✓ | PLAY WITH FIRE ⎯⎯ harry potter

forty-one

"Why would Snape kill Dumbledore?" Hermione asked, choosing to ignore everything else that Marina had said.

Marina reached into her bag and found the locket Harry had found in Dumbledore's pocket. "I'm not sure, but I think it had something to do with this. It has my father's written note in it. I think it's a fake Horcrux."

"I don't think they know much about Horcruxes," said Harry, confirming that he had yet to tell his best friends about Voldemort's strategies to live forever.

Marina shook her head and turned to Kreacher, showing him the locket. He looked at it with bloodshot eyes. "You wouldn't know anything about this, would you?"

"No, Mistress," Kreacher shook his head, "Kreacher knows nothing."

"I think you do," Harry chimed in.

"And I think you should tell me everything you know, Kreacher," Marina said in a low tone, leaning closer to the house-elf. "Do I need to shove you into the room across the hallway to show you my family tree and remind you who I am? Or, no- actually, I order you to tell me everything you know, Kreacher."

Kreacher gulped for air, his hollow chest rising and falling rapidly. And he broke; he told them everything he knew about the locket: before Marina's birth, Voldemort had requested the use of a House-elf from his Death Eaters. Master Regulus had volunteered Kreacher. A great honor it had been, for both Regulus and Kreacher, for Voldemort to bring the elf to a cave beside the sea. The Dark Lord had presented Kreacher to a basin full of poison there. He had ordered the elf to drink the poison. And Kreacher had drunk and drunk until he had seen terrible things and until his insides were burning, and then, Voldemort had dropped a locket into the empty basin and left the house-elf to die in the cave. However, Voldemort had overlooked the house-elves' special magic binding them to their masters. Kreacher had been able to Apparate back to Regulus, and after seeing how Voldemort had treated Kreacher, Regulus had turned against him.

During Regulus' time as a Death Eater, Voldemort had made veiled references to his Horcruxes - that, Marina had read in her father's diary. Regulus had concluded that Voldemort had made a Horcrux and that it was the object that he had forced Kreacher to help him protect. Having reached these conclusions, Regulus had told Kreacher to take him back to the island he had been left. There, he had seen the Horcrux hidden away in the basin covered in poison. The only way to remove the potion from the basin, thereby making the Horcrux able to fetch, was to drink it, as Kreacher had done. Not wanting the house-elf to suffer more, Regulus had drunk the poison, which caused him unbearable pain. He instructed Kreacher to switch the true locket with a fake one, and to take the Horcrux home and destroy it. He ordered Kreacher to leave the cave without him, and Kreacher, with the Horcrux in hand, watched in horror as Regulus was dragged beneath the lake by an army of Inferi.

Kreacher had never been able to destroy the locket, and he had continuously punished himself for it.

"Then the one Dumbledore had is fake," Harry concluded. "Where's the real one?"

The house-elf didn't answer. Marina leaned back in her chair, wiping away a tear.

"It's in the house," Ron guessed. "I think it's in the Drawing Room - that's the room he has spent the most time in all these years."

"Is it true, Kreacher?" Marina asked. The elf had big tears rolling down his crooked nose. It was clear that Regulus' death had left him with scars on his mind. But Marina had to continue, "I order you to show me where the locket is."