The Cave
He’s, he’s so close. He’s so close, he’s so close, no, no, no, no. It’s, it’s pulling him away. Away from the water but he needs the water.
He.
Needs.
THe.
WATER.
And then his face his wet and the water doesn’t matter anymore. It doesn’t matter cause it’s here. It’s so good. Down his throat. On his face. He drinks more. And then, and then, it’s, no, it’s gone. Then it’s back and he drinks more, and more, and more. And then he realizes.
You are Regulus Arcturus Black, he reminds himself, you are on a very dangerous mission so get yourself together you idiot. It takes longer than he’s proud of to realize someone else is there. He pushes the stranger off of him quickly grabbing for his wand.
“Looking for this?” the stranger asks.
Oak, dragon heartstring, 11 inches, rigid.
“Give it back,” he demands.
“Alright,” the stranger replies tossing it over. Regulus catches it deftly.
“And who, ” Regulus asks angrily, “are you? How did you get here?”
The stranger looks at him warily as he points his wand at the stranger. Should have thought of that before he threw his wand back.
“Er,” the stranger waffles for a moment. “Well, it’s a bit difficult to explain.” He says. And that. That is just not good enough.
“ Try, ” he spat through his teeth.
“Well, I suppose I’m here to save you.”
Regulus is going to scream. It will be very dramatic.
“Why?” He replies. He secures a steadier grip on his wand before continuing. “Who are you? How do you know this place? How do you know me? ” Regulus thinks these are all perfectly valid questions.
“Alright, I’ll just, well, I’m. Well, I’m from the future.” The other boy has dark shaggy hair, round glasses, a jagged scar on his forehead, and is utterly delusional. “No, really, I am,” he proceeds. “I’m from 1998, I sort of… died I suppose. Except I didn’t do it quite right, and, well. Here I am.”
“And you just happened to know who I am and exactly when I needed saving?” Regulus does not believe this nonsense for a single moment.
“Well,” he stops to think as though he finds this perplexing as well. He is going to scream. “I was here for the locket honestly, I came to the past and just. Figured I’d find the horcruxes since I know where they all are.” He says simply. As though hunting for horcruxes could ever be simple.
“Sorry, horcruxes, as in, plural of horcruxe. Multiple horcruxes.” A cruel joke. It must be a cruel joke, the Dark Lord cannot have made multiple horcruxes.
“Yea, seven, it’s a special number in magic or something,” Or something. Regulus Arcturus Black the heir to the most Nobel House of Black owes a life debt to an imbecile.
“Or something? What sort of wizard are you that you can break into the Dark Lord’s cave but don’t understand the significance of seven used in magic? I mean in Pythagorean numerology alone…”
“Ok, ok, ok,” the stranger interrupts. “Worse than Hermione, Christ.”
“My name’s Harry Potter, my parents are James and Lily Potter, and my godfather is Sirius Black. You’re his brother. I know this because you left the same initials on your little note to Tom that you have on your bedroom door back in 12 Grimmauld Place. Now, Kreacher told me everything I needed to know about you and the locket back in the future, where I’m from, and now I’ve saved you. Do you believe me?”
Regulus takes a moment to process the meer onslaught of information. This Harry Potter has been in his bedroom? Tom?? He knows Grimmauld and Kreacher. And the friends he does have he’s liked enough that he hasn’t subjected them to his home. No one knows about Kreacher but family, no one else cares to know. And he does look a startling amount like James Potter. Lily too now that he’s looking, he doesn’t know her well but he’s seen her enough in Slug Club. But it’s impossible. Time travel of his magnitude has never ended well for anybody.
“And how, exactly, did you time travel 19 years?” The stranger pauses like he somehow didn’t expect this.
“I died,” he murmurs softly. “I died, wrong. ” He says it like he’s horrified. Like he couldn’t even get death right. Something settles uncomfortably in Regulus’ chest as Harry retreats into himself.
“Alright, well,” he concedes. “I can decide if I think you're lying after we get out of the blasted cave.” Harry gives a shaky nod in agreement.
They both stumble up out of their seated positions and Regulus does not need to lean on Harry thank you very much… he swoons into his arms. It’s not graceful at all. Merlin.
Harry proceeds to drag him into the boat where Regulus is able to move a bit more and situates himself while Harry squeezes in next to him.
Harry tenses as the boat slowly slinks across the water.
“They’re coming,” Harry steadies himself on the end of the boat with his wand at the ready so Regulus gets his wand ready too.
“Who, exactly, is coming?” He replies wearily.
“Inferi,” Harry replies as though that’s not close to the worst news he’s heard all day. Only close because the implications of Harry saving him are clear to see. He was almost killed by bloody inferi. He still might be.
“You know firestorm?” Harry asks as though it’s a normal seventh-year spell to learn. Perhaps he thinks Regulus learned it as a death eater, does Potter even know he’s a death eater? That’s something perhaps best to be left to himself for now.
“ No! You absolute madman I don’t know the bloody firestorm spell.” He can’t believe this is his life.
“Pity,” Harry responds and fucking casts firestorm. The heat is scorching as it rounds itself around the boat over and over. The light from it fills the cave and exposes the deformed bodies dragging themselves up from the depths of the lake. There must be hundreds of them rising up all around them.
He hears their screeching as the skeletal forms burn as they reach the surface and the smell of the burning flesh floods the air. As Harry fights them off Regulus does his best to steer the boat back toward the shore.
By the time they make it to shore, Harry is visibly tiring from the powerful magic and Regulus doesn’t feel much better himself, sweating out the much-needed water from the heat and strain from maneuvering the boat.
“You go,” Harry yells, “get out and drag the boat out a bit, I’ll jump out and we can make a run for it!” The strain gets worse as Harry expands the spell to allow Regulus room on the shore. As Regulus pulls the boat forward Harry turns to move back and aim at the inferi all in the same direction now.
“C’mon,” Regulus yells as the boat docks firmly in the sand as Regulus moves to run out of the shallows. Suddenly as it came the fire cuts out and the ghastly forms seem to get faster and multiply as they surge after them. Regulus runs as fast as he’s able with Harry behind him and catching up with his body still weak from the poison.
As Harry runs past he grabs Regulus around his back with one arm to pull him along as they run through the arch.
“Reducto!” Harry aims above the entrance to the cave and Regulus sees from the corner of his eyes as a rock slide falls against the inferi that had made it through before they both head off over the cliff.
Despite the cushioning charm keeping him from breaking all the bones in his body Harry knew he’d underestimated how deep into the water he’d go when he came up hacking it out of his lungs.
After a moment Regulus came up beside him gasping for breath and, honestly, flailing around quite a bit. Harry grabbed his arm to tug him far enough away from the cave to apparate.
“We have to go this way,” Harry yelled as he pulled Regulus along breathing heavily. The air is colder than the last time he was here and it burns his lungs as he breaths in and out. “Once we get a bit further I can apparate us somewhere safe.”
“Pardon me?” Regulus asked incredulously. “You think I’m going to let you apparate me anywhere? No, I’ll apparate us.” He insisted. Harry didn’t have it in him to argue if it meant getting out of the cold.
“Fine,” he grunted out as they waded forward a bit more. “Here.” Regulus yanked him closer by the arm and then they were gone.
Harry never got used to the feeling of apparation no matter how many times he did it. The tight compressed flying feeling sent adrenaline running through his veins. Before long they popped out into the desolate countryside.
“Where are we?” He asked disoriented. The landscape was entirely unfamiliar.
“France,” Regulus replied curtly. He didn’t seem inclined to share more than that. “Right, you owe me a proper explanation.” Merlin, how was he supposed to get the other boy to believe him? He’s already told Regulus all the information he had on him, little as it was.
“Well, I’ve already told you the truth, and I really didn’t know all that much about you so I’m not sure how I’m supposed to prove it,” he answers and Regulus considers him for a moment.
“Surely you know something, ” he drawls exasperatedly. Harry thinks for a moment.
“Well you're a death eater aren’t you,” Regulus flinches at that but Harry keeps going. “I can tell you everything I know about what happens with them. Names. Malfoy, Bellatrix, Karkaroff would still be one at this point, the Carrows, Pettigrew,”
“ Pettigrew,” Regulus exclaims suddenly.
“Yea,” Harry spits roughly. “The rat was a traitor to the order just like Snape was to Tom.”
“Who the fuck is Tom?” He shrieks in the manner of someone at their breaking point.
“Er, You-Know-Who? It’s his actual name. Tom Marvolo Riddle, apparently he has some stupid anagram that switches it all around into I Am Lord Voldemort, how long do you think it took him to come up with that?” Harry tries for a joke but Regulus looks like he might actually lose it.
“So, so,” he starts. “I can’t deal with the Tom of it all at the moment. The Dark Lord. Tom. But, so. Pettigrew is a traitor? So is Snape? Neither seems the type,” as he speaks Harry can see him adding layers of a mask, compartmentalizing quickly and efficiently in order to regain his composure.
“Yea, that’s why they were so efficient,” Harry remarks.
“So, let’s say any of that is true, which neither of us has any way of proving,” he hesitates for a moment. “What happened to Evan Rosier and Barty Crouch Jr.” And there’s a look in his eyes as he asked about them on purpose. Perhaps Rosier died already? Harry remembers the name from the pensieve but Crouch wasn’t arrested until after Voldemort was gone.
“Well, Rosier died, maybe in battle or something I just heard about it in a memory, and Crouch, well, he got kissed, by the dementors,” Harry’s always felt a bit strange about Crouch. He tried to get Harry killed and brought Voldemort back. Harry’s also meet Neville’s parents and knows Crouch was one of the men responsible for that. But he knows no one deserves the kiss. No one.
Regulus closes his eyes like he’s in pain. He takes a deep breath and then meets Harry’s eyes again.
“What about Sirius? My parents?” He believes him now. Something he said rang true with something he knows.
“All dead,” he says softly. He knows enough to know Regulus and Sirius didn’t exactly end on good terms but it has to suck to know your whole family will be dead in less than twenty years.
“How,” he counters soft and cold.
“I dunno about your parents. Most I ever knew of them was your mother’s portrait in Grimmauld, but Sirius,” Harry’s the one that needs a moment this time. Thinks back on it, Remus holding him back, attempting an unforgivable for the first time on Bellatrix. “Bellatrix killed him when I was 15,” he ends with. Regulus lets out a small whine apparently deciding that this is finally the thing that gets to be too much for him. His older cousin killed his brother long after he and his parents were dead. Maybe Rosier and Crouch mean something to him too.
Regulus stares him in the eyes and then flints around his face taking him in in his entirety.
“Ok,” he says finally. “Ok, I believe you.” Harry releases a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. He doesn’t know why. Regulus doesn’t matter to him. If he didn’t believe him they’d just go their separate ways. But there’s been something so lonely about the last week he’s been stumbling about in cold and dreary February all by himself. Perhaps, despite himself, he’s hoped to make a friend in the ways of near death just as he always seems to do.
“Let's get out of here.”