Mortal Once More

13th October, 1983 - Hogwarts Castle 

Think there’s any chance I could come in and talk? 

As Regulus stares at the blonde girl in front of him, those words echo around his brain, bouncing and skittering until he can scarcely wring any actual meaning from them anymore. 

She’s here. After all of that frantic scrabbling to find this mysterious blonde culprit, those witnesses who were only ever able to point them in vaguely the right direction, but never quite close enough…she’s here. The culprit has come to them. 

Not that Meggie Brown looks much like the kind of culprit they’ve been looking for at this moment. She’s standing there outside his office, staring at him with wide, anxious green eyes, shifting from foot to foot restlessly in the billowing silence, looking like she has never felt so uncomfortable and uncertain in her life. 

As Regulus stares at her, struggling to process any of this, the deafening silence continues, expands to breaking point. It feels as though all three of them - Regulus, Fabian, this girl - are suspended in time for a moment, each of them holding their breath. 

Blinking rapidly, green eyes filling with tears, Meggie suddenly stumbles back a little, breaking the spell. 

“I’m…sorry,” she mumbles, seeming to shrink slightly, as though trying to make herself as small as possible. “I shouldn’t have…this was stupid…obviously,” she lets out a self-deprecating, humourless little laugh. “I’ll just…forget it, I…good night.” She turns, making as if to flee the bizarre scene. 

“No - wait!” Fabian exclaims hastily. She stops. Turns back to look at him. “It’s Meggie, isn’t it?” he continues, his voice quieter now he’s got the girl’s attention. 

“I…yeah,” she says awkwardly, looking back at him with a wary expression on her face, as though she thinks he might be about to chastise her for calling so late. “Yeah, I’m Meggie. Hi.” 

“Hi, Meggie,” he replies. “You said you needed help, right?” 

She nods tremulously. 

“Well,” Fabian continues, and now his face breaks into a small, reassuring smile. The kind that always makes Regulus’s heart skip a beat. Or three. “The way I see it, asking for help is never stupid. Or something you need to apologise for.” 

Meggie’s lower lip trembles a little at that. Regulus thinks he hears her breath hitch slightly as she looks at Fabian, as though nobody else has ever made her feel seen like that. He knows the feeling. 

“And I’m guessing, from the fact that you’ve turned up here to speak to Professor Black even though it’s past midnight, that the thing you need help with is actually pretty important?” 

“I…yeah,” she replies, her voice a little choked. “Yeah, it’s important. I…I’m scared.”

“I see,” Fabian says quietly, without a hint of judgement in his voice. “Definitely important, then.” 

He reaches over Regulus’s head to open the office door a little wider, before stepping back, gesturing her over the threshold. 

“Come on in,” he says, shooting the girl another grin, “Professor Black is hoarding some pretty cosy seats away in here, as you can see.”

“I…thank you,” Meggie says quietly, stepping tentatively into the office, with a nervous glance in Regulus’s direction, as though worried he might tell her to get out. 

“Reg, we can get the kettle brewing, can’t we?” Fabian asks, escorting the blonde girl to one of the cosiest armchairs by the fireplace. He waves his wand silently so that flames spark up from nowhere, crackling merrily as though they’d been burning there for hours. 

“Uhh…sure,” Regulus answers lamely, still struggling to process any of this as he taps the kettle with the tip of his wand. 

“Mischief managed,” he mutters under his breath, trying to tap his wand as subtly as possible against the Marauders’ Map as he walks past the coffee table, wincing a little as the map ostentatiously wipes itself clear and folds itself away, attempting to look like an insignificant piece of parchment. Meggie casts it a look somewhere between curious and suspicious. Not quite as inconspicuous as he’d hoped for, then. 

“Here,” he says, attempting to distract her, his hands trembling slightly as he hands her a mug of steaming hot tea. 

“Thank you,” she murmurs. 

“You’re seventeen, right, Meggie?” Fabian asks, apropos of nothing as far as Regulus can tell. 

“Um….yes?” she replies, looking as bewildered by the question as Regulus feels. 

“Good - so you can have a spot of Firewhiskey with your tea, then?” he asks her, with another one of those mischievous grins that makes Regulus’s pulse go crazy. “If you’d like, of course. Professor Black has quite an impressive collection stashed away somewhere in here.” He waves his wand again; a large red bottle shaped like a flame comes soaring towards him from Regulus’s liquor cabinet, and Fabian catches it one-handed, grinning still more broadly. “See?” he says, holding it up to show her. “Ogden’s Finest, apparently.” 

Shit. Regulus really did think he’d done a better job of keeping that hidden. 

“I…sure, thank you,” says Meggie in a small voice. “That is, um, if it’s alright with Professor Black?” She casts him a nervous look.

“Why not,” he says with a sigh, summoning two more mugs and teabags, deciding that keeping the Firewhiskey away from Fabian is probably a lost cause at this point. He’s a grown man, after all - Regulus just worries about him sometimes. 

Fabian takes the mug Regulus had summoned, holding the bottle of Firewhiskey in the other hand and pouring a small measure into first Meggie’s mug, then Regulus’s. Once the others are both settled down, however, he gives his wand a slight flick, so that the lid screws itself back on as the bottle soars away, resuming its place in the liquor cabinet without Fabian having touched a drop. Regulus looks at him, a little taken aback. 

“Aren’t you going to -?” Meggie starts. Fabian shakes his head, his grin a little more self-deprecating this time. 

“Nah, I don’t need any. Think I’ve had enough of the stuff over these past few years to last me for a lifetime, or a good long while at least. Plus, it makes Professor Black a bit worried when I have it - and I don’t like making him worried.” 

Regulus blinks at his boyfriend. He’d never told him that it worried him. Hadn’t realised he’d even noticed. 

“Oh,” Meggie says awkwardly. 

Regulus can tell she’s intrigued by Fabian’s confession, but has no idea how to ask politely. Characteristically, though, he seems to read her mind anyway. 

“I was having a pretty rough time,” he tells her quietly, no trace of his usual mischief in his eyes now. “My…” He takes a deep breath, as though steeling himself. “My twin brother died, you see. Well, he was killed, actually. His name is - was - his name was Gideon.” 

“Oh,” Meggie responds in a small voice. 

There’s something flickering in her green eyes - something more than just pity. Like she’s suddenly recognised a kindred spirit. Like she’s found someone else who is more intimately familiar with grief than they ever wished to be. 

Regulus, though, is staring at his boyfriend, feeling the back of his throat burn, his eyes stinging a little. It’s one thing to realise the other man is aware that he’s had issues with alcohol in the past, and is consciously trying to get better - but it’s more than that. Ever since that night when they returned from their ordeal in the cave, Regulus doesn’t think he’s ever heard Fabian say Gideon’s name out loud - he usually cuts himself off, breathing harshly, eyes welling with tears, before he gets to the end of the sentence. Regulus knows, of course, that his boyfriend will never stop feeling the loss of his twin - hell, he can’t even think about the possibility of losing Sirius without his entire brain flinching violently away from the prospect, like a small child burning their hand on a stove. 

But it seems that maybe, just maybe, Fabian is actually healing, the loss of his twin no longer a gaping, open wound. 

“I…I didn’t know you had a brother,” Meggie says quietly. “I’m…I’m so sorry, Fabian.” 

He gives her a small, sad smile, a smile that doesn’t quite reach his beautiful eyes.

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Yeah, me too. I’m sure you’d have loved Gid - everyone did. We always used to argue about which one of us was funnier. It was him, of course. Maybe if he was still around, I’d finally be able to stop being a brat and actually tell him.” He stops, taking another slow, deep breath, careful and measured, as though he’s reminding himself how to do it. “Luckily for me, I met Professor Black here. And he’d never tell you this in a million years - he doesn’t even know it, really - but he’s pretty damn good at helping people. I don’t know if I’d be here now, in fact, if it wasn’t for him.” 

Regulus lets out a ridiculous, strangled noise before he can stop himself, immediately raising one hand to cover his mouth. He can feel Meggie looking at him - but Fabian is looking at him, too, bright eyes soft, that look on his face that seems to be reserved for him and him alone. Wordlessly, the other man reaches out to him; Regulus grasps his hand urgently, like a drowning man. Fabian clears his throat before turning back to Meggie. 

“So, anyway…if you need help, Meggie, then you’ve definitely come to the right person.” 

“Why did you come to me, though?” Regulus asks her, finally forcing himself to look away from Fabian. Because, well - that part still isn’t making sense to him. “If you need help, Miss Brown - why come to my office? Why not go to Flitwick, given he’s your Head of House? Why not go to Dumbledore?” 

Meggie blinks at him for a moment, as though taken aback by his question. 

“Well…I guess I was scared, for one thing,” she says slowly. “Of what Professor Dumbledore might think of me, I mean.”

“I see,” Regulus replies, raising his eyebrows slightly.

“But that was only part of it,” Meggie adds hastily. “The thing is, I remembered that, when all the weird shit was happening with the Chamber of Secrets, the messages being daubed on the walls and everything, it was Professor Black and Professor Lupin who made it stop. I mean, obviously I wasn’t aware of most of that, at the time,” she says, her voice shaking a little - Regulus can scarcely imagine how terrifying it must be to have whole weeks, months , missing from your memory and your life - “but I was told that it was Professors Black and Lupin who saved everyone last time. Well…they saved almost everyone, anyway.” 

Regulus feels a sickening lurch of guilt as a shadow flickers in Meggie’s green eyes. He and Remus hadn’t solved the mystery in time, of course. They had failed Alfie Thomas - and by extension, they had failed his parents, his friends, and his girlfriend. It’s almost impossible to move past the enormity of that failure, confronted as he is now with this living reminder of it. 

“And I also heard that it was little Bill Weasley who was down in the Chamber - who opened the Chamber.” Fabian immediately flinches at that. Regulus squeezes his hand reassuringly. “I didn’t really understand that, at first,” Meggie continues. “I mean, why would a first-year be opening the Chamber, especially a kid from a family famous for being ‘blood traitors’?” She raises one trembling hand, putting disdainful quote marks around those words in midair. “More to the point, how would an eleven-year-old kid even have the power to do something like that? But then, over the last few weeks, I sort of started to think…maybe none of that was the kid’s choice. I still don’t really understand it, but maybe something…happened to him, somehow? Maybe he ran into something he didn’t understand, something dangerous. Something that hurt him. Something that made him….hurt other people.” 

“You’re right, Meggie,” Fabian whispers. “Bill did run into something dangerous. Something much more powerful than him.”

“I think…” Her voice trembles and cracks; she clears her throat and starts again. “I think I might know how that feels.” 

Regulus exchanges a glance with Fabian, unease trickling slowly down his spine. Judging by the expression on his boyfriend’s face, he can feel it too. 

Regulus raises one eyebrow slightly; with a small sigh, the other man nods and turns back to the girl. This girl who’s come to them for help because she’s terrified of herself. 

“Wanna tell us what’s going on, Meggie? Think you could start at the beginning?” 

Meggie Brown lets out a slow, shaky breath of her own, and nods. 

“It’s sort of hard to say where this all began,” she mumbles. “Well, no, I suppose it began with Alfie. Or… without Alfie, I guess.” 

Her breath hitches in her throat and she pauses, apparently fighting to keep herself under control. Meggie isn’t looking at them any more, but staring determinedly at her own hands, twisting in her lap. Head bowed, pale face illuminated by the flickering firelight, tears caught in her eyelashes. 

“Pomfrey fed me the Mandrake Restorative Draught, and suddenly I could see and hear and feel things again…but I didn’t understand anything. I didn’t know why the hell I was suddenly waking up in the hospital wing, when the last memory I had was walking down to the library. They told me I had been Petrified by a bloody Basilisk - targeted because I’m Muggleborn, apparently - and I couldn’t even begin to process that. Nobody was explaining anything properly - so I asked Pomfrey if she would tell Alfie I was awake. Because I needed to see him. Because there was nobody in the world I trusted as much as him. But Pomfrey just gave me this… look. This look that made me feel as though I was made of glass, or something. Like she didn’t want to be the one to shatter me.” 

Fabian’s hand clenches almost painfully around Regulus’s; he squeezes back reassuringly, knowing that this story hits far too close to home for him. 

“And that’s…that’s when Pomfrey told me that she couldn’t tell Alfie I was awake,” Meggie whispers, squeezing her eyes shut. “She couldn’t, because Alfie was gone.” 

Regulus feels another sharp stab of sickening remorse as he looks at her, sees the way she’s barely managing to hold herself together to tell this story.

“He was just gone,” Meggie repeats, as though she’s reminding herself as much as telling them, the shock of her boyfriend’s absence still rattling through her. “One minute, he was coming to meet me in the library after dinner, and the next…he’s not here. He’s not anywhere. And I was trying to piece it together, what the fuck happened, and Alfie’s friends told me…they told me that the last time they ever spoke to him, he was sneaking out of his dorm after curfew. He was on his way to the hospital wing. To see me. Maybe…maybe if he’d just stayed in his bloody room…”

Meggie’s voice trembles and cracks, and Regulus thinks he feels something inside him splinter and crack along with it. She raises a shaking hand, scrubbing at her eyes almost angrily. 

“Stupid bloody Gryffindors,” she mutters, speaking more to herself than to them. 

“I’ve been saying the same thing for months,” Regulus tells her solemnly. 

Meggie lets out a choked sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sob. 

“I just…I couldn’t wrap my head around it,” she whispers. “It sort of felt like the world had ended, because he wasn’t here any more…but then, what the hell was I still doing here? You know what I mean?” 

“Yeah,” Fabian murmurs. “Yeah, I know exactly what you mean, actually.” Glancing sideways at his boyfriend, Regulus sees that his bright eyes are welling with tears, his jaw slightly clenched. He’s wearing that expression - thankfully, a rarer sight these days - that tells Regulus he’s trying desperately to ground himself in the present, to stop himself from being shattered by the grief of the past. 

Something too big to be contained in mere words wells up in his chest as he looks at Fabian; not wishing to interrupt Meggie’s tale, Regulus rubs small, reassuring circles over the other man’s hand with his thumb, hoping his boyfriend will understand even a fraction of the unsaid things in his chest, just from that tiny touch. 

Meggie finally looks up from her hands, twisting in her lap, and looks directly at Fabian. Something unspoken seems to pass between the two of them, in that moment. Meggie draws a deep breath - when she speaks again, she seems to be speaking only to him. Regulus has the distinct feeling of being locked out of the conversation, somehow - and yet, he feels no resentment. 

“But it seemed like…nobody else really understood that Alfie was gone,” Meggie continues, her voice shaking slightly. “I came out of the hospital wing, struggling to understand anything, trying so hard just to keep breathing - but nobody else seemed to understand that the whole world had been thrown off-balance. It was like they were just…. relieved.” Her face twists slightly, as though the word is something disgustingly bitter. “People told me how lucky I was to survive a Basilisk attack, how thankful I should be. The Chamber had been closed, little Bill Weasley had been rescued just in the nick of time” - Fabian flinches again - “Professor Dumbledore was back at Hogwarts, and the school was safe again. It seemed like, as far as most people were concerned, it was time to celebrate. Even now, it’s like there’s this…I don’t know, this… huge, dark, hole in the world, this absence where Alfie Thomas was once living and laughing and loving. But sometimes it feels like everyone’s eyes just…slide past that gap, that hole, because it’s not convenient for them to dwell on it. Sometimes it seems like people have just forgotten. Nobody can see the hole, nobody can feel it. Except me.” 

Her voice breaks, cuts off. With one hand still entwined with Regulus’s, Fabian extends his other hand towards her. She looks at him with wide, brimming eyes.

“If you need,” he says quietly. “I’ve found that it helps. A little, anyway.”

Her lip trembles, but she tentatively accepts his offer, reaching out to place her hand in his much larger one.

“I…thanks,” she whispers.

“Any time,” he tells her earnestly, squeezing her hand gently. 

Meggie gives a tremulous nod. She takes a long, deep breath before continuing with her story. 

“I just missed him so much,” she says shakily, “I still miss him so much. Alfie was my best friend, long before I fell in love with him. He was…he was everything to me. How could he just be gone? I still don’t understand it.”

She closes her eyes for a moment, a fresh tear creeping its way down her cheek. Fabian squeezes her hand again, which seems to somehow give her the strength to open her eyes again, to keep talking. 

“I just felt so…alone. Mostly because Alfie wasn’t here any more, but also because…nobody would bloody talk to me about him. Pomfrey told me what had happened to him, and she told me how sorry she was. Everyone in this bloody school - my friends, Alfie’s friends, the teachers even - they all wanted to tell me that they were sorry about Alfie, it was such a shame , and if there was anything I needed to talk about, they would all be there to listen.” 

For the first time, Meggie’s expression darkens, a flicker of something more than just grief and pain in her green eyes. Something closer to anger. 

“But as it turned out, that was a lie. They were all lying. Everyone says that they want to help you, that they’ll listen to you, they’ll be there whenever you need them - because that’s what they think they’re supposed to say when death happens. But whenever I so much as hinted that I needed to talk to one of my friends, one of his friends, it was like people couldn’t get away from me fast enough. I felt like…I feel like…I have so much love left over, that I never got a chance to give him, so many words left that I wanted to tell him and I never did, because it never occurred to me for a moment that our time - his time - was running out. It’s like all of that love, all of those words I never said, they turned into this huge, ugly cloud, or shadow, or something, that I’m carrying around everywhere with me, that I can’t shake off - and it feels like wherever I go, it turns me into an awkward inconvenience, a burden for everyone else. It’s like people were terrified that my grief, the way it’s fucked me up, is poisonous, infectious or something. So despite their promises, their empty words - no, nobody listens to me. They barely even look at me. Sometimes I feel like people’s eyes just slide right past me, like any chair I’m in is empty. Like I’m…invisible, or something.”

The guilt is so sharp for a moment that Regulus feels as though somebody has reached into his chest, grabbed hold and viciously twisted. Because…it’s true, isn’t it? What Meggie is saying? Hadn’t he and Remus congratulated themselves on destroying Riddle and the diary, saving the school, before immediately moving on to the next problem? He’s been so fixated on his own problems with the Dark Lord, his Horcruxes, Dumbledore, Narcissa, Sirius - he’s scarcely stopped to consider Alfie Thomas, or the shattered girl he left behind, since he handed the flask of Restorative Draught to Pomfrey all those months ago. 

Rosie Macmillan couldn’t remember Meggie’s name, remembering her as ‘that girl who lost her boyfriend’, and he’s willing to bet the same is true for many other students, despite the fact that Meggie Brown’s name had been all over the school when she was first Petrified, before Alfie Thomas’s death. Meggie hadn’t stopped coming to classes once she was revived - including his Potions classes - even though anyone who stopped to look at her for one moment could tell that this girl was broken, that she needed help. But Regulus hadn’t stopped to look at her, he realises now. Despite knowing what had happened to her better than most people, it was as though his eyes had slid right past her chair. 

And why? Because it was too inconvenient to think about her pain on top of his own dramas? Because he didn’t have enough compassion to spare any for a girl whose life had been destroyed? 

“Yeah,” Fabian murmurs suddenly. There’s a shadow of something in his eyes as he looks at her, as though that bright light he carries everywhere with him has flickered out for a moment. “Yeah, I know the feeling, Meggie.” Regulus has to bite back a small, pathetic whimper at that. “It’s pretty shit, huh?”

Meggie lets out a small, choked laugh at that.

“Yeah. yeah, it’s pretty shit.” 

“I’ll tell you something I’ve figured out, though,” the freckled man continues, squeezing her hand again. “Grief’s a hell of a bitch - and it likes to prey on you. It likes to lie to you. Sure, yes, there’s plenty of people who won’t know how to deal with your pain, who would rather just look away from it, pretend it’s not there. Grief likes to tell you things will always be like that, that you’ll just be alone forever, carrying the burden by yourself. Took me a while to figure it out - some days I still have to remind myself, in fact - but that’s not true. It’s not true, Meggie. You’re not alone. There are people who will love you, who will listen to you and see you. They just have to find you first. Regulus here, he found me. And it’s lucky he did, really - because now, I’ve found you. And I promise you, Meggie Brown, you are not invisible. I see you.” 

“I…” Meggie opens her mouth and promptly closes it again. As fresh tears trickle down her cheeks, she withdraws her hand from Fabian’s, raising it to her mouth to stifle a sob. “Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you for saying that.” 

He just shakes his curly head.

“You don’t need to thank me for that, Meggie,” he says quietly. She gives a tremulous nod, still pressing her hand against her mouth. 

“I’m sorry,” Regulus pipes up awkwardly. “For not seeing how much you needed help. I should have been paying more attention.” 

“It wasn’t just you, Professor,” she murmurs. 

“No,” he replies, guilt twisting itself into knots in his chest, “but that doesn’t excuse me.”

Meggie shrugs slightly, without answering - which, Regulus supposes, is answer enough in itself. 

For a moment, the room is quiet as he looks at her tearstained face, frowning a little as he tilts his head to the side. 

“This isn’t the only reason that you came here asking for help tonight though, is it?” he asks finally. “This grief, I mean. Fabian told you his nephew was unlucky enough to come across something much more powerful than him, last year. And you said, ‘I think I might know how that feels.’ What exactly did you mean by that, Meggie?” 

Something new flits across her face now as she looks back at him, as swift as the shadow of a dragonfly on the surface of a lake. Something that looks very much like guilt. 

“Well…” she says hesitantly, and Regulus can tell immediately that this was the part she was stalling. “I was just so…so angry. My boyfriend was murdered when the Chamber was opened - but it seemed to me like nobody cared about justice being served. About revenge.” There’s something fierce, burning in those green eyes now, Regulus notices. Despite the fresh tear tracks, it’s almost unnerving. “Of course, when I heard that it was Bill Weasley who was found down in the Chamber, who’d opened the Chamber, I knew it couldn’t have been him - there had to have been something much darker behind the scenes.” 

“It was Lucius Malfoy who was to blame, Meggie,” Fabian tells her, a shadow darkening his own face as he says the name. “He’s dead now, as I imagine you read in the Prophet. No great loss, as far as I’m concerned.” 

Meggie shakes her head, looking slightly mad for a moment. 

“But I thought it must have been something to do with You-Know-Who,” she says quietly. “That article hadn’t been published yet; I didn’t know it was Malfoy at the time.”

“At the time…?” Regulus echoes, staring at her.

She flinches a little, looking at him with wide eyes, as though she’d said more than she’d intended to. 

“At the time I started looking,” she whispers. “I…I thought I was alone, I thought everybody else had already forgotten Alfie. And I knew I could never be strong or powerful or clever enough to take down the bastard all by myself. So, a few weeks before the summer holidays…I went looking. For an advantage.”

“An advantage?” Regulus echoes, unease dripping down his spine. “What do you mean, an ‘advantage’?” 

“I…” Meggie scrambles for a moment, a desperate look in her eyes. “You have to understand, I couldn’t bear just…just sitting here in school, being invisible. And the stupid Ministry never seems to make any bloody progress - probably because half their employees are bigots themselves, if not outright Death Eaters - and I wanted to do something to take that bastard down myself. No, I needed to do something.” 

“And by ‘that bastard’,” Regulus says weakly, “you mean the Dark Lord?” 

“‘ Dark Lord’, ” Meggie repeats bitterly, her face darkening. “Y’know, I had no idea I was a witch - or that this whole world even existed - until I was eleven years old. Didn’t know that that fact would automatically make me a second-class citizen when I arrived in this world, either.” 

Regulus fidgets slightly, raising a hand to rub at the back of his neck. 

“So I had a lot of catching up to do,” Meggie continues, apparently oblivious to Regulus’s discomfort - though his family background isn’t exactly a secret, so he supposes he couldn’t blame her if some part of her relishes making him squirm. “Did a hell of a lot of research and reading over my first two or three years here, probably more than everyone else in my dorm put together. Which is saying a lot, given Ravenclaws like to form research groups completely unconnected to our homework, just for fun.” Fabian snorts a little at that. “Anyway, I found from my research that, unlike Muggles, the wizarding world doesn’t actually have any royal families, or any aristocracy - despite the airs and graces the old pureblood families give themselves. So this whole ‘Dark Lord’ thing - it’s complete bullshit,” she spits, eyes burning. “He might be powerful and dangerous and all that, but the man is clearly an unhinged egomaniac, going around making people call him ‘the Dark Lord. ’” Her words positively drip with scorn. “The whole thing reeks of insecurity to me, too. Overcompensating for something. Maybe he’s not even a pureblood himself. Maybe he didn’t get hugged enough as a child. Or maybe it’s just small dick syndrome, I don’t know.” 

Regulus chokes on a badly timed sip of Firewhiskey. Fabian lets out a startled laugh, his freckled face splitting into a wide grin as he looks at Meggie like she’s the most amazing person he’s ever seen. 

“I knew I would never have lost Alfie, if it weren’t for Voldemort,” she continues. Regulus blinks at her, a little startled by her casual use of the name - he never really hears anyone just say it, except for Dumbledore and Sirius. Dumbledore is probably the only wizard alive who’s more powerful than the man; as for Sirius, he’s just a reckless idiot. Noticing his look, Meggie rolls her eyes. 

“Oh, what’s he gonna do about it? Has he got a tracking spell on anybody who dares to mention the pretentious fake name he obviously spent ages trying to think of to make himself sound more intimidating?” 

Regulus can’t help but grin a little at her flippancy, despite himself. 

“Anyway,” Meggie continues, “I knew I needed to find a way to bring the bastard down - or to do my bit, at least. At first I thought about applying to join the Aurors once I graduate - but I would never be accepted now, my grades have slipped far too much since…since it happened.” Pain flickering behind her eyes again. “Anyway, even if they did let me in, it would take at least three years before I was fully qualified and the Ministry would allow me to do even the most basic fieldwork. Besides, I bet I’d just get a letter of rejection full of some pompous rambling bullshit, a string of empty apologies and ‘we regret to inform you’s,  which would basically translate to the fact that my background isn’t ‘pure’ enough to join one of the Ministry’s most elite departments. As if I’d ever even want to work for the Ministry. Bigoted dickheads.” 

“They are bigoted dickheads,” Fabian agrees solemnly. “But did you consider talking to Professor Dumbledore, Meggie? Maybe asking if he’d consider letting you join the Order once you graduate? I know we’ve got plenty of Muggleborn members; don’t suppose you’d remember Lily Evans - well, Potter now, I guess - or Mary Macdonald? Were they both before your time here?” 

Meggie is staring at him with a bewildered expression on her face now. 

“What the hell is the ‘Order’? Is that some kind of cult, or something?” 

“It’s…oh…” Fabian’s face falls slightly. Evidently, he’s only just remembered that the Order is technically supposed to be a secret organisation. 

After all, Dumbledore never bothered to get approval from anyone at the Ministry before forming it - indeed, the Order’s very existence is only necessary because of the Ministry’s collective incompetence, despite the fact that there are some prominent Order members who are secretly in it - so, essentially, they’re an unofficial, borderline illegal resistance group. 

“Well done, Fabian,” Regulus tells his boyfriend sardonically. The other man grimaces. 

“What? What am I missing?” Meggie asks, frowning from one to the other. 

“Well…” Fabian hesitates for a moment, then sighs. “Okay, look, I wasn’t actually supposed to tell you about this - that was my bad. The Order of the Phoenix is a secret organisation that was founded by Professor Dumbledore to fight back against You-Know-Who. Because the Ministry, as you said, are mostly bigoted, incompetent dickheads, and Dumbledore knows it. Mind you, a lot of brave and talented people trust Professor Dumbledore, so there are a few of the more decent Ministry members who are in the know. Amelia Bones and Kingsley Shacklebolt, for instance. Mad-Eye Moody was even in the Order, at least until he bit off more Death Eaters than he could chew.” 

“Holy shit,” says Meggie, staring at him in stunned disbelief.

“Yeah,” Fabian agrees, laughing a little at the look on her face. “Though, now I come to think of it, Professor Dumbledore probably wouldn’t let you join for a few years yet; I expect he’d say you’re still too young to be putting yourself in that kind of danger for the cause.” 

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Regulus pipes up sceptically. “The old man has a track record of recruiting people who are scarcely more than child soldiers for his army. Easier for him to find sacrificial pawns, that way. And if those child soldiers are not only desperate to join the cause, but also feeling particularly isolated and vulnerable - well, I’d say that’s all the more convenient, as far as he’s concerned.” 

Fabian glares at him pointedly as Meggie raises her startled gaze to his face. Regulus winces a little.

“I…sorry,” he mutters. “That was tactless of me.” 

Meggie shakes her head, her wide green eyes brimming with tears again.

“It’s true, though,” she says quietly. “I was feeling isolated. I wasn’t thinking….clearly, I thought nobody was going to lift a finger to help me. And I didn’t know that Dumbledore already had a whole secret resistance movement going on behind the scenes.” She lets out a bitter little self-deprecating laugh, as though suddenly struck by the irony of some private joke. “Hell, maybe if I had known about this Order, I wouldn’t have gone looking for -” 

She cuts herself off abruptly, that brief shadow of something that looks almost like guilt crossing her face again.

“Looking for…?” Regulus prompts her, uneasy impatience making his voice sharper than he’d intended. 

Meggie darts an almost frightened glance at Fabian, as though afraid she might be about to lose his good opinion forever, before drawing in a slow, deep breath, steeling herself. 

“The diadem,” she says quietly. “I went looking for the lost diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw.” 

For one seemingly endless moment, the room goes completely silent as Regulus struggles to process those words, certain he can’t possibly have heard Meggie right. 

“Ravenclaw’s lost diadem?” he croaks hoarsely, once he finally regains the ability to form coherent words. 

Meggie nods.

“Yeah,” she whispers. 

Regulus sits with that for a moment, with absolutely no clue how to proceed, feeling as though the air has suddenly been punched out of him. Instinctively, he turns to Fabian for help, but the other man is looking every bit as dazed as he feels. Regulus wonders if Fabian, too, has Dumbledore’s words echoing in his brain. 

“The only artefact with a connection to Ravenclaw, that I know of, is Rowena’s lost diadem. Knowing Tom, I do not doubt he was resourceful enough to find it, if he was determined enough.’ 

“But…” It’s more of a struggle than ever to keep his voice neutral. “Why the hell would you want to go looking for Ravenclaw’s diadem , of all things?” 

“Flitwick was talking about it in class,” she says quietly. “He said that - according to legend, anyway - whoever wore the diadem would be granted knowledge and wisdom beyond all others. The wisdom of Rowena Ravenclaw herself. And I knew that I hadn’t learned anywhere near enough, didn’t have half the power I would need to bring that bastard down. And like I said, I’d have to wait at least three years if I went through Auror training, assuming they even let me in -”

“So you came up with the idea of looking for a lost diadem which is reputed by legend to grant powers of extraordinary wisdom?” Regulus asks, still staring at her in bewilderment as he tries to process this. “Despite the fact that there’s no evidence it actually has those powers? Or even any concrete evidence that the thing ever existed in the first place?” 

“Well, Professor Binns was pretty adamant when he insisted that none of us needed to panic, because the legend of the Chamber of Secrets was nothing but ‘nonsense and superstition,’” Meggie retorts, jutting her chin out defiantly. “Which we now know to be complete bullshit. In fact, I’m pretty sure that you and I both know that better than most people, Professor Black. So I figured, if the legend of Slytherin hiding a huge monster in a dramatic secret cavern under the school had been proven true - was the legend of Ravenclaw having a tiara with the power to grant the wearer extraordinary wisdom really that outlandish? If there’s one thing I’ve learnt since the age of eleven, it’s that the wizarding world is full of some pretty weird shit. Seems to me that nothing can be dismissed out of hand as pure fairytale, or legend. It’s always worth digging a little deeper.” 

Regulus opens his mouth to retort - and promptly closes it again. 

“Sorry - when you say ‘digging a little deeper,” Fabian pipes in a hoarse voice, clearly still struggling to keep up with this latest revelation, “....we’re talking about a diadem that’s been lost for centuries , Meggie.” 

“Well, the thing about shrouding something in myths and legends for centuries,” Meggie answers, “is that people tend not to put all that much effort into searching for it. Especially when the fact that the thing is ‘lost’ is a key part of the legend. That was the other reason my grades have been slipping. It wasn’t just because of Alfie.” Her breath hitches a little. “Well - yeah, okay, it sort of was, I suppose, but not directly. I got a little…obsessed, I guess you could say? With researching the diadem, I mean.” 

Fabian stares at her, apparently still reeling. 

“And?” Regulus prompts her. 

“Well, at first I was only finding second-hand accounts of it, retellings of the legend,” Meggie admits, grimacing slightly, “none of which were immensely helpful, given they were mostly conflicting accounts. But eventually - after far too many hours in the library, and a couple of well-placed Summoning charms -”

“What, like Accio? ” Fabian interjects, looking perplexed. 

“Yep,” Meggie confirms, “because eventually it dawned on me that the kind of primary sources I needed would be too valuable and fragile for that old hag Pince to even consider making them available to students. So I tried just Summoning them directly from her private collection - and it worked.”

“That’s…that’s brilliant,” Regulus says quietly, staring at her. 

Meggie shrugs slightly, a tiny grin twitching at the corner of her mouth.

“I take my research pretty seriously,” she replies. “Especially in this case.” 

“I’ll say,” Fabian breathes. “Well? Were the primary sources more useful?” 

“ Substantially more,” she replies. “I actually managed to find some eyewitness accounts of Ravenclaw’s diadem, for one thing. Couple of drawings, too. Some of which were actually done by sight; the artists had the diadem right in front of them. Seems Rowena certainly wasn’t shy about parading the thing, at least at first. We’ve got a statue of her in our common room; did you know that?” 

Both men shake their heads. “The sculptor carved her wearing her diadem. I’d just assumed for all these years that both Rowena and the diadem had been sculpted by the artist from imagination alone, centuries after she died and the diadem was lost. But, having seen these drawings in the primary sources, drawn by eyewitnesses, I realised the marble diadem on Rowena’s statue matched the drawings almost exactly. Meaning that the statue is centuries older than I’d assumed - the artist must have sculpted it using the actual, living Rowena Ravenclaw as a subject, before the diadem was lost.” 

“Holy shit,” Fabian murmurs, staring at her. 

Regulus is inclined to agree, although he likes to think he would have worded the sentiment a bit more eloquently. 

“Which meant I had a pretty good idea of what I was looking for, at least,” Meggie continues, as though she hadn’t heard Fabian. 

“Alright,” says Regulus slowly, still struggling to wrap his head around this information, “so you found from your research that the diadem actually existed - at least, it must have done at some point - and you knew pretty much exactly what it looked like. But…it’s still the lost diadem of Ravenclaw. I don’t understand how any of this would have helped you to actually find it.”

“Well, I won’t pretend it wasn’t a daunting prospect, deciding to look for something that had been lost for centuries,” Meggie replies with a grimace. “There were a few times I almost gave up, told myself I was being delusional. But it wasn’t like I had anything left to lose by searching for it.” Her laugh is bitter and self-deprecating again. “And then I reminded myself that most wizards and witches over the centuries have put the four founders on a ridiculous kind of pedestal, desperate to keep them shrouded in mystery, to keep the myths and legends intact. The last thing they want is to shatter those myths with logic. Besides which, most people over the centuries had no proof that the Chamber of Secrets was anything but a legend, either. But I certainly know now that the Chamber - and the monster Slytherin kept in it - was every bit as real as the dungeons, or the Astronomy Tower. So it seemed to me that the castle would be as good a starting point as any other.”

“The castle?” Regulus echoes, staring at her.

“Well, yeah,” Meggie replies, shrugging slightly. “If Slytherin felt it was his right to hide his secrets away inside Hogwarts itself - who’s to say that Ravenclaw hadn’t come to the same conclusion?” 

“So….what, you decided you were just going to search the entirety of Hogwarts for this thing?” Regulus asks, trying and failing to keep his tone free of scepticism. 

“Where did you start looking?” Fabian asks, clearly enthralled by the tale now. 

“Well, my first thought was to investigate the statue of Rowena in the common room, obviously. I thought the real diadem might have been magically sealed inside it, maybe even hidden in the marble replica. So I snuck down to the common room in the middle of the night, when it was empty, to examine the statue. I tried every single spell to reveal magical concealment that I know, but eventually I was forced to conclude it wasn’t there. Shame, really - I would have thoroughly applauded old Rowena for hiding her ‘lost’ diadem right under the noses of generations of Ravenclaws.”

“That would have been pretty iconic of her,” Fabian agrees. “So then what?”

“Well, eventually, I remembered this…this room, a room that Alfie and I had been to once.” Regulus tilts his head, intrigued by the sudden shift in her tone. “It was about two years ago now, I think. We’d come across this little first-year girl sobbing her eyes out. Turned out she was Muggleborn like us, and she’d brought one of her favourite Muggle books to Hogwarts to help her with her homesickness - but apparently some pureblood Slytherin dickhead had seen her reading a Muggle book and taken it away, taunting that she’d have to find it for herself. Anyway, she pointed the bloke out to us and I hexed him so badly that he started sprouting antlers, which got him talking. He told us he’d taken the book to ‘the room with the hidden things’, which was apparently on the seventh floor. None of us had a clue what he was talking about, and Alfie and I thought maybe he was just talking shit, but that was all we had to go on. So we took the kid - Penny - with us to the seventh floor, and started wandering along the corridor, blindly looking for this room. We were just pacing back and forth, feeling like idiots - but the third time we passed the same blank stretch of wall, we suddenly noticed a door that had just… appeared there. We could have sworn there hadn’t been any door there before, but when we opened it, we found one of the weirdest rooms I’ve ever seen - massive, with sunlight streaming in through these huge windows that make it look almost like a cathedral. It was completely packed to the rafters with things - stained cupboards, broken toys, random jewellery, Zonko's items banned by Filch, battered old books written by both wizarding and Muggle authors. It felt like we were combing through it for hours - there were a ton of really fascinating old things in there, which was sort of distracting - but eventually we managed to find Penny’s book. She was pretty thrilled to have it back, as I recall.” 

“Wait,” says Fabian suddenly, sitting bolt upright now, staring at her with a look of astonishment on his face. “I know that room. I’ve been in that room plenty of times - my brother and I discovered it accidentally in our third year, when we were hiding some things that Filch had banned, and then we kept going back there whenever we needed to hide shit. Hell, I think I even told your brother about it, so he could pass the news along to his friends,” he adds, turning excitedly to Regulus, “back when we were -” His cheeks suddenly turn pink, an awkward expression on his freckled face, as though he’s just remembered exactly who he’s talking to. “Back when we were hanging out a lot,” he finishes hastily. Regulus glares at him. “Except the room isn’t always like that,” Fabian adds, turning back to Meggie, apparently choosing to deal with Regulus’s annoyance later. “It’s different every time you go back there, depending on what you need at the time. Like, you want to practise some Quidditch moves but the pitch is already booked? It becomes an extra Quidditch pitch. Want somewhere to chill but Sirius Black and his friends are making the common room exceptionally noisy? It becomes a little nook full of cushions and books, with an amazing selection of teas and hot chocolates and some of Rosmerta’s best Butterbeers. It’s bloody cool, actually. Apparently some people call it the ‘Come and Go Room’. Others call it the ‘Room of Requirement.’ 

“Really?” Meggie asks, her eyes widening in amazement.

“Yep!” Fabian confirms, grinning enthusiastically at her. 

“Hold on a second.” Regulus holds up a hand, his head reeling as he stares at his boyfriend. “You’re telling me,” he asks slowly, through gritted teeth, “that there is a room on the seventh floor, inside this very castle, called the ‘Room of Requirement’, which literally provides you with whatever you are looking for at that moment?”

“Yep!” Fabian says again, beaming at him.

“Right,” Regulus says tightly. “And it never occurred to you that a room like that might have been rather useful for us, at any given point over the last year?” 

“Oh…well…” the other man’s freckled face has turned rather sheepish now.

“ Sirius knew about this? You told Sirius, but it slipped your mind to tell me? ” 

 “I mean, it probably can’t provide you with everything! ” Fabian says hastily. “Like, I doubt it could have provided us with Basilisk fangs, for instance.” 

“Basilisk fangs?” Meggie asks, perplexed. “Why the hell would you want Basilisk fangs?” 

Regulus ignores her, still glaring at Fabian.

“It’s not on the map,” he says. “How come it’s not on the map, if you told Sirius and his friends about it?”

Fabian shrugs helplessly, looking faintly alarmed by the expression on his face now. 

“How should I know why they didn’t put it on the map?” he asks. “Maybe they couldn’t, maybe the Founders enchanted the room to ensure it couldn’t be plotted on any map!”

Regulus opens his mouth to protest - and then closes it again, deflating a little.

“That…yeah, that would make a lot of sense, actually.” 

“What map?” Meggie asks insistently, glaring back and forth between them now. 

Fabian turns back to her, his expression apologetic. 

“Sorry, we’re being rude,” he says. “Regulus’s brother Sirius made an enchanted map of the school with his friends, to answer your question. It shows everyone in the school and what they’re doing, every minute of every day. It’s bloody useful, though not without its flaws, evidently. It’s right there on Regulus’s desk, if you fancy having a look later.”

“What…?” Meggie asks faintly, glancing over towards the desk, eyes wide. 

“But we interrupted your story,” says Regulus. “Well, alright, it was mostly me. I apologise. So  - you checked the statue of Ravenclaw, and then you remembered about this ‘Room of Hidden Things?’

“Yes,” Meggie whispers. 

“And…?” Regulus asks quietly, feeling suddenly as uneasy as though somebody had placed a cold hand on the back of his neck. “You didn’t find the diadem there either?”

“Actually,” she whispers, the reflected firelight flickering in her wide green eyes. “I…I did .” 

Regulus freezes, his breath seeming to solidify in his lungs. 

“You found the legendary lost diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw,” Fabian says slowly, his voice sounding slightly strangled, “in the Room of Requirement? ”

“Yeah,” Meggie breathes. “Took me a long time to search for it, but eventually I found a chipped bust of Paracelcus, and there it was, just…perched on top of the bust. I could see immediately that it was a perfect match for the pictures; it was engraved with Rowena’s motto, too. Wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure.” 

“You mean to say I’ve walked past a priceless, legendary artefact belonging to one of the Founders, multiple times,” Fabian asks, a dazed expression on his face now, “without even bloody noticing?” 

“If it helps, I think there must have been plenty of people who’ve done the same thing,” Meggie replies with a small shrug. “If it was Rowena herself who hid it in the Room, then Merlin only knows how many times it’s been moved around since. It just so happened that when I went in there, I knew exactly what I was looking for.”

“So you’ve been walking around wearing Rowena Ravenclaw’s diadem ever since?” Regulus asks faintly. “Without anybody noticing?” 

“Well, firstly, it’s much smaller and more delicate than it seemed on her statue, or in the drawings,” Meggie answers. “Obviously I knew I couldn’t go around wearing the thing on my head; I attached it to a chain I conjured, so I could wear it hanging around my neck, tucked away under my shirt. I put a charm on it too, so that anyone who caught even a glimpse of the chain would immediately look away, get distracted by something else. Not that there was any need for that, really,” she adds, with a bitter, twisted little smile. “Invisible girl, remember? But no,” she says, drawing in a deep, shaky breath. “I’m not wearing the diadem any more, to answer your question, Professor Black. It started to get…too much.” 

“Too much?” Fabian echoes. 

Meggie nods. 

“I could feel the power thrumming through the diadem from the first moment I picked it up,” she says quietly, avoiding their eyes now, her hands twisting in her laps again. “And for a while I thought - maybe I’d just bitten off more than I could chew, you know? Like, maybe Rowena’s magic was just that much more powerful than mine, especially with the headspace that I was in - and they do say strong enchantments only get stronger over time. Everything was so dark, without Alfie,” she whispers shakily. “I’d hoped so desperately that finding Ravenclaw’s diadem would lead me to the answer, but once I had it, I…I couldn’t find my way at all. Sometimes I felt much weaker, colder than usual. And sometimes I felt strong…angry, even. I was used to feeling angry - angry at the world for taking Alfie away, for forgetting about me completely afterwards. But once I had that diadem on, the anger felt completely different. It was much colder, a more calculated kind of rage. It was just…unfamiliar. It was like it didn’t even belong to me.”

Regulus shivers slightly, feeling again that sensation like cold fingertips pressing, lingering against the back of his neck. 

“And then, sometimes, I would just have…blanks.”

“Blanks?” Fabian repeats slowly, worry and fear flickering in his bright blue eyes as he gazes at her. 

“Yeah,” Meggie replies, with a small, tense laugh, probably the most unamused sound Regulus has ever heard. “Like, memory blanks. There would be times I’d just find myself standing somewhere, alone in a corridor, and I would suddenly realise that I had no idea how I’d got there, because I couldn’t remember anything at all from the past few hours. I tried and tried, but…nothing. Like trying to remember the details of a dream once you’ve woken up, but it just slips through your fingers, y’know? All I knew was that I was a little breathless, like I’d been running somewhere, or fighting, or something. And I would be shaking, too, with no idea why .” 

Her voice cracks on the last word, her bright green eyes welling with tears again; she brings her hands up to cover her face. 

“I’m not mad,” Meggie whispers into her hands. “At least…I don’t think I am.”

Fabian shakes his head, as Regulus feels a strange lurching sensation behind his navel, like he’s missed a step going down a staircase in the dark. Compassion, perhaps, he muses. Or at least pity. 

“No,” says Fabian quietly. “No, nobody said you were, Meggie.” 

She takes another deep, shaky breath, removing her hands from her tearstained face. 

“I did,” she whispers. “ I thought I might be going mad, cracking up after everything that had happened, imagining things that nobody else could see, that nobody else was affected by. But then, earlier today, in Hogsmeade…a girl hit me in the face.”

Fabian and Regulus exchange an uneasy glance, as Meggie raises a shaking hand to push her long blonde hair behind her ear, so that they can clearly see the red mark on her cheek. 

“It hurt, a lot,” she continues, “and it gave me a hell of a shock. And when this girl screamed at me, asking what the hell I thought I was doing - well, I couldn’t really answer that, because I had no memory of even coming into Hogsmeade. It felt like I’d just been suddenly woken, with icy cold water. And I asked this girl what I’d done, and she told me…” Meggie’s hands clench tightly in her lap, her knuckles alabaster white. “She told me I had tried to put my hands around her throat.” She lets out a choked sob. “And at first I thought, that’s insane - I’d remember it, if I’d done something like that. But then I realised, I couldn’t remember an y thing I’d been doing, for the past few hours. And then I remembered hearing that there were two unconscious kids in the hospital wing, both with bruises on their necks, the marks of fingerprints. And I tried to remember where I’d been, on the days those people had been brought to the hospital wing, and…I couldn’t. I couldn’t remember where I’d been at all.” 

She blows out a slow, shaky breath, apparently trying to maintain control of herself, trying to prevent her fear and horror from taking over. 

“That was when I took the diadem off,” she says quietly. “I have no idea what’s wrong with it, but…I know there’s something. I thought about just putting it back where I’d found it, but I realised…this thing has much more power than I do. I needed - I need - help. So…here I am, I guess.” She shrugs a little. “I should have just left well enough alone, I know that now. But hindsight is a bit of a bitch, I guess.” She looks up at the two men, her bright green eyes shining with tears. “I think…I think I might have hurt people. People who didn’t deserve it, I mean. But I never wanted to do that, I swear.” 

“We know you didn’t, Meggie,” Fabian says quietly, nothing but pain and compassion in his eyes as he looks back at her. He offers his hand to her again; tentatively, she reaches out her own shaking hand to grasp his, looking at him as though searching for any hint that he might change his mind. “Sometimes we come across things we can’t handle by ourselves, sometimes we need help. It was bloody brave of you to come and ask for help tonight. A lot of people wouldn’t have been able to summon the courage that you found.” 

Meggie lets out a small, choked sound, hastily biting on her lower lip to try and stop herself from crying.

“Fabian is more articulate than me,” Regulus adds awkwardly. “But…yeah, listen to the man with the freckles.” 

She makes a sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh. Regulus tries his best to smile back at her, hesitating before he asks his next question. 

“So, you decided not to put the diadem back where you found it?” She nods. “Does that mean you have it with you right now?” 

She pauses, staring at him. For one endless  moment, it feels as though not one of them is breathing.

“Yes,” she says finally. “Yes, it’s right here.” 

She reaches into the pocket of her dressing gown, slowly pulling something out, something that almost dazzles Regulus for a moment as the firelight catches the silver, making it gleam and glisten. 

He feels as though someone has knocked the wind out of him as he stares down at it. An array of delicate, priceless sapphires, the firelight catching them so that their sparkle is refracted around the room, a thousand shards of light - there they are, perfectly arranged in the shape of Ravenclaw’s symbol, the eagle. The gleam of the silver is almost subtle in comparison - but there’s not a doubt in Regulus’s mind that it’s every bit as genuine and flawless as the sapphires. Goblin-made, if he’s not mistaken. His childhood and adolescence at Grimmauld Place may not have been exactly enviable, but he’s at least fairly certain his upbringing enabled him to pick out the most priceless objects in any array within seconds. 

“Merlin,” Fabian murmurs, his jaw dropping slightly as he edges closer. Unconsciously, Regulus imitates him. 

“May I…?” he murmurs, extending his hand. Tentatively, Meggie hands him the diadem. 

Something about holding the thing gives him that same sensation again; cold fingertips brushing against the back of his neck, the hairs there standing on end. Despite having been in Meggie’s pocket for hours, and nestled against her neck before that, the diadem doesn’t seem to have picked up any heat; indeed, the silver is so cold it’s almost icy, giving Regulus a slight shock, making him shiver a little. He can sense the other two both holding their breath as he inspects it. Not a trace of lint or wool from Meggie’s pocket, no trace of anything at all marring the gleaming silver, not one speck of dust. 

“Fabian?” 

He proffers the delicate tiara to the other man, wordlessly asking for a second opinion. Looking immensely uneasy, Fabian moves forward a little, laying one hand on it gingerly as though afraid it might suddenly grow fangs and bite him. 

“Can you feel that?” 

They both fall silent, holding the diadem between them, concentrating hard. 

“There’s something… beating ,” Fabian says finally, looking up at him with a grim expression of fear, revulsion and dread all twisted up together. “Just like…”

“Just like the locket,” Regulus finishes quietly. “Exactly.” 

With another shiver, Fabian lets go of the diadem. 

“Locket?” Meggie asks nervously, staring back and forth between them. “What does this have to do with a locket?” 

“Meggie,” Regulus asks, ignoring her question. “When you were wearing this thing - did you ever feel a tiny, regular little rhythm beating inside it? As though it had its own heart?” 

She stares at him, the colour draining from her face. 

“I…I told myself I was just imagining that,” she whispers. “I was just…being paranoid, overreacting to something that was probably just my own heartbeat. I…I thought I might be going insane.

“Well, you weren’t,” Regulus replies. “It’s there, alright.” 

“But…but how?” she asks. “Why?” 

He hesitates, looking down at the beautiful silver-and-sapphire tiara in his hand. 

He’d known. From the moment Meggie had admitted to her obsession and subsequent search for the lost diadem, he had known she had, just like Bill, unwittingly stumbled across one of Lord Voldemort’s Horcruxes. After what Dumbledore had told them, after what Meggie had said about her gradually dwindling grasp on her own memories, her sense of self, since she had actually managed to find the thing - it was all too much of a coincidence. 

“I’m sorry, Meggie,” Fabian says quietly. “I’m so sorry that you got caught up in all this, after all the shit you’ve already been through. You did an incredible job in finding the diadem, you really did. But unfortunately, it seems you weren’t the first person to find it since Rowena Ravenclaw lost it.” 

“What do you mean?” she asks, frowning up at him. “Who…?”

“You-Know-Who - actually, you know what, fuck it, Voldemort. You’re right, why the hell should I feed into the egotistical bastard’s power trip by being scared of a bullshit name he invented for himself? But anyway - it was Voldemort. Voldemort seems to have discovered this diadem before you did.”

Meggie’s face is the colour of alabaster now. She stares frantically back and forth between the two men, as though hoping one of them will tell her this is just their twisted sense of a joke. 

“And who really knows if Ravenclaw ever did infuse this thing with the power of her own wisdom,” Regulus says grimly, “or if that was only ever a myth that she liked to encourage. Whatever power this diadem once had, I can certainly tell you it contains something far more sinister than the wisdom of Rowena Ravenclaw now.”

“ He put something in there?” she whispers. Regulus nods. “What? What exactly did he put in the diadem?” 

Regulus hesitates again at that, exchanging another uneasy glance with his boyfriend. How do they even begin to explain this?

“Well, that is quite a long story,” he replies finally. “But…you know how you wanted to bring him down?” She nods. “Well, suffice it to say, he has a few little trinkets he’s enchanted to try and ensure that he can’t be brought down - and from everything that you’ve told us, Fabian and I are pretty sure that this is one of them. So I can’t begin to tell you how thankful we are that you brought this to us, Meggie.” 

She stares down at the diadem in his hand, sparkling brightly in the firelight. Slowly, a look of pure rage suffuses her pretty face. For the first time, she looks almost frightening. 

“Alfie is gone because of him,” she says quietly. “And you’re telling me he didn’t stop at that? He stole my free will away from me? He - he stole my mind? ” 

“I am so, so sorry, Meggie,” Fabian says quietly. “But you were strong enough to take the diadem off, remember that. You were strong enough to ask for help, to fight back. ” 

“And you can keep fighting,” Regulus adds, placing the diadem carefully down on the coffee table and wandering over towards his desk in the corner. 

“Keep fighting?” Meggie asks, staring after him. “What do you mean? Where are you going?” 

“You certainly came to the right place for help,” he answers, tapping the bottom, locked drawer of his desk with his wand so that it springs open. 

Sparing one brief, grimly satisfied glance at the shattered remains of Slytherin’s locket, he wordlessly lifts the Disillusionment charm he had cast many weeks ago on the item lying next to it, revealing a deceptively small, drawstring green velvet bag. He picks it up, walking back over to the others. 

“There aren’t many people around Hogwarts who would have access to exactly the tools you need to destroy the power in that diadem,” he continues. “But as it was Remus Lupin and me who went down to the Chamber of Secrets, it just so happens that I have those tools right here.” 

He drops the velvet bag down in front of her; it makes a dull thunking sound against the coffee table. 

“Have a look in there,” he says casually. “I’d be a bit careful, though - don’t just stick your hand in. And be careful not to touch the pointy ends.” 

“ Reg,” Fabian protests exasperatedly, shooting him a warning look. Regulus ignores him.

“‘Pointy ends’?” Meggie echoes, now looking bewildered as she unties the drawstrings. “What the fuck? ” she gasps a moment later, gingerly drawing out something huge, curved, yellow and ever so slightly bloodstained. “These aren’t…these can’t be…”

“Basilisk fangs?” Regulus supplies, unable to stop himself from smirking slightly at the look on her face. “Yep. Once Professor Lupin had killed it, the basilisk didn’t need them much anymore, so we decided to help ourselves to a few. Pretty damn useful, too, as it turns out.” 

“You’ve used these things before?” she asks faintly.

“Yep,” he says again. “Only once. But I’d already seen Remus Lupin using one down in the Chamber - the same one he had literally just pulled out of his own arm a few minutes beforehand, because he’s mental like that - so I knew the basic theory. Well, I knew which end was the pointy end, at least.”

Meggie looks like she has so many questions she doesn’t know where to begin. Regulus supposes he can’t blame her. 

“So I just…stab it?” she asks quietly. 

“Well…that’s the general idea, yeah,” Regulus responds. “But I should probably warn you, it’s not likely to be that straightforward.”

“What do you mean?” she asks, frowning at him. 

“Well, there’s some pretty powerful dark magic in that sparkly thing,” he replies bluntly. “Some of the darkest magic in existence, actually. And once that dark magic senses that you’re trying to destroy it - well, it won’t let you without putting up a damn good fight. We did the same thing with a locket the Dark Lord had enchanted in the same way, and it certainly fought me. Nearly won the fight, in fact. Probably would have done, if Fabian hadn’t been here to remind me I was stronger than I thought I was, that I could get through it. He’s pretty good at that kind of thing.”

He shoots a small, grateful smile in his boyfriend’s direction, knowing he can never thank him enough for what he’d done that night. Fabian looks back at him, his mouth trembling with emotion, his bright eyes shining with a love so strong, so dazzling, that Regulus finds he has to look away - it’s like looking at the sun. When his gaze shifts back to Meggie, he finds that she’s staring at him with a look of horror on her face. He supposes he’s not exactly being reassuring. 

“Obviously you don’t have to do it,” he adds hastily. “I mean, I wouldn’t say I’m exactly thrilled at the prospect of going through that again - but if it sounds like too much for you, then obviously -” 

“No,” Meggie interjects, her voice much firmer and clearer than Regulus had been expecting. Her expression shifts as she looks back down at the diadem in front of her. She takes a deep breath, her grip tightening around the basilisk fang, face pale but set, determined, bright green eyes blazing. “I’ve had enough of this. I’ve had enough of having no control over my own life. Had enough of my power being taken away from me. I’m going to do this. I’m going to fucking fight.” 

Fabian glances at Regulus again, his expression torn between protective worry and something thoroughly impressed. For his part, Regulus feels much the same. As a professor who technically has a duty of care over Meggie, part of him knows that he shouldn’t be letting her do this, that he should simply have thanked her for handing them a Horcrux - albeit unwittingly - and sent her straight to Madam Pomfrey. But deep down, he also knows, somehow, that Meggie Brown needs to do this. She won’t be able to heal from her grief fully, if she leaves this task to someone else. 

“Here if you need,” Fabian tells her quietly, stepping closer to her. 

Meggie’s shoulders stiffen as she turns to the silver and sapphire tiara glinting in front of her, that look of fierce determination still blazing in her green eyes. 

The two men both fall completely silent as they watch on anxiously, the room seeming to become strangely airless. 

But as Meggie clutches the basilisk fang tightly, raising it higher, readying herself for the plunge, the diadem suddenly emits a faint, but distinct sound - something that sounds like a cold, mocking laugh. As Regulus stares down at it, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up, something tall and silvery blossoms out from the diadem without warning, like a tree growing in fast motion. Regulus can’t help but shudder as the silvery figure straightens up to its full height, towering over the three of them. 

It isn’t an echo of his mother or his brother this time, but Regulus still feels an icy chill as the figure looks down at Meggie mournfully, realising why it looks so familiar. Alfie Thomas had always been a good-looking kid, popular with plenty of girls from what Regulus had gleaned - but somehow, this ghostly echo of him towering over them is more beautiful in death than Alfie had ever been in life. 

Yet there’s something missing, too, Regulus muses as he stares at him. The real Alfie Thomas had always had a spark of joy in his dark eyes, a mischievous grin twitching at the corner of his mouth, as if desperate to break free. But, as Meggie gasps in horror, turning deathly pale and almost dropping the basilisk fang, this silvery version of Alfie looks down at her with no hint of joy, his expression etched with grief and hurt.

“Probably should have seen that coming,” Regulus mutters to himself. 

Neither Meggie nor Fabian give any sign of hearing him, both staring at the echo of Alfie Thomas, utterly transfixed. 

“Hey, Megs,” says the echo, its voice soft, sad, almost hypnotic.

“Alfie?” Meggie whispers, staring up at it in wonder, the basilisk fang in her hand apparently forgotten. 

“No,” Fabian interjects, “Meggie, don’t engage with it, please don’t, that’s not -” 

“Yeah, Megs,” the silvery echo cuts across him, its attention fixed solely on Meggie, who doesn’t appear to have even heard Fabian. “It’s me. Miss you.” 

“I miss you too,” she chokes out, her eyes shining with tears. “I miss you so much.” 

“Really?” asks the ghostly version of Alfie - and now something turns icy in its gaze as it looks down at her. Accusatory. “Then why are you trying to hurt me? Why are you turning your back on me?” 

“What?” she whispers, her expression turning suddenly horrified. “No,” she protests, shaking her head frantically. “I’m not…I would never …” 

“Don’t you think you’ve caused enough damage already, Megs?” the silvery Alfie asks her, his voice mournful, almost gentle. “I died because I wanted to see you. If it weren’t for you, I would have been sleeping safely in my bed.” 

“Meggie, ignore it, that’s bullshit! ” Regulus says loudly. 

But she doesn’t seem to hear him either, her expression wracked with guilt and pain as she stares up at the sinister, twisted echo of her boyfriend. 

“I’m sorry ,” she whispers, sounding almost like she’s pleading now. “You don’t know how many times I’ve apologised to you in my head, Alf. How much I’ve gone over that night in my head, how much I’ve wished I could go back, how much -”

“Well, it’s a bit late for wishing now, isn’t it, Megs?” the echo replies, with a hollow little laugh. “But I thought you wanted to avenge me, at least.”

“I do!” she protests. 

“Really?” asks the echo sceptically, looking down at her, its expression mournful. “Then why are you trying to throw away your best chance, your only chance? You’ll never be able to defeat him without the diadem - you know that, right?” 

Meggie blinks, apparently lost for words for a moment, her bright eyes shimmering with tears. 

“Don’t you want to see me again? To talk to me?” 

“Of course I do,” she replies, her voice cracked and desperate. 

“Well, you can see me now, can’t you?” the silvery echo replies. “I’ve already died once because of you, haven’t I? If you destroy the diadem, you’ll have to live with the fact that you’ll never see me again - and that will be your fault, too.” The ghostly version of Alfie Thomas pauses, a thoughtful expression on its face now as it looks down at its prey. “Unless you decided to join me, I suppose.” 

Meggie stares up at it, her tears falling unchecked. 

“Join you?” she repeats slowly. “What…what do you mean?” 

“Come on, Megs. I know how clever you are - do I really have to spell it out?” 

The echo’s voice is unnervingly soft now. “You said it yourself, didn’t you? You’ve been practically invisible to everyone around you, ever since you lost me; none of them can help you. None of them give a damn. None of them would miss you.” 

The twisted version of Alfie Thomas gives Meggie a small, sad smile. 

“But I miss you, Megs. You could never be invisible to me. Don’t you want to join me? We can still be together, just like we always planned. We can still spend our forever together. You’re holding a key that will open the door, right there in your hand.” As if she can’t help herself, Meggie’s gaze falls to the basilisk fang she’s holding. “All you have to do,” the echo whispers, “is be brave enough to make the choice. And I know how brave you are, Megs.” 

Meggie keeps staring at the fang for a long moment - and when she raises her eyes to the eerie, disconcertingly beautiful echo of her boyfriend, there’s no mistaking the look of pure longing on her tearstained face. 

Regulus starts forwards, not even knowing what he’s doing, barely able to think past the sudden burst of panic in his chest, but - 

“Like hell, ” Fabian snarls, getting there before him, reaching out to try and snatch the fang from Meggie’s slackened grip. 

But as soon as he reaches for it, another faint, mocking laugh rings through Regulus’s office. The sound doesn’t come from the echo of Alfie Thomas, whose gaze is still fixed on Meggie, not seeming to even notice Fabian - no, the sound seems to be echoing from the diadem itself. Before Regulus has time to do anything but cry out a useless warning, a second figure is blossoming from the little tiara, raising itself quickly to its full height, this one staring down at Fabian instead. 

Anyone else, perhaps, might have wondered why the Horcrux had chosen to taunt Fabian with a silvery reflection of himself. But for Regulus, who must have spent countless hours staring at Fabian’s face by now, tracing patterns and constellations between his freckles, trying to memorise every inch of him, it’s easy to spot the differences between his boyfriend and the ghostly, silver figure staring back at him. The echo that’s just risen from the diadem has a completely different freckle pattern, a slightly shorter nose, eyes that aren’t quite as kind or bright. He carries himself differently to Fabian, too, as though he’s missing that invisible, heavy burden of grief that his twin has carried everywhere for almost two years. He’s grinning a little, just as he was the last time Regulus had ever seen him - but there’s something slightly off about it. Something cold. Something cruel.

“Gid,” Fabian whispers, staring in shock and awe at the echo of his brother, completely distracted from Meggie.

“ No, Fab!” Regulus shouts. “That’s not Gideon, you know it isn’t -” 

“Hi, Fab,” says the silvery echo of Gideon Prewett, cutting Regulus off. “Been missing me, have you?” 

The echo’s voice is tinged with amusement - but not as though he’s sharing a joke with Fabian, as Gideon had so often done in life. It sounds more like a joke at his expense. 

“Stupid question,” Fabian whispers, the look on his face making something deep inside Regulus splinter and crack. “You know I’ve been missing you, Gid. It hurts without you. Sometimes…sometimes it’s like I can’t breathe.” 

“Really?” The echo raises one silvery eyebrow sceptically. “Looks like you’ve been a bit busy with your boy toy to be thinking about me all that much, no?” 

“Fabian, don’t listen to it!” Regulus cries frantically. 

He darts a nervous glance over at the figure of Alfie Thomas. Now that the echo of Gideon has appeared, he can no longer hear what the echo of Alfie is saying, but he can see it’s still leaning in towards Meggie, murmuring to her with an imploring expression on its face while she gazes back at it, transfixed. Regulus has no clue what to do, he can scarcely think past his panic.

“That’s not fair, Gid,” Fabian croaks, looking at the echo of his twin with an expression of pure heartbreak. 

“Isn’t it?” the echo of Gideon challenges. “You chose to stay with Regulus Black the night I died, as I recall. Haven’t you ever wondered whether, if you had stayed with me instead, if you had been there for backup on that mission, like you were supposed to be, we might both be alive today?” 

Fabian stares up at the ghostly figure, looking for a moment as though he’s in physical pain, like he’s just been struck. Regulus looks at him, feeling the other man’s pain as though it’s his own, like a blow to the chest, leaving him practically gasping for breath. 

“Of course I’ve thought about that,” Fabian answers finally. He blinks, letting his tears fall thick and fast, just like Meggie. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to save you that night, Gid, I’ll never stop being sorry. I loved you so much. I…I still do.” 

His voice cracks and Regulus almost keens with the pain of it. 

“I love you too,” the silvery figure replies. Its tone is suddenly much gentler, its eyes sad and mournful. “That’s why I can’t bear to see you like this. You deserve so much better, Fab.” 

“What…what do you mean?” Fabian croaks. 

He’s staring at the echo of his twin with an expression of dread on his face, as though he already knows what the reply will be, as though he doesn’t want to  hear or see any more, but he can’t bring himself to tear his gaze away. 

“You’re trying so hard to distract yourself with this mission, this reckless idea that you can actually take You-Know-Who down,” the silvery figure replies, with a small, sad smile, “telling yourself all the while that you’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do, because you’re avenging me. But it’s not just that, is it? You’re terrified to stop moving, to stop acting for a second, because you don’t want to be alone with the thoughts in your head. Alone with the absence where I used to be.” Fabian shudders, bites back a whimper. “You’re so desperate to everyone in the Order that you’re still an asset in this war. You just keep smiling and cracking jokes, always trying to entertain everyone - because you don’t want them to see just how broken you are. You don’t want them to tell you you need to step back from this fight. You don’t have to worry about that, though” the echo of Gideon continues mercilessly. “You don’t have to worry about anyone seeing you - because they all look right through you, like a pane of glass, ever since the night I died. You’re not relevant, because they’ve decided that you’re not. Actually, you’re worse than irrelevant - you’re an inconvenience. Nobody wants to see you, it makes them too uncomfortable to see you without me at your side. Don’t you see that, Fab? Don’t you realise how alone you really are?” 

“Please,” Fabian whispers brokenly, shuddering as the tears trickle down his cheeks. “Please stop.” 

“You bastard, ” Regulus snarls at the echo. 

It’s not really Gideon Prewett, he knows that; it’s just a figment the Horcrux has manifested to protect itself from destruction. It’s not as if he can actually hurt it, the way it’s hurting Fabian. But he doesn’t know what else to do. 

“But you were never alone with me,” the silvery echo of Gideon continues, as though Regulus hadn’t spoken. It tilts its head to the side, as though considering Fabian. “The two of us together, me and you - that’s the way it always was, right, Fab? We didn’t even need to speak aloud to understand each other - we just knew. And yeah, you left me alone that night; neither of us can change that. I can’t come back to you, and I’m sorry about that. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be together again. That doesn’t mean you can’t come to me. ” 

Regulus has never felt such an icy rush of terror in his life - and yet, somehow, at the same time, he feels a fierce, burning rage at his very core, so powerful that he swears he actually sees red for a moment. He can taste that fury, burning like a hot coal on his tongue. 

“What?” Fabian whispers, the last of the colour draining from his face. 

The echo of Gideon gives him another small, sad smile. 

“Oh come on, Fab. I could call you lots of things, but stupid isn’t one of them. You know what I’m asking. It would be so easy, too, you’ve got a whole bag of basilisk fangs right there - though if you want to choose a more creative way, who am I to stop you?” 

Fabian gazes at the echo of his twin - and for one brief moment, Regulus thinks he sees a flicker of longing in his eyes. And that - that scares him more than anything else has tonight. Maybe more than anything has scared him in his entire life.

“Please?” murmurs the silvery shadow. Its tone is gentle now, a pleading, hopeful expression on its face. “For me?” 

“But…” Fabian croaks. “But…Regulus…”

“Oh, Fab,” the echo says softly, looking at him with pity in its eyes now. “I know you’re head over heels for him - though I won’t pretend to understand what the hell you see in him. I know it comforts you, pretending to yourself that he might feel the same, that you might actually be important to him. But you’re just lying to yourself, at this point. You’ve made your feelings clear - his silence speaks volumes, doesn’t it? You don’t actually think he loves you back, do you?” 

“I do! ” Regulus bursts out furiously, without even thinking about it - and for the first time since it appeared, Fabian looks away from the echo of Gideon. He looks at Regulus. 

“What?” he whispers, staring at him as though he doesn’t dare to believe he’d heard right. 

“I do love you,” Regulus says, gazing right back at him. 

He isn’t just saying it to try and get through to the other man. He can feel the truth of those words, burning through him - finally, finally , they’re easy to say. 

He strides forwards, reaching up to cup the other man’s face between his hands firmly, refusing to let him break eye contact, to look back at the twisted echo of his brother. 

“I love you so much, Fabian. I’ve loved you for such a long time. That thing isn’t Gideon - and I know that because everything it just said to you was utter bullshit. You’re not invisible. You’re important to so many people -and you’re so, so important to me. I am completely and utterly in love with you - and you’re staying right here with me. I will not lose you to some toxic, manipulative mind game that Riddle designed to prolong his own vile, pathetic life, do you hear me? Fuck that. I refuse.” 

For a long moment, Fabian just stares silently back at him, a thousand different emotions flickering so quickly across his tearstained face that Regulus can’t keep track of them. But then - 

“Meggie,” Fabian says, his tone suddenly fierce, determined, as he finally turns away from Regulus. “Meggie, you’re not invisible. I see you.” 

Meggie Brown blinks, seeming to come out of a trance, some spell seeming to shatter as she finally looks away from the shadow of Alfie Thomas, looking back at Fabian.

“What…?” she asks, sounding dazed.

“I see you, Meggie,” Fabian repeats, reaching out to put a gentle hand on her shoulder, to anchor her, even as the silvery figures stare down at them, hissing and murmuring. “ We see you. And you’re so, so brave, Alfie knew that, better than anyone. And I’m so sorry, Meggie - but that thing isn’t Alfie - you know it isn’t. It’s not Alfie, and it’s not my brother either - because they loved us. Wherever they are, they love us still. They would never ask us to hurt ourselves for their sake.” 

She blinks at him, and Regulus sees a look of horrified awareness dawning in her bright, tear-filled eyes, as though she’s waking up from a nightmare. 

“It’s trying to control us again,” she whispers. “It’s Him. He’s trying to control us.”

“He is,” Fabian confirms, his voice shaking a little. “He tried - but he failed. Because you and me - we’re gonna win this round.” 

He reaches out, wrapping his hand tightly around the basilisk fang held loosely in her hand, so that they’re both holding it. 

“Together?” Meggie whispers. 

As she tightens her grip on the fang and looks back at Fabian, that fire from before, that spark of vengeance, seems to reignite, flickering in those green eyes. 

Despite the fresh tear tracks glistening on his freckled cheeks, Fabian’s jaw is clenched, his bright blue eyes blazing with a determined fury; Regulus feels his chest swelling with relief and pride at the sight of. He could swear the other man has never looked more beautiful than he does right now. 

“Together,” Fabian agrees. 

“What are you doing?” the silvery figures of Alfie and Gideon cry out, their voices echoing in perfect unison as, together, Meggie and Fabian lift the basilisk fang high up above the diadem. “Stop - no -” 

They step forwards, just as the memory of Riddle had once done down in the Chamber - but their plea is just as futile as his was. Fabian takes one last look at the echo of his twin, grief and pain and longing and fury etched across his face, Meggie looks once more at the twisted version of Alfie with a small, stifled sob - and then, clearly using every bit of strength they can muster between them, they plunge the basilisk fang down, straight into the centre of the diadem. 

The Horcrux emits a long, agonising scream, just as Slytherin’s locket had done, the echoes of Alfie Thomas and Gideon Prewett releasing piercing shrieks along with it, so that Regulus actually claps his hands over his ears, screwing up his eyes.

And then, just like that, both silvery figures have vanished into thin air, as though they were never there. Regulus cautiously opens his eyes, his ears ringing with nothing but a shocked silence, like the aftermath of an explosion. 

He looks down, his heart still pounding with a potent combination of terror, fury, love and adrenaline. 

Ravenclaw’s diadem, so recently pristine and dazzling, is lying on the coffee table, so twisted and burned that it’s scarcely even recognisable as silver anymore, the sapphires charred and blackened. 

Meggie stares down at the ruined Horcrux with wide eyes, her grip on the basilisk fang slackening.

“ Fuck,” Fabian whimpers. The fang clatters down onto the coffee table as he lets go of it, folding into himself, crying in great, heaving gasps. 

Regulus reaches forwards immediately, enveloping the taller man in his arms. 

“That’s what I said,” he murmurs, pressing his face into the red curls, inhaling that familiar, smoky sweet scent, close to sobbing himself, out of pure relief. 

Fabian lets out a choked, muffled laugh.

“Say it again,” he whispers into his chest. 

“What, ‘fuck’?” 

Fabian finally raises his tearstained face, glaring at him.

“No, you prick. The other thing.” 

“Oh, that ,” Regulus says, unable to stop himself from grinning. He’s just so damn thankful to have this man in his arms, alive, safe. He doesn’t think he could stop smiling if he tried. “I love you,” he whispers, pressing a kiss into Fabian’s hair. “I love you” - a kiss pressed against his forehead - “I love you” - a soft, chaste kiss pressed against his trembling mouth. “And I’m so proud of you.” 

He feels the other man shiver slightly in his arms, and squeezes him tighter in response. 

“Get a room,” Meggie mutters quietly, making a valiant attempt at a teasing grin, despite the fact that she looks completely shellshocked. 

“Sorry, Meggie,” Fabian replies, raising his head and giving her a slightly sheepish look. “If it helps, he’s bloody proud of you, too - right, Reg? I know I certainly am.”

“Yeah,” Regulus murmurs. “I am, actually. You were incredible, Meggie Brown. Definitely not invisible.” 

“I…thanks,” she mutters, looking hastily away, her lip trembling a little. 

“I’m pretty sure a group hug is called for right now,” Fabian announces, disentangling himself from Regulus a little so that he can hold out one arm to her. 

“For healing purposes. Non-negotiable, I’m afraid. I’m sure Madam Pomfrey would tell you the same.” 

“Fine,” she huffs, making a show of rolling her eyes - but Regulus doesn’t miss the small smile twitching at the corner of her mouth, as she tucks herself into Fabian’s other side. 

The three of them fall into a comfortable silence for a moment, Regulus still basking in Fabian’s solid, reassuring warmth. 

“Hey Meggie,” he says conversationally, breaking the silence. “You know how you wanted to help bring Voldemort down? To avenge Alfie?” 

“Yeah?” She raises her head, looking at him warily. 

“Well, you just had a hand in destroying part of his soul,” Regulus continues. “You destroyed one of the last obstacles that was in our way, in fact. Soon enough, he’ll be nothing but a normal, mortal, overconfident egomaniac. Okay, I can’t promise anything, he’s still bloody dangerous. But I reckon our odds have never looked better than they do now. I think we might actually be able to win this war now. To destroy him. Thanks to you, that is.” 

Meggie stares at him, her mouth open.

“Pretty cool, huh?” Fabian pipes up, giving her a one-armed squeeze, his other arm still wrapped tightly around Regulus. 

“I…yeah,” Meggie responds, with a breathless, dazed laugh. “Yeah, that’s pretty damn cool.” 

15th October, 1983

“All in all,” Dumbledore says quietly, peering over his half-moon spectacles as he turns the charred and twisted diadem over in his long fingers, examining it, “it would seem that you have been quite busy while I was away.” 

“That’s certainly one way of putting it,” Fabian mutters, grimacing slightly. 

“Well, I should say that the three of you did rather well,” the headmaster continues. “ Remarkably well, in fact.” 

“Not the three of us,” Regulus corrects him sharply, “the two of them. It was Meggie and Fabian who destroyed it.” 

“Oh, I daresay you’re selling yourself rather short there, Regulus,” Dumbledore replies. “I imagine your presence and support was immensely valuable - so valuable, perhaps, that the task could not have been achieved without you.”

Regulus pauses, thoroughly disarmed by this. They’d given the old man a brief summary, with some key events glossed over to protect both Fabian and Meggie’s dignity and privacy - and yet here he is, speaking as if he already knows, or can make a fairly accurate guess, at the exact details they’ve omitted from the story. Besides which, Regulus finds himself caught off-guard by the look on Dumbledore’s face. He’s never looked at him like that before. As though he’s proud of him. 

“Would you agree, Fabian?” the headmaster asks mildly, turning his gaze to the taller man. “Is Regulus, too, to be commended in this instance?” 

“Yeah,” Fabian croaks, glancing at Regulus, his bright eyes glistening with unshed tears again. “Yeah, he bloody well is to be commended. More than I could even begin to explain, Professor.” 

“Well then,” Dumbledore replies, “it is lucky that I have a fairly good idea of it already, then.” 

As Fabian tries to discreetly scrub at his eyes, Dumbledore seems to take pity on him, his gaze moving back to the destroyed diadem in his hands. 

“It really is remarkable, that Miss Brown managed to find an artefact that has eluded historians for centuries,” he murmurs. Regulus finds that he can’t hold back a little smirk, feeling strangely proud on Meggie’s behalf. “Though it is, of course, rather unfortunate that she found it after it had already passed through Tom’s hands,” Dumbledore continues, with a small sigh. “It has made our task substantially easier, of course…but at what cost to Meggie?” 

Regulus feels another sharp twinge of guilt. Right. Possibly not the best time for smugness. 

“How is she, Fabian?” the headmaster murmurs, glancing up at him again.

“Not fabulous,” he answers bluntly, his expression rather less than warm as he looks back at the old man. “She’s still in the hospital wing.” 

Upon hearing the story - or the edited version, anyway - Dumbledore had asked to speak to Meggie about it directly, but Fabian had point-blank refused. He’s adamant that Meggie deserves her privacy, time to recover, and apparently being interrogated by the headmaster has been ruled out of her recovery process. He had firmly told the old man that he and Regulus between them would tell him everything he needed to know, and if he had any other questions for Meggie, he would just have to wait until she was feeling ready to answer them, and accept that that might not be any time in the foreseeable future. Fabian seems to have become every bit as protective of her as he is with his own nephews and niece. 

“Meggie is grieving,” he adds, his jaw clenched as he meets Dumbledore’s piercing gaze. “Poppy is doing everything she can to help her at the moment, but…well, it’s a long process. And all the shit she’s been dealt since Alfie died is hardly likely to make it any shorter.”

“Indeed not,” the old man agrees, with a small, weary sigh. 

“I asked Poppy to put her in a separate, private room, and not to let anyone come in and talk to her without Meggie’s explicit clearance,” Fabian continues. “Poppy agreed, of course. Meggie might be going home for a little while, to spend some time recuperating with her parents. We’re still discussing it, she hasn’t quite decided yet.” 

“Yes,” Dumbledore murmurs, “that may be a good idea, indeed.” 

He pauses, leaning back in his chair as he considers Fabian over his half-moon glasses. The three of them fall into a somewhat tense silence. 

Fabian fidgets for a moment, before standing up abruptly. 

“Actually, if that’s all, Professor, I think I might go and see Meggie now. I’d like to check on her.” 

“Naturally,” the headmaster replies quietly. “And if she is awake, Fabian, may I ask that you reassure her, on my behalf, that she is not to blame in the slightest for anything that she did under the diadem’s control, and that she need not dwell on guilt on top of all her other burdens?” 

“I’ve already told her that, Professor,” Fabian answers stiffly. “But sure, I’ll tell her Professor Dumbledore says so too, if you like.” 

“Thank you,” the old man murmurs. “And if it is not too much trouble, may I ask that you also pass on the message that I am very, very grateful to her for not only finding this diadem, but destroying it too? And that we are all very much in her debt?” 

“I…alright,” the redheaded man replies, looking slightly taken aback by this. 

“Thank you,” the headmaster says quietly, inclining his head a little. 

Fabian nods a little awkwardly in acknowledgement, before turning to Regulus. 

“Reg?” he asks, his voice gentle now, expression much softer. “Wanna come? Meggie said you could.” 

“No, you go ahead,” Regulus answers, coming to his decision on the spot, his heart thumping against his ribs. “I…I’m not quite done talking to the headmaster yet.”

Dumbledore raises one eyebrow slightly, but as usual his expression betrays no other hint of his thoughts. Fabian looks a little puzzled for a moment; but then he shrugs, a small, affectionate grin twitching at the corner of his mouth, evidently assuming Regulus isn’t finished giving the old man a piece of his mind yet. 

“Alright,” he says. “See you later, then?” 

“Yeah,” Regulus agrees, his voice coming out a little hoarse. He clears his throat. “See you later.” 

Fabian’s expression is almost unbearably soft. He bends down to press a small kiss to the top of Regulus’s head in farewell; Dumbledore politely looks down at the diadem again.

“Goodnight, Professor,” he says, nodding curtly at the headmaster as he straightens up again.

“Goodnight, Fabian,” Dumbledore murmurs.

Fabian turns, closing the door quietly behind him as he leaves the office. 

The old man looks expectantly at Regulus. His heart still pounding, Regulus abruptly stands up, pushing his chair in. 

“I thought you wished to speak to me?” Dumbledore asks. 

“I do,” he mutters. “I’ll be right back, I just…I just forgot that I need to tell Fabian something first.” 

“Ah,” the headmaster replies, sounding faintly amused - but Regulus barely registers him, already hurrying for the door. 

“Fab, wait!” he calls, almost tripping over his own feet as he rushes down the spiral staircase in pursuit of the mass of red curls disappearing round the corner. 

To his relief, Fabian stops halfway down the staircase, a puzzled - and thoroughly endearing - frown on his freckled face as he catches sight of him.

“Reg?” he asks, his tone bemused. “I thought you said you weren’t - oof!” 

He nearly topples backwards, gasping for breath slightly, as Regulus throws himself forwards with full force, wrapping his arms around him and burying his face in the taller man’s chest. 

“Reg, I’m only going to visit Meggie for half an hour or so,” Fabian tells him, wrapping his arms around him in turn. “I wasn’t planning to leave and never come back to you, I promise.” 

He sounds so, so soft. Regulus doesn’t know how to handle it. How to deserve it. 

“I know that,” he replies, making a valiant attempt to scoff even as he nestles himself closer, his words muffled against the other man’s chest. 

“Then what’s this about?” Fabian asks quietly. His hand comes up to cup Regulus’s face, tilting his chin up oh so gently. His touch somehow makes Regulus feel like he might actually be something valuable, precious, those bright blue eyes tracing over his face. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

“Nothing,” Regulus replies quickly. Too quickly. 

Fabian’s beautiful eyes narrow slightly, a faint frown line appearing on his forehead. Dammit. 

“Just…” Regulus continues, as the other man opens his mouth, “...I love you. That’s what I wanted to say.” 

Fabian closes his mouth abruptly. He blinks rapidly, his eyes a little watery, lower lip trembling a little. Regulus has never seen him look so vulnerable and yet so happy at the same time. Merlin, if he’d known he had the power to make Fabian Prewett look like that , maybe he’d have worked up the courage to say it a bit damn sooner. 

“Yeah,” Fabian whispers, a soft, almost awestruck smile playing across his mouth. Regulus wants to taste it. “Yeah, you did mention that.” 

“Oh, well,” Regulus replies sardonically, pulling back a little, “sorry to be repetitive, then. I didn’t mean to bore you.”

Fabian rolls his eyes, catching his face gently between his hands again before he can go too far.

“That was not a complaint,” he reassures him, his grin widening as he leans forward a little to press their foreheads together. “I’ve been waiting for you to say those words for over two years now. Don’t think I’m gonna get sick of hearing them any time soon.” 

Regulus makes a small, strangled noise, which only makes Fabian’s smile even brighter. Merlin, but this man really will be the death of him one of these days. 

“Was that the reason you came running after me, then?” Fabian asks. “You thought I might have forgotten that you love me? Because I’m fairly certain I can be trusted to remember that, actually.”

His voice is light, teasing - but his eyes are still scanning Regulus’s face, concern etched across his brow.  

Regulus hesitates. Uncharacteristically, he hadn’t exactly thought this far ahead.

“I just…needed to tell you again,” he murmurs. “I don’t exactly know much about loving people, but…I don’t just love you right now. I’m fairly certain I’m going to keep loving you forever.” 

Fabian’s lower lip is trembling again. He leans in slightly - but Regulus pulls back a little, pressing a gentle but firm hand against his mouth, because he needs to say this. 

“And that means I’ll still love you…even if I do something that you can’t forgive me for,” he whispers. “Even if…even if the time comes when I’ve crossed one too many lines, gone somewhere you can’t follow me, for the sake of this stupid war. Even if you tell me one day that I’ve forfeited your love.” His heart nearly splinters in two at the mere thought of it, but he forces himself to continue, never breaking eye contact. “That would be okay, Fabian. I would never be angry at you, if you stopped loving me. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it would hurt like hell,” he adds, his voice cracking slightly. “But…I would understand. And it wouldn’t stop me from loving you . Even if I had to love you from the sidelines, love you from a distance, then that’s what I would do. Because nothing could stop me from loving you, at this point. I’ll love you as long as I’m breathing.” 

Fabian is staring at him with that unbearably soft look on his face again. 

“So…yeah,” Regulus finishes, feeling a little awkward now he’s said his piece. “That’s what I wanted to say, I guess.” 

There’s a long moment of silence. 

“Do I have permission to speak now?” Fabian mumbles, his voice slightly muffled, given that Regulus still has his hand over his mouth.

“Oh…right, yeah,” he answers, taking his hand away sheepishly. 

“Good,” he says, before proceeding to take Regulus’s face between his hands again, bending him back a little and kissing him firmly, deeply, determinedly, as though his life depends on it, as though Regulus is the air in his lungs. 

When Fabian finally releases him, Regulus finds himself a little dizzy, gasping for breath slightly. He thinks he might actually be seeing stars. 

“What….I…” He’s finding it a little tricky to form coherent words right now. “That wasn’t speaking,” he mumbles finally. 

Possibly not the wittiest thing he’s ever said. 

Fabian releases a small huff of laughter, pressing their foreheads together again.

“No, it wasn’t,” he agrees. “Well spotted.” 

Regulus tries and fails to huff indignantly. Fabian grins. 

“But I’m speaking now,” he murmurs, his expression completely earnest now as he cups Regulus’s hands in his own. “I’ve told you this before, but I think it bears repeating, because it’s pretty important. So I hope you’re listening, Regulus Black.” 

Regulus feels his breath hitch as he stares back at him. 

“I love you so much,” Fabian whispers, like he’s telling him a precious, precious secret. “I am so proud of you. Every day, I think that I couldn’t possibly love you any more - only for you to go and prove me wrong the next day.” Regulus lets out a sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh. “You have this idea in your head that you can’t be a good person, no matter how hard you try, that you don’t deserve to be loved, that one day you’re going to slip up and reveal the ‘real’ you, which will inevitably lead the people who love you - or claim to, at least - to retract that love as a consequence.” 

Regulus fidgets, something in him trying to flinch away from those words, because…who the hell gave this man the right to see him like that, to see him in brutal, gory detail?

“But I know you, Reg” Fabian continues, gentle hands on his cheeks stilling him. “I’ve seen you at your best, and I’ve seen you…well, maybe not at your absolute worst, but I’ve certainly seen you acting like a petty, spiteful little shit on the odd occasion.” Regulus huffs out a reluctant, shocked laugh at that, and Fabian grins. 

“So I promise you, I’m not under any illusions that you’re a perfect person, or that you always make good, kind choices,” he murmurs. “But I do know that you are, at your very core, a good person. And I’m pretty sure you always have been. You’re always fighting to be better than you were yesterday, even when the odds aren’t in your favour, even when it seems like everyone is against you - including yourself, most of the time. You are a bit of a melodramatic, brooding prat sometimes, y’know.” 

Regulus elbows him in the ribs at that, and Fabian grins, catching his hands gently. 

“I don’t know exactly what you’re planning, that’s prompted all this,” Fabian continues in a whisper. “But I do know that, whatever it is, it won’t be enough to make me stop loving you. Because you can’t change who you are - and I love every single thing that makes you you, Regulus Arcturus Black. Even your bloody pretentious name.” 

He lets out another choked sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob, his tears starting to blur his vision now. 

“That’s what love is , Reg,” Fabian murmurs, using his thumbs to gently brush his tears away. “When I tell you I love you…I mean it. It isn’t conditional. Ever.” Regulus fails to repress a sob. This is just getting embarrassing now. 

“You understand?” the other man asks him quietly. 

“Yeah,” he replies. “Yeah, I think I do.” 

For the first time, he thinks that might really be true. 

He takes a deep, shuddering breath, trying to piece himself back together. 

“I should…I should probably get back,” he says, gesturing in the direction of Dumbledore’s office. “I still need to…” he trails off awkwardly.

“Right,” Fabian replies. “I’ve probably kept Meggie waiting a bit too long. Unless she’s already sick of me, I s’pose.” 

“Fat chance,” Regulus mutters, rolling his eyes. He pauses. “Tell her I say hi, yeah?”

Fabian looks back at him, his eyes glowing with warmth and affection.

“Will do,” he says.

Regulus nods, chewing on his lower lip, his heart beginning to pound against his ribs again now.

“Love you,” he whispers.

Fabian leans down, pressing a soft, lingering kiss against his forehead. Regulus leans instinctively into the warmth of his lips. 

“Love you too,” the taller man murmurs against his skin. 

Then, with one last, gentle squeeze of Regulus’s hand, Fabian is walking away, disappearing out of sight at the bottom of the spiral staircase. 

“You caught him, then, I take it?” Dumbledore asks, the moment Regulus walks back into his office, clicking the door gently shut behind him.

The old man’s tone is mild, conversational, but there is an unmistakeable glimmer of amusement in his eyes as he surveys him over his half-moon glasses. Regulus sighs internally. He needn’t have bothered drying his eyes, it seems. He should have known better than to try and get anything past the old bastard. 

“Yes,” he answers shortly. “I caught him.” 

Dumbledore nods, looking thoroughly satisfied, as usual, by his own skills of deduction. There’s something else in his expression as he looks at Regulus, though. Something prouder, fonder, than there ever used to be. 

“Ah, the joys of young love,” the old man says wistfully.

“Something like that,” Regulus replies vaguely, unable to stop himself from smiling slightly as his mind replays everything Fabian had just said. 

Dumbledore can prod and hint and tease all he likes; he won’t be getting anything more from him. Regulus is going to hoard the memory of the conversation he’s just had forever; it’s far too precious to ever be shared. 

“I must admit, I am rather proud, Regulus,” Dumbledore murmurs. 

Regulus only inclines his head a little. Nope, still not discussing it. 

“Very well,” the headmaster says finally, with a small sigh, as though reading his mind - which he better bloody not have done this time. “I shall respect your privacy, of course. But I believe there was something that you actually wanted to discuss with me, was there not?” 

“Well, wanted is rather a strong word,” Regulus answers sardonically, impressed with the calmness of his own voice. “But yes. Something important which we need to discuss.” 

“Well then, Regulus, I am all ears,” the old man says mildly, sitting back in his chair a little and gazing at him thoughtfully over steepled fingers. 

Dumbledore’s long sleeve has fallen back a little, allowing Regulus to see that the Horcrux’s curse has spread past his hand now, past his wrist, blackening the skin almost halfway up his arm. He tries not to shudder at the sight. He can’t imagine how much pain it must be causing the headmaster - not that he ever betrays a flicker of it in his expression. 

“Perhaps a drink first?” he asks quietly. “This might take a little while.” 

The old man raises one eyebrow.

“Are you offering me one of my own drinks, Regulus? Is this a veiled jab at my own failings as a host this evening? If so, I must apologise.” 

“Can I pour you a drink or not?” he asks flatly. 

Dumbledore lets out a small sigh, as though lamenting Regulus’s lack of appreciation for his humour. 

“Very well. I am not too proud to admit that a drink would be greatly appreciated, at the moment. I have had rather a long journey over the past few days, and I am not as young as I once was. Of course, it seems that my search for the missing Horcrux was rendered rather unnecessary by events happening right here in the castle,” he adds, gesturing at the twisted and charred diadem on the desk in front of him. 

“Sorry about that,” Regulus murmurs sardonically as he stands up, heading towards the headmaster’s drinks cabinet. 

“No need to apologise, of course,” Dumbledore replies cheerfully. Regulus rolls his eyes - he’s fairly certain his sarcasm never actually goes over his head. Dumbledore is only oblivious when it suits him. “I am very glad to have one less weight on my mind. Besides, the true adventurer knows that no journey is ever truly wasted.” 

“Wine? Butterbeer? Firewhiskey? Mead?” Regulus asks curtly. 

“Goodness, Regulus,” the old man says, sounding thoroughly entertained, “you could give my brother a run for his money.”

“Well?” he asks impatiently. 

“And you both share the same thorough aversion to small talk, too,” Dumbledore says, with a small sigh. “Very well - I could certainly polish off a glass of mead, especially as you have asked me so politely.” 

“Was that so hard?” Regulus mutters, reaching for the bottle of Rosmerta’s oak-matured mead. 

“Will you be joining me?” the headmaster asks, selective hearing apparently in full swing again. 

“If you like,” he replies with a small shrug, reaching for a second glass. 

They both fall silent for a few moments, as Regulus concentrates on pouring. 

“Here,” he mutters as he returns to the desk, holding Dumbledore’s glass out to him stiffly.

“Thank you,” the headmaster murmurs, his mouth twitching slightly as he accepts it. “Perhaps we shall make a gracious host of you yet.” 

“Just drink your bloody mead,” he mutters darkly, settling down in the seat opposite him with his own glass in hand. 

“Very well,” he says, raising his glass solemnly. “To your good health, Regulus.” 

Regulus leans back in his seat, watching the headmaster thoughtfully over the rim of his own glass as he takes a long, hearty swig of mead. 

“Ah, that’s just the ticket,” Dumbledore says approvingly. “Rosmerta certainly does know her craft.” 

He hums noncommittally, taking a small sip of his own mead. 

Another silence falls between them, as the headmaster takes another large sip of mead, eyes fixed on Regulus, clearly waiting for him to speak. Regulus’s gaze flits around the office, looking for another distraction.

“The sword,” he says suddenly, frowning. 

“Hmm?” the headmaster asks. 

“Gryffindor’s sword.” Regulus gestures towards the glass case high up on Dumbledore’s shelf, where he could have sworn the huge, ruby-encrusted sword that Remus had pulled out of the Sorting Hat down in the Chamber had been gleaming, last time he’d been in here - only now, the case is sitting empty. “It’s gone.” 

“It is, indeed,” the old man answers, with a small chuckle. “Nothing gets past you, does it, Regulus?”

“Why did you take it out?” 

“Well, as we discussed here in this very office, I am sure that our friend Tom is rather keen to create a Horcrux linked to Gryffindor, to complete his set,” he answers conversationally, settling back in his seat and taking another swig of mead. “Even if you do manage to ensure he cannot reach little Harry Potter, I thought it not entirely unlikely that Tom might gain access to this room, some time in the not-too-distant future. Unfortunately, he is not entirely incapable of putting two and two together; it would almost certainly occur to him at some point that Gryffindor’s sword would be in my own keeping. So, I thought it best not to make things too easy for him.” 

“Oh,” says Regulus, slightly stunned. “So…where did you put it, then?”

“Ah,” Dumbledore replies, with a small, almost mischievous smile, “now that is the question, isn’t it? I have my little hiding places set aside, like anyone does. But I imagine it will turn up again, sooner or later.”

Regulus glares at him - not that it seems to perturb the old man in the slightest -  he just continues to smile at him placidly. Merlin, must he always be so irritating?

“Now,” Dumbledore says, suddenly more businesslike as he considers Regulus over his half-moon spectacles, settling back a little more comfortably in his chair. “I must admit I am curious, Regulus, for it rather seems to me that you have been stalling. What is it that you needed to discuss with me?”

Regulus hesitates, willing his heart to stop throwing itself against his ribs, like a trapped bird in a cage. 

“We’re another Horcrux down now,” he says quietly, nodding at the twisted diadem on the desk between them. “Thanks to Meggie and Fabian.” 

“Indeed,” the headmaster murmurs, a little quieter now, his eyes fluttering closed briefly. “Thanks to you, too, from what I heard.” 

“That’s beside the point,” Regulus says brusquely. “My point is, that means we’re five Horcruxes down now, by my count - or at least, we soon will be, assuming Narcissa and Andromeda are on track securing the one Bellatrix has locked away.” 

“Narcissa sent me some good news on that front, only yesterday,” Dumbledore murmurs, his eyes drooping a little again - it seems to be taking him a little effort to keep them open now. “Apparently, she did, in fact, manage to secure it - and she and Andromeda have now dispatched it, between the two of them. It seems my guess was right - it was, apparently, an heirloom that once belonged to Helga Hufflepuff.” 

“Right,” says Regulus. He sets his glass down on the desk, leaning forward slightly, feeling a small burst of excitement in his chest now, despite everything. They’re so close, now. “So then that’s the locket, the diary, the ring, Ravenclaw’s diadem and something of Hufflepuff’s - all dealt with. All destroyed.” 

“Yes indeed,” the headmaster murmurs, inclining his head a little. Or maybe his head is just drooping. “An impressive group effort, to be sure.”

“Which leaves only the new Horcrux he created with Lucius’s murder,” Regulus says, a little breathless now. “The snake. And that one, he just keeps with him, right?” 

“Correct,” Dumbledore replies quietly. 

“Which means, ” Regulus continues, “that we’re pretty much ready now. Ready to put Sirius’s insane plan into motion. All of the pieces are in place on the board.” 

Dumbledore pauses, considering him over those half-moon spectacles. 

“The pieces do seem to be in place,” he agrees in a murmur. “The only remaining question, I suppose, is whether you and Sirius are feeling ready.” 

“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be, I think,” Regulus answers, trying to ignore the nerves twisting his stomach in knots, the thumping of his heart. “And as for my brother - well, you know him. When has he ever waited until he feels ‘ready’?” 

The headmaster chuckles again.

“True enough, I suppose. Well then, I suppose you may tell Sirius - and Tom - the good news at your leisure, Regulus.” 

He heaves a small sigh, his eyes fluttering shut again. 

“Of course, as soon as Tom believes that he has won, his first order of business will be to get me out of the way. In as humiliating and painful a manner as he can devise, I suppose. I don’t doubt that Bellatrix will be more than happy to be involved; she does like to play with her food before eating it. I know I promised you I would not order you to kill me, Regulus, but…” He sighs again, opening his eyes a fraction and giving him a small, sad smile. “I must confess, I do rather wish that you had given me a swifter, more painless death, which would have allowed me to retain some dignity, before we reached the stage of getting Tom and his more unsavoury devotees directly involved.”

“Well,” Regulus murmurs, “wish granted, then.” 

For a moment, Dumbledore just looks at him. It seems to take a few seconds for Regulus’s words to land properly. 

“I’m sorry?” the headmaster asks, sounding as close to confused as Regulus has ever heard him. 

Slowly, he reaches into his pocket, drawing out a tiny bottle, half-filled with a clear liquid. To the untrained eye, it could easily be mistaken for water. He tilts the bottle towards Dumbledore slightly, showing him that the seal is broken. 

“Not Veritaserum, I take it?” the old man asks, his brow furrowing slightly as he takes the little bottle from Regulus, examining it with a detached kind of curiosity. 

“No,” Regulus agrees quietly, “not Veritaserum. The Draught of Living Death. Slughorn never allowed us to brew this until our sixth year - and even then, nobody managed it except me. I seem to recall him warning us that we should under no circumstances give anybody more than one drop of this, two at the very most. That would suffice, Slughorn said, to send the drinker immediately into the deepest of sleeps. It’s colourless and tasteless too, if brewed correctly - almost completely undetectable. Three drops, he said, would make someone’s heart rate drop down immediately to an almost fatal level, even if the drinker was young and healthy. If you look at the bottle carefully, Professor, you’ll see there isn’t a great deal of potion left. That would be because I’ve just put ten drops of it in your mead.”

“Ahh,” Dumbledore says slowly, looking at Regulus with an absurdly proud expression on his face now, as though he’s just handed in a particularly well-researched assignment. “Well, that certainly would explain why I have suddenly started to feel so immensely tired over the past few minutes. I’m aware I’m an old man who has had rather a long day - a long week, in fact - but I was thinking that my current exhaustion seemed a tad extreme.” 

Regulus doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he stays silent. 

“I must confess, I assumed that, if you decided you were going to kill me after all, you would simply use the Killing Curse,” the headmaster muses, “but perhaps it was foolish of me not to consider that this is much more your style. Despite the fact that I literally requested this of you, somehow I still didn’t see you coming, Regulus,” he continues, not sounding angry or afraid in the slightest, but rather chuckling faintly to himself, as though amused by both Regulus’s ingenuity and his own uncharacteristic blindness. “And I flatter myself that, if I didn’t see you coming, then Voldemort certainly won’t. It’s a shame, in a way, that I won’t be there to see it - but I trust you, Regulus. I have every confidence that, with you and your brother working together, there is nothing that the pair of you won’t succeed in, if you put your minds and your considerable combined talents to the task.” 

“I….thanks,” he mutters. 

He never did get used to receiving compliments from the old man. Not that it was a particularly frequent occurrence. 

“How long would you say I have left?” Dumbledore asks, in the same tone someone might use to ask about the likelihood of rain, his eyes fluttering closed again. “Just for curiosity’s sake.” His voice is definitely growing fainter now. 

“Well, it’s coming up on ten minutes since you started drinking the mead now,” Regulus murmurs, checking his watch. “So….I’d say about another ten minutes, give or take?”

“Good, good,” Dumbledore says quietly, his voice becoming slightly slurred now. “And do I take it that this was the important matter that you needed to ‘discuss’?” 

“Well, I was going to tell you the thing about the plan being ready, too,” he mutters. “But…yeah. This was the important matter.” 

“Ingenious,” the headmaster responds, chuckling and looking absurdly proud again. “I don’t believe I could have planned it better myself.” 

“You shouldn’t feel any pain at all,” Regulus adds, suddenly struck with a strange urge to reassure him, in these final moments. “If I’ve brewed it correctly - and I have - then it should be quicker and easier than falling asleep.” 

“Yes,” Dumbledore replies, his voice growing thicker, “I daresay you have brewed it perfectly, Regulus. I cannot feel any pain at all - which makes a very welcome change after these past few months, I can assure you.” 

Regulus believes him. The old man looks more content, more peaceful in this moment than he’s ever seen him. 

“Would you like me to leave you?” he asks quietly. 

“Actually,” the headmaster replies, opening his eyes a fraction and giving him a small smile, “if I am permitted to ask another favour of you…I confess I would rather like to have some company, while I drift off. You have not finished your drink, after all - I presume you did not tamper with your own?” 

“No. Of course I didn’t,” Regulus answers, feeling a little lost suddenly. He had never expected the old man to ask him to stay. 

“Well then,” says Dumbledore, nodding towards Regulus’s glass. “I certainly have no wish to hurry you out of my office. You may have to forgive me, though,” he adds, chuckling to himself faintly again, “if I am not the most engaging of hosts, over the next ten minutes or so.” 

Regulus nods, settling back in his chair, chewing on his lower lip as he feels a sudden swell of emotion in his chest, taking him by surprise. He’s not even sure what the emotion is ,exactly. He just knows it’s there. 

“No regrets, I trust?” Dumbledore murmurs, apparently prompted by the look on his face. 

“Plenty,” Regulus responds. “But none about this in particular.” 

Dumbledore smiles in that melancholy way again. 

“I am sure you do not have half so much to regret as I do, Regulus - or even as I did when I was your age,” he murmurs. “Not least…” He lets out a small sigh. “I regret some of the things I have said to you. The way I have treated you, on occasion.” 

Regulus blinks, taken aback by this. 

“Really?” he asks, frowning at him curiously.

It takes the headmaster a few moments to answer him, this time - so long that Regulus thinks for a moment that he’s already gone. But when he starts speaking again, he realises that the old man is struggling to form words, using up the rapidly draining vestiges of his energy. 

“Well…I should…qualify that apology, I suppose,” he says, his voice growing more slurred every second. “I do not regret doing things that were…necessary. But I am sorry for…the things I have done that have caused…unneccessary harm. In hindsight.” 

“Right,” says Regulus, raising an eyebrow. “Still a bastard, then.” 

Dumbledore lets out a sound that might have qualified as a laugh, if it wasn’t so weak. 

“Indeed.” He pauses for a moment, apparently trying to summon the strength for more words. “But I should not spend…my last moments…complaining.” He’s wheezing slightly now. “I have been cursed and blessed with a life…full of adventures. And misadventures. I am glad to hear that you do not….regret doing this, Regulus. Because, to my mind, this is…the last adventure I have left.” 

Regulus pauses, considering the old man thoughtfully. 

“Y’know, there haven’t been many moments where I’ve admired you, Dumbledore,” he says. “I probably wouldn’t even need one whole hand to count them, in fact.”

“You flatter me,” the headmaster slurs, his lips twitching ever so slightly. “As always.” 

“But I have to admit, this is one of those rare moments,” Regulus continues solemnly. “I have no idea when or how I’m going to go. I used to spend half my life wishing it would just… be over, and quickly. I’m doing much better these days, though. I truly hope my time won’t be up any day soon. But, when it does come…well, if I can make my exit as gracefully as this, I reckon I’ll be doing pretty well.” 

Dumbledore’s eyes have fluttered closed again - he smiles slightly, bowing his head a little in acknowledgement, but makes no other response. He’s still breathing - but only very faintly. 

“Fabian will forgive you for this, you know,” he says suddenly.

“I know,” Regulus replies, a little taken aback by the abrupt change of topic. “He told me so, just now.”

“You told him what you were going to do?” Dumbledore asks faintly, opening his eyes a sliver, raising a silver eyebrow.

“Well…no, not exactly,” he mutters. “But he…well, he made it pretty clear that he’ll forgive me, anyway.”

The old man nods, looking satisfied as he closes his eyes again. 

“Sirius will forgive you, too,” he adds.

Regulus shifts uncomfortably in his seat, his stomach twisting itself into knots. 

“I…I don’t know,” he says quietly. “I hope you’re right.”

“Well, as we have discussed,” the headmaster murmurs, his voice barely audible now, so that Regulus has to lean in slightly to hear him, “I make mistakes, like the next man. But I am confident enough in this…to let it be…one of the last things I say to you. One of the last things I…say at all, in fact. Sirius might kick up a fuss, but he’ll…still…forgive you. He loves you a…great deal, you know. More than you have…ever realised, I think.” 

Regulus feels his throat begin to burn at that, his eyes stinging.

“I love him too,” he admits, voice choked. What the hell - if he can’t admit it now, when can he? What’s Dumbledore going to do, run and tell Sirius in the next five minutes? “I love him so much. Always have, I think.” 

“I know,” the headmaster says simply. “But does Sirius know? Have you ever…actually told him?” 

“I….” Regulus is brought up short by that, wracking his memory. “No. Now that you mention it, I don’t think I ever have.” 

“If you’re brave enough to say it to Fabian, you’re brave enough to… say it to Sirius too,” the old man murmurs, his breath coming in short gasps now. Regulus doesn’t ask him how he knows about Fabian - but of course he does. Figures, really, that he would manage to be infuriating until the very end. “I believe in you, Regulus. You are…a much stronger, braver man than me. I know this,” he adds, an edge of something like grief creeping into his tone for the first time, “because I never managed to…summon the courage to tell…my own brother…how much I loved him. It would seem I have… run out of time, now. It’s too late for me. But it’s not too late… for you. I know I’m in… no position to be…giving you instructions or advice. But…tell Sirius, anyway. Take it from me, you’ll… regret it greatly. If you don’t.”

“I will,” Regulus whispers, his voice still hoarse and choked. He blinks, tears blurring his vision again. “I promise.”

The headmaster nods, apparently satisfied. 

“Very tired, Regulus,” he mumbles. 

For a moment, he almost sounds like a small child who’s stayed up past their bedtime, too overwhelmed and sleepy to cope with anything anymore. 

“Yeah,” Regulus murmurs. “Yeah, I know. It’s alright, though. You’ll stop being tired soon enough.” 

“I know,” the headmaster answers, with a small, blissful smile, as though he can’t wait. He falls briefly silent again. “I have…one more favour…to ask you.” 

“ Another favour?” Regulus asks, raising his eyebrows. Dumbledore gives a tiny nod, opening his eyes and fixing him with a look that’s remarkably piercing, given the state of him right now. Regulus supposes that means it’s important. He sighs. “Fine. I suppose I may as well indulge you.” 

“Would you…would you pass on a message…to my brother?” 

“Aberforth?” Regulus asks, a little taken aback. 

The old man nods, looking somehow more vulnerable than Regulus has ever seen him. Almost reminding him of a lost child again. 

“Could you tell him…that I love him? That I’ve always loved him? And tell him…tell him I’m sorry.” 

Suddenly, he can feel tears burning at the back of his throat again. He’s not even sure why. 

“Sorry for what?” he asks hoarsely, before he can stop himself. 

Dumbledore smiles, a tiny, sad, private smile. A smile tinged with grief. 

“He’ll know,” he says simply - and for once, Regulus finds that he’s not irritated by the old man’s evasiveness. 

“So?” he presses, after a moment’s pause, his breathing so shallow now that it’s barely there at all. “Could you? Could you tell him…what I said?” 

“Yeah,” Regulus says quietly, finding to his own surprise that he doesn’t need to hesitate at all. “Yeah, I’ll pass on the message. I promise.” 

Dumbledore lets out the faintest of sighs, his face settling into contentment, his shoulders lifting slightly, as though Regulus has just relieved him of the last, heaviest weight he was carrying.

“Thank you,” he murmurs. 

“You’re welcome,” Regulus responds quietly.

“Really,” Dumbledore insists, as though Regulus might suspect him of withholding the truth, even now. He barely has any breath left to speak, but it seems he needs to get these words out. “Thank you, Regulus Black. For…for everything.” 

He lets out one last exhale, his eyes closing again, his head drooping forward slightly, and goes completely still. 

Regulus waits, just in case the headmaster is still struggling, fighting to find the energy and willpower for more words. He sits there in the silence, staring at the old man slumped in his throne-like chair. One minute. Two minutes. Nothing. No movement, not the slightest flicker. Tentatively, Regulus leans over the desk, reaching out to gently take hold of his unblemished arm, holding his thumb against the other man’s wrist, focusing as hard as he can. No pulse. His arm is already growing stiff and cool to the touch. 

It’s nine thirty in the evening, October fifteenth, 1983 - and Albus Dumbledore is dead. 

Regulus places his arm carefully down on the desk and pushes his chair back, standing up and staring silently down at the husk of the Hogwarts headmaster. The greatest wizard who has ever lived, people say. The only one Lord Voldemort has ever feared. Ironic, perhaps, that he looks like he really could be just sleeping, having worked too late at his desk. 

Regulus can’t quite untangle everything he’s feeling, in this moment. Shock. Respect. A strange sense of closure. Perhaps even a shadow of grief. 

What he isn’t feeling, even the slightest bit - to his own surprise - is guilt. He wasn’t lying about that, he wasn’t just trying to put the old man at ease in his last moments. He isn’t doubting himself, hating himself for what he’s just done. He knows somehow, at his very core, that he’s done the right thing. The right thing to ensure the plan can continue smoothly, yes - but the right thing for Dumbledore, too. 

Shaking himself a little, Regulus reaches over to take the mangled remains of Ravenclaw’s diadem, slipping it into his pocket. He pushes the tiny, unsealed, half-empty bottle of potion towards the old man, placing it just next to his half-finished glass of mead, before swiftly vanishing his own glass. 

He steps back, considering the scene in front of him. Nothing here to suggest that Dumbledore hadn’t added the Draught of Living Death to his drink himself. 

Nodding to himself, Regulus turns his back on the body of Albus Dumbledore, leaving him alone in his office as he strides for the door.  

He has a letter to send. No - two letters. 

17th October, 1983 - Little Hangleton

“Come on, ” Regulus mutters irritably under his breath, his heart in his throat as he looks around, turning to check if anyone has joined him yet for what feels like the tenth time. Still nobody. 

He had written to Voldemort, telling him that he had news to share, news of the most important kind. The man, for reasons best known to himself, had sent a reply telling Regulus to meet him at this exact spot. Regulus has no idea why - the last he’d heard, it was Bellatrix’s manor that was being used as a base - but, not willing to push his luck at this juncture, he had obediently Apparated here, arriving fifteen minutes early just to be on the safe side. 

But it’s coming up on half an hour now since he’d been ordered to be here, and Voldemort, for his part, certainly seems to be taking his sweet time in meeting him. Regulus supposes he’s trying to make a pointed statement, implying that Regulus has kept him waiting for far too long without following through on his promises, so now he’s going to keep Regulus waiting in turn, as some kind of petty revenge. 

He turns back to the old manor house looming up on the hill behind him, frowning up at it, still trying to figure out why the hell they’re meeting here. 

The facade is red brick, handsome, ivy-covered, the architecture relatively new by pureblood wizarding standards. Only nineteenth-century, probably, if Regulus had to guess. The manor doesn’t look anything like the Malfoys’, or the Lestranges’, or Grimmauld Place for that matter. Whoever lives here is obviously wealthy, but the building has a distinct aura of…mundanity. Muggleness. 

The same can be said for the village lying in the valley below, now Regulus comes to think of it, turning back to examine the view beneath him. Little Hangleton, according to the wooden milepost pointing towards it. 

The whitewashed cottages are certainly pretty - quaint would be a good word, he supposes. He can just see the outline of a small church and graveyard, if he leans over slightly - a little harder to make out from this vantage point, as both are lying directly in the shadow of the manor house on the hill. The church, like the rest of the village, like the manor behind him, is small, neat. Everything around him is cosy and tidy and perfectly uniform. 

Regulus’s bewilderment deepens the longer he looks at it. He’s grown up amongst purebloods - regardless of the Statute of Secrecy, wizards and witches have rather a habit of drawing attention to themselves. You can usually spot a wizard dwelling a mile away, which is part of the reason they usually have to be kept hidden from Muggles with various concealment charms. 

So why the hell has Lord Voldemort, the most vehemently supremacist of all the pureblood supremacists, told Regulus to meet him in the most blatantly Muggle village he’s ever set foot in? 

“Ah. Regulus.” 

He jumps at the sound of the familiar cold, cruelly amused voice, his heart in his mouth as he spins to face the speaker. 

Voldemort is standing there, merciless red gaze fixed on him unwaveringly, a malicious little smile playing on his lipless mouth, clearly relishing in the knowledge that he’s frightened him. The huge snake - the last Horcrux - is draped over his shoulders like an accessory, Voldemort’s long, pale fingers stroking it almost absentmindedly, without taking his eyes away from Regulus for a moment. The snake raises its head slightly with a lingering hiss, tongue flicking towards Regulus as though longing to taste him. 

He tries not to flinch, internally cursing himself. How does the man manage to move so bloody silently? How is it that he’d been waiting for him with rapidly dwindling patience for half an hour, and yet Voldemort had still somehow managed to catch him off-guard? 

“So,” Voldemort continues quietly, tilting his head to the side slightly, considering him, as though he’s a snake himself, debating whether now is the right moment to strike. “You said you had important news for me, Regulus?” 

The sceptical sneer in his voice would be evident even to a small child. 

“I…I do, my Lord, yes,” Regulus answers, hating the fact that this vile man still has the power to make him feel so small. 

“Well, I certainly hope so, for your sake,” Voldemort replies, with a small, malevolent smile. “For I must say, Regulus, you have yielded very little return for me, as of late.” 

He wills his heart to stop throwing itself frantically against his ribs. You have the upper hand , he reminds himself. He’s missing almost all the pieces he needs for this game. And he doesn’t even know it. 

“I think this news may change your mind, my Lord,” he says, focusing on wiping his mind completely as he gazes back at him. A blank slate. 

“Oh?” The unnaturally pale man raises one almost invisible eyebrow. “Important news indeed, then. Well, Regulus? What is this news? ” 

He takes a deep breath. 

“It’s Albus Dumbledore.”

“What about him?” Voldemort asks, lip curling.

“He is dead.” 

Tom Riddle stares at him, his expression one of pure shock. Whatever he had been expecting, it wasn’t that, apparently. 

“Dead?” he repeats, in a low whisper. “Dumbledore is dead?” Regulus nods. “By your hand?” 

“Yes, my Lord. By my hand.”

“Regulus!” 

He’s caught between shock and wild excitement now. It makes Regulus feel sick to his stomach, but he forces himself to continue. 

“I did not use the Killing Curse; I slipped poison into his drink. There is no evidence to link the murder back to me, anyone who walks into his office would assume that the old fool had done it himself. Which means that I can continue to spy at Hogwarts, or in the Order, without suspicion falling on me. If you wish it, of course.” 

Voldemort’s face is transformed now, a vindictive, unhinged kind of glee written across it. Most people look warmer, more approachable, when they’re joyful - but not this man. He looks somehow even less human than usual. It sends ice dripping down Regulus’s spine. 

“At last! ” he crows. “The old fool is gone! Hogwarts is mine for the taking, and I can crack his grave open, rob him and spit on him, if I so choose - for who would have the power to stop me? Ah, Regulus!” Riddle moves forward without warning, placing one cold hand on the back of his neck, keeping him in place. Regulus shudders slightly, fighting the overwhelming urge to spit at him, as the snake flicks its tongue towards him again. “I would be lying if I said I had never doubted you - for I did doubt you indeed, severely. I spent many weeks wondering whether I had been foolish, placing my trust in another unworthy, incompetent Death Eater, wondering if I would be forced to dispose of you in the end, as I disposed of Lucius.” 

Regulus tries his utmost not to flinch. How the man can say things like that, so casually, with absolutely no hint of guilt or remorse, he has no idea. 

“But you have proved me wrong,” Voldemort continues, almost breathless in his excitement. “I am almost never wrong - but it is rarer still, for me to taste such relief , such power, in finding that I was wrong!” 

Small dick syndrome , Meggie’s voice interjects in his head, unbidden, and suddenly Regulus finds himself struggling not to laugh in this man’s face. 

“I am happy to be of service, my Lord,” he says, bowing to keep his expression hidden, inching subtly away now that the other man’s grip on his neck has slackened.

“So, you have succeeded in one of the tasks that I set for you,” says Voldemort, finally sounding a little calmer. He’s eyeing Regulus like a snake intent on a mouse again. “I wonder, though - was this the only news you had for me? Is it possible that you have proved yourself a faithful servant to Lord Voldemort twice over? Have you finally succeeded in the other promise you made to me, all those months ago? Have you fooled your brother into telling you where the Potters are, where they are hiding the boy?”

“Oh,” Regulus says quietly. He can feel his mouth curving into a completely genuine grin now. “Well, actually - now that you mention it, I can do you one better than that, my Lord…”