What I Must Ask You To Do

Harry’s throat was burning in protest but he would not stop screaming. From where he stood off to the side, he could see the grisly white puppets at Lord Voldemort’s command crawling up onto the rocky mass where the basin containing the Horcrux had been placed. So intent on dragging the cave’s intruder down to the depths of their lake and making him one of them, the skeletal corpses had enveloped their prey so thoroughly that Harry could only make out a mane of long dark hair within their midst.

Desperately, Harry thrusted his hands into his pockets for his wand, but pulled out only a locket instead. He couldn’t replicate the fire that Dumbledore had used to drive the Inferi back the last time without his wand. Now they were grabbing onto him too and it was no use, he was powerless to get away from them without Dumbledore’s help.

“Harry - Harry,” his name was being called from what seemed like far away outside of the cave. Still twisting madly in the Inferis’ clutches, Harry looked over his shoulder and saw Voldemort's enormous snake, Nagini, slithering across the floor towards him with her forked tongue flicking excitedly.

Now his surroundings were shifting and the weight pressing down on Harry’s body became the feel of the snake crawling up his high-backed chair to drape over his shoulders. Harry reached out to stroke her head with his long white fingers as he felt his face twisting up into a satisfied smile. Alone in this richly carpeted room that he couldn’t recall ever having been in before, Harry felt a strong sensation of something akin to joy swell up inside him. It all was going his way and, with that, his screams dissipated and were replaced with laughter.

“Harry! HARRY!” Sirius finally succeeded in pulling Harry out of his disturbed sleep. He was holding him tightly by the shoulders where the snake had been and Harry suddenly became uncomfortably aware that the shirt he was wearing was completely drenched in sweat.

“You’re fine - you’re at Hogwarts - you’re with me,” Sirius said, lowering one of his hands to pick up the glasses on the nightstand, which Harry quickly pushed onto his face.

He remembered now where he was and that Professor McGonagall had told Sirius that he could spend the night with him downstairs in Professor Snape’s quarters. Though it was too dark to read the time, Harry imagined that that hadn’t been very long ago. The five of them had sat up together until well past midnight, when McGonagall had insisted Ron and Hermione accompany her back to Gryffindor Tower, and Harry had fallen asleep as soon as his head had hit the pillow.

“Yeah - I -” Harry could barely breathe as he struggled to free himself from the bed sheets he was completely tangled in. The room was cloaked in the green glow from the lights off the lake outside the window. A view that he usually derived great pleasure from, suddenly seemed quite threatening in the wake of all he had just endured in that cave.

“Was it just a nightmare?” Sirius asked concernedly. “You don’t usually get those anymore.”

“Yes, I - no, actually it wasn’t,” Harry confessed.

It was all coming back to him now. How he had collapsed into bed and fallen asleep immediately - too tired to think, but also too tired to do his regular Occlumency exercises either. What had begun as an ordinary nightmare - albeit a terrifying one, had transitioned into a glimpse through the window of Lord Voldemort’s eye. Sitting in some room with Nagini’s comfort and his own good humour. That had really been happening - Harry was positive he had really been there. As a feeling of dread overcame him and he realized his grave error.

“Dad, I - I forgot to take my potion!” he blurted out, watching Sirius's face whiten in alarm as he jumped out of the bed and practically flew across the narrow hallway to the bathroom.

“Christ, how could I have forgotten that?” Harry heard Sirius asking himself, as he loudly opened drawers and rummaged in the cabinets to find where Snape kept it stored.

Though it wasn’t Sirius’s fault; at sixteen, Harry was certainly old enough to be responsible for taking his own potion. He’d been drinking it before bed routinely for nearly two years now and it was easy to take for granted what a truly remarkable concoction it was when it kept him so well protected that he rarely thought about his scar anymore.

He hadn’t experienced the connection between himself and Voldemort open at all since he’d first begun the treatment, so that it was easy to forget that the connection even existed. Now hit with a harsh warning, Harry closed his eyes tightly and called upon his rudimentary Occlumency skills in case Voldemort could sense his vulnerability right now. There was so much dependent upon him keeping his mind sealed.

“I’ve got it,” Sirius hurried back into the room and Harry held his hand out for the vial, while keeping his eyes still firmly shut. It was easier to focus on making his head calm and blank when he wasn’t seeing everything around him.

“Will you fill it again to the half-way mark?” Harry asked, once he had finished swallowing the entire vial in one long gulp.

“You need more?” Sirius questioned.

Harry nodded. “I think he'd tell me to drink another half-dose, if he knew what I saw. I've been late a few hours before and still never saw anything until tonight.”

“Well, this is a particularly difficult night so I’m not surprised,” Sirius said, going back across the hall while Harry focused on building his sanctuary inside the realm of his imagination.

It was the place he visited before falling asleep every night in a medication exercise that worked better for him than an attempt at a blank slate. This place harboured no secrets and dwelled on nothing all-together important or revealing, so that if even Voldemort managed to somehow invade here, he would learn nothing significant about their greater plans. All he would see was blue water underneath a bright blue sky, as he listened to the waves crashing on the sand, and breathed in the fresh air, while Harry flew like a bird above it all; free, unbothered, and untouchable.

Harry was imagining himself diving down from the sky low enough to push his fingers through the white caps of the rough waters, when he felt Sirius pressing the vial containing his second dose to his lips. He had a foot in each world for a moment, but his own inventiveness and creativity was helping his mind to clear just as surely as the potion provided was doing. So that as soon as the last droplet was swallowed, Harry felt comfortable opening his eyes to reenter reality securely.

“Severus would be very proud if he’d seen you just now,” Sirius was smiling from the opposite side of the bed. “You were using Occlumency, weren’t you? I could see how hard you were concentrating.”

“Yeah, it’s a collaboration with the potion,” Harry explained, leaning back against the headboard and arranging the ball of blankets flat over his lap as he felt his body continue to grow more relaxed. “But I didn’t do either tonight, I just slept.”

“And you saw Voldemort?” Sirius verified.

“I was Voldemort,” Harry corrected. “Just sitting there with Nagini….and laughing.”

“You were laughing aloud,” Sirius told him. “Well, first you were screaming and then you started to laugh. To be quite frank, the laughter scared me the most.”

“He was just so happy,” Harry said, grateful that the room was dark so that Sirius couldn’t see his face blushing with embarrassment at the fit he’d probably been having moments ago. “I guess because he knows Dumbledore died?”

“I imagine so,” said Sirius. “So, we should presume that Severus is safe and well then - if Voldemort suspected anything amiss then he would be angry, but he’s not. He’s happy because he thinks his plan worked and that Dumbledore is dead by the hands of his most faithful servant.”

Sirius had a point and it relieved Harry of one of his most major sources of stress. As he turned his head to stare out into the lake, catching a familiar turtle swimming idly by as though he had not one care in the world. Harry recognized him, by a long jagged scar across his shell, as the regular passer-by that he and Snape both took frequent notice of. The constancy of nature and its creatures of habit, who kept swimming, hunting, and foraging as they do without any concern for human wars and threats, was somewhat reassuring.

“I never would have expected rooms in the dungeons to be this peaceful,” Sirius said.

“It surprised me too,” Harry admitted, watching as the turtle’s tail moved out of sight. “It’s a view of Hogwarts that nobody else gets to have….I wish I could just hide down here.”

He was dreading morning come, when he’d have to get up and face the rest of the school at breakfast. Listen to all the gossip and speculation about how Snape had killed Dumbledore, and look into the hysterical crying faces of people who hadn’t really even known Dumbledore at all - or at least not the way that he had.

But perhaps it would be easier in a few days when things began to calm down and adjust into a new - and more perilous - normal, Harry thought to himself, as he set his glasses on the nightstand, laid back down in the bed, and closed his eyes. He hoped tomorrow would provide some enlightenment as to Snape’s whereabouts and condition and that something would spark pertaining to the real Horcrux still out there somewhere. Harry lay there thinking regretfully about how he was so sure Dumbledore would have had the answers, if only there had been time for him to examine Regulus’s locket himself before he died. Regretfully reminding himself after a few minutes to put this to rest and go back to flying over the water in his mind for the sake of everyone involved.

“Can’t you sleep?” Harry murmured, opening his eyes briefly as he rolled onto his other side and saw that Sirius was still sitting straight up in bed and staring off as if in a trance - he didn’t appear to even hear him. “Dad?”

The name seemed to draw Sirius back to life and he forced a smile as he patted Harry’s hand in reassurance. “I’m alright.”

“You sure?” Harry asked doubtfully. He didn’t think anyone could possibly be okay after making a discovery of such magnitude about their dead, estranged, brother. Sirius was suddenly being called to question everything that he had ever thought he’d known about Regulus, and perhaps the rest of his family too.

“I will be,” Sirius said, in a carefully controlled voice. “It’s not fun to live with regrets - but that’s nothing new to me. I’ll be fine.”

Harry sincerely doubted that, but he didn’t say it out loud. One thing he had noticed from observing both Snape and Sirius was that regrets never left you and they never got easier to live with either. Not when you were facing the things you couldn’t change and which had worsened - or even taken - the lives you’d sworn to protect. Distracting yourself was an effective remedy in the short term, but bettering yourself and evolving from the person you had been did not make you suddenly forget who you were - especially on dark, sleepless nights.

“We'll find the locket and finish the job Regulus started,” Harry said hopefully. “Someone knows what happened in that cave and we’ll find them.”

“I’ve been thinking about that all night,” Sirius admitted, “but there’s nobody. The group Regulus hung out with at Hogwarts nearly all turned out to be Death Eaters, and there's nobody in our family who would have been willing to let him die for any cause. They loved him. Regulus was the golden boy in our family.”

Harry gripped his blankets in his fist and tried to picture the young, quiet, talented boy who had signed up to follow Lord Voldemort out of Hogwarts. Aside from Sirius, Regulus had had the backing support of all of his pure-blood family, who had agreed with the anti-muggleborn movement even if they hadn’t been prepared for how far Voldemort was willing to go to achieve power. They wouldn’t have revolted and they wouldn’t have let Regulus die, that seemed clear. Yet someone had accompanied him to that cave.

“What if it wasn't their choice?” Harry said after several minutes of silence. Sitting up straighter on the bed and surprising Sirius, who seemed to have believed he’d fallen back asleep judging by the way he jumped at the sound of his voice. “What if they had to do what Regulus said even if they didn’t want to?”

“You think he forced someone into that cave with him against their will?” Sirius frowned.

“Not by Imperius or anything,” Harry said quickly. “But don’t you think we’d better talk to Kreacher?”

Almost immediately at the mention of his loathsome house elf, Sirius’s face clouded over. Kreacher was a representation of everything that Sirius had hated about his own family. The dislike went both ways and the time spent locked up in Grimmauld Place together had been horrible for the both of them.

“He knew Regulus,” Harry reminded him. “Even if he’s not involved, he might know something.”

“Well we've got to start somewhere,” Sirius said begrudgingly, linking his fingers together and cracking his knuckles above his head. “Let’s go now. I can’t sleep, can you?”

“No,” replied Harry, who was feeling impressively wide awake now that he thought they had a promising lead to follow. Something that might lead them to the Horcrux sooner and minimize the remaining time that Snape needed to spend being a spy in Voldemort’s vicinity.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and slipped his feet into his trainers. Glasses he put back on and then he shoved both his wand and the fake locket into the pockets of the jeans he hadn’t bothered to change out of since returning from the cave with Dumbledore. He just couldn’t be bothered and didn’t have his stuff readily on hand anymore either. Before following Sirius out of Snape’s quarters, he remembered to slip on his invisibility cloak, determined not to make such a neglectful oversight ever again.

Sirius had transformed into his animagus counterpart of the great black dog. He padded down the silent corridor jovially ahead of the invisible Harry and up the stairs into the entrance hall, where he waited with a wagging tail for Harry to open the door out to the grounds. Crickets were chirping and bullfrogs were ribbeting down by the lake. In the distance, Harry could make out Hagrid’s hut, with nary a lantern lit during this offensively late hour.

“This is where it happened,” Harry said, almost to himself, as he reached the spot in the grounds where he had set Dumbledore down to wait for Snape. Perhaps it was just his imagination, but by the light from the stars and the moon above, Harry was quite sure that the grass had been flattened down into the exact shape of Dumbledore.

Sirius transfigured back into a man and placed his hand on Harry’s shoulder for the rest of their silent walk down to the sealed iron gate that led out of the enclosed grounds. Harry balked when he remembered the lock and how both Dumbledore and Snape had opened it with a tap of their wands. He didn’t think just anyone was able to do that though, but then Sirius pulled out an old fashioned brass key from his pocket.

“Dumbledore gave me this after I adopted you,” Sirius explained, opening the gate wide enough for them to pass through and then shut it securely behind them. “I guess he knew I’d be coming and going quite frequently, whether he liked it or not.”

“I don’t think Dumbledore minded as much as you think,” Harry said fairly, reaching out for Sirius’s arm. He didn’t trust himself to do it properly on his own again just yet. Aside from still being too young to have a licence, he was pretty sure that his adrenaline had been what had helped him successfully transport himself and Dumbledore back to Hogwarts earlier that night, and not his prodigious skill.

“God, I hate this place,” were the first words out of Sirius’s mouth when they landed seconds later on the front steps of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place.

They never visited it aside from meetings, but since it was still the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix it had a healthy flow of traffic in and out. As they stepped inside quietly, so as to not disturb the portrait of Sirius’s mother on the wall, Harry nearly stumbled over a bag of dumbbells on the floor of the darkened foyer and was reminded of another purpose the place was now being used for.

“I wonder how the Dursleys are settling in,” Harry said, knowing very well that they would hate everything about the house and be perfectly miserable for however long they needed to stay there.

The protective enchantments that Dumbledore had cast around their own house had become impotent now that Harry had ceased to call Privet Drive home. With his seventeenth birthday approaching in the summer, it had been essential for his relatives to accept protection and prepare to go into hiding, though Harry doubted they had come very graciously. He was just thankful that they weren’t his problem anymore.

Though it puzzled him to hear laughter and excitable chatter as Sirius and himself proceeded deeper into the house. Aside from it being very late and knowing perfectly well that the Dursleys had no sense of humour, it sounded so odd to hear such happy sounds and be reminded that some people weren’t weighed down with the grief and the worries that so consumed themselves right now. At least not yet.

“Sirius! Harry!” Tonks exclaimed in surprise.

Harry came to a halt awkwardly just outside the living room, but Sirius showed no such hesitation in walking boldly over with a grin on his face as he took in the scene of Tonks wearing Lupin’s blue buttoned up shirt like a dress while she cuddled against his bare chest.

‘Well, I suppose it could have been worse,” Tonks laughed good naturedly, briefly kissing Lupin’s lips before she climbed off of his lap.

“Yeah, Harry and I could have gotten here five minutes later,” Sirius joked, as Lupin blushed and reached desperately for the grey sweater on the floor. He slipped it on and then quickly buttoned it up over his bare - and very scarred - chest.

“We didn’t think anyone would show up at this time of night,” Tonks said, her short bob of hair the same blue as the men’s shirt she was wearing. Harry noticed that it was also the same shade of Dumbledore’s eyes and his stomach seemed to painfully twist inside his abdomen.

Tonks’ eyes flashed nervously between Sirius and Harry but when neither of them said anything, she proceeded on with the news it couldn’t have been clearer that she was bursting to say. “Remus and I did a thing today before we went to put up Harry’s relatives, didn’t we?”

She smiled radiantly at Lupin, who shyly reached for her hand and lifted it up to show Sirius and Harry the diamond set of rings that she was wearing on her finger.

“You got married?” Harry asked, stepping into the room and glancing between the smiling pair. “Congratulations!”

He was elated for them but also somewhat surprised. He knew from conversations overheard in the manor and from things Sirius had shared with him, that Lupin had tried to push Tonks away several times due to his Lycanthropy, but to no avail. She wanted him, she loved him, and it was clear that Lupin loved her back. They looked simply delighted right now in the bliss of one another’s company and Harry felt immediately guilty for being here right now, with nothing to spread but negativity and sadness. Though Sirius seemed intent on pushing those feelings down for at least a little bit longer.

“You got married without telling me?” Sirius looked a little put out, as he nonetheless patted his friend affectionately on the back. “What’s the matter, Remus? Didn’t you want the same level of awesomeness I gave to James when he was getting married?”

“No, because if you recall, you made me a nervous wreck with all that,” Lupin said calmly. “Especially after what happened to James at that Bachelor Party you planned for him.”

“What happened?” asked Harry eagerly.

“Oh, nothing,” Sirius smiled. “I lost him for a couple of hours, but it was no big deal. We found him eventually. Lily never even found out. We made a pact to never tell her.”

“Well, just ourselves and an officiant this morning was quite enough,” Lupin said, as Tonks giggled and Harry laughed at the chaos and shenanigans he could only imagine Sirius and James had surrounded his parents’ wedding with.

“We got married, then we went to lunch, had a stroll…” Tonks said dreamily, before winking at Harry. “And then we went to pick up the Dursleys.”

“And they ruined the rest of the day, I’m sure,” Harry said apologetically.

“Oh, just you wait,” Tonks said mischievously. “I’m going to make them love me.”

“Well, not if you keep changing your appearance every time they turn around,” Lupin shook his head. “She changed her hair colour at least fifteen times in the car. I told you they wouldn’t like that.”

“Well, what did they expect after Vernon made that rude comment about my hair when we pulled up?” Tonks complained. “And then Petunia - how unnatural and attention-seeking, what will the neighbours think?”

Her imitation was so on par that Harry burst out laughing. It was easier to appreciate the ridiculousness of the Dursleys now that he didn’t have to live with them and obey all of their stupid rules. He wasn’t looking forward to reuniting with them at all, and Sirius had said he didn’t have to if he didn’t want to. They were going to be staying indefinitely at Grimmauld Place, and Tonks and Lupin had moved in to provide their security and have a bit more space to themselves. It would also be closer for Tonks to travel back and forth to work at the Ministry.

“But you two must be here for a reason,” Lupin said suddenly, looking grave again despite his good fortune. “What’s going on? Did something happen?”

The last of the laughter died out and the atmosphere in the room shifted immediately. Tonks and Lupin both looked ecstatically in love right now; celebrating themselves and finding the humour in their new companionship in the forms of Harry’s disagreeable relatives. Meanwhile, Sirius and Harry had enjoyed a temporary distraction from what they really had come here to do. Remembering suddenly with a pang that so much of Britain still did not know the horrible truth, which would shatter everyone come tomorrow morning when the owls began to arrive.

“A lot is going on, I’m afraid,” Sirius told them. “But we didn’t really set out here to burst your bubble either….”

“That’s okay, we don’t mind,” Tonks said worriedly.

There was another pause and Harry felt like Sirius was waiting for him to say the next part. Perhaps it was more his given right to make the claims in the way that best suited him. As he grieved in two separate ways, for two separate reasons.

“Dumbledore’s dead,” was all Harry could say.

“No!” Lupin gasped, glancing at Sirius as though waiting for him to discredit Harry’s words. When that didn’t happen he sank back down on his chair and buried his face in his hands while an uncomfortable sob escaped him. Harry had never seen Lupin lose control before; he felt as though he was intruding upon something private, indecent.

“How did he die?” whispered Tonks. “How did it happen?”

There was nothing to be said except the truth. “Professor Snape had - he killed him.”

Sirius placed his hand on Harry’s shoulder and squeezed him tightly, massaging the tense muscles that were throbbing all the way down into his arm. It might have been viewed as the show of pride in him that Harry knew it to be, or else a display of comfort for Harry having been so betrayed by someone he had believed on their side. All the same, Harry felt completely sick to his stomach as he bit down on his tongue to resist the compulsion to spew out the whole story. He hoped the people who mattered would figure out some semblance of truth without his assistance, but he accepted that there were some words that simply could not be spoken. Some things are so classified that they cannot be put out into the universe.

“I don’t understand,” Tonks shook her head, looking completely confused.

“There’s a lot you’re not saying,” Lupin said, raising his head from his hands to look back and forth between Harry and Sirius, waiting for an explanation that was not to come.

“Yes, there is,” Sirius nodded. “But leave it be, Moony. This is the way it is.”

Lupin shook his head and buried his face back in his hands. A growl escaping from somewhere in his throat like a wounded, but suppressed wolf. Harry knew that the loss of the great Albus Dumbledore was going to hit each individual hard in one way or another, but Remus Lupin was grieving the man who had permitted him to come study at Hogwarts when no other headmaster would have ever allowed it.

The kindest and perhaps most wonderful part about Albus Dumbledore was that he had always believed in giving people the chances they needed to grow into their full potential. He could see the good in anyone and knew how to nurture the best in them. While hopefully setting up enough moving pieces to destroy Voldemort once and for all in the end, Dumbledore would also be forever remembered for brightening so many lives that others would have easily written off as lost causes not worth the effort.

“WHAT THE RUDDY HELL IS THAT!” a bellowing voice suddenly shouted from above, which Harry immediately recognized as that of Uncle Vernon. It broke the silent vigil that had overcome the four people downstairs lost in their emotions about Albus Dumbledore and all the things left unsaid between themselves.

“It’s okay,” Sirius smiled, as Tonks and Lupin had both raised their wands and been about to run out of the room to check on the well-being of the Dursleys. “I may have given Kreacher orders earlier today to clean the guest bedrooms when they were sleeping tonight.”

“Really, Sirius?” Lupin groaned. “While I’m trying so hard to get along with them, you have to resort to tricks like that?”

“Hey, what can I say?” Sirius shrugged, winking at Harry. “That miserable old elf finally proved himself good for something.”

“Perhaps good for more than one thing,” Harry muttered under his breath, reminded at once about the reason why they had come. To uncover the truth and put everything back as it should be. He knew there were answers here.