The second to last chapter (and yes, the title is stolen from a Buffy episode for no reason)! Finally, things begin to make sense...
Betaed by the infinitely patient rambkowalczyk
13 Dead Things
For a long time, Remus wasn’t aware that he was awake. The darkness and silence around him was so complete that his thoughts remained heavy and empty as in deep sleep.
Only when the multitude of small lights started to glow and illuminate the cavern, he realised that he had been awake for some time. He was resting on a perfectly smooth stone that felt like hard silk under his palms. To his surprise, he was neither bound nor paralysed. He felt for his wand, but it was gone.
Around him, the jagged walls of the cave rose like a gothic cathedral until they ended about fifty feet above, in what seemed at first sight to be an enchanted ceiling not unlike the one at the Great Hall of Hogwarts. However it showed not the sky but a strange, translucent surface that rippled and moved like some kind of fluid.
Remus sat up and vertigo overcame him. He felt dizzy and weak as a kitten. How much time had gone by since... what had happened? He remembered something urgent that he had to tell Snape. Snape, who was in a bathroom with him “ and Regulus Black. Snape tried Legilimency, to find out how to wake up Dumbledore. Remus remembered that there was something important that he needed to tell Snape but his dizziness made it hard to think.
Because the vertigo remained, he didn’t try to stand up but he looked around to find out where he was.
The cavern itself was rather narrow, but very long, and the far end of it vanished in twilight and shadows.
But the cave was not empty. There were huge, high-backed chairs and an oval table of dark wood, and some of the walls were obscured by ancient tapestries. Another wall was carved into a shelf that held thousands of books and scrolls. Only a few feet from where Remus lay, a single column rose out of the ground.
The small lights were neither candles nor the artificial light of magic, but came from the leaves and buds of a vine-like plant that crept up the stone walls and along the floor in filigree coils and curls. The colour ranged from soft purple to a green-golden glow and it pulsed very slightly as if following a slow heartbeat.
The solemnity and beauty of the room was marred by the many things that were crammed chaotically into it. On the oval table, for example, lay two swords, a couple of mirrors, daggers and goblets, several gems, rings and bracelets, a patched hat that Remus recognised as the Sorting Hat and a couple of valises and boxes. All objects radiated strong magic. Against the walls, shrouded portraits were stapled. Two tall mirrors were also half hidden by cloth.
But the most disconcerting thing was the assortment of beings and creatures that stood in the room like lifeless statues: all four of the Hogwarts ghosts along with Peeves and several minor and less corporeal ghosts stood in paralysed poses next to each other, followed by a Centaur, a couple of large spiders in jars, Mrs Norris, Hermione’s kneazle and Hagrid’s huge dog, Fang.
They were real and alive; Remus could smell them (except for the ghosts, of course). They just didn’t move. When one of the figures did move, Remus jumped in startled surprise.
A man walked out of the shadow and came closer to him. It was Regulus, clothed in a hooded Death Eater cloak. He walked slowly and dragged his crippled foot more than usual.
“Five hours to midnight,” he announced in a flat voice. Then he seized one of the golden goblets and offered it to Remus.
“Drink. There’s no need to poison you now,” he said with a sardonic smile.
Remus frowned and took the goblet from him. It felt warm and alive under his touch. He still felt too weak to get up from the floor. The goblet was full of a steaming liquid that smelled sweet and salty and sour all at once. It was dark red, but more like wine than like blood. Regulus still smiled.
“What day is it?” Remus asked suspiciously.
“The thirty-first of October,” Regulus answered and the smile spread into a full grin. “Halloween. Tonight the castle will fall to its enemies and the enemy of the Dark Lord will be vanquished.”
Indeed, there was no need to poison him. The vertigo returned with renewed vigour. Helplessly, Remus sipped at the goblet and discovered that he had never tasted anything that was as heart-warming and nourishing as this. What is this, he wondered irreverently, the Holy Grail?
He got up and put the goblet onto the table. It was still every bit as full as before. He glanced around the room once more.
“Where are we?”
“Deep under Hogwarts. This is the fundament, the heart of the castle. Since the day of the founders, no one has known of it or entered it, even though there are passages that lead here from many places. No one, except for my teacher.”
“Your teacher. The one who taught you how to weave Glamours complex enough to deceive even Albus Dumbledore?”
Regulus laughed harshly. “The very one.”
It made sense. This was probably a part of the Chamber of Secrets. From Harry, he had heard about the Chamber and its connection to Lord Voldemort. So Regulus’ teacher was Voldemort.
“Why are all these things here? What did you do to the ghosts and the others?"
“They were threats,” Regulus replied. His voice had suddenly lost all emotion and sounded slack and dead. “Threats, all of them. Magical objects of great power, the guardians of the castle “ threats, all of them. They were caught by my spell and frozen by it. Down here, they can do nothing to serve the castle.”
But two threats seem to be missing. “Where is Fawkes?” Remus demanded. “And where is Snape?”
“Fawkes is with Dumbledore,” Regulus said flatly. “Sleeping, no danger. Snape is dead.”
“Dead.” All the warmth from the strange drink left him instantly along with his will to go on. He only wanted to black out again.
“He lay on the floor, all still after he tried to read my mind. Possibly dead. No threat. I left him behind,” Regulus went on in the same dead voice. Remus found that the icy grip of fear gave him free and he could think again. Suddenly he remembered the most important thing.
“You are dead!”
Regulus remained still as a statue. He stared into the distance with unseeing eyes, his arms hanging slackly at his side. “Dead things,” he whispered. “From the grave, from the earth. Eating death, breathing death, bringing death...”
Remus glanced down the far end of the cave. Regulus seemed lifeless and mad. If he ran now, he might escape. But where did the cave lead? And Regulus was sly, he might only be faking his madness. His eyes darted towards the table. There lay two swords. His chances were good that an undead being like Regulus would genuinely die if he beheaded him. It worked with vampires and most zombies. But what good would a dead Regulus do? Remus still needed to know how Merlin’s Sleep could be undone.
“We were wrong,” Remus said instead. “You weren’t put alive into your grave. Somebody has raised you from your death.”
He, a Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, should have realised it much sooner. The signs were all there: he had a strange smell, he had no need to consume food or drink, his hair didn’t grow, and his blood didn’t circulate.
Remus didn’t know much about Necromancy, the art of raising or talking to the dead, but he was quite familiar with some of creatures of Necromancy: vampires and zombies. Regulus, was neither a vampire nor a zombie, but something similar. But there were some things that puzzled Remus. A zombie for example usually didn’t have free will. The Necromancer had full control over his creatures. Did that apply to Regulus? The man seemed to act fairly autonomously.
It certainly would solve the mystery of the blurry Pensieve images. The memories from before Regulus’ death would be blurry because Regulus was under a form of mind-control. Something about these particular memories from before Regulus’ death contradicted the orders of the Necromancer. That made sense in so far as Regulus had been killed by Death Eaters. Before he died, he hadn’t been loyal to Voldemort anymore.
But why had Regulus put them in the Pensieve together with the bait that led them to the tree? That made no sense at all.
“I was called to serve, from beyond the grave,” Regulus suddenly said and started to walk away a few steps before he stopped again.
“Why are you telling me this?” Remus asked.
And why did he put the memories in the Pensieve? Why had he healed Remus’ cold in Azkaban, why where all his lies so transparent? Why had Hermione not been under his spell? Why hadn’t he killed Snape when he could? Why was he given that invigorating drink?
But before Remus could ask the next question, Regulus whirled around and hit him with surprising strength. Remus slammed into the next wall and sagged to the ground. Beneath him he felt the glowing vines crush like fine glass.
Regulus was standing above him, and his features looked alive again. The bright madness had returned to his face and Remus now realised what had seemed so wrong about this face before: it was not the face of a man of thirty-three, but the face of a youth, no older than eighteen.
But his boyish features were distorted by malice and raving insanity.
With nervous hands, Regulus undid the clasp that held his cloak together at his collarbones and it fell to the floor. Underneath it, he wore clothes that sent Remus into a state of shock.
A faded black Muggle jeans too long for the dead young man, torn below the left knee. A belt of worn-out leather. A black, sleeveless shirt that was meant to be tight but loosely around his pale, emaciated body.
And, in the gloomy room, with the dim lights behind him, Remus was looking at Sirius, Sirius at age twenty. Remus gasped and bit his lips painfully.
“Do you like it?” Regulus whispered in a flat voice. “Do you like me?”
And Sirius “ Regulus dropped to his knees a bit ungracefully next to Remus and grabbed a small letter opener from the folds of his cloak.
“Where did you get these clothes?” Remus forced himself to ask.
“At home.” Sirius’ brother studied the thin blade and then slowly pressed it against Remus’ jugular. It was almost warm, it didn’t seem dangerous, but Remus felt a tingle of silver on his skin. And the hand on the blade was shaking too much for his taste.
“Call me Sirius,” the young man demanded softly, almost gently.
The soft voice and the shadowy face that looked so much like Sirius sent cold shivers down Remus’ neck. For a moment he was almost tempted to comply and call him by his brother’s name “ what difference did names make to two dead men, really “ but then he stopped himself.
“You’re Regulus.”
“Call me Sirius!”
Regulus might kill him. There was not much Remus could do to prevent that.
“Why? Do you really want to be Sirius? Wouldn’t you rather want me to call you a friend?”
Regulus’ eyes, inches from his face, were wide and dark. Slowly, he backed away, sitting back on the floor and shivering.
The dead young wizard raised his left arm and pressed the letter opener into his palm. He dragged it down the wrist and deep into the flesh, over the Dark Mark, up to the crook of his elbow, like someone trying to slash his. But nothing happened. There came no blood, even though the cut was deep. Instead, a horrible stench of dirt and decay rose from the wound. And then, very slowly, a dark, clotted liquid oozed from the cut. It clung to the white skin like thick oil and finally dripped onto the floor.
Regulus didn’t even look at the wound. His face was open and confused as he blinked and rocked back and forth.
“From the earth, from the grave...” he whimpered.
Then he suddenly bit his lip and squeezed his eyes shut. It seemed to take all his strength to first turn his face away and then shake his head. Remus edged away from him and got up. But as suddenly as it had begun, the attack of madness seemed gone.
Regulus opened his eyes, looked at his wounded arm where the flesh was already mending itself and grimaced with obvious distaste. Then he picked up his cloak and wrapped it around himself, thankfully hiding Sirius’ old clothes.
He walked over to the table and perched on its edge.
“The Dark Lord has raised my corpse. Sordid affair, that. Dig a trench, six feet deep, the size of a man. Fill it with blood from black sheep and an animal of your choice. Invoke the spirit of the animal. Pour libations around the trench. Invoke the spirit of the dead man. And his body, wherever it rests, will crawl back to life, filled with the blood from dead beasts... do you know what it was?”
Remus, still shaken by the display of madness, didn’t ask. Regulus seemed not to care.
“A lion. A bloody lion, because it was the vilest animal the Dark Lord could think of.” Regulus grinned, a facial expression that would have served well as a threat.
“So that’s why you’re smelling of big cat. It confused me, back in the forest,” Remus thought aloud.
“Ah, yes. Before the little Mudblood Stunned me.”
Angry about the derogatory expression, Remus didn’t notice the significance of that statement at first, but when he did, he frowned suspiciously.
“Hold on. How did you know it was Hermione who Stunned you?”
“I knew the girl followed me into the forest every day.”
“And you never stopped her?”
“She’s just a girl. A student. She was no threat.” As he said this, Regulus’ voice sounded flat and dead again. But his eyes remained bright and almost expectant. Remus slowly began to understand.
“Well, she was a threat,” he replied a bit tersely. “And I don’t quite buy it that you didn’t know that before.”
Regulus said nothing, but a faint smile appeared on his lips. So far, Remus could make out three different personas: insane Regulus, who looked like a child and babbled about blood and graves, Death Eater Regulus, who mocked and taunted him all the time and this serious, more grown-up version, who was prone to mysterious silences and unreadable looks. It was all very confusing but it began to make sense to him. The key was to ask the right questions, and, if Regulus didn’t answer, to supply the right answers himself.
“You knew Hermione was there and you knew she might pose a threat. She’s an apt witch for her age; that could not have escaped your attention. She had thrown off your Popularity Glamour or whatever it was. And you left Snape lying there, even though he might very well not be dead. What about that? And you cured my cold in Azkaban. Why did you do that?”
“Little mistakes,” Regulus replied with a wave of his left hand. But his eyes remained deadly serious. “It doesn’t matter. Everything is working according to the plan. Everything is all right. None of you were threats.”
Remus paused, trying to analyse what he had guessed so far. ‘Threats’. Regulus was saying that word again and again. What was its significance?
Regulus was undead. Voldemort had revived him, probably because he needed Regulus’ special abilities in the field of Glamours. But before his death, Regulus had tried to leave the Death Eaters. It was possible that in the scene inside the Pensieve, he had been talking to Dumbledore and asking for help. Now Regulus was back from the dead, which seemed to be a most traumatic experience, and he was probably less than willing to serve Voldemort. But he couldn’t shake off the mind-control of the Necromancy, which was far stronger than an Imperius curse.
How did that control work? Was it possible to undermine it?
Obviously, it wasn’t perfect. Regulus was making little mistakes all the time, mistakes that were too obvious to be anything but deliberate. The hilarious cover-up story about Sirius, the lion and the zoo, for example. Regulus could have invented something more convincing but he hadn’t.
There must have been some kind of order that Voldemort had given Regulus.
“Tonight, you’ll see your master again,” Remus said. A smile flashed over Regulus face.
“Tonight we will be reunited, my real master and I.”
“You haven’t seen him for some time.”
“No.”
Possibly not since Regulus had been reanimated and given his orders. How specific were these orders?
“And you have fulfilled his plan.” Remus felt his fingers itch with anticipation. Regulus looked equally tense. He opened his mouth and closed it again.
“A wonderful, elegant plan,” he finally breathed.
Elegant, Remus thought. Elegant but not flawless. The choice of words was telling. The orders must have been something like this: ‘Go to Hogwarts and enchant the teachers, students and Order members. Use Merlin’s Sleep on Dumbledore. Wait until Halloween.’ And: ‘Eliminate all possible threats to the plan.’ And that was the flaw of this order! Voldemort had left it to Regulus to estimate what he thought a ‘threat’ was. Remus nervously licked his lips.
“You were the only Death Eater who could fulfil this plan. Why? If Voldemort taught you all you knew, he could have taught it to someone else, someone who was loyal to him.”
Regulus eyes widened, but not in surprise. He seemed to wait for Remus to go on.
“Voldemort wasn’t your teacher, was he? But who could it be, then? Someone who knows this cave underneath Hogwarts. Someone who knows magic as old as Merlin’s Sleep.”
Regulus turned around and seized something that lay on the table: a small silver instrument. He seemed to play with it disinterestedly, but Remus understood. He sighed in relief.
“Dumbledore. Dumbledore was your teacher. But why? You were a Death Eater, why would he teach a Death Eater the means to deceive just about anyone?”
Regulus put away the silver instrument and said in a light tone: “Three hours to midnight, Lupin. Why do you even care? Soon you’ll be deader than I am.”
Just as he said this, he picked up the old Sorting Hat, turned it around and let go of it. Remus racked his brain for the meaning of this tiny hint but the only thing he came up with was McGonagall, saying: ‘He hasn’t worn this hat for at least sixteen years.’
“That’s it! You were really young when you entered the Death Eaters, weren’t you? Still a student, it seems. And yet you received the Dark Mark so early, while people like Snape had to earn it. Why? The talk with Dumbledore you showed us in the Pensieve “ that wasn’t after you left the Death Eaters, but before you even joined them.” He paused for breath.
“I served detention.”
But Remus didn’t let himself be distracted. Finally he had understood. “You hate Snape. You don’t know Occlumency, but he does. He became a spy just after you died.”
“That traitor,” Regulus spat, but his face had become flushed and sweaty, just as it had when Snape had forced him to drink the Truth Serum.
Remus took a deep breath. “You were Dumbledore’s spy before Snape.”
Regulus started shaking and shivering all over his body, but he remained unable to answer even with a nod or a shake of his head. Remus had a theory. The mind control of the necromancy worked a lot like the Imperius: instead of simply forcing a person to do something, it changed that person’s perception of the truth so far that the orders he or she was given became the natural, right thing to do. Regulus now had two truths inside his head: one told him that he was a loyal Death Eater and wanted to serve his master. The other, hidden under layers of madness, said that he was a free man, a friend of Dumbledore, who hated the Dark Lord for what he had done to him.
Regulus couldn’t act against the orders he had been given. He couldn’t even admit to himself that he wanted to act against them. All defiance had to happen behind layers of lies and deception. But he was a master of deception, educated by Dumbledore. Regulus Black was good enough to deceive the enemy within.
He could not tell Remus about the truth, but he could drop hints. And the closer Remus came to uncovering the full truth, the less power had Voldemort over the man. He was very close to it, but something still lacked, something that was the key to freeing Regulus.
But what?
“Dumbledore saw that you were talented. He taught you all he knew about Glamours because you couldn’t master the art of Occlumency. It was enough for you to enter the ranks of the Death Eaters. But then “ something happened. You were discovered. How?”
But Regulus was calming down once more, the shivering was almost gone. Remus bit his tongue. He was loosing against the mind control!
“You were discovered and killed. Years later, you were revived.” Remus started retelling the whole story as far as he knew it so far. But the dead man got calmer and calmer.
“It drives you mad to be such a monster, doesn’t it? It was horrible to wake up in that tiny vault. Before, when you showed my Sirius’ clothes ““
With an anguished howl that was more animal than man, Regulus dropped to the floors. His hands raked over the stone like claws. Without thinking, Remus started forwards and tried to keep Black from hurting himself by grabbing his wrists and pressing them down.
“What? What is it? Sirius?” A sob escaped Regulus and he fell still under Remus’ hands.
“Sirius. Something about Sirius. Sirius is dead, is that it? No?” Remus gently touched the faded black of Sirius’ shirt under his younger brother’s Death Eater cloak.
“You admired your older brother. Of course you did. Sirius was brilliant. Who doesn’t admire his older brother? And then he became a Gryffindor and he didn’t talk to you anymore. That hurt. You wanted him to acknowledge you. You wanted to be like him “ that was why you became a spy!”
All the tension faded from the thin body under his hands. Slowly, Regulus opened his eyes. Unlike his blood, his tears were completely human.
“He “ he would be proud now, wouldn’t he?”
Remus tried his best to smile. “Yes, he would be. I would be, if I were him.”
Regulus got to his feet a bit awkwardly with Remus’ help. For a moment, the steady pulsing of light from the vines along the walls was interrupted by a nervous flicker. Something was happening, but Remus wasn’t sure whether it was Regulus or the castle or something else.
“I had hoped that when I died, Dumbledore would tell my brother what I had done. That was the last thing I thought before they killed me. That Sirius would realise that I was also brave. But I wasn’t. Unlike Snape, I wasn’t able to kill and torture to keep up my cover as a spy.”
“Killing people isn’t brave. You did the right thing.”
“No, I didn’t. If I had stayed alive, I would have helped Sirius. I would have proved his innocence, I know I would.”
There was nothing Remus could say against that, he least of all. He had done nothing to save Sirius. But the younger Black seemed to gather his last reserves of strength. He picked up the silver instrument he had been playing with before.
“Half an hour to midnight,” he murmured. “Close, but not too late.”
“What do we have to do?”
“Kill me.”
Remus didn’t say ‘but you are already dead.’ There was many ways to make an undead person deader than before. Instead he asked: “Why?”
“Because I am a monster. Every second of this parody of life kills my soul. I long for death. Sever my head and burn the corpse. And for Merlin’s sake, don’t put the ashes into that bloody vault or my ghost will haunt you.”
Regulus had picked up a sword with a huge red ruby on its handle. The sword of Gryffindor. “And because as soon as I die, all Glamours and spells on Hogwarts, its people and Dumbledore will cease to exist. Hurry. The Dark Lord is already arriving. I can feel him approaching.”
Remus took the sword. The steel was surprisingly light which shouldn’t have surprised him. How else could a twelve-year-old boy have wielded it? The dim glow of the vines made the blade shine in a soft golden hue.
In all his life, he had never killed a man. A ridiculous fear seized him. What if he did it wrongly? What if he only hurt Regulus instead of killing him with the sword?
Regulus raised his eyes to the ceiling of the cave. The glittering liquid surface above their heads was now distorted by many tiny waves: it looked like someone was walking across it. Death Eaters? The Dark Lord himself?
“I’m free,” Regulus said loudly into the silence. “I’m a free man.”
With as much strength as he could muster, Remus swung the terrible, swift sword.