For the first time
Regulus wakes up on a sofa, a glass of water sitting on a coffee table before him. He sits, grabbing the cup and drinking with such intensity that droplets fell messily from the sidelines and dropped down to his chin. This was not his finest moment.
"How are you feeling?" A voice ask from behind him.
"I'm fine." He sets down the glass. "Where's Kreacher?"
"I sent him back. He was reluctant but I managed to convince him that your mother needed him more than you do."
That's not far from the truth. The woman can't fend for herself even if her life depended on it. "And the locket?"
"Here." She drops the locket in front of him, hanging its chains around her finger like a yo-yo. "It's quite pretty isn't?"
It is. "Let's destroy it."
"Now?"
"Yes," he says, snatching the locket from her hand as he stood up. "I see no point in wasting any time."
"No." She eyes the locket in his hand carefully. "Neither of us are strong enough to do it now."
"You are," he says. "You could do it."
"No, I can't," she argues. "It's late I need sleep."
Regulus glances down at his watch, reading out the numbers 9:45 pm. "It's not late." He turns to her. "Let's get this over with."
"Aren't you tired?" She changes the topic. "Don't you feel fatigue? Surely the potion effects hasn't worn off that quickly."
It hadn't. Regulus could feel it in his bone, the potion seeping into every part of his body and all he could think about was how nice dinner and a nap sounded but he could not bare seeing the locket in one piece any longer. "I'm fine," he lies, repeating: "let's get this over with."
"No," she says sharply. "Let's just wait until tomorrow when you're all better."
"I don't need to be better, you're perfectly fine and you can handle this on your own." He tries to ignore the fact that she is worried about his well being. "After all, we only need one person to destroy this thing."
"Well I'm not perfectly fine, I'm tired, I need sleep and I can't get the taste of that fucking potion out of my mouth."
What? "You drank it?" Regulus asked slowly. "You drank the potion?"
"No, I drank the sea water," she says sarcastically. "There was a tiny bit left and you could barely keep yourself up, I needed to finish it to get us out of there."
"You could've died." Was the only thing he could say. "That potion could've killed you. I told you to make me finish it. Did you not listen?"
"I did." She screws her eyes shut. "But then you started sobbing and the probability of you dying in there got so high that I thought it'd be best to finish it on my own."
"So risked your own life?"
"To save yours." Her eyes open back up. "Heaven knows, Dumbledore would give me that disappointed look of his that makes me feel shittier than him being straight up angry with me. It's what had to be done."
When Regulus doesn't respond, she added. "And I knew, from watching you drink it, that the first few weren't so bad. I did the calculations in my head and figured that it couldn't hurt to finish the rest of what was in the basin and I was right. I'm perfectly fine now. Just a little drained. So could you please just try to relax for the rest of the night."
He mulls the information over and nods, sliding the lockets chain over his head. "Great." She smiles in an uncomfortable manner. "Oh and Sirius sent an owl."
"He did?"
"Yes." She hands him a letter the size of a ring box. "Here."
Moony's flat. 3pm sharp.
Snuffles.
"What?" He murmurs, confused. Reading and rereading to try and see if there was any hidden messages. There weren't. "What does he want us to do with Moony's flat?"
"He wants to us to call Moony's landline," she explains. Regulus brows only knits together, still not understanding one bit. "His telephone? We call from a public phone booth to the telephone at his home."
"That's a bit foolish isn't it?" He looks at her, meeting eye to eye. "Telephones could be traced couldn't they? Recorded? Listened into?"
"I guess it could," she concurred. "But incase you've forgotten we're dealing with wizards who hates muggle technology and telephone just happens to be muggle technology. Do you see what I'm getting at?"
"Yes," he says. "Still, it could easily be intercepted."
"Okay, let me ask you something." She was testing him to prove her point now. "Do you —as in a pure blood who used to be a death eater— know how to work a telephone?"
Regulus' eyes darts to the floor. "No." He admits.
"And do you know how listen into or intercept a phone call?" She adds on.
"No," he murmurs lowly. "But that isn't the case for all of them, some knows how to work one."
"Some tends to be guys like you who are seeking redemption. The plan is a concrete one, just accept it," she says in a no-bullshit manner. "Anymore questions?"
Regulus frowns, accepting defeat. "No."