The diary and the diadem
The three broomsticks only had one room. One with thankfully two beds, she'd read too many 'oh no there was only one bed' tropes for her to not see it coming from miles away. Sure, they could've just camped out somewhere in the woods but that was too much unnecessary work for either of them.
They dropped their bags in the room, making sure that they'd have their wands with them when they exit the room, locking the door behind them and finally making their journey into Hogswart.
The castle looked the exact same save for the new faces they couldn't recognize. It's been two years since they graduated, changes are bound to happen.
A knock on Hagrid's door causes loud barking to ensue. Hagrid steps out of his cottage, shutting his door behind him just in case his dog escaped and smiled. "It's good to see yer here," he says kindly.
"Hi, Hagrid. We're here to see Dumbledore actually.
"I know, I know." He waves his hand dismissively. "He's told me to keep an eye out for the two of yer. Follow me."
The pair do as they were told, following the giant while making friendly conversation until they arrived in Dumbledore's office. Hagrid bids a quick goodbye and left them to it.
The office was empty, a pensive standing before them with an array of vials sitting by it. Black steps forward, picking a note up from the table and reading it out.
It's seems as though you've caught me at a bad time. Though I do apologize for my absence, I could only hope you would make use of your time by viewing what I've left out for you. Please, comb through them with care. I'll be with you in no time.
"Do you want take a look first?" She asked him, seeing his hands hovering above the many vials. He grabs one, viewing it with scrutinizing eyes and twists the cap open. Black pours it into the pensive, and watched as it swirls into itself. "I'll take that as a yes."
Dumbledore came into his office two hours later, making her turn from where she was sat on one of his guest's chair. Black was occupied, had stuck into a pensive. "Professor," she says in acknowledgement.
He says her name in return with a polite smile, his hand tucked into his robe's pocket where something strung to a chain hung out of. She glanced down at it, eyes narrowing in disbelief. "Is that a—"
"Time turner?" Dumbledore finishes for her, his face apprehensive. His mouth open, twisting in a shape of 'no' before he shuts it quickly, hesitating. The old wizard decides, finally, to say what he had in mind. "Yes."
"Are you— have you been using it?" She asks him.
Dumbledore pursed his lips, coming to sit in front of her in his own chair. He halts, wondering if he should tell her the truth or lie his way out before finally deciding. "Yes," Dumbledore says calmly. "I have been."
"Is it to come back here?" He nods. "Yes," he says almost shamefully. "When did you come from then?" She follows up.
"A time where neither Regulus nor The Potters survived," he answers. "I come from a time where I made many mistakes that caused many lives to be taken, I can't afford to lose anymore."
Neither Regulus nor The Potters survived. Deep breaths. "What happened?"
"Many things that I can't tell you," he says truthfully. "What I can tell is that I have made idiotic choices that I wished I never have made, and Harry losing the one thing he loved most was the consequence of my actions."
"Which are?"
"Not telling the whole truth."
"So you lied then?" She simplified it for herself, feeling an emotion she can't place a finger on bubble up inside of her. "You lied and that's what caused Black and the Potters to die?"
"No," he says sternly. "You're picking and choosing what you want to hear. I never once lied to them, I just never told the whole truth."
"And that makes it any better?" She laughed dryly, feeling angry at the old Professor for the first time ever.
"It doesn't," he concurred. "It made it worse. Which is why I'm telling you this when I could've told you my half truths. I promised you I would fix things and that's what I came back here to do."
"You promised me?" She repeats his words. "What do you mean you promised me?"
"That's enough, [name]." He taps at Black's shoulder, pulling him back up. Black gasps loudly, gripping onto the wooden table to balance himself. "Sit, Regulus. I've got something to show you both."
Black does as he's told, taking the seat besides her whilst he compartmentalize everything he'd seen. Dumbledore reached under his desk, bringing out a leather bounded book with carved golden rims on its edges from his drawer.
"I believe this is it." The professor places the book down before them. "What you're looking for."
Black eyes it, his hand reached forward before he stopped himself. He pauses, silently asking for permission and when Dumbledore nodded wordlessly, he took it in his hand.
Black flips the cover open, the book yellowed with age. At the top of the front page showed a faint inscription of what seems to be T.M. Riddle.
"T.M. Riddle?" She says out loud, clueless to what it meant. "It's Tom's initials," Dumbledore tells her. She frowns, following up. "And . . . Who's Tom?"
"The Dark Lord," Black answers, flipping through the book. His eyes narrows, finding that the pages all came up empty, blank as the day as it was bought. He lifts it up slightly, brows furrowed. "Sir?"
"It's what I couldn't decipher," he says in an understanding tone. "And why I'm asking the two of you for your help."
Black shuts the book, his face looked almost like pride but Black's expressions were always hard to read. For all she knows, he could be silently suffering over the added task. "Thank you, Professor."
She trails down the stairs from Dumbledore's office after being dismissed by the old wizard. Her thoughts a mix of confusion and anxiousness.
What had he meant by 'I promised you I would fix things and that's what I came back here to do'? And if the Potters had died, how exactly had Harry grown up to lose the one thing he loved most? Who's hand was Harry under the care of? Was it Sirius?
Did Sirius even make it?
He was Harry's godfather and by wizarding laws, Harry belonged to him if something were to happen to James and Lily. Oh how she hoped that Sirius was a good father figure.
"Wait." A hand wrapped around her wrists, holding her in place. She turned, a little startled by the sudden touch and voice to find Black with an all too irritated look. He must've called for her a thousands time before this. "I want to see something before we go."
"What is it?" She asks, voice lower than normal.
"The diadem." She supposed trying to poke around for information, even if it seems like a dead end, was better than nothing. "And the cup if we could."
"Okay," she says, nodding. She'd seen the cup before but she supposed he hadn't. It's not like he was constantly lounging around the Hufflepuff common room like she had. "Let's go."
•••
The only place that had a visual on the diadem was the Ravenclaw towers, this they knew after flagging down one of Hogswart's many school ghosts and bugging them about it.
Black had filled her in as they made their way over to the tower, informing her of every detail he had on Voldemort/Tom Riddle/apparently very good looking Slytherin. And as they stand before the Ravenclaw's door, unsure whether they should reach out to use the bronze knocker in the shape of the eagle, a voice booms out from it.
"What can travel around the world yet stays in one corner?"
Their eyes met with similar confusion before turning back to the door. Shouting out their answers. "Deodorant tightly packed in the corner of a suit case."
"A stamp."
The door cracks open and for a moment she wondered whether his or her answer were right. She slips through the door, taking in the sight before her.
Where the Hufflepuff common rooms had been stuffy, the Ravenclaw was the exact opposite with its high ceilings in the shape of a dome painted with stars. There tables, chairs and book shelves filled to the brim with every novel a reader could dream of on one side and the other, the exact thing they were looking for.
Rowena Ravenclaw stood tall and beautiful on her pedestal made of white marble. On the top of her head laid an elegant piece of jewelry that they immediately knew was what they were seeking. She made her way towards it, climbing onto the platform for a closer look.
Etched onto the diadem was the famous Ravenclaw quote: "Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure."
She made sure to store that into a special part of her brain, not wanting to forget one bit about the piece before her. When she turn, finally deciding that she'd had a good look at it she finds Black standing slightly behind and below her. Her eyes meet his owns before he raises a hand.
She stared at it, unsure of what he needed from her. Did he want her to tear the marble diadem away from the statue to keep as a souvenir?
"Take it," he says. "Take my hand."
Was he just trying to help her down? Her brows knit, as if skeptically whether she should believe him or not until she relents, clasping his hand with hers and jumps down from the platform. His eyes turn to the diadem for one last look before going back to the door they'd come from.
He lets go of her hand, silently heading out with no other words.
•••
The cup was next, and it was much easier to come across, for, Helga had held it in every painting of hers. At one of the first ones they could find, Black paused and took a long good look at the cup whilst she spoke to Helga, catching up on everything that had happened since she left Hogwarts.
The cup was shining from its gold with two finely wrought handles at its side and a badger engraved on its surface. It was an easy thing to remember despite how common it seemed to look, there was something about it, something so surreal that you could never forget.
Black turn to look at his partner who was listening to a painting talk with so much interest that it weirded him out until he hears: "The only way you can find that thing is if you dig Rowena up from her grave, my dear," the painting said in a light-joking tone. "It's a lost cause, honey."
She laughs kindly, "it's a shame I can't dig her up then." Then something in her clicks. "Although she had a daughter right? The grey lady?"
Helga nods animatedly with interest, eager to be of help. "Yes."
"Do you think she knows anything about it?" She asks the painting. "Something that could help me?"
"Maybe," she murmurs. "Go ask her, deary. Your efforts would be better than nothing."
"Okay," she nods. "Do you happen to know where she is?"
"She'd just pass me mere minutes ago," Painting-Helga tells her. "I'm sure she can't have traveled far."
"That's good." Her eyes casts towards Black and an understanding is passed between the two of them. "Which way?"
"That way." She points to the right, and then, with her two painted hands up and her cup pressed to her side, Helga gave her the encouraging thumbs up. "Good luck!"
"Thank you!" She yells over her shoulder, fast on her feet with Black a few steps after her.
It takes them two minutes, thirty four seconds and two hundred forty one steps to find the Grey Lady. She spokes first. "Excuse me miss." The ghost turns to her. "Could I ask you a few questions?"
The ghost turns back around, ready to float away when Black chirps in sternly. "Tom Riddle." The ghost freezes in her place and he felt a sense of success wash over him. "Did you talk to him?"
The Grey Lady, or in her given birth name, Helena, turns back once more; her eyes wide and translucently pales at his words. "Who are you?" She seems to be ashamed of even thinking about Tom. "How do you know this?"
Black ignores her questions. "Did you tell him where to find it?"
She blinks. "He understood." They share a look of uncertainty but let her go on. "He was a good person. Tom was a good person, I could feel it. Otherwise I would have never told him where I'd hid it."
"You hid it?" She questions, watching Helena drawing into herself. "Did you have it?"
She nods. "I stole it from mother," she says. "But Tom, I hadn't— I hadn't known that he was bad." It was as if she was convincing that everything that had happened since, the death of countless innocent people, wasn't her fault because she didn't know. "If I had known I wouldn't have told him."
"Did he find it?" The Grey Lady nods. "Do you know where it is?"
"Tom came back to show me it before he'd went in to see Dumbledore," Helena says wistfully. "When he came back, it was gone."
She turned to her partner. "He must've hidden it here then."
Black seems to agree, and with purse lips, he turns on his heels towards the direction of the stairs. Her eyes shifts between the ghost and Black before she lets out a small thank you and chased after him.
Black took long and quick strides as she struggled to keep up. "Where are you going?" She shouts. "And could you please slow down."
Black didn't answer, only moving faster until finally they found themself on a wide stretch of the seventh floor corridor. She heaves, trying to catch her breath as he walked back and forth down the corridor in deep concentration.
Large wooden doors appear before them, drawing itself up out of nothing, she'd have been shock if she herself hadn't just been talking to a ghost. Black didn't wait for her, pushing open the door without a word.
She follows after him, confused as ever. "What are you doing?" She asks first, watching him take in the surrounding of the room. "Where are we? Why are we here?"
The room was large and stuffy, an air of humidity to it caused by the many items piled up from floor to the high ceilings of it. Things, ranging from gold coins to stockings laid on the floor with twenty —or two hundred things, on its side. It was, at its core, truly a hoarder's room.
"If you had something important, where'd you hide it?" Black asks, beginning to search for something.
"Under my bed?" She says exasperatedly. "In my bra? I don't know."
"Those are terrible hiding places," he murmurs, then stands up to his full height. "Search for the diadem. If I had it I'd hide it here."
"And where exactly is here?" She drawls, but starts her search nonetheless.
"The room of hidden things." He shuffles towards a old creaky looking cabinet.
"The what?" She murmurs, going towards the old cabinet as well. "How'd you even find place?"
"I had things to hide," he answers easily.
"Like what?" She follows up, now intrigued. "Dead bodies?"
"Like I'd be stupid enough to hide bodies somewhere that could easily be traced back to me," he says sardonically. "No. I had other things."
"What is it then?" She resigns from her post, finding nothing but books with filthy old smut and a few —what looked like— used needles. "Drugs?"
"No." He gives up on his side as well, turning to the middle where a large wardrobe stood. "It wasn't as colourful as you think."
"What is it then?" She watches as Black pulls at the wardrobe's door, a pile of books falling at their feet immediately after.
"Rubber," he says lowly, so lowly she almost didn't hear it.
"What?" She crouched down to take a look at the books while he occupies himself with the the remaining things in the wardrobe.
"Rubber," he says louder this time, sounding almost bashful. She snorts, glancing up to find half of his face reddening, the other half hidden behind the wardrobe's door when something caught her eyes. Her mouth drops open, a small gasp leaving in its wake and with wide eyes she stood up. He turned abruptly to her. "What is it?"
"Look." She points up and above the wardrobe where a mannequin head was placed neatly, a beautiful looking hairpin with a blue crystal resting on top of it. "Could that be it?"
Black tilts back slightly, his head craning upwards as he reaches for the mannequin head. His hand wraps around it's neck, pulling it down towards them. He holds it in front of him, wordlessly giving her the go to take the tiara in her hand.
She grabs at it, twisting it over with only one thing in mind. In the back of the tiara, carved out in a unique set of calligraphy wrote.
"Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure."
Shocked to the brim with joy that yes, yes that'd found the 'lost' diadem, she throws her arm around him, pulling him in a bone crushing hug with an excited shriek. Realizing that she, besides Tom Riddle were the only people alive who'd not only seen but touched the 'lost' Ravenclaw diadem.
Once Black chokes up, coughing and gasping for breath did she realized what she'd down. She lets go of him quickly, feeling her cheeks heat up but knew better than to dwell on it.
"We've found it," she says, trying her best not to smile. "We've found the lost diadem."
And when the corner of Black lips tilts upwards, she relents and breaks into a grin. "I know," he says first. "And we're one step closer to ending the war."
She nods excitedly, agreeing to what he'd said. And one step closer to saving his and the Potters life is what she'd never tell him.