Kreacher's outburst drew every eye in the Headmaster's office to Draco — even the phoenix, Fawkes, stared at him in surprise.
If he could have, Draco would have very much liked to see his own face at that moment.
*Theft?*
This was nonsense. An insult to a Malfoy.
He composed himself, his expression settling back into its usual cool indifference. Slowly and deliberately, he raised his wand and cast a Scourgify on his robes, washing away whatever had transferred from touching Kreacher.
He met the room's collective gaze with an unhurried arrogance, his tone dropping to something pointed. "I do not accept unsupported accusations."
"Kreacher didn't lie!" The house-elf jumped on the spot, roaring with conviction, his ugly face contorted with righteous fury.
Draco looked down at him with cool dismissal. "To accuse a Malfoy without evidence — do you have any idea what that costs?"
"Kreacher, I require an explanation." Sirius glanced between them and finally turned on the elf with firm authority.
Kreacher fixed Draco with a ferocious glare, straining like a dog at the end of a chain. "Kreacher didn't lie! The day he came to the Black house, he took the young master's locket — and that heartless young master Sirius just handed it over without a second thought!"
Draco went very still. Something had clicked.
On the day of the visit to Grimmauld Place, Dobby had sorted out a large bag of Dark objects. Among them, he now recalled, there had been an unremarkable locket.
Dobby had said at the time that it contained "extremely powerful magic," but in the commotion nobody had thought much of it, and the locket had been set aside and tipped into the bag along with everything else.
The bag had eventually ended up in Draco's possession. He'd asked Sirius for it, intending to pass it along to the Weasley twins as potential material for one of their products. But the start of term had been hectic, he hadn't managed a private word with anyone, and the bag had remained in his dormitory — sitting in a dragonhide storage bag at the back of his wardrobe — ever since.
It could, of course, be a Horcrux.
Draco stayed quiet for a moment, and then, with a slow, cold clarity, the pieces fell into place.
Since his return, he had been careful. He had used every Occlumency technique he knew to keep his memories ordered, his emotions controlled, his past life walled safely away where it could not overwhelm him.
But since he had taken the locket in early August, everything had been sliding toward chaos:
Broken sleep. A procession of nightmares — green light, screams, falling, death. His Occlumency repeatedly collapsing. Mood swings that came from nowhere. Inexplicable fatigue and gloom. Uncontrollable impulses. A bitterness that clung to him. Sarcastic remarks slipping out before he could stop them.
He had been galloping in entirely the wrong direction.
There had to be a reason.
Something as corrupted as a Horcrux would naturally carry effects like these. When the Ravenclaw diadem was destroyed, it had emitted that mesmerising cry. Tom Riddle's diary had conversed, manipulated, drained the life of its host. Slytherin's locket — ancient, powerful, infamous — would be no different. More likely worse.
Looking back now, Draco felt cold sweat prickle at his neck. It would have been extraordinary if a month in close contact with a Horcrux had left him completely unaffected.
"I never imagined that ugly grey thing could be—" he began, then stopped.
Sirius knew nothing about Horcruxes. He couldn't finish that sentence.
He turned and looked at Sirius carefully.
Something shifted in Sirius's haggard face. "I think I remember it. Some useless-looking thing — I was going to throw it away..." He met Draco's eyes. "Do you still have it?"
"I believe so. Give me five minutes." Draco nodded to Dumbledore and strode out.
---
The sky above Hogwarts was just beginning to lighten, the first grey-gold of dawn pressing at the horizon.
Draco ran back to his dormitory, pulled open his wardrobe, and dragged out the dragonhide storage bag. There it was — the locket, lying quietly in the bottom, grey and dusty and utterly unremarkable.
When he picked it up, it was heavier than he remembered. And there was something else — a faint, low whisper, barely at the edge of hearing, that seemed to come from inside the metal.
His heart hammered. Without stopping to examine it further, he wrapped the locket carefully in a handkerchief and sprinted back to the Headmaster's office.
---
When the locket was set on Dumbledore's desk, it landed with a dull, heavy thud entirely out of proportion to its size.
"It sounds heavier than it looks," Dumbledore said, leaning in thoughtfully.
"It is," Draco said, studying it alongside the other two. "Much heavier than it should be."
"Is this it? That locket?" Sirius frowned.
"It was so filthy it was hard to tell," Draco said.
"Do you see the serpentine S worked in tiny gems beneath the tarnish?" Dumbledore said softly, something close to fascination in his voice. "Extraordinarily fine craftsmanship. Goblin-made, I should think. I believe this is Slytherin's locket — one of his genuine relics."
"We should ask Kreacher to confirm it," Draco said.
"Is this the one?" Sirius seized Kreacher by the ear with his good hand and drove the elf's head down against the edge of the desk.
"Yes! It's it!" Kreacher trembled with a kind of awful joy, seemingly unbothered by Sirius's roughness. His large, bloodshot eyes fixed hungrily on the dusty locket, wide with the disbelief of someone who had stopped expecting to survive long enough for this moment.
The keepsake his beloved young master Regulus had entrusted to him. Here, at last.
"Right then — let's destroy it." Sirius looked at the locket with open revulsion and reached for the sword mounted on the wall.
"You're welcome to try," Dumbledore said, lifting it down. "Though I doubt it will be straightforward."
Sirius took the gleaming silver sword — rubies glinting along the hilt — and brought it down on the locket with his better hand.
*Clang.* Sparks flew. When they faded, the locket sat exactly as before, dusty and undented, seemingly indifferent to the whole affair.
"As I thought." Dumbledore stepped closer, lifting the thin chain on the tip of his wand, watching the locket swing slowly in mid-air. "Kreacher was correct. It can only be destroyed from the inside. I suspect it has a protective mechanism — it must be opened first, and only then will the vessel become vulnerable."
"Then open it." Sirius set the sword aside, his expression hardening. "Blast it open. I know spells that ought to do it."
"Let me try." Dumbledore set the locket back on the table, pointed his wand at it, and cast a sequence of silent incantations — some of the most complex Draco had ever watched performed.
A pause.
"It's no use." Dumbledore lowered his wand and regarded the locket with a calm that held its own kind of weight. "The protective enchantment is flawless. Truly the work of Slytherin — I rather think only one of his bloodline can open it."
Silence settled over the room.
The grandfather clock behind Dumbledore ticked on, cold and indifferent.
Draco exhaled slowly.
Where, exactly, did one find a living descendant of Salazar Slytherin? The Gaunt line was extinct — Morfin Gaunt, the last confirmed member of the family, had died in Azkaban not long ago.
He was still turning this over when a memory surfaced — something he had glimpsed in the Pensieve:
The Gaunt family's collapsing hovel, a dead snake nailed to the door in the shape of an S; the hissing sounds the Gaunt family had used among themselves — the same sound Harry had spoken to open the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets.
"Professor Dumbledore," Draco said, sitting forward, "try Parseltongue. It's the language unique to Slytherin's bloodline — the language of serpents."
Dumbledore looked at him and gave a measured nod. "Worth attempting."
"Then we'll need Harry." Seeing Draco's puzzled look, he added, "I can comprehend Parseltongue, but I cannot speak it. Fawkes — I'm sorry to ask again."
The phoenix lifted its head with a look of profound weariness and swept toward the door. Its tail feathers, usually so magnificent, drooped with the resignation of a creature that had been sent on far too many errands this evening.
"Harry can speak it," Draco said. "Asking him is the simplest solution."
It did raise a question, though — was Harry truly a descendant of Slytherin? Why could he speak Parseltongue at all?
He set it aside. There were more pressing matters. Whatever the reason for Harry's ability, the evidence of it was difficult to argue with — he had faced Voldemort as an infant and survived; he had killed a Basilisk with a sword at twelve years old. Strange and extraordinary things seemed to attach themselves to Harry Potter with some regularity.
Now was not the moment to unpick the mystery.
---
Draco blinked and looked around the Headmaster's office. The room had taken on the flat, grey look of exhaustion.
Dumbledore was polishing his half-moon spectacles, a sigh barely escaping him. Sirius sat slumped in his chair, staring at the locket with hollow eyes. And Kreacher — like a small, ancient child — trembled where he crouched, rubbing at his swollen eyes with wrinkled hands, his large tears falling silently onto the carpet.
Kreacher.
Draco had disliked the elf on instinct — the slander alone would have been enough. But now that the truth was out, he found himself seeing it differently.
In some ways, Kreacher hadn't lied at all.
Looking at the elf's pitiful, hunched figure, he thought unexpectedly of Dobby.
Dobby, who had once been just as wretched. Just as slovenly and broken-looking. Who had now transformed entirely — appearing before him with an almost comical swagger these days, developing a somewhat excessive devotion to Harry Potter, but becoming more capable and sure of himself by the week.
And here was Kreacher. Still crushed under the weight of a task he'd been given eighteen years ago, by a master who had never come home.
Something tightened in Draco's chest. It was unfamiliar and uncomfortable, and he identified it with some irritation as sympathy.
He thought, immediately, of Hermione Granger.
He thought of the way her eyes always filled with that particular quality of compassion whenever she encountered something overlooked or mistreated. She never showed contempt for the wretched, the marginalised, the ones society had discarded — even when showing them kindness cost her something. Even when there was nothing to gain.
If she were here now, in this early morning full of grief and revelation, what would she make of all this?
She would think of Regulus Black. A boy of eighteen — the same age as them in their seventh year, when everything had already gone wrong. His bravery had never been acknowledged; his name had been written over with "coward." The light in him had never been seen; the world had counted him among the Dark Lord's faithful. His dying wish had gone unfulfilled for nearly twenty years.
He could have chosen differently. He could have sent Kreacher in his place and saved himself. Instead, he had refused to sacrifice the elf, and gone to his death alone, leaving behind a task so impossible that it had driven the creature he'd protected to the edge of despair — and yet Kreacher had never stopped trying.
*If she were here, what would she do?*
"I have a suggestion," Draco said.
Both Dumbledore's blue eyes and Sirius's grey ones turned to him with something between suspicion and curiosity.
He was aware that he had been somewhat impulsive tonight. Fatigue, he supposed — too long under the influence of that locket, too long running on fractured sleep and fraying Occlumency. It had worn away at whatever usually kept him careful.
Or perhaps he had simply allowed himself, for a few hours, to feel something like kinship with Regulus Black — the lone-wolf Slytherin who had carried everything alone, all the way to the end.
With a certain Hermione Granger-ish stubbornness, he didn't allow himself to back out.
"If we manage to open this locket — could we give it to Kreacher? Let him be the one to destroy it. Let him complete the task his master gave him."
Sirius stared at him blankly.
Kreacher went completely still. His cloudy, tear-streaked eyes found Draco's face, and for a moment they were startlingly clear — bright with something that had not been in them all night.
Dumbledore did not look surprised. A faint smile touched the corners of his tired eyes.
"I have no objection," he said. "Sirius?"
"Fine," Sirius said. He was still reeling; it came out numbly.
Draco crouched down to Kreacher's level. He kept his voice as level and kind as he could manage, and he did not allow himself to dwell on the elf's near-naked state or the tears drying on its creased face.
"Kreacher," he said carefully, "we want to finish what Regulus started. We want to make certain his sacrifice was not wasted."
"Yes — yes!" Kreacher nodded rapidly, desperately.
But a moment later the eagerness faltered, and something like dread took its place. It looked at the locket in misery. "Kreacher has tried everything. Nothing has worked. Kreacher is afraid—"
"Don't be afraid. We have a way." Dumbledore rose, lifted the Sword of Gryffindor from the wall, and approached the elf with a gentleness at odds with the blade. "It's a rather unusual way, I'm afraid — not everyone can wield this. Here — you try."
Kreacher trembled as the hilt was placed in his hands.
"Go on," Dumbledore encouraged him quietly.
A fierce determination gathered in the elf's face. He strained with everything he had —
And slumped, the sword immovable.
"Oh—" He dropped to his knees in despair, a broken sound escaping him. "No—"
"The sword can only be wielded by a true Gryffindor," Sirius said, from his chair. His voice was distant, almost detached. "Kreacher is a Black family elf, through and through. In every way that matters — his loyalties, his values, his whole formation — he's a Slytherin."
Kreacher pressed his forehead to the floor, shaking. "Kreacher is sorry, Master... sorry, sorry, sorry..."
"Don't give up yet, Kreacher." Draco reached into his robes. "Slytherin has its own methods. I have something here — a keepsake from last year."
He drew out a basilisk fang, still in its leather sheath. He removed the sheath carefully, revealing the fang's length, its surface glinting with a cold, venomous silver.
"I believe this will serve," Draco said, handing it to Kreacher with quiet care, keeping his expression neutral against the surprise on the elf's face.
Dumbledore raised his eyebrows.
A basilisk fang. Of course — the very thing that had destroyed the piece of Voldemort's soul preserved in the diary. Highly effective.
But this young Mr. Malfoy had been keeping it very close to his chest. He had not mentioned the fang to anyone; no one had known he'd taken it from the Chamber of Secrets as a souvenir. Dumbledore observed him over the rims of his spectacles, his gaze quiet and thoughtful.
"Be careful with it," Draco said, oblivious to this scrutiny, focused entirely on positioning the locket on the floor in front of Kreacher.
---
Harry Potter arrived still half-asleep, wearing pyjamas, hauled unceremoniously along the corridor by Fawkes. He stood in the doorway of the Headmaster's office in the early morning light, blinking at what he found inside.
Dumbledore, measured and alert despite the hour. Sirius, pale and hollowed-out in a chair. Draco, looking as though he hadn't slept in a week, radiating an oddly electric energy. And a small, bony house-elf crouched on the carpet, clutching a large fang and trembling.
The combination was not what he had been expecting.
Everyone turned to look at him with an expression of barely contained hope, as though he were the answer to a question no one had yet explained.
"What happened?" he asked carefully.
"You've come at exactly the right moment." Draco was already crossing the room, seizing him by the arm, looking more animated than Harry had seen him in weeks. He pointed to the locket on the floor. "Can you speak Parseltongue to it? Say *open*."
Harry looked at the locket. It did look oddly familiar. "What is it? What's wrong with it—"
"It's very important. Please, quickly," Draco said.
Harry looked at Dumbledore, who nodded. He looked at Sirius, who was pale but managed a small, encouraging smile.
He walked up to the locket. He swallowed, gathered himself, focused — and hissed.
*"Open."*
With a soft click, the golden lid of the locket parted. Two small glass windows were revealed, and behind each one, a vivid, living eye blinked open.
"Kreacher — now!" Draco said sharply.
Kreacher stood frozen. The fang shook in his hand.
"I see your heart," a low voice hissed from the locket, thick and terrible with false intimacy. "It is mine."
"Kreacher — stab it!" Draco commanded.
"I see your fear," the voice continued, silky and merciless.
And then the eyes in the locket began to release images — thin and shimmering, like dark soap-bubbles rising into the air.
A boy. Dark-haired, slight, with something of Sirius's features made younger and softer and sadder. Regulus Black, Draco was certain of it.
The boy writhed in agony, drinking from a stone basin — crawling on his hands and knees toward the edge of a dark island — hands rising from black water, pulling him under—
The last moments of Regulus Arcturus Black.
Then: Walburga Black, lying frail and motionless on a bed, tears spilling from eyes that were losing their light, fixed on a door that would not open—
Dumbledore's hand tightened around the hilt of the Sword of Gryffindor.
"Sirius." Something passed briefly across his face — reluctance, and then resolve. "You have to give the order."
Sirius came back to himself with visible effort. His voice, when it came, was stripped of everything except authority.
"Kreacher. Destroy it."
The aged elf lunged.
A flash of silver. And then it was over.
The phantoms vanished without trace. Kreacher stood hunched over the locket, the fang slipping from his fingers onto the carpet. Wisps of dark smoke curled from the shattered casing. Whatever had lived inside the Horcrux — whatever fragment of a soul had been sealed there in hate and Dark magic — was gone.
The locket lay in pieces.
Kreacher looked down at it. His legs buckled, and he sat heavily on the carpet, chest heaving with shallow, rapid breaths. Each one seemed to cost him something.
Then he began to cry — a sound that was equal parts anguish and triumph, rising in sharp, uncontrollable bursts.
"Master — Kreacher finished — look, Master — Kreacher finished—"
"Kreacher—" Sirius had always found the noise intolerable. The instinct to silence it rose automatically — and stopped.
"Young Master," Kreacher said, his voice fading to a whisper, large tears rolling down his wrinkled face and dripping onto the carpet, "look... Kreacher is finished..."
The young master he was speaking to, Draco thought quietly, was not Sirius. It was Regulus — lying at the bottom of a cave lake somewhere, for eighteen years.
"You've done it," Sirius said. The words came out rough and low, and for once there was no contempt in them at all as he looked at the elf. "Go back to Grimmauld Place. Rest."
Kreacher gathered himself with painful dignity, rose to his feet, and bowed — deeply, solemnly — to Sirius, then to Draco, then to Dumbledore, then to Harry.
*Crack.* He was gone.
---
The room was very quiet.
In the growing light, all four of them seemed to recognise simultaneously how completely exhausted they were.
As the first gold of sunrise crept through the Headmaster's office windows, Dumbledore sent a Patronus for Madam Pomfrey.
She arrived shortly, swept one look over Sirius, and descended on him like an avenging mother hen, shooing him toward the door with brisk hands and muttering, "You look absolutely dreadful. What on earth have you been doing all night?"
Harry trailed anxiously after his godfather and the unstoppable Madam Pomfrey, throwing a last baffled, curious look over his shoulder at Draco. Draco suspected Harry had approximately forty questions and was already composing the first one.
On the wall, the painted portraits were yawning one by one, conferring in uncertain whispers — unsure whether to sleep, to gossip, or to pretend the entire night had not happened.
"If you would," Dumbledore said to them gently. "Please keep this between us. Thank you."
A murmur of agreement rustled through the frames. Only the portrait of Phineas Nigellus Black was already empty — his frame bare. Draco suspected the grim-faced Black patriarch had gone directly to his portrait at Grimmauld Place, to deliver the news of Regulus's death to whoever might still be listening.
---
When everyone else was gone, only Draco remained at the desk.
He picked up the teapot, found it long since gone cold, and poured a cup anyway. He took one small, grimacing sip.
"I must say, Draco — I am genuinely astonished," said Dumbledore.
He was crouched near the hearth, examining the shattered remains of the locket, turning the broken chain in his fingers with an expression of quiet disbelief.
"I didn't expect it to end like this, either," Draco said, looking at the ruins. "Slytherin's locket, destroyed. It feels rather like waking up from a dream."
"Actually, I was speaking of Kreacher." Dumbledore set the fragments down and looked at Draco steadily across the desk. "I confess I did not expect such a suggestion from you."
"Does only someone who can wield the Sword of Gryffindor have the right to destroy a Horcrux?" Draco held the gaze briefly, then looked away. "There are brave people in Slytherin. Even the house-elves."
"Had I not witnessed it myself, I might have assumed those words came from a different sort of young wizard entirely." Dumbledore's voice was calm and without edge. "What made you think of it? Giving Kreacher the honour of finishing the task?"
Draco said nothing for a moment.
How could he explain his strange recognition of Regulus — another Slytherin who had borne everything alone, who had been written off by history and died for a cause no one ever credited him with? How could he explain Hermione Granger and the particular way she looked at the world's forgotten things?
"Kreacher was owed it," he said finally, with a faint, self-satisfied expression. "And as for the Dark Lord — having one of his Horcruxes destroyed by a house-elf he considered beneath contempt? That seems like exactly the sort of humiliation he deserves."
Dumbledore's eyes warmed with something close to real amusement. "I do appreciate your reasoning," he said. "Yes — he should not have underestimated Kreacher. Nor Regulus. They were both, in their own way, among the finest Slytherins I have known."
"Perhaps," Draco said, with the tone of someone offering a polite concession rather than genuine doubt.
"In that case," Dumbledore said, lacing his fingers together thoughtfully, "once we have located Slytherin's ring—"
"Sir." Draco raised a hand. "Please don't expect me to find the ring for you by tomorrow morning. I have no idea where it is."
"That is what you said yesterday," Dumbledore observed pleasantly, "and yet here we are, with the locket destroyed before dawn."
"Yesterday was a coincidence." Draco fixed him with a stern look. "And — can you guarantee that Sirius won't start asking questions? Harry will pry into everything, he's constitutionally incapable of leaving things alone—"
"I'm afraid you were the one who suggested calling Sirius," Dumbledore said, with a hint of helplessness that was not entirely convincing. "And you were the one who thought of using Parseltongue. Once they realise what has been happening, they will dig until they find answers."
"Then you can manage them," Draco said, without sympathy. "And while you're managing them — please make absolutely certain my parents are not mentioned."
"Of course," Dumbledore said warmly. "Is there anything else?"
"A day off," Draco said, with the conviction of someone stating a non-negotiable. "A full day. No classes, no homework."
*Merlin's beard.* If he didn't sleep soon, he was genuinely going to collapse. The locket had been tormenting him for over a month. Sleep deprivation. Fractured Occlumency. No peace of mind whatsoever.
Dumbledore's smile shifted — became something less polished and more genuine. He inclined his head and waved Draco toward the door.
---
Draco emerged from the Headmaster's office as if walking through water.
He drifted along the corridor, yawning until his jaw ached, his eyes beginning to close of their own accord.
Exhausted. Empty. Bizarrely weightless.
Everything had gone too smoothly. So smoothly that the whole night had a dreamlike quality that he couldn't quite shake — as though it had happened to someone else, or hadn't quite happened yet.
And then, from the far end of the silent corridor, a familiar voice broke through the haze.
"Draco — did you come from the Headmaster's office? Are you alright?"
Her voice was bright and clear, like biting into a green apple.
He half-opened his eyes, yawning, and opened his arms without thinking — and caught the girl who came running up to him entirely on instinct.
The morning sun was dazzling. He was probably dreaming again.
He pulled her in without hesitation, the way he'd done a hundred times in his dreams, and buried his face briefly in her hair, breathing in.
*Oh,* he thought, with drowsy contentment, *I'm so glad.*
"I'm so glad, Hermione," he murmured against her ear.
"Draco?" Her voice was startled — the voice of someone who had just noticed that something was considerably off. "What's wrong?"
She was always so endearing. Untameable hair, a slightly alarmed expression, eyes that held a question about everything they landed on.
He leaned back and looked at her — at the early morning light in her face, the brightness in her eyes — and gave her what he was distantly aware must be a rather vacant smile.
She tilted her head and looked back at him, studying his face in that particular way she had, waiting patiently, the morning breeze lifting her hair.
*Oh, Hermione,* he thought distantly. *I really do need to sleep. I cannot keep dreaming about you.*
So he cupped her face in both hands and pressed a firm, fond kiss to her forehead.
Then he released her, turned, and drifted down the corridor toward the Slytherin dungeons, calling "Goodnight!" over his shoulder as he went.
---
"He's gone absolutely mad," Hermione murmured, watching the boy walk away into the rising sun.
She stood very still for a moment.
The place on her forehead tingled as if it had been grazed by a live wire.
Her heartbeat was doing something dramatic and entirely unasked-for.
*Oh no,* she thought, pressing her fingertips to the spot.
*That awful cold seems to have come back.*