FicWad

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DISCLAIMER: The characters and settings herein are, for the most part, variously the property of JK Rowling or Neil Gaiman. I borrow out of love, and will put them back when finished.
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When he had a bit more time to think about it, Harry supposed he oughtn't have been surprised by Death Eaters turning up at Hogwarts while he and Dumbledore were gone. After all, he'd known Malfoy was plotting something all year, even though no one else had really seemed to care.

Nothing could have prepared him for the altercation ending the way it did, though. And certainly Dumbledore had frozen him in place and hidden him from sight for his own safety, but that only meant he couldn't help when Snape arrived.

Everyone was reeling from Dumbledore's death, even as they acknowledged it was a miracle (or perhaps just a well-brewed potion) that that and the attack on Bill Weasley were the worst casualties in the whole affair. Regulus seemed far too amused by the whole affair, in light of the circumstances. Harry could decide what to make of that later, though. Dumbledore was dead, and someone needed to come up with the next plan to take down Voldemort.

Ron and Hermione asked him about it after the funeral. If Harry hadn't known better, he would have thought they timed it so that Sirius and his brother could listen in.

"I don't know. I think someone's going to have to go and look for those Horcruxes. I might be the best qualified for the job--"

"Actually, I don't know about that."

Harry blinked, and turned to face Regulus. "Since when do you care? I thought you weren't taking sides."

"That doesn't mean I wouldn't like to see this nasty business over just as much as you do. First things first - where did Dumbledore take you on your little Horcrux hunt?"

"I don't know. Some cave or other, in a cliffside."

"And the man didn't even check to make sure he had what he thought he did? Then again, I suppose that means Voldemort never noticed I'd nicked the thing, either. More fool them."

"...Wait, that was your note? How did you get past the green stuff?"

Regulus sighed. "If Dumbledore drank that shite, he deserved everything he got. I summoned Kreacher and made him drink it."

Hermione looked appalled, but Harry shook his head before she could start to protest. Now was not the time for house elf liberation; besides, if ever there were a house elf that was too dangerous for freedom, it was Kreacher.

"Anyway, my point stands. If you don't know what objects you're looking for, where to find them, or how to tell whether you've got the right thing, you're best off staying home. To say nothing of how to destroy the things - I never quite worked that one out myself. But at the very least, I've actually found one and made off with it."

"Well, I'd thought--"

"Did you? If you're worried about me trampling on your oh-so-important destiny, I have every intention of avoiding that. You can destroy as many of the things as you'd like, if you can work out how. But in the grander scheme, the three of you would be far better off keeping yourselves out of trouble for a change, and possibly trying to figure out how to keep all of this from happening again."

*

Not trampling on Harry's apparent destiny was a brilliant idea in theory.

Unlike nearly everyone else involved, though, Regulus liked having more of a plan than 'get the flask' or 'kill the bad guy' in place before he took action. And when he sat down and thought it out logically, he ran into a road block.

Horcruxes, he'd gathered from reading, took a bit of the creator's intelligence away along with their soul. There was very little research as to what happened when a Horcrux was destroyed, but he saw no reason to assume the bit of soul wouldn't return to its owner.

If they carried on destroying Horcruxes while the bits of Voldemort's soul still had a body to return to, this would only get exponentially worse before it got better. Therefore, the easiest solution would be...

To piss off Harry quite a bit, in the short term. But at least Dumbledore had graciously saved him the trouble of nosing in when the need for an explanation finally reared its head.

He only hoped he could make it to Kilburn and back before the kids had time to do anything stupid.

*

After a close call with an ancestor to the Floating Market, the former legionaries fell into the habit of keeping up a night watch; before they deserted and found themselves Below, the uniforms usually did the trick. Marcus Octavius was at what passed for their lookout post when the man they all called the young Caesar came back.

"Hail. The rumor was you had gone."

"I had, but it seems desperate measures are in order. There's... a situation, where I hail from. If you could spare any men, I would greatly appreciate it. I don't know whether I'll be back to be indebted to you, but the sentiment is there."

Marcus nodded. "Will the matter hold until morning, or ought I wake the others?"

"...I honestly don't know how much time I have. Waking the others might be a good idea."

So Marcus roused the other soldiers, and they all discussed the matter until the late hours were becoming the early hours. Ultimately, twenty of the soldiers agreed to follow the young Caesar - or attempt to, anyway, since even he wasn't entirely sure if such would be possible.

It was, though the soldiers were most severely sidetracked by just how much Londinium had changed, on the surface.

*

The bad men usually left Ingress alone now. They'd asked her a bunch of questions when the crazy lady first brought her Topside, but then they stopped bothering. She guessed it was because she didn't really have anything to do with their war, so she wasn't interesting enough to talk to.

That was okay, but she really wanted to go home. Anywhere in London Below would count, by now, but if it had her family - if her daddy and brother and sister hadn't met the same end as Mama had - it would be extra good. She didn't know why the bad men wouldn't just let her go, since they didn't seem to need her, other than... well, they were bad. Wasn't that what bad people did best? The opposite of what good people wanted?

One morning, she woke up and heard fighting. That was new - someone must have found the bad men. They didn't fight each other, as far as Ingress knew.

That was good. The bad men needed a little trouble, and maybe whoever had come, if they won, would let her go home. She only wished the bad men hadn't tied her to a tent peg. She wanted to see what was going on, at least long enough to know how dangerous it was.

After a while, all the noise died down. The tent front opened, and a boy who looked about Arch's age - well, Arch's age if he was still alive - stepped in, holding a wand like what the bad men had. Ingress didn't recognize him, but that didn't mean much. The bad men liked masks a lot.

"Are you one of the bad men?" she finally asked. It seemed the best way to find out for sure.

The boy stopped in his tracks, looked at her, and said, "Not anymore. How long have you been here?"

"Ages and ages. I stopped counting - it got too high. Do I get to go home now?"

"I can certainly try to get you there. Where's your home?"

"The House of Arch," she said right away. "It's in London--"

"Below, I know. I'd half guessed - you have your sister's eyes."

"You know Door?"

"Well enough to know she'll be thrilled to see you. I won't be able to go along myself, but I can send you back and get word to her." The boy pointed his wand at the ropes tying Ingress to the tent peg and said something she didn't understand, but then the ropes came undone, so that was all right. It wasn't like what happened when the bad men pointed their wands at things.

She was a little disappointed to find out she was going to have to spend time with more soldiers - but these were at least nicer than the bad men, even though they didn't know much English. And the boy told her he'd met them Below, so Ingress was sure she'd be home and back with Door before she knew it.

*

It had been roughly a month for Door since the brothers had returned to London Above; she occasionally wondered how they were faring, though everyday politics and the ongoing search for Ingress rather limited her time.

One of her stops at the Post Office, now part of her routine thanks to Richard's insistence that getting things in the post did people good, turned up a note in handwriting she didn't recognize. "One of the Romans delivered it," 404 explained, "but I don't think he wrote it."

"It's certainly not addressed in Latin, so I'm inclined to agree. Thank you." She left the Post Office intending to save the note for when she got home, but curiosity got the better of her on the Tube.

Get to Kilburn at your first convenience. There's someone there you'll want to talk to, if I don't miss my guess; I'd have come to tell you in person, but matters topside are still rather hectic.

Oh, and Bella's dead. That may interest the Friars.

She blinked at the initials the writer had signed with, before correlating the first and last to Regulus. After rereading the note a couple of times, she got off the Tube and headed toward one of Richard's usual haunts instead of home. If she was reading this correctly... well, they likely wouldn't need the Key again after all.

And if Regulus ever found his way Below again, she'd probably never be able to repay him in full.
*

The news beat Regulus back to Grimmauld Place; then again, he had to make sure the soldiers got back the their camp all right, so there wasn't much he could do about it. Fortunately, the underside hadn't seen fit to eat up decades of his time once again.

Unfortunately, it meant Harry was still sulking loudly enough to bring the impromptu Order headquarters down on everyone inside. And no one had figured out how to remove or otherwise shut up Mother's portrait, so she was shrieking as well.

"How could you do that?"

"Harry--"

"That was supposed to be my thing, everyone said so--"

"If you could stop shouting for five seconds--"

"And you said you weren't going to--"

"...I don't have time for this. /Silencio/!"

Regulus still had to wait for the portrait to stop raving before he could continue. "Anyway. I would have been more than happy to let you have all the glory, believe me, but the circumstances didn't allow for it. I only want to have to explain this once, though, so get your friends and meet me in the kitchen. Longbottom as well - he's been kept in the dark far too long. I'll get Sirius. Can you do that without shouting the place down again?"

Harry nodded, and Regulus canceled the spell before going to look for his brother.

*

"...Lovegood, what are you doing here? I'd only meant for him to get Ron and Hermione and Longbottom."

Luna shrugged. "He said it was about the business with Voldemort. I was interested."

"You would be. All right, you're sensible enough. You can stay."

After everyone was settled around the table, he continued. "I'll start with the practical explanation. I did some reading on Horcruxes some time ago. There's nothing to suggest a bit of soul wouldn't return to its owner if one was destroyed, and there is a lot of evidence that separating part of one's soul from the rest also removes some intelligence."

"Well," Hermione said, "if a Dementor's Kiss leaves behind a soulless, mindless husk, that would make some sense."

"Precisely. And since releasing bits of Voldemort's soul while they had a body to return to would have been a horrendous idea and made getting rid of him that much more difficult, the obvious thing to do was discorporate him first." Harry looked as though he were just realizing that point, which wouldn't have surprised Regulus in the least.

"All right, but why didn't you tell anyone else?" Sirius asked.

"None of you have any particular inclination to trust me, so far as I know. I figured Harry would likely throw a fit either way, so he might as well use the energy on what had already happened rather than what might. Besides - saving your presence, Lovegood - I know the Gryffindor mentality far too well for my own tastes by now. This wasn't a case where rushing in first and asking questions later would have helped."

"Oh, so you asked questions and then rushed in?"

"I didn't rush anywhere, thank you very much." In truth, it had taken a bit longer than he would have liked, but it was his own fault for not warning the soldiers about how far London had come since their heyday.

Ron looked puzzled about something. "...Well, yes, all right, but isn't there still the prophecy thing?"

"Yes, that's the second part. Sirius, I know you never took it - how are the rest of you on Divination?"

Hermione snorted; there was absolutely no mistaking the derisive overtone.

"She walked out before a year was even up," Longbottom explained. "Because she thought it was a joke, but I think also because she tried to take all the electives at once and finally lost her nerve."

"I did not lose my nerve!"

"I don't know what else you want to call it. You were certainly more jumpy than usual. Anyway, the rest of us stuck it out at least through to OWLs. Even though Professor Trelawney kept making fun of me for being clumsy and forgetful."

"It's an easy pass, though," Ron added. "Predict doom and gloom for yourself and your loved ones, and you'll get top marks every time."

Regulus sighed. "How like Dumbledore to replace a competent teacher with a crackpot. Lovegood, you said you were mostly self-taught when we talked at Christmas, right?"

She nodded. "I wanted to take the class, but Daddy said I'd be better off reading on my own. So I did."

"Right, then. The first thing Professor Device told us was that prophecies should never be taken as an excuse for inaction. The event in question may never come to pass otherwise, and if there's a Chosen One at hand, everyone else doing nothing only serves to make his life harder."

"I know that feeling," Harry muttered.

"I expect you do. The second thing he told us was that interpreting prophecies is both easier and harder than it looks. His family's been in the practice for generations. He said that where you think something's meant literally, it could also be far more obtuse, and vice versa."

"All right. How does this relate to the one about me?"

"About you or Longbottom, Harry - I only have what Sirius told me to go on, but he told me most people thought it was one of you two. Anyway, I mostly agreed to come back because I saw a chance it could apply to me as well, whether I wanted it to or not."

"Hold on a moment," Hermione said. "You certainly weren't born in 1980."

"No. But in prophetic speech, 'born' can mean 'born to a new life' - usually the afterlife - just as easily as a literal birth. For all official purposes, I died September 29th of that year."

"...Well, there's the seventh month covered," Luna said, half to herself.

"Quite. As for the rest of it... some wouldn't call conditions in London Below a life, comparatively, though I had little trouble with it. It's probably close enough to count. I doubt anyone could possibly have been prepared for Romans at their door these days. And if we want to discuss being marked as the Dark Lord's equal, I'll not mince words and just roll up my sleeve."

"There's a bit you didn't get," Harry said, though with far less venom than he'd been using before the group discussion started. "'Born to those who have thrice defied him,' or something very close to that, anyway."

Sirius nodded. "I'd figured there was a part I didn't remember. And I don't think you can claim our parents--"

"I'll admit that bit's tricky. However, it doesn't specifically say parents, or how the defiance took place. If you look at the family line in general, there are at least two cases of rebelling against Voldemort's principles in my generation, one of whom is sitting at this table."

"...Point taken. And for the third... there are a few Squibs in the family, Uncle Alphard helped me get on my feet when I moved out, Dora's gone into law enforcement - there are more options than I thought."

Luna was grinning. "So the prophecy chose someone that nobody could have expected."

"It did, at that." Regulus sighed. "Harry, Longbottom, I would have been more than glad to stay out of the center of attention and let one or both of you do the dirty work. I didn't even want to come back, particularly, but the world had other ideas. Anyway, if a prophecy points fingers at more than one person, they might all be necessary to solving the problem."

Harry brightened for what was probably the first time since Dumbledore died (Regulus really didn't understand what everyone had seen in the man, but that bore consideration at another time). "So I can still help?"

"Both of you, more than likely. You're not hunting for Horcruxes alone until you know what you're doing, but it might well take all three of us to destroy the things."

*

"Right. Did Dumbledore give you any useful information about these things at all?"

Harry sighed. "I think I know what they are, and some of them are already out of the way. It's just going to be a matter of finding the rest of the things. Here, I'll write them down..."

After Harry had written down everything he knew about the Horcruxes, he passed the list to Regulus, who read it with a slight frown on his face.

"So you can vouch for the ring and the diary. I'm fairly certain one of the Romans offed the snake. The locket should still be around here, unless you went through Mother's jewelry boxes in the apparent spring cleaning or it got pinched by Fletcher. If only the cup and the mystery artifact are at large, this may be easier than I thought."

"Finding them, anyway," Neville pointed out. "We'll have to destroy them afterward - do you know anything about that?"

"No, and I tried the library at school last year. Hermione too, since she knows it better than I do. There's nothing about them either way." Harry tried to avoid thinking about the locket in conjunction with Mrs. Weasley's cleaning spree - there'd been that one that no one could get open, that they were going to throw out... but he could bring that up later.

"You're not likely to find anything here. The family library always did tend more toward making that sort of thing than dealing with it." Regulus sighed. "Still, if we only have two of the things to find..."

"Um. We might have three? I'm fairly certain, thinking back, the locket ended up in the discard pile."

"Damn."

"...Then again, Kreacher was always nicking things back and hiding them in the kitchen. It might be there."

"I'll go look," Neville said, heading for the back stairs. He was back all too quickly, though, just as empty-handed as when he had left.

"Now what do we do?"

After a moment or two, Regulus smirked and stood up. "Summon Kreacher."

"Are you kidding?"

"If anyone's going to know where the thing ended up, it'll be him. Do it." He moved behind a high-backed chair, still smirking; Harry looked at Neville, who shrugged.

"All right, but if he tries anything, you can deal with him... Kreacher!"

The house elf appeared with the usual pop and a scowl. "Oh, so Master Potter is back, probably with his Mudblood and blood traitor friends in tow. Kreacher cannot think what Master Potter would want to talk to Kreacher for--"

"Actually," Regulus said before Harry could reply, abandoning his cover, "we had a few questions for you."

Kreacher turned white. "Master Regulus!"

"Not as dead as you thought I was, am I? On to the question. That locket I had you help me procure - is it still here?"

"Kreacher tried to keep it in the house, but Mundungus Fletcher stole it from Kreacher..."

Harry sighed. He'd suspected as much, especially after Neville hadn't found anything in the kitchen, but hearing it from Kreacher was still something of a disappointment.

Regulus nodded, after letting Kreacher babble for about a minute. "Very well. Find it."

With a terrified nod, Kreacher disappeared again.

"...Well," Neville said after a moment. "Never would have thought of that approach."

Regulus was still smirking; in fact, he was closer to laughing outright than Harry had seen him so far. "I'm just glad I had an opportunity to scare him. Anyway, that should keep him busy for a while - let's work on how to get rid of the thing once we have it."

They were at the problem for at least an hour without any real leads; Harry didn't know how Dumbledore had destroyed the ring, and Neville and Regulus had (admittedly understandable) reservations about finding enough basilisks to repeat the diary's fate. Ultimately, Harry was on his way to try to find some food before carrying on when the idea came.

"...That's it," Neville said. "Cooking. You and Hermione have mentioned something Muggles use to heat up food when they're in a hurry. And I think Hermione said they don't interact well with metal, and we're looking at trying to destroy a bunch of metal objects..."

"You want to microwave the things to... well, to death?"

"It can't hurt to try, at least. If that doesn't work, we can... I don't know, find a big hammer or something."

"Why are you the one having ideas about non-magical solutions?"

Regulus shrugged. "As long as someone thought of it, it doesn't much matter."