The locket carried back from the cave at such terrible cost had been taken. Switched out by someone, before they ever arrived.
The knowledge appeared into Harry like a hot iron, stealing the breath from his lungs.
The dying embers in the parlour fireplace popped and hissed, their light was flickering across the tight line of his jaw, but no warmth could reach the disbelief frozen in his eyes.
Yet whoever had stolen the locket had left something behind—a clue.
A signature: R.A.B.
Without Sherlock, Harry and Dumbledore might never have connected those initials to the name Regulus Arcturus Black.
No—that wasn't completely fair. Dumbledore might have worked it out eventually. But Harry was certain he himself never would have.
Holmes was Holmes, after all.
"Of course—"
Following the thread of Sherlock's reasoning, Harry remembered the locket they'd seen during that great clean-out two years ago. His heart lurched into a gallop; even his breath came faster.
He didn't hesitate. He turned toward the empty parlour and called out: "Kreacher!"
Crack!
With a sharp, clean snap, the Black family's old house-elf materialized from nothing.
It looked as it always had—frail and desiccated, its pale skin hanging off its skeleton in loose, papery folds like crumpled parchment. Bat-like ears bristled with tufts of white hair that trembled faintly with each breath.
The only difference was the rag it wore. What had once been a garment thick with filth was now scrubbed to a faded, threadbare white.
Harry's doing—an earlier command.
He understood the elf well enough to know that giving it new clothes would frighten it. But ordering it to wash what it already wore fell just within the bounds of what it could accept.
"Master."
Kreacher answered in a voice like a bullfrog's croak, fingers clutching the hem of its robe, bowing so deeply its spine bent into a rigid arc. "What is your command?"
Its gaze never left the carpet at Harry's feet.
That, too, was the fruit of two years' quiet effort. Harry's genuine kindness had, slowly, made Kreacher willing to obey him as its "young master."
"I need to ask you something."
Harry lowered his voice deliberately, though he couldn't quite press the urgency out of it.
He could feel his own heartbeat—each thud hitting his ribs hard enough to set his eardrums ringing.
"Upstairs, in the drawing room—there was a large golden locket. We threw it out during the clean when we were clearing this house, a year or two ago."
His green eyes locked onto Kreacher, measuring every word: "Did you… take it back?"
The question hung in the air.
The fire spat a shower of sparks into the ash, but the silence they'd made held, thick and airless.
Kreacher stood with its head bowed, its thin shoulders rising and falling—struggling with something, working through something.
Then, slowly, it straightened. Its clouded eyes lifted for the first time.
It looked at Harry's face for a long moment. When it spoke, there was a tremor in its voice: "I—I did. I took it back."
"Thank God."
Harry stepped forward, urgent. "Where is it now?"
"Upstairs—"
Kreacher was breathing hard now, its sunken chest heaving as though bearing a great weight. "The locket belonging to Master Regulus. It's upstairs.
"Kreacher has done wrong—all this time, still unable to carry out Master's orders—
"Master Potter, shall I fetch it for you now?"
"Of course—"
The words barely left Harry's mouth before Sherlock cut him off. "Wait."
Sherlock's sharp gaze had not moved from Kreacher. He raised an eyebrow slightly, fingers tapping a slow, quiet rhythm on the arm of the sofa. "You just said Master Regulus's locket.
So, what exactly was the connection between you and Regulus?"
A careless remark that untangles a knot.
Harry blinked. Then it came to him.
From the very beginning, Sherlock had been treating Kreacher as the key to confirming his deductions. Harry's own encounter with the locket had merely been a fortunate bonus.
He pushed the thought a step further. That was right—Sherlock had told him, two years ago, to be kind to this house elf. Perhaps even then, Sherlock had already noticed something.
Kreacher's answer now was simply proving that Sherlock's reasoning had never been wrong.
This elf was hiding secrets—many of them. And the most important one was the truth of Slytherin's locket—Voldemort's Horcrux and its connection to Regulus.
But Kreacher clearly had no interest in cooperating. Its pointed ears trembled, and its voice came with unconcealed resistance: "Kreacher won't answer any question from a Mudblood—"
"I forbid you to call anyone that word!"
Harry's voice cracked. He shot Sherlock a quick apologetic glance, then turned back to Kreacher, pressing each word flat and hard: "Listen to me, Kreacher. As your master, I am ordering you:
"Tell me everything you know. About the locket. About Regulus. Everything."
Since the misunderstanding between them had been resolved, Harry had rarely spoken to Kreacher in this tone of absolute command.
But this was different from anything before.
Slytherin's locket was confirmed as a Horcrux. He could not afford a single gap, a single lie, a single omission.
What he didn't expect was Kreacher's reaction.
Rather than bristling at the hard command, the elf's whole body gave a violent shudder—and then its eyes filled with tears. They spilled down the deep creases of its face and darkened the collar of its robe.
"Master—Master has finally asked—finally—"
Its voice broke into sobs, like a grief long-caged finally finding the door: "Kreacher has always wanted to tell someone—but Master Regulus said not to—I couldn't speak of it, not to anyone—
But now—now I can—"
In that moment, all three of them—Sherlock, Harry, Dumbledore understood that what Kreacher was about to say was no small thing.
Sherlock most of all.
He pressed his steepled fingers against his chin, eyes burning with focused intensity as he watched the elf.
He already had, in broad outline, a picture of the whole affair. What remained now was only to verify it.
The place held no sound but Kreacher's quiet weeping. The fire had burned low; the light dimmed, and the elf's shadow on the wall wavered in and out with each fitful flame.
Kreacher drew a long, shaking breath. Its voice was low and muffled, yet each word cut through cleanly to all three of them:
"First—Master Sirius ran away."
It raised its voice on that, with a sharp edge of resentment, clutching its robe in both fists: "Good riddance! His behaviour—all that shameless, lawless behaviour—broke my mistress's heart!
But Master Regulus was different. He had pride. He understood what the name Black meant. What his pure blood meant."
Harry pressed his lips together. He wanted to argue. Whatever Regulus had been, Sirius was nothing like what Kreacher described.
But he held his tongue. He knew Kreacher's convictions too well. Nothing he could say now would move them.
Kreacher didn't notice. It sank deeper into memory, and its voice softened:
"For many years, Master Regulus spoke of the Dark Lord. He said the Dark Lord would free wizards from hiding—that one day they could walk openly, and rule over Muggles and those born from them—
And finally, in Master Regulus's sixteenth year, he joined the Dark Lord's ranks."
A flicker of pride crossed the elf's eyes. Its hollow chest lifted slightly. "He was so proud then. So joyful. To serve the Lord he most revered—he called it the greatest honour of his life."
Sherlock gave a quiet, contemptuous sound. Like Harry, he said nothing.
"Then one day, about a year later, Master Regulus came to find me in the kitchen."
Kreacher's voice dropped again—touched with something like longing. "He had always been fond of Kreacher. That day, he crouched down and put his hand on my head.
He said the Dark Lord had need of a house-elf."
"Voldemort needed a house-elf?"
Harry couldn't help himself. He frowned in genuine confusion, his gaze drifting instinctively toward Sherlock and Dumbledore.
He couldn't imagine why Voldemort—proud, arrogant Voldemort—would ever require a house-elf.
But Sherlock and Dumbledore understood.
Sherlock gave a small, knowing nod.
Dumbledore, too, lifted his head slowly. Behind the half-moon lenses, his blue eyes had turned distant and very deep, the shape of the whole thing already forming behind them.
"Yes."
Kreacher answered only Harry. Its voice was full of pain now; its thin body began to sway. "Master Regulus said he was lending me to the Dark Lord—that it was an honour for both of us.
"He said Kreacher must do everything the Dark Lord required. And then come home."
By the last words, its breath had dissolved into small, broken sobs, its shoulders jerking with each one carrying a grief plainly long-borne.
"So Kreacher went with the Dark Lord."
It pressed on, voice hollowed by fear: "The Dark Lord said nothing. He brought Kreacher straight to a cave by the sea.
"It was enormous—dark inside—with nothing but a great black lake, and a small boat floating on the water—"
The back of Harry's neck went cold. Every hair rose.
He recognized it. The cave they had visited, all three of them, barely hours ago. Exactly as Kreacher described.
Dumbledore leaned forward slightly, his expression was growing grave.
Sherlock's mouth curved in smile. The smile of someone watching the last piece slot into place.
Voldemort had needed a house-elf. He had needed an expendable life—something beneath his notice to test whether the protections on his Horcrux would hold.
"The little boat was enchanted—it could only carry one wizard to the island in the centre of the lake."
Kreacher's voice grew smaller, trembling: "On the island there was a stone basin, and it was filled to the brim with a dark potion—
"The—the Dark Lord made Kreacher drink it. Forced me to drink it.
"And I drank—"
Its body began to shake violently, as though the memory itself was physical: "While I drank, I saw terrible things—I saw and saw, and everything inside me felt like it was on fire, burning, burning until I thought I would go mad!
"I called for Master Regulus to save me; I called for my mistress—but the Dark Lord only stood there and laughed—
"He watched me, and kept watching, until every last drop was gone!"
"And then what?" Harry pressed, his voice barely his own. Something had him by the throat.
"Then the Dark Lord dropped a locket into the empty basin, and filled it again with the potion—"
Despair had entered Kreacher's voice entirely: "He turned, walked back to the little boat, and left. He left without a single look back. He left Kreacher alone on the island—"
Harry was trembling now.
Because he could see it.
He saw Voldemort's pale, serpentine face vanishing into the darkness.
He saw those flat red eyes watching the little creature writhing in agony—cold and patient.
He saw what would come next: the thirst, the unbearable burning thirst that the potion conjured, driving Kreacher to the edge of the island—toward the water—
Harry's imagination stopped there. He couldn't work out how Kreacher had escaped.
"Kreacher felt its throat splitting—dying of thirst—"
The elf's voice was terror stripped bare; it had gone back to that cave: "I crawled to the edge of the island. I stretched out my hand to reach the water—
"And then—all those hands—dead hands—they came up from the water and seized my ankles and dragged me under!"
"So—how did you get away?"
Harry heard his own voice come out barely above a whisper. He wasn't surprised. It was the only volume the moment allowed.
Kreacher lifted its ugly, tear-blotched face. Its bloodshot eyes fixed on Harry's, and its voice came out flat and strange: "Master Regulus had told Kreacher to come home."
"I know that—but how did you escape the Inferi?"
Kreacher only repeated, as if it hadn't heard: "Master Regulus had told Kreacher to come home."
"I know, but—"
"Self-evident, my friend." Sherlock looked at Kreacher then, and touched two fingers lightly to his own temple. "Kreacher Disapparated."
"Impossible." Harry's reflex was instant, certain. "If that were possible, Dumbledore would have simply Apparated us straight there—"
"You're thinking in a straight line, Harry."
Sherlock smiled, gently, and his gaze returned to Kreacher. "A house-elf's Disapparition is nothing like a wizard's.
"As I understand it, even Hogwarts—where Apparition is expressly forbidden—cannot stop a house-elf. In other words, whatever enchantments guard that cave…
They were never built to hold Kreacher."
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