Fairy of shampoo
Six Horcruxes. One of which has been found. Marvello gaunts ring. Six others that has not: Nagini, Voldemort’s diary, Slytherin's locket, Hufflepuff's cup and one other that they didn't know for sure but suspects to be the lost Ravenclaw diadem which —if it was that— would be a lost cause seeing as it was called the 'lost Ravenclaw diadem' for a reason.
One month —maybe six if he was being honest, stuck in a constant loop of laying low as they haunted down the many Horcruxes they needed. Deep breaths. One sword of Gryffindor's that has been imbued with basilisk venom which they were now using as the main source of destruction. Deep breaths. Limited space. Limited noises to be made. Limited resource. Not limited spendings. And . . . limited privacy. Deep breaths.
"Could you breathe any louder?"
"I'm sorry," she snaps at him from where she sat. "Do you want me to quit breathing?"
Black casts a glance at her from his post at the opposite as their temporary tent, and raises an eyebrow. Is she testing him? Because the answer was clear. Very clear in fact. Yes. Yes, he does want her to quit breathing.
This hide out —which is just kind words to replace with being stuck with the most intolerable person on earth, wouldn't have been necessary had Sirius shut the fuck up. But he didn't. Because he never does.
When the Order meeting about this exact matter at hand came up, Black, who was sat next to his brother made it clear that he'd be joining in the mission of retaliating against Mr. Bald head and defeating him which Sirius had managed to bring up the obvious fact: "you think the death eater would spare you if they knew you were actively seeking out the Horcruxes? Are you mental? You'd never make it out alive."
And Dumbledore took that as cue to put her on babysitting duty (along with seeking, destroying, risking her life over tiny objects that snake eyes man fascinated over). It was the third day and the only concrete plan they have as they hid in the middle of a forest was to:
One: retrieve Kreacher from his home in order for the house elf to lead the pair of them to where Voldemort has hid one of his Horcruxes. They could easily get the Horcurx, this they knew for a fact.
Two: something they didn't know for a fact was how to steal the Hufflepuff's cup that Bellatrix, the Black brother's cousin, has in her possession. You'd think that that sort of information would've been kept more secretive but no, Black, who was a passerby at one of the death eaters many meeting, managed to overhear that piece of knowledge with no effort.
They need to act on two fast, Black would be haunted down the second the death eater notices that he was missing with no actual prove of him being dead. That was an extremely time sensitive matter.
Still, the two sat, on opposite ends of a tent, trying to curate a plan that would be both time efficient and a sure win. "Can't you just break into her vault after charming her pants off?"
"She's my cousin," he told her sternly, eyes fixated on a hole that managed to wedge its way in the tents fabric.
"And? That's never stopped anyone from your bloodline before," she retorted with a shrug of her shoulder. "That's the best plan we've come up yet."
"You," he corrected her. "You came up with that. I think it's the most stupid thing I've heard come out of your mouth and trust me, I've heard plenty of idiotic things."
If he heard her mutter 'twat' under her breath, he showed no outward reaction to it.
"How about you act as if you need help?" She suggests. "Seek her out, say you need something for a mission that you don't have in your own vault."
He looks up at her for once, actually considering her words. "Like what?"
"I dunno. A ring maybe, a tiara? Something a man your age isn't expected to have but for someone her age to have," she replied. "Wait, you don't happen to have a tiara now do you? Because that would quite frankly ruin this entire plan."
"There's no guarantee she'd let me into her vault," Black says, ignoring everything she'd previously said. "She'd be protective over it, scared that she'd lose it and tick off the dark lord."
"Which is exactly what's going to happen if we nicked it from her." She leaned back leisurely into her chair. "I'd like to think I'm a good thief."
"That's not something impressive nor something to be bragged about," he murmurs. "We need to find a way to get into her vault." And then; when she smirks at the terrible innuendo, Black sighs. "Candytuft, I'd really appreciate it if you help think this over because in case you've forgotten, all of our lives are in danger."
"Candytuft?" She repeats in a questioning manner, that was not her name. It was nowhere near her name.
Black replies mockingly, "or do you prefer buttercup?"
Candytuft. Buttercup. Was he referring to her as different flowers? Better yet, was he insulting her in flower language? Candytuft, in itself means indifference, that they couldn't have cared less about you if they gifted it to you and he'd just called her that. Then he topped it off with buttercup? The flower that symbolizes childishness? What a dick.
"You're an ass," she says first. And then, "just borrow the key from her, say you need it for something the Dark Lord asked of you. Lie. Make it believable, it's not all that hard."
Lie, take the key to her vault and steal the cup. It can't be that hard. "Okay," Black says, "we'll do that later." But for now, they have another Horcrux to hunt down.
On any other occasion she'd love the scent of salt air rushing through her senses combined with the sound of water crashing against its shore, but that wasn't the case as she shrugged off her coat and tried to put her hair back as best as she could.
Her wand presses tightly between her ankle and her boot, snug enough for it to not slip out during the swim to where they needed to be.
Kreacher apparated them to a cliff side the second they found him in 12 Grimmauld place. Informing them that what they needed, the Horcrux, was on the other side of the deep water where a cave stood alone in all its glory.
"How can we be sure that he can't just apparate us in with him?" She asks no one in particular.
"We don't," Black answers, leaning down to secure his shoe laces. "Though I'd rather not risk it."
"It'll be more beneficial if we do," she counters. "Less time consuming, and I don't have to swim."
"And if you get spliced?"
"Then I'll lose a finger or two." She shrugs. "We have magic, everything grows back in no time."
"An organ doesn't," he says dryly, straightening back to his full height. "Would you risk your heart?"
"I'll let you know I wear my heart on my sleeve." To which he fixes her a look. "Losing my heart will do no damage."
Black purses his lips before shaking his head. "You truly are something."
"I am," she agreed, nodding. "Which means you have to agree with what I say including trying to have Kreacher apparate us in."
"It's too dangerous," He said without missing a beat. "Too many things can go wrong, the Dark Lord made sure any person who enters that cave would not return."
"And yet Kreacher did," she pointed out the obvious. "He can't be all that great if he underestimated elves, everybody and their grandmother knows that elves' magic differs from wizards. Also —before all the Horcruxes and facial reconstruction— he was very human. And humans who believes that they are able to rule the world tend to overestimate just how smart they are, I doubt he made just this one mistake."
He hesitates, thinking. "Fine," he says finally. "But I'm going in first, if anything goes wrong you leave and seek out the Order. If all goes well I'll send Kreacher back here for you."
"But shouldn't I be the one to go in first?" Her brows furrowed. "This was my idea."
"And it's a stupidly risky one," he tells her. "You could die."
"Oh and it's okay for you to die?"
"Yes," he says curtly, he knows what he's signed up for, he'd come to peace with it as long as he gets to right his wrongs. "Kreacher?"
"Yes, master," the elf says obediently.
"The cave." He needn't say more for the elf already knew what he wanted, latching a hand onto his master's arm, Kreacher apparates the pair of them in no time.
Now she'll have to play the waiting game, knowing that someone —even if she doesn't get along with them all that much— had risked their life over something she'd suggested was not a feeling that was easy to swallow down.
So she waits, trying to be rational as she stood on top of the cliff, looking down into the cave's large opening mouth, ready to eat up anyone who dares enter it, and if you were smart enough —maybe it'll even spit you back out. Deep breaths. This will be just fine. Everything will be fine. Deep breaths.
As if the gods were waiting by, tuning in her journey and giving her help when she needed it. Kreacher appears before her. "Master has ordered for me to retrieve you."
She lets Kreacher hold onto her arm, bracing herself for that specific feeling of being apparated to come with closed eyes. When she opens her eyes back up after letting the nausea that came with apparition pass over, she found herself standing on an island no larger than Dumbledore's office.
"Careful not to touch the water," Black's voice was soft and distracted, a clear indication that something had caught his eyes. "There's Inferies in there."
"Oh," she murmured, glancing at the dark black water, watching as a body floated by, hair and robes swirling around like smoke. "Do you think that—"
"Yes," he cuts in. "It's only fair isn't it? In the process of us stealing the locket, the Inferi's will take our lives as payment."
"That's bleak," she said, turning to where he stood, finding him peering over a stone basin. "You should lighten up a bit, Black."
A step forward, looking over and into the Penseive as well. The basin was filled with an emerald liquid emitting a greenish glow. She reached for her wand and —with no real thoughts or reasoning— tried to put her wand into the basin, attempting to touch the potion with it. Only to be met with an invisible barrier that prevented her coming within an inch of it.
Both their head shot towards one another as if on cue, curiosity underlining their eyes. She pushes harder to no avail, encountering nothing but what seemed to be solid and flexible air.
"You have to drink it, Master," came Kreacher from Black's side. "That's the only way to reach the locket."
"Drink it?" She asks. "That can't be safe."
"It isn't," he says earnestly. "But it's the only way."
"What is it, Kreacher?" Black questions. "What happens when you drink it?"
Kreacher answers obediently. "It dries your throat out with thirst and weakens you, Sir."
Oh. So that was what the Inferies were really for. She had a half thought that they were a precaution step Voldemort had set up just to be sure that whomever tried to take the locket would not make it out alive if his main plan failed but she was wrong. So wrong.
They were the main plan.
Whoever entered would have to find their way towards this island from the cave's entrance (one that they skipped), down the entirety of whatever was in the basin until they were so parched they were willing to risk drinking from the black lake that was teeming with dead only to be dragged down and meet the same faith as them.
"Right." She tried to keep her head on straight, combing through the limited information she had. "Do you have any water?"
"No," he says. "Why would I?"
She didn't know why she'd asked him that if she was being honest, she knew he didn't have any water on him. And neither did she. "Okay." Raising her wand again, she twirled it once in mid air and swiftly caught the goblet she conjured up. "Let's try this then."
"Aguamenti!" She casted, wand above the goblet. The goblet fills up with water and then, within a blink of the eyes, the goblet became empty. Unable to wrap her head around what had happened, she tried again only to be met with the same result. She handed out the goblet towards Black. "Give it a try."
He takes it, knowing full well that it'll be no difference but humored her either way. He pulled out his wand, said the very spell she'd said two times before and watch water fill and disappear from the goblet with his very eyes. "Kreacher."
"Yes, Master." Kreacher didn't wait for Black to explain, trying his own hand at what they'd been doing. This time, unlike Black and her tries, the goblet didn't even fill up. Nothing.
"Okay." She feels like she's been saying okay a million times. Okay, deep breaths. "Let's say the only source of water we'd have is the lake, and if we were to touch it Inferies will be trying to drag us down, what do we do?"
"Fire," he answers deep in thoughts. "They fear fire."
"Okay." There it was again. "One of us will drink and the other will have fire at the ready, Kreacher will then apparate us out. How does that sound?"
"It's the only plan we have," Black says, taking the goblet back from Kreacher. "I'll drink. How are you with fires?"
"I'm great with fiendfyres," she tells him.
"Fiendfyres?" He repeated, filling up the goblet with the potion. "The ones you can't control and destroys quite literally everything?" And when she nods. "How do you know that?"
"Know what?"
"That you’re great with fiendfyres." Black downs the goblet, seemingly fine when he goes for another one.
"I'm an auror."
Another swig. "That doesn't explain it." Refills.
"It's my job," she says, eyeing his every movement for any sign that the potion was harming him. "Sometimes I have to burn things down in order to succeed."
Black hums, drinking three more goblet full in silence. Then, half way through his fourth, his eyes shut tightly, blindly finishing the goblet. He staggers backward, grasping onto the basin to keep himself stable.
"Hey, hey." Her hands clasp around his shoulder, trying to keep him from falling and hurting himself. "Hey, you okay?"
“No,” Black says honestly. "But you need to make me."
"What?"
"Make me finish it," he says coarsely. "Force it down on me if you have to, just make me finish it."
"Okay." Deep breaths. "Kreacher, get the goblet and fill it up." Kreacher grumbles but follows her order nonetheless, knowing within himself that the Master he devoted himself to wouldn't be happy to know he disobeyed her. "I'm going to sit you down, okay?"
She brought him down, landing on the island's dark stone with his back pressed against the basin. She stood over him, taking the goblet from Kreacher's hand and pried open Black's mouth.
She bend down to his height, pouring it between his lips to have him gulp it up greedily with a thirst that would not be fulfilled. He pales, face twitching as though he was in a horrible dream. "Stop," he pleads. "Please stop."
She got back up and took one glance at the basin, and filled up the goblet. She could see the locket clearly at the bottom of the basin now.
She presses the goblet to Black's lips, him tilting his face away in protest. "Please flower," his voice desperate. "I don't like it, please stop."
"It's alright, drink this," she says. "It'll make it stop."
Black drinks with no protest, believing her words that this gobletful would different, this gobletful would bring him relief and make it stop. He believes and believes and drinks on when the other gobletfuls came to his lips.
"I can't," he sobs. "I can't take it anymore. Please."
One, two, the basin had about two gobletful left and he had managed to drink five gobletfuls before it got too bad. Two goblets, that she could do. Deep breaths.
She brought the goblet to her lips and drank it, letting it burn her throat with its bitterness and imagined —as if it was any help, that this was just some absinthe. After all, alcohol is bound to be more tolerable than poison.
"Kreacher," she says, refilling the last and final goblet, with a deep breath in and no time to fully exhale, she downs the entire goblet. Her hand reaches for the locket and with a sense of relief washing over her, she slides the locket on over her head. "Let's get out of here."