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There was a loud bang and a yell from behind the dais. Harry saw Kingsley hit the ground yelling in pain: Bellatrix Lestrange turned tail and ran as Dumbledore whipped around. He aimed a spell at her but she deflected it; she was halfway up the steps now.

"Harry - no!" cried Lupin, but Harry had already ripped his arm from Lupin's slackened grip.

"SHE KILLED SIRIUS!" bellowed Harry. "SHE KILLED HIM I'LL KILL HER!"

And he was off, scrambling up the stone benches; people were shouting behind him but he did not care. The hem of Bellatrix's robes whipped out of sight ahead and they were back in the room where the brains were swimming…

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Had they stayed, all but poor Neville Longbottom, they would have seen a body hurled out of the Veil. It thudded onto the cold stone moments after Sirius Black had fallen through.

Neville ran forward, only realising it was not Sirius's corpse it - he - began to spasm and choke. Then the man - boy he realised as he got closer - heaved up gallons of water.

"Longbottom?" the man muttered, and then he passed out again.

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Dark magic, they said. The Blacks must have an heir - it's in their grimoire. Horrific thing.

The man stayed unconscious for days, hidden away in Grimmauld Place; half-aware at times before drifting back into oblivion.

(Even Dumbledore had been shocked).

"Kreacher?" he finally called upon waking.

The old elf was beside himself, already hovering over the patient.

"Master?" he gasped. "Master Regulus is awake?"

The boy smiled for a moment, face pale and eyes still closed.

"Did you destroy it?"

"Destroy what, Regulus?" another voice interrupted.

"The locket," he said hoarsely, grey eyes flashing open as he pulled himself up. "Did it work?"

"I think," Albus Dumbledore said gently, "you and I have much to discuss."

He handed Regulus a potion. The dark-haired young man scowled at it.

"What is it?" he asked, sniffing suspiciously. "Where am I?"

He took in the familiar room. Home.

"Why are you here?" Regulus amended.

"You have been… gone for a long time," the old man replied. "It's an Invigoration Draught. Drink up."

Regulus drank, and then he told his old Headmaster everything. And in return, Albus Dumbledore told him a horrific tale of war and murder and Horcruxes.

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His arm wa

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,

Weeks passed and he remained hidden away, even from the Order for all that they used his house as their own.

Potter's house now, they said. But Kreacher answered only to him. Family magic superseded a written Will from a disowned blood traitor. The house was his.

You killed my brother, he said to the elf. That was not well done.

But he understood. Sirius had never been kind to their withered servant.

A goblin came one day with Dumbledore to formally hand over the unclaimed Black vaults. He'd never been proven to be dead, they told him. Goblins required proof.

A home and money. But not freedom. Not that until the end of the war.

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The first time he met the Mudblood was the night he was at last introduced to some of the Order. Lupin, Moody, Tonks, Shacklebolt and her. No one else.

He disliked them - but at least they were new faces in the pattern of days locked in his room with only his elf and occasional visits from his old Headmaster to break the monotony of his days.

He was fully recovered, Dumbledore said. He was not a prisoner.

(Don't mention the Horcruxes.

We will find them and destroy them. But you cannot be seen by Voldemort… his obsession with immortality would make you a greater target than even Harry).

His mission: six times greater than he'd believed.

(He felt like a prisoner.)

Harry was not to see him, Dumbledore told them. Or even to know. If Voldemort saw Regulus Black, looking no older than the day he had died, there would be too many questions.

The boy who'd found him (the son, rather than the father as he'd initially believed) had been sworn to secrecy.

"Why am I here, Headmaster?" the Mudblood asked.

(He, too, wondered what made her special).

"Miss Granger, I have need of your extraordinary mind… Regulus will help me find the Horcruxes. You must help me find out how to destroy them."

She looked flabbergasted, as well she might. She was hardly more than a girl.

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It took her less than a month in the end.

"Fiendfyre or basilisk venom," she told the headmaster. "I was thinking - the sword is goblin-made isn't it? So it only takes on what makes it stronger. That would be the safest, I think. Or we could go into the Chamber, but then we'd have to tell Harry…"

Regulus watched Dumbledore's face light up.

Grudgingly, once it was explained to him, he couldn't fault her plan. How simple, how elegant to use a sword already prepped with venom. A sword that happened to be in the Headmaster's possession.

"What you did - it was very brave," she said to him one night. She had come specifically to see him. It was uncomfortable. "Professor Dumbledore told me. He said the ring was cursed. He said he would be dead, if it weren't for you."

She was so proper. That's what annoyed him the most. He could see her ferocious brilliance now. He'd watched her calmly read through the darkest, most evil books the Black family had collected over the centuries without flinching. She had found a quick and easy solution to the Horcrux problem - a problem that Kreacher hadn't solved with years to think about it and a direct order from his Master. Apparently she had even been at the battle when he'd been returned, fighting the likes of Malfoy and Nott and Dolohov.

And she sat there, in his library with her shirt impeccably pressed, legs (long long legs, he'd noticed the day she'd worn a fucking skirt and -) in hideous Muggle jeans and yet - and yet -

She carried herself like Pureblood. Regulus had never really spoken to a Muggleborn before. There had been some in his year at Hogwarts of course, but they'd all had hideous accents like Severus's before that had mysteriously disappeared over the summer at the end of Regulus's first year. One of them - Cresswell? - had been one of Slughorn's favourites, he recalled. He'd had some stupid first name like Dagger.

But this girl - she was different.

She was kind to the elf in the face of what even Regulus considered beyond the pale rudeness. But graciously kind, kind as though she recognised that Kreacher knew no better.

(And if he, Regulus, had told the elf to stop being rude to her, well that was because of his manners).

"Thank you," he replied.

Saving the man he'd always seen as a Muggle-loving freak had tasted sour. But if he could stop the Dark Lord it would be worth it.

"Why did you turn?" she asked, and he wondered how long his question had burned at her.

She was as curious as a cat - not that he'd noticed, no, it was just obvious - but it had been almost two months since his return, two months since they'd been working together in secret.

He thought about the question.

Because there's a line, even with Dark Magic, you ought never cross.

Because I believed in a man's silver-tongued promises and found his true goals far different.

Because I was offered the world and would have been given nothing.

"It's complicated," he said eventually.

"Try me," she challenged and he watched how her hair sparked and thought -

no - understood - that she was magical, truly and inherently and ferociously magical.

"It wasn't for people like you. I still believed Mudbloods were lesser. But there's a line between wanting power and doing something evil. Horcruxes - I grew up with what people like to call Dark Magic, but not like that." He could still taste the horror that had choked him for so many days after he'd found out. "What you have to do - only madman would survive. It's a violation of magic.

"And, well, I suppose I joined him because he offered me the world... but really, he only wanted it for himself. He didn't care about our goals, what we wanted. He just wanted power."

"Do you still believe I'm less than you?" she asked and he cringed at the disdain in her voice. How could she despise him? It went against everything he'd ever believed. And yet -

"You, no. I still believe the Muggle world is a threat to us but I don't want to rule it any more. I just want my world to be safe."

She was quiet for a while, just watching him and he felt uncomfortable under her gaze, as though she could see through to something inside him, something cowardly and small and selfish.

"Our world," she corrected him. He shrugged.

She checked her watch with an elegant twist of her wrist.

"I need to go," she told him. "I won't come back here before Hogwarts now. I'll be at the Weasley's for the rest of the summer. I brought you some reading… these," she gestured at his family's bookshelves, "probably aren't the best companion for a confused and lonely man walking a thin line between doing the right thing and going back to the wrong."

He scowled at her words. She opened the bag she'd brought with her and pulled out a pile of books.

Muggle books.

"I think you'll find them enlightening. Goodbye Regulus."

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He'd meant to leave them gathering dust where she had put them forever. But eventually the loneliness of Grimmauld Place, with only Kreacher and occasionally the werewolf and those damn Aurors for what might loosely be termed company, got to him and he turned to the books she had left.

"Once, over dinner, Henry was quite startled to learn from me than men had walked on the moon. "No," he said, putting down his fork.

"It's true," chorused the rest, who had somehow managed to pick this up along the way.

"I don't believe it."

"I saw it," said Bunny. "It was on television."

"How did they get there? When did this happen?""

Regulus, too, was shocked. He wondered if it was true, wondered at the power of the book, at how the writer seemed to understand him, understand his soul and yet there was no magic.

Had they really gone to the moon?

Eventually, with no other way to find out, he wrote to her.

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Yes, she wrote. It's quite true. I'm glad you enjoyed The Secret History. Here are some newspaper articles about the moon. I have ordered you a Muggle encyclopaedia. It will probably be delivered to one of the houses next door, as it's coming through the Muggle post so you'll have to work out how to go and get it. Introducing yourself to your neighbours and asking if anything's been delivered there for you (perhaps you live at a 12 Grimmauld 'Street'?) might be rather more civilised than sneaking in.

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He tried it. The Muggles were friendly. Invited him him and pushed a glass of wine into his hand. The house was bohemian. Artists, they explained, smiling.

Would you sit for us? Ever such a beautiful face hasn't he, Dorothy?

Not today, he excused.

Well come back, drop in any time.

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The encyclopaedia was -

was

- beyond anything - anything - he could ever have imagined.

B for bomb, he read in horror. H for Holocaust. M for Martin Luther King. P for physics.

There were nineteen books in total. He hardly slept, days tumbling over each other with the pages.

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He emerged from the other side of a pile of novels and an encyclopaedia anew.

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You have opened my eyes without taking me even outside my house, Hermione. What magic is this? It is as though I have unravelled - I am without foundations.

Forgive me.

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She wrote back, asking him for advice about house-elves. You are the only one who really understands, and perhaps now you've read about slavery and subjugation you'll understand there has to be another way. It's wrong, but I don't know how to explain it.

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Hermione, house elves are what used to be called brownies. You can't rip them away from their homes and families. What you can do is talk to them, find out if there's ways to ensure they're being treated well. Perhaps, in time, you can introduce payment, but I'd say the first step would be educating them, as you have with me. Most elves can't even read. Give them the tools to change their own fate.

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Sign your name as Viktor, she told him once. That's who people think I'm writing to.

Who the hell is Viktor? he wanted to write back, furious, but did not. That would be too close to revealing something he could hardly acknowledge even to himself.

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She visited again, on New Year's Eve, and he could see some change within her. She was more ferocious and subdued altogether, like a cornered fox. Like she was hiding a hurt behind her bright-eyes and tanned skin.

"Skiing," she explained. "My parents go every year. They've got a chalet in Chamonix. I came back early, though. It's not really my thing, to be honest."

They shared a bottle of champagne from his father's cellar - his now - and Regulus almost worked up the courage to kiss her. But she didn't invite him to and took something called a taxi home not long after midnight. Her parents' house was close by she said, also in Islington.

"I'll come back tomorrow with more books," she promised. "Now I can use magic I'll be able to bring more."

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He asked why she was not with her friends.

"I've fallen out with one of them. Ron. Harry is staying with his family so…"

He frowned.

"Why did you fall out?" he pressed and to his immense irritation she flushed.

"None of your business," she snapped.

He took a deep breath. She was right.

"Alright. Sorry. Anyway, back to the potions issue, I think you need to think about the theory you've learned and apply it more to the practice. A friend of mine at school taught me. So the book is a basic guide but you've got to think - is there a better, more efficient way? And also… you know, little things can affect it… the lunar cycle, for instance, or even the time of day. The freshness of the ingredients."

She came every day, and even Flooed back to Hogwarts from his fireplace. Her smiles and sharp intellect lifted his spirits.

He missed her, when she went back.

He wished he was braver.

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I've got to go to Ron's brother's wedding. Would you like to come with me? I've asked Dumbledore and he says it's fine as long as you're disguised.

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"You knew, didn't you?" he asked her, as they lay wrapped together in his bed at Grimmauld Place, her dress crumpled from the rush to escape, from the emergency apparition. "You knew they'd attack?"

"I had a feeling they might. I just… I wanted you there with me. I'm sorry Harry and Ron were so cross. They'll have cooled down by tomorrow."

He kissed her for the second time that night. The first had been on the dance floor, not long after he'd been introduced to the real Viktor. He did not care at all how angry her friends were. He thought her mouth might be its own magic.

A Muggleborn witch in his bed. How his mother would have screeched. The thought gave him no pleasure. For all her faults - and he could now see what they were - she had loved him fiercely.

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It was all over before September in the end. Harry Potter, who was a braver man than Regulus could ever aspire to be, had spent hours closed up with Dumbledore in Sirius's old room the day after the fiasco that had been the eldest Weasley boy's wedding. He'd come out pale-faced but accepting.

"I understand why you didn't tell me," Regulus overheard him tell Hermione. "About the Horcruxes. About Regulus."

He didn't, it had to be said, actually apologise for the way he'd spoken to Hermione but she seemed to understand and there was some sort of appallingly Gryffindorish scene where she cried and Harry almost cried and Regulus, who'd merely been going to ask them down to dinner, ran away and told Kreacher to put a stasis charm on the food.

The next day Harry Potter left the house alone. He returned sad and tired but victorious.

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"I love you," he told her, two years later and she turned to him startled.

"I know," she said fondly. "Did it really take you this long to work it out?"

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The first section of text is JK Rowling's. There is also a chunk from Dona Tartt's The Secret History. Both italicised. Obviously I don't own either of these great works.

It's been too long since I've written Regulus Black.

Let me know what you thought.