Sirius's answer came on a Thursday, at breakfast, tied to the leg of a huge, tired-looking tawny owl.
It dropped the letter in my porridge, drank half my pumpkin juice, and left.
"Charming," Hermione said. She fished the letter out with her spoon and passed it over, holding it by one corner.
I wiped it on a napkin and opened it. She leaned in to read over my shoulder, not even pretending she wasn't.
Harry,
What in Merlin's name is going on?
I went back to the old house. I'd like that on record, because I swore I'd never set foot in the place again. It's worse than I remember.
My mother's portrait screamed at me for twenty minutes straight, and I'm fairly sure something in the drawing-room curtains bit me.
I found your locket. Or rather, Kreacher had it, stuffed in his little den under the boiler with all the other rubbish he's nicked over the years.
When I asked him for it, he went completely mad, screaming and crying, and then he tried to hit himself with a frying pan. I had to order him to stop.
I didn't open it, but just holding it made me feel like I was back in Azkaban. I don't know what it is, and I've got a feeling I don't want to, but I'm guessing it's not a birthday present.
So here's what I've done. I've told Kreacher to take it to you, only you, and to come when you call his name. He's not happy about it. Don't let him near your food.
You owe me a very long explanation, and I want it in person.
Sirius
P.S. Terrifying how? Good terrifying? Your dad would want details. So do I.
____________________________
Hermione had gone a bit pink by the end.
"What exactly did you tell him about me?" she asked.
"Only good things," I said, folding the letter up.
She crossed her arms. "Then you won't mind telling me word for word."
"I said you were terrifying," I admitted, and tucked the letter into my pocket. "Which is a good thing. In context."
She gave me a look, but she let it go, because there were more important things in that letter than her reputation. She leaned closer and dropped her voice. "Kreacher's coming here?"
"When I call him," I said.
She glanced up at the staff table. "Into Hogwarts?"
"House-elves can get in pretty much anywhere," I said. "Dobby does it all the time."
She stirred her porridge without eating any of it. "He was so upset he tried to hit himself with a frying pan."
"That's what elves do when they think they're betraying their family," I said. "Dobby used to iron his own hands."
She winced. "So what happens tonight? Kreacher turns up, and you just take it off him?"
"No." I put my spoon down. "Sirius ordered him to bring it. I'm not going to order him to hand it over. Tonight, in the Room, I'll just talk to him."
She nodded slowly. Then she pushed her bowl away. "I've lost my appetite."
_______________________________________
That night, the Room gave us something small for once, just a fire and two armchairs on an old rug. No blackboard, which Hermione seemed slightly disappointed about.
I stood in the middle of the rug and said, "Kreacher."
There was a loud crack.
He was the oldest house-elf I'd ever seen, and I'd met the whole Hogwarts kitchen staff. His skin hung off him in folds and white hair grew out of his ears.
All he had on was a filthy old rag tied round his middle. The locket was clutched to his chest in both hands, and he was already muttering before he'd finished landing.
"...the blood traitor sends Kreacher away, sends Kreacher to the Potter boy, the boy who stopped the Dark Lord, oh, what would Mistress say, what would she say if she knew..."
Then he saw Hermione, and his bloodshot eyes narrowed.
"...and the Potter boy has brought a girl. A nasty little friend of blood traitors. A Mudblood, Kreacher shouldn't wonder, they always are with his sort..."
The fire in the grate went out.
Normally I kept my magic pulled in tight, so it wouldn't leak out and set things off by accident. Now I let some of it out. The whole Room felt heavier. Hermione grabbed my sleeve.
Kreacher felt it too. House-elves are more sensitive to magic than wizards are, and he backed off a step, holding the locket tighter.
"Her name's Hermione," I said. "Either use it or don't talk about her at all."
"Kreacher... understands," he croaked, and bowed so stiffly that something in his back clicked.
I pulled my magic back in, and the fire lit itself again.
Hermione let go of my sleeve and nudged me. "You didn't have to do that," she whispered.
"I know," I said.
I crouched down so I was level with Kreacher. He shuffled back an inch.
"I'm not going to take that off you," I said. "Not unless you give it to me."
"Master Sirius says Kreacher must give it to the Potter boy," he muttered at the floor. "Kreacher must obey."
"Yeah. I'm asking you instead." I nodded at the locket. "This is about Regulus, isn't it?"
His ears went flat against his head.
"How..." He looked from me to the locket and back again. "How does the Potter boy know about Master Regulus?"
"You talk to yourself a lot, Kreacher. My friend Dobby heard you." Which was true enough.
"And I know what that locket really is. It belonged to the Dark Lord. Regulus found out what it was, and he took it from where the Dark Lord had hidden it. Didn't he?"
Kreacher let out a horrible wail and sat down hard on the rug.
Then it all came out.
It came out in bits and pieces, in between sobs, and most of it was in the third person, but it was all there.
The Dark Lord borrowing Kreacher years ago and taking him to a cave by the sea. A stone basin full of potion that Kreacher had been made to drink until he couldn't stand.
Dead things in the water. Master Regulus finding out, and going back to the cave with Kreacher, and drinking the potion himself so Kreacher wouldn't have to. Swapping the locket for a fake one. Ordering Kreacher to go home without him.
"Kreacher was to destroy it," he sobbed. "Master Regulus said so. And Kreacher tried. Kreacher tried everything, every spell Kreacher knew, and nothing would even scratch it, and Kreacher could not tell the family, Master Regulus forbade it, and Mistress died not knowing where her son had gone..."
Hermione had both hands pressed over her mouth. By the end, she was crying too.
I waited until Kreacher ran out of sobs. It took a while.
"I can destroy it," I said. "Tonight. Right now, if you let me. And then Regulus's last order is done."
He sniffed and looked up at me.
"The Potter boy can... destroy it?"
"I've done it before," I said. "Three times."
He looked down at the locket for ages. His fingers were shaking. Then he held it out to me with both hands and let go.
___________________________________
The locket was heavier than it looked, and it was warm, which was gross. It could tell I was dangerous, too. I could feel it trying to push my hand away.
"Hermione," I said. "Stand behind me."
She moved behind me straight away, wand out.
I didn't bother trying to open it. I raised my wand, pulled the soul orb into being in front of me, a slow swirl of pale light about the size of a Bludger, and held the locket up to it.
The two little gold doors snapped open on their own. Behind each one was a dark eye, looking straight at me.
Smoke poured out and made a face. Young, sixteen or so. It turned away from me and looked at Hermione.
"Clever little Hermione," it whispered. Its voice was soft and cold. "What are you without a dead woman's crown in your..."
"Yeah, no," I said, and pushed the orb forward before it could get another word out.
There's a rule every overpowered main character should know, and it's right at the top of the list: never let the villain finish his speech. Nothing good has ever come from a villain finishing his speech.
The face screamed as the light dragged it in. The locket screamed too, a thin metal shriek that made Kreacher clap his hands over his ears.
The orb swallowed the last of the smoke, flared white, then folded in on itself and was gone.
The locket dropped into my palm. It was cold now. Just metal.
Somewhere inside me, a thread snapped.
"Four down," I said.
___________________________________
When I turned round, Hermione had one hand up at the clip in her hair, touching it like she was checking it was still there.
"Hey," I said.
"I'm fine." She very obviously wasn't. She dropped her hand. "It's just... it knew exactly where to poke, didn't it?"
"That's all they do." I stepped closer. "Hermione. You worked out Rita was a beetle before you ever touched that thing. You worked out the diary was a Horcrux in about five seconds flat. The clip just helps you get there faster."
Her chin wobbled a bit. She was trying very hard to look stern about it.
"And for the record," I said, "you're the one who drew the whole plan. All I did was come up with the names."
That got a laugh out of her, even if it was a bit of a soggy one. "They were terrible names."
"They were great names," I said.
"They were terrible." She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. Then she hugged me.
Kreacher was still sitting on the rug, staring at the locket in my hand.
I held it out to him.
"It's empty now," I said. "Just a locket. You spent years trying to finish what Regulus started. You should have it."
For a second I thought he was going to pass out. Then he took it, very carefully, and pressed it to his chest, and started crying all over again. Happy crying, I think. It was hard to tell with Kreacher.
"Master Regulus's locket," he whispered. "Kreacher has... Master Regulus's order is..."
He couldn't finish. He bowed so low his nose touched the rug, and he stayed there.
I'd read this scene in about a hundred fanfics. The Kreacher redemption arc was practically a rule by now. Still, it was different watching it happen right in front of me.
"One more thing," I said.
He lifted his head.
"Sirius is the one who sent you to me. If he hadn't, that thing would still be sitting under your boiler." I shrugged. "Maybe go a bit easier on him."
"Kreacher will... try," he said, in the voice of someone agreeing to eat a slug.
He bowed to me again. Then, after a pause that went on just long enough to be awkward, he bowed to Hermione as well.
"Miss," he said stiffly.
Crack. Gone.
Hermione stared at the empty bit of rug where he'd been. "Did he just..."
"He did," I said.
She looked from the rug to me. "He called me Miss."
"Character development," I said, dropping into one of the armchairs. "Took him about twenty minutes. That's a speedrun."
She frowned at me. "You keep using that word."
"It means very fast," I said.
"Then why don't you just say very fast?" she asked, folding her arms.
I didn't have an answer for that, so I pulled her down into the armchair with me and kissed her instead. She said that was cheating. She didn't complain much, though.
______________________________________
I wrote to Sirius the next morning.
Padfoot,
Got it. It's gone. Thank you. Kreacher might be slightly less awful to you from now on, but don't hold your breath.
I'll explain everything in person. I promise.
Harry
P.S. Good, terrifying.
Valentine's Day was the week after that. I'd had Hermione's present sorted for ages. What I hadn't planned for was everyone else.
Apparently, being a Triwizard champion who'd frozen a dragon in front of the whole school made you a target.
By the time the post owls had finished, there was a pile of cards next to my plate, and more were still coming in.
One of them was bright pink and sang. Badly. Hermione silenced it with a flick of her wand before it got to the second verse, and she didn't even look up from her toast.
"Twenty-three," Fred announced from further down the table. "George, pay up."
"I said twenty-five," George said, holding his hand out. "There's still the second post."
"There's a second post?" I said.
"On Valentine's?" George grinned at me. "Mate. There's always a second post."
A box of chocolate cauldrons landed on top of the pile, tied with a fat pink bow. The card said From Romilda, xxxxxxxxx.
Nine kisses. I counted.
I remembered Romilda Vane. She'd asked me to the Ball, and I'd said no.
I also remembered, from somewhere much further back or forward, a box of chocolates with a love potion in them, and Ron mooning round the dormitory, sighing her name.
Love potion on Valentine's Day. The oldest trick in the fanfic book, right after the shady Gringotts inheritance test. Not today.
I vanished the box.
Hermione watched it go and didn't say a word. She just looked very satisfied.
"Self-defence," I said anyway.
"I didn't say anything." She buttered her toast. "Nine kisses, though. Honestly."
Then she picked up the next card on the pile, looked at the lipstick kiss on the front, and set it on fire with a small, very neat flame.
"Hermione!" I said.
"It was a fire hazard," she said calmly, and went back to her toast.
Down the table, Ron had got exactly one card, and he spent the rest of breakfast holding it up to the light and trying to work out whether the handwriting was Lavender's.
___________________________________
After breakfast, Hermione pulled me into an empty classroom and pushed something soft into my hands. It was a scarf, red and gold, very long, with a slightly wonky H stitched in at one end.
"Happy Valentine's Day," she said, going a bit pink again. "I've been knitting it since January."
I turned it over in my hands. "You knit?"
She shrugged. "I read a book."
Of course she did. Hermione Granger had learned to knit from a book. That was probably the most Hermione sentence in existence.
"It's brilliant," I said, and I meant it. I wrapped it round my neck twice, and there was still enough left over to trip on.
She looked very pleased with herself, right up until she noticed my hands were empty.
"You forgot," she said, and her face fell a little.
"Nope," I said, and held out my hand.
Ice-blue fire curled up out of my palm. Frostfire, the same stuff I'd used on the Horntail, except this time I shaped it slowly, petal by petal, until there was a rose sitting in my hand, made of cold blue flame and wrapped in a thin shell of clear ice so it wouldn't go anywhere.
It was cold to the touch, but it wouldn't melt, and it wouldn't hurt her.
Hermione stared at it.
"It'll last as long as I want it to," I said. "Which is forever, if you were wondering. I worked out the spell weeks ago. The hard part was hiding it from you."
She took it very carefully, in both hands. "You had me worried for a second there."
"That was the point," I said.
She hit my arm. Then she kissed me, right there in the classroom with the door half open. Somebody walking past in the corridor whistled. I didn't check who.
She kept the rose on her bedside table. According to Lavender, who told Parvati, who told Ginny, who told me, it kept the whole girls' dormitory nice and cool for a week.
____________________________________
That evening we walked down to the lake. It was freezing, and I had about four feet of scarf trailing behind me in the grass.
"Ten days," Hermione said, looking out at the water.
"Ten days," I agreed.
"You still haven't told me how you're going to breathe down there," she said.
I grinned at the lake. "It's a surprise."
She sighed. "I'm going to be asleep for it."
"Then it'll be a surprise for everyone else," I said.
She poked me in the ribs through about six layers of wool. "I'm serious. It's February. That water's going to be freezing."
"Relax," I said. "I've got plot armour."
She squinted at me. "You've got what?"
"You know, in films, when the hero can't die because the story still needs him?" I said. "That."
She rolled her eyes. "This isn't a film."
"Tell that to the dragon," I said.
She gave up arguing and looked back out at the water. "If you part the lake," she said, "I'm breaking up with you."
"That's two break-up threats in one month," I said.
"And they both stand." She tucked her arm through mine and leaned into my shoulder.
We stood there a bit longer, until her nose went red, and then we went back up to the castle.
___________________________
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