The end of his first year as a teacher came faster than he expected, in a whirlwind of revisions, exams, and nervous breakdowns. A girl barricaded herself in his dorm, unceremoniously throwing out her roommates, for three full days before he was forced to break in and appease them. He learned to have a box of tissues always full and ready in his office for any student who was sniffling. McGonagall even gave him a sympathetic nod of understanding when he rushed into a staff meeting ten minutes late, looking tremendously overwhelmed.
And then finally the school year was over and summer came. And within hours the school is empty and quieter than Regulus has ever seen it.
The summer was very fruitful in his endeavor alongside Dumbledore, he could have done more had it not been for his current seat in the Ministry thanks to his title as Head of House Black.
Between the death of his mother in early 1982 and the start of his work as a teacher in the same year, Regulus was not much in his childhood home, still preferring his small cottage in the village where he stayed to recuperate; but during that vacation he decided his house needed a real cleaning. Not only the normal filth, he fully trusts Kreacher to keep the house perfectly tidy, but Grimmauld Place is home to a lot of dark magic, which is not surprising with all his family's ideology. And even after the war, there are still dangerous things in that house.
So he spent nearly the entire first month researching every protective and containment spell he could and turned the basement into a magical vault where he dumped all the evil stuff he didn't want to fall into the wrong hands.
It's not that he didn't particularly believe in the ministry's suitability, it's just that he doesn't. Not after Nott and Malfoy managed to get away with their war crimes with only the flimsy excuse of being cursed with the Imperius.
No, those objects and books better stay with Regulus where no one tries to use them for something dangerous and stupid, like trying to bring Voldemort back from wherever he is.
Speaking of his possessions, he went to Gringotts to sort out some things and visit the Blacks' vault there would be dark magic things with the money, he had no doubt when he entered the vault. But the shiver he felt wasn't just a fluke.
Regulus could freely say that he was used to the Dark Arts, he is a Black; he can even admit how familiar he is with the Unforgivable Curses themselves, having been on both sides of at least one of them. Now that uncomfortable shiver that makes his Inferi scars burn, that he only felt one other time, with a locket; Slytherin's Locket which was turned into a Horcrux.
The theory that the Dark Lord had made more than one Horcrux was at best a nightmare and at worst a terrible reality. So when he was drawn to a specific object among the many golden goblets on a shelf.
The same feeling he felt when he found the Medallion, the dark magic oozing from the small cup as if it were oozing from the object.
Taking the cup with him back to Hogwarts, the only place where he could find Dumbledore, Regulus presented him with the object.
"How did you find him as a child?" Dumbledore asked.
Regulus was willing to ignore the old man calling him a child, watching him cast detection spells on the cup. He spent the drive to Hogwarts torn between hoping he was wrong and the cup just had some curse on it, and wondering if it was a Horcrux, how in Merlin's name did it end up in the Black Vault?
Considering that hypothetically it was a Horcrux. It is assumed that the Dark Lord has more than one, but the Locket was overprotected, beyond natural barriers, Voldemort hid the locket in this cave with various magical enchantments to guard it. First, in the cave, one could not Apparate and Disapparate; second, an unmarked door that could only be opened by paying blood on the cave walls; third, an Inferi-infested lake; fourth, an invisible rowboat that transports only one wizard at a time safely across the lake; fifth, a stone basin filled with a green potion that could not be disappeared, transfigured, or otherwise altered to change its properties.
The only way to remove the potion from the basin, exposing the medallion at the bottom, was to drink it. The potion caused Regulus unbearable pain and forced them to relive their worst memories and face their worst fears as if he were in a nightmare, and if he still had the strength from all that and the agonizing thirst, he went for water, where anyone else would have just died like Regulus almost did.
Until then, the Dark Lord with all his intelligence and malice had not considered that a house elf's magic could circumvent at least one of his barriers, the only one that gave Regulus a chance to survive; Monster can Apparate from the small island not once, but twice.
But this wasn't the time to point out how ignorant Voldemort was about non-wizard magic. The point to watch at the moment is how he got access to the Black Vault, and why he chose that place to keep a piece of his soul.
Regulus wouldn't begin to despise the quality of security at the goblin bank, but he's sure that like his parents, Voldemort despised them, thought them inferior and all. So how, why, and how? And even though Voldemort disregarded the vault's security — which makes no sense if he kept a Horcrux there — he would not have access to the Blacks' vault without a Black's authorization. Regulus knows that his father and mother would never let the man have access, however much they support the cause, that would be too much even for them.
That leaves Sirius, Andromeda, Narcissa, and Bellatrix.
Andromeda didn't even have access to the vault after she was disowned, of course, Regulus undid that, but still, the answer is no. Narcisa wasn't a Death Eater, Lucius is another case, but he doesn't have access to the vault married to Cissa or not.
Would the Dark Lord trust something like a Horcrux into the hands of his Death Eaters?Well, he asked to borrow an elf, but that wasn't exactly trusting a Death Eater, he never mentioned what the mission was even to the elf, and the Lord also didn't expect Kreacher to survive all of this.
However, it is possible that he would give a Horcrux - without telling the truth, of course - to someone to hide it, but it would have to be someone he knew loyalty to.
Blind loyalty is hard to come by, even among Death Eaters if mass desertion after his downfall is any indication.
Sirius didn't believe he was, but he could be wrong. 0.001% of him being wrong and his brother had done what he's accused of doing, but Sirius doesn't have access to the vault since he too was disinherited. front of an Avada for him.
"I believe Bellatrix kept it in my family's vault."
"Why not the Lestrange family?" Dumbledore asks when he finishes the spells.
Regulus stares at the object, now magically proven to be a Horcrux.
"She may have transferred the cup after the Longbottoms, after all the Lestrange vault is now under ministry control, but mine is not.
"I see" Dumbledore took the cup in hand, analyzing it "Interesting" The Headmaster was silent for a long moment, his brows slightly furrowed "I believe this is Hufflepuff's Cup."
"Didn't the cup disappear decades ago?" Regulus asked leaning forward, as much as he wanted to distance himself from her like a Horcrux, it was still fascinating to see a relic of the founders like that. It's a shame she was corrupted like that "Do you think he transformed the others too?"
"Yes, she disappeared in the mid-fifties as far as I know"—Dumbledore set his goblet down on the table between them—"following the murder of Heptziba Smith, an heiress of Hufflepuff. As for the sword of Gryffindor, I don't believe he transformed it, it's been sitting here in my office since before I became Headmaster.
Dumbledore got up and walked over to where the sword was on display over the office fireplace.
"The Diadem, however, has been missing since the Founders' era.
"Well, the Locket was missing for a long time and yet he found it," Regulus countered.
Helga Hufflepuff's cup was joined by Salazar Slytherin's locket in a secure vault in the basement of Grimmauld Place.
Three weeks later, Regulus found himself in the doorway of an abandoned cabin next to Dumbledore. They went to Little Hangleton where the Gaunt lived to find some clue, maybe another Horcrux, after practically stumbling upon one in his vault, Regulus wouldn't be surprised.
The hovel, clearly abandoned for decades, was decaying, the wood rotted and surrounded by moss and mold all over the walls. It took nearly an hour to get past all the wards on the premises to be safe for them to enter the house.
The smell of mold and rot outside is a refreshing breeze compared to inside.
When they finally emerged from the hut half an hour after they managed to get inside they were out of place, Regulus carrying a box with the newest horcrux found. A ring that appears to be another family heirloom, this time the other side from which the Gaunt descend, the Preverel.
The faculty meeting for the year 1983 was scheduled for an especially hot summer Friday in the last week of July. There was only a month left for the return to school, and the day when the new teachers would be introduced arrived.
Regulus wasn't especially excited for this, another year, another Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Considering your years as a student, that it was the fifteenth that was passing by the school. According to Dumbledore and all the older students, there was a curse on the office and no wizard has managed to destroy it so far. So this was just one of many more to come.
Leaving that thought aside, he entered the staff room, greeting those already there. Mr Robins wasn't there yet, the old Muggle Studies teacher had especially helped with the queries of many of his Slytherins.
Last year, to his particular pride, saw the highest number of Slytherins enrolling in Robins' classes, and the children of the most extreme ones who feared their families' backlash still respected him more than his generation ever did.
"Excuse me," a female voice sounded behind him.
Only then did Regulus notice that he was still very close to the door, and obstructing the others' passage.
He moved to sit at the table, choosing a spot in the corner. Seeing the person he had disturbed go and sit next to Professor Sprout, she looked incredibly young compared to the average age of those present. The woman looked strangely familiar and there wasn't a huge age difference.It took another fifteen minutes for Dumbledore to begin the meeting. The new Professors were introduced as Joffrey Hooks the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, a man in his late sixties, and Persephone Stevens the new Muggle Studies teacher, apparently Mr Robins had decided it was time to retire and live for the rest of his life. family.
Not much different from the previous year, they decided on the class times for the classes, the rotation schedule of the teachers responsible for accompanying the students to Hogsmeade, as well as the dates of excursions. It's not among Regulus's favorite tasks, though he's only done it once, many people, many restless. Not pleasant.
Given the end of the meeting, Regulus left to continue his studies on a new potion that was created that supposedly helps lycanthropes during their transformations. Upon seeing this potion for the first time, Regulus was inevitably reminded of his brother's friend, Remus Lupin.Lupine and Sirius were almost as close as Sirius and James. Of course, Regulus always suspected that there was something else there, he was jealous of James for Potter becoming a brother to Sirius, replacing what he already had, even more so when Regulus didn't run away with his brother and later when he received the mark. He resented James for that, but the man was dead now and it wouldn't make any difference to go on hating him. Lupine, however, was a different story, not just because the man was still around — at least Regulus thought so — but because his relationship with Sirius had always felt like something more.
Sirius and Potter had an air of brotherhood, Sirius and Lupine – especially in their later years at Hogwarts – had an air of lust and repressed passion. It wouldn't be surprising if Regulus found out that the two were lovers it would just be a statement of the obvious, the unsaid.
Remembering that, the time at Hogwarts when he pretended to hate her brother and his friends only brought a sour taste to her day. So Regulus pushed the memories over them and focused on the new, the present, and this new potion that could help so many.