The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix - Part Two

A Ta Mort

The stone basin loomed.

Regulus pulled himself up out of the boat. Kreacher stood on the stone landing and shivered, clinging onto Regulus's leg the moment his Master had come up beside him. 

Regulus's wand glowed from his fist and he walked stiffly across the rocks. They were wet and slimy and slippery. His feet slid as he moved and he fell to his knees more than once as he climbed up the sloping pile of stone. He kept pausing frequently to lift Kreacher along.

Finally, Regulus put Kreacher on the pinnacle beside the basin's pedestal and then pulled himself up onto the stone, too. 

He lay on the ground for a long moment, his cheek pressed to the rock, panting and feeling the cold stone on his feverishly-hot face. His arm was throbbing so hard that he imagined his heart there, for the beating felt more prominent in his bicep than it did in his chest by this point, and the sleeve of his shirt was bloody and sticking to his skin around the gash, the bandage having not been replaced after he opened the cavern door. 

Finally, after what felt like hours of reminding himself how to breathe in and out, Regulus stood up, pushing himself up from the stone by the good hand, and inched his way closer until he was standing, staring down into the basin. He could see the locket laying at the bottom of the bowl, the chain curled about it, the liquid nightmare encasing it appeared as pure and as still as if it were encased in glass or ice. He knew better than to try at picking up the locket - it would not be possible until every drop of the nightmare had been consumed.

That was all there was left to do now, after all.

He'd come all the way through the cave, over the little lake in the darkness, and he'd climbed up here from the boat, and now --

Slowly, Regulus raised his arm up behind his head, and  fingers undid the clasp at the back of the locket 'round his neck. The fake locket dropped into his palm and he stared at it for a moment. It felt heavy in the palm of his hand.. He wished he could take back the changes he'd made to the pendent for just a moment - just long enough to run his fingers over the letters BRAVE one last time... but they were already gone forever.

"Kreacher," Regulus said quietly.

Kreacher's ears were flat to his head already, his eyes as wide as ever could they be.

"Come here." Regulus lifted the elf up and set him on a stone that stood beside the pedestal that held the basin, where Kreacher could easily see into the bowl. "Do you see that?"

"The locket, Master?" Kreacher asked, looking where Regulus pointed. 

"Yes, Kreacher," Regulus said. "When all of the potion in the bowl is gone... I need you to switch the lockets, remember? Take the real one out of the basin and replace it with this one." He held up the fake locket.

Kreacher peered at the locket in the bowl, then up at the fake one as it hung from Regulus's hand. Regulus held out the fake locket, giving it up, and Kreacher's hands closed around it.

It took all of his strength to let it go.

It felt even harder to breathe when he had. It was as though the air he was breathing in was barely even air anymore.

Regulus stepped even closer to the basin so that his abdomen pressed to the edge of the stone. There was a little hand bowl made of a mother-of-pearl oyster shell, which sat on the ledge of the basin. Regulus's hand shook as he lifted the empty bowl, turning it over in his palm, inspecting it carefully.

"Kreacher," he whispered.

"Master Regulus?"

"I'm going to drink this potion... so you can switch out the lockets... and I don't know what it will do to me..."