to pay his debt to Lily. She had been willing to die for her son, so she had probably been pissed at Severus’s inability to see her son for who he truly was.
Severus supposed that it was better that he saw Harry as a distinct individual now rather than later. He would have to make the most of these next couple weeks before he returned to his proper role. He’d do his best to help Harry with whatever mess the boy managed to trip himself into over the next couple weeks.
Because, knowing Harry, he would certainly manage to find his way into several messes with no effort at all. And, for the first time ever, Severus was perfectly positioned to not only protect him, but to actively assist him.
A small part of him wondered what he’d do once he was back to being “Snape” to Harry. Already, he was growing used to having the boy in his life, and he couldn’t imagine that Harry would ever want to stay in contact with him normally, let alone after discovering that Severus had been lying to him about his identity.
The betrayal alone of discovering that Eli was Severus would likely close Harry off to forming any new relationships. Severus, being the person responsible for the betrayal, would have no hope at all of any relationship beyond being the boy’s Potions professor.
That was— if Harry ever found out that Eli was Severus. Because, really, why did he ever have to know?