Chapter Text
“This place is creepy,” Zach comments, looking around Ollivander’s with wide eyes as a tape measure seems to skim over every part of his body. Zorian, standing off to the side with his hands clasped behind his back, rolls his eyes and doesn’t bother translating.
Immediately after arriving at No. 12 Grimmauld Place from King’s Cross station, before he’d even unpacked his bags, Zorian and Remus had sat Sirius down in the dining room, swore him to secrecy, and explained the whole of Zorian’s situation from beginning to end, so that he could not be accused of purposely hiding things in order to gain Sirius’ trust. He even gives the true story of what happened beneath the third floor corridor with Quirrell –including dying and seeing the real Harry Potter in the afterlife –and puts all his cards face-up on the table: he is not going back to the Dursleys, but he is willing to find somewhere else to live if Sirius isn’t comfortable with taking him in. As he speaks, Sirius’ face slowly drams of emotion, until he looks more like a particularly realistic wax figure than a man… but in the end, he assures Zorian and Zach that they are welcome in his home. And then he avoids them entirely for several days.
This seems pretty reasonable to Zorian, and Remus is already fully aware that he’s not capable of inhibiting Zorian’s mobility, so now around a week into the summer holiday, he and Zach have just popped by Ireland to fetch the pine wand Zorian’s simulacrum had left behind, before returning to London to visit Diagon Alley and get Zach a wand of his own.
“Give this one a wave, won’t you?” says Ollivander, thrusting a pale wand into Zach’s hands. “Aspen and dragon heartstring, fourteen inches. Reasonably springy.” Instead of properly waving it, Zach gives the wand a playful flick, and the tip goes off with an explosion of light and sound, like shooting a gun. Zorian breathes a quiet sigh of relief –he’d forgotten until they were walking into the store that just because Zach was a perfectly competent magic user didn’t mean he’d be able to use this world’s form of magic, and if his friend had turned out to be a muggle, they really would’ve been screwed.
“Aspen wand owners tend to be strong-minded, determined, and are often either accomplished duellists, or destined to be,” Zorian recites –in Ikosian, so that Zach can more easily understand –instead of letting on that he was worried. “That wood type is particularly suited for flexible spellcasting and combative magic, while the length of your wand and the dragon heartstring core seems to indicate that you will be a particularly flamboyant caster, which… makes sense, for you.” The dragon heartstring will also be something of a blessing, he hopes, since they’re said to learn new spells faster and more easily than other wand cores, and Zach will have to learn the first three years (at least) of the Hogwarts curriculum in less than three months.
Zach shoots him a grin. “Thank you,” he says to an applauding Ollivander, in stilted English. “How much for it?”
“Seven galleons, Mr. Noveda,” Ollivander replies, though Zorian’s the one who hands the money over. It’s a little amusing for Zach to be reliant on Zorian’s inherited coffers, this go around.
“Where to next?” Zach asks, looping an arm around Zorian’s shoulders as they leave the shop. He’d done some more research on the Trace, and it seemed that the enchantment was most likely applied to the wand of every first year student during their first ride on the Hogwarts Express –meaning that with their pine and aspen wands respectively, they wouldn’t have to worry about encountering any restrictions placed on the usage of underage magic until fall term.
“I need to find a shop that will sell me decent quality quartz,” Zorian answers, “and I would like to see if any of the books at Flourish and Blotts mention a Tom Riddle. We can take a break and have lunch somewhere around here, then we’ll stop by Madam Malkin’s, since we both need a few new sets of robes –you can’t borrow Sirius’ clothes forever.”
“Muggle clothes are comfortable,” says Zach in English. “And your robes make you look like a girl. With the long hair?”
Zorian rolls his eyes. Harry’s naturally messy hair is a lot more manageable once it’s been grown out, and he thinks the robes he picked out make him look quite sophisticated. “You should’ve told Jornak that when you had the chance,” he replies, and Zach grumbles.
Number 12, Grimmauld Place has changed drastically since he visited Remus there some time ago. Most of the first floor has been cleared of its various pests, deep cleaned, and renovated –repainted in bright, cheerful colors, and installed with proper lighting. A heavy, Gryffindor-red curtain is tied securely into place over the portrait of Sirius’ mother, one Walburga Black, which hangs in the entrance hallway and is apparently nigh impossible to remove. Sirius seemed to take quite a bit of pleasure in ripping the master bedroom to shreds before remaking it in a way designed specifically to make the family that disowned him roll over in their graves; Zach moves into Sirius’ childhood bedroom on the fourth floor (although Sirius had removed many of the decorations he’d placed there as a teenager, the decor remains quite loudly red and gold), while Zorian claims the fittingly Slytherin one next door, which once belonged to Sirius’ younger brother.
Regulus Black’s bedroom hadn’t yet been touched in the renovations when Zorian first claims it, so it’s on that wall that he finds his first real insight into the Dark Lord’s –or Tom Riddle, if Death was to be believed –life. At some point, Regulus had pasted a collage of newspaper clippings about Voldemort’s movements to the wall, and though they’re now yellowed and crinkled with age, they’re still clear enough, and the words still legible.
In the late 1970s, Lord Voldemort looks nothing like the wretched parasite Zorian had seen clinging to the back of Quirrell’s head –he’s regal and conventionally handsome, with aristocratic features, dark hair graying at the temples, and an aura of power that feels tangible even through the faded moving photograph, where Voldemort stares piercingly into the camera even as the Death Eaters that flank him rush around, a tangle of pale masks and fluid, moving robes (he wonders, absently, if Snape was among them). Zorian knows from personal experience that the Dark Lord is competent and dangerous, even in his current, weakened form, but he can actually imagine people wanting to follow the man in these pictures. The media at this time seemingly hasn’t taken a side on what would become the First Wizarding War yet; in some of the articles, Voldemort is still described as someone that could be respected.
Though he removes the picture of Regulus posing with the rest of the Slytherin Quidditch team, he keeps the newspaper clippings for further study (he stores them in his mind as well, to be a backup since the clippings are old and fragile, but he’s not sure if his usual way of memorizing and copying blueprints will work with the moving picture enchantments). Then, because he’s a Slytherin himself –and not entirely lacking in house pride, despite his best efforts – he keeps most of the room’s furnishings the same, though he asks Kreacher to clean them all thoroughly, and then does a second pass himself.
When he and Zach return from Diagon Alley, they put their purchases away (Zorian ended up buying himself a nice new set of knives, which now hang at his belt, and Zach wanted to try even more weird candies after being devastated by the news that they’re too young to drink alcohol in this world) and then reconvene in Zach’s bedroom, since it’s the larger of the two. Although they still have to be careful with their mana usage while they’re not at Hogwarts, he also only has one simulacrum active, and Zach pointed out there’s no point in just sitting on full mana reserves when they’re not expecting to be attacked. Therefore, it’s Zorian who performs the modified soul marker ritual, which he’s adjusted to hopefully target the shard of Voldemort’s soul that he carries, rather than the marker he shares with Zach –a surprisingly difficult alteration, since the very original ritual doesn’t even contend with soul magic, just detecting a marker using a copy of the mark provided by the caster. Not being able to access Alanic’s expertise, or even just reference books on soul magic and tracking spells, means the ritual definitely isn’t as optimized as it could be… but he’s fairly confident that it should work, and he’s proud enough of that.
Like the first time he casted the soul marker tracking ritual, he checks and triple checks the spell formula circle for faults before he starts chanting –and when he’s done, nearly twenty minutes later, he has to stare into the middle distance for several moments as he process the information his ritual just dumped into his head.
“So?” Zach sits cross-legged on his bed, watching Zorian with interest. Zorian holds up a hand for him to wait, and he obliges, closing the textbook on his lap, on which he had been experimenting with using divinations to automatically translate the text into Ikosian. He’s so far failed at trying to make Zach practice speaking English even when they’re alone, though it’s been nice to have someone to speak Ikosian with, and it can be hard to speak technically about their world’s style of magic when he doesn’t even know if there are accurate English translations of words like projection, illusionism, and negation, when those concepts don’t even exist in here (he would say alchemy and potion-craft are pretty synonymous though, as with alteration and transfiguration).
Once he’s reasonably certain the unexpected results aren’t a result of a fault in his ritual, he sighs and leaves the circle to sit down on Zach’s bed, rubbing his eyes and pushing his glasses up on his forehead.
“Alright,” he says after another few moments, reaching for the map of Great Britain that they’d prepared. “The ritual gave me seven results, which is within the range that we expected. I’ll start with the furthest –which is outside the range of the spell, I believe, somewhere to the southwest of here. Most likely it’s on continental Europe, since I’m still getting a direction, just not a precise location.”
“Does that mean there could be other soul pieces completely outside the range of your ritual, and we just wouldn’t know?” Zach asks, leaning over the map with him.
Zorian purses his lips. “It’s possible, I suppose, but I think it’d be pretty unlikely. We expected a maximum of eight results, and I’m currently thinking that the one result outside my range is the Dark Lord’s main soul.” He draws an arrow on the map, pointing towards the southwest corner, and Zach hums an agreement.
“If you say so. What about the others?”
“The next furthest is up north, around 250 miles from here in the Scottish highlands –I would say that it’s definitely hidden at Hogwarts, or at least in the surrounding area, in the Forbidden Forest or Hogsmeade, so that’ll make it extremely easy to search for once we get there, and we don’t really have to worry about it until fall term. Then there’s one about 200 miles away –I would say it’s near here,” He marks a star slightly north of a city called York, “but we would have to get a lot closer before I can track it with any real accuracy, since I’m not familiar with that area. Within teleportation distance, there’s one to our west in Wiltshire, and another here in London, somewhere in the pocket dimension of Diagon Alley.” For this, he just marks the Leaky Cauldron on their map. “Since it’s unplottable, we’ll also have to go there before we can track it with any more accuracy.”
“That’s… only five,” says Zach, suspiciously. “And the seventh soul piece is you. So where’s the sixth?”
“Well,” he replies, “it would seem that the sixth piece of the Dark Lord’s soul is in the Black family townhouse, around three floors down from here, and most likely in the kitchen.”
Kreacher, the Black family’s elderly house elf, has not become more pleasant in appearance nor personality since the first time Zorian encountered him. Nonetheless, he doesn’t feel comfortable rummaging through the kitchen cupboard that the elf claimed as his own, so he calls Kreacher down.
“Yes, Mister Kazinski-Potter?” he croaks (Kreacher had been sworn to secrecy, the same as Remus and Sirius, so that he and Zach could speak freely while at home). Like Sirius, the old elf has seemed somewhat uncertain on what to make of them, two teenage wizards from another world. Zach had cheerfully revealed that the Noble House Noveda, of which he is the last remaining heir, has a strong magical bloodline and a proud militaristic tradition –which makes him as close to being pureblood as possible –while Zorian rarely mentions his family. That being said, neither of them could rightly be called mudbloods or blood-traitors, and Zorian is a Slytherin, and has read quite a bit about pureblood aristocratic tradition, which seems to earn him some respect.
“If it’s alright with you, might we be allowed to look through your cupboard?” he asks politely, making sure to phrase it as a request rather than an order. Sirius, to whom Kreacher is magically bound to serve, had commanded him to follow orders given by all three other members of their household –Zach only uses this power for silly, meaningless things; Remus tries to be polite but is sometimes forced to order him around, since Kreacher would never willing obey a werewolf; and Zorian does his best to never phrase anything as a command if it can be avoided, following his own rule of trying to stay cordial and polite to everyone and everything he encounters in this world. “We’re looking for something, and I believe it might be in there.”
Kreacher narrows his eyes. “Kreacher does not have anything belonging to the young sirs. Kreacher is a good elf, not a thief.”
“We’re not looking for something that belongs to us, but an item that was in this house before we arrived,” Zorian explains apologetically. “It might have belonged to your old master or mistress.” Now that he’s paying attention, he can sense a portion of the Dark Lord’s soul somewhere inside the cupboard, though it’s so small and unobtrusive that he never would’ve noticed if he hadn’t been looking for it. It occurs to him that this may actually be intentional.
“Master Sirius discarded many heirlooms of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black,” Kreacher spits. “Blood-traitor master turned his back on the honor and dignity of his House, disrespecting his ancestors–”
“You didn’t save any?” Zach interrupts. Kreacher eyes him shiftily.
“That’s right,” Zorian says, “you obviously care about the Black family legacy. Were you able to salvage any of the heirlooms?” He crouches, shows off a bracelet that he wears –a Black heirloom that Tonks had gifted him last Christmas. If the horcrux is actually a Black family heirloom as well, that would make a lot of sense; it’s obvious that Voldemort is deeply invested in the pureblood families of Great Britain, and to make one of their artifacts into a horcrux may have been a way of honoring House Black’s decades of service to his cause. “I care about the tradition of this family too, so I won’t throw away anything you might’ve been able to save, or tell Sirius about any of it. I just want to look.”
They stare each other down; Zorian is still slightly unnerved by his inability to pick up even Kreacher’s most surface thoughts and emotions. After a moment, Kreacher bows and steps aside. “As the young sir wishes,” he says.
The interior of Kreacher’s cupboard is just… sad. The small, dark space contains a nest of grimy blankets of the same color and texture as the dirty rags the house elf still wears, which glitters in places with trinkets that Kreacher had managed to salvage from Sirius and Remus’ efforts. He understands that Sirius was mistreated by his family as a child and that Kreacher was probably complicit in that mistreatment; he understands that Sirius becoming Kreacher’s master has likely only made their antagonistic relationship worse (he himself is not immune to holding grudges). That understanding doesn’t stop the cupboard under the kitchen counter from reminding him uncomfortably of a dark, spidery cupboard under a set of hardwood stairs, walls painted beige and peach, and a heavy padlock on the door. They may not be his memories, but Zorian is still Harry Potter in many of the ways that matter.
“You should clean this place up a bit,” he says quietly. “Take any of the spare blankets and clothes from the linen closet upstairs, or buy new ones. I’ll pay for it if Sirius won’t.”
The house elf bows again. “Young sir is too kind.”
His fingers are drawn, when he crouches down and reaches inside, to the far depths of Kreacher’s nest, between several layers of blanket –he touches heavy, cold metal, and after a few pulls, draws out an ornate golden locket.
Kreacher lets out a choked gasp.
It’s heavy, ostentatious, and about half the size of his palm, hung on a gold, filigree chain. A serpentine S is inlaid on the front in glittering green jewels, most likely emeralds, and the gold surfaces are all covered in swirling, snaking patterns. Though it has no visible clasp, he can see a thin seam around the edges, and the loop that the chain is threaded through seems to also function as a hinge. He tries prying it open, but the two halves remain quite firmly stuck together.
“Need some help?” Zach asks, and Zorian passes it over with a frown. Then he notices Kreacher’s expression: wide, bulging eyes, face screwed up as if he’s holding his breath, fingers flexing at his sides.
“What do you know about the locket, Kreacher?”
“It’s–that’s–” Kreacher closes his eyes, swaying back and forth. “Master Regulus’ locket, young sir. Kreacher failed in his orders. Kreacher has–Kreacher is yet to fulfill Master Regulus’ final orders. Kreacher is a bad elf!” At that, the house elf bursts into sobs.
“What?” Zorian asks in a panic. What is he supposed to do in this situation? “Are you okay? What were Regulus’ orders? Maybe we could help you fulfill them?”
“M– Master Regulus ordered Kreacher to destroy the locket, Kreacher tried everything, everything he knew, but nothing–nothing would work… So many powerful spells upon the casing, Kreacher was sure the way to destroy it was to get inside it, but–but it would not open… Kreacher punished himself, he tried again, he punished himself, he tried again. Kreacher failed to obey orders, Kreacher could not destroy the locket!” The elf lets out a loud, wailing cry, and starts attempting to brain himself on the kitchen tile.
“No! Kreacher, stop!” Zorian orders, in shock, but it’s too late. Loud footsteps thump down the stairs, and Sirius appears at the entrance to the kitchen, a look of vague horror on this face. They must make quite the picture: Zorian, kneeling on the floor; Zach swearing quietly in Ikosian as he tries to pry the locket open; and Kreacher laying on the floor and utterly pitiful, a bruise already blooming on his pale, wrinkled forehead, eyes swollen and bloodshot with tears.
“What in Merlin’s name is going on in here?”
Zorian shoots the man a glare, but Kreacher is already picking himself up off the floor and bowing low enough that his disproportionately large nose brushes his knobbly knees. “Master,” he croaks hoarsely.
“We’re in the middle of something,” Zorian says curtly. He needs Kreacher to be honest, and honest means vulnerable, and vulnerable means –well, it’s just not going to happen with Sirius in the room.
“I can see that,” Sirius replies. He takes another good look around the kitchen, and his gaze finally lands on Zach, who’d given up and started using magic –not that it’s giving him much more success. “What is that?”
“A horcrux,” says Zach, quite cheerfully. Sirius and Kreacher a nearly identical sound of shock and horror, in unison, and then eye each other with antagonistic distaste.
“It’s what?” says Sirius.
“Whatever,” Zorian grumbles. “Kreacher, could you tell us the entire story of the locket, from beginning to end, so we understand what we’re dealing with?”
“Kreacher was ordered never to tell any person in the family, even Mistress” he replies, glaring sideways at Sirius. Zorian sees Sirius starting to puff up with anger, and puts up a hand to forestall his reaction.
“Could you tell us if Sirius just went and stood outside the kitchen?” He feels Zach’s mind brush against his questioningly, and allows the link to form –they’ve perfected this form of translation over the past couple of weeks, where part of Zorian’s mind dedicates itself purely to translating English to Ikosian and then telepathically transmits everything almost instantly to Zach. It’s not perfect, however, and Zach does actually need to become somewhat proficient in English before the fall term, since they won’t be taking the same classes (and most likely won’t be even sorted into the same House), so Zorian usually refuses to use it.
Sirius and Kreacher eye each other, but Zorian being Kreacher’s favorite member of the household was bound to pay off eventually, so the elf nods stiffly. Sirius takes another look around the room, eyes narrowed, and then steps outside the kitchen, just out of sight.
The story Kreacher reveals is a tragic, horrifying one. Zorian only manages to keep his composure throughout because Kreacher loses his own early on, words slurring into gasping sobs, and he is determined to know the whole story. He reads between the lines: if Voldemort had a way of bypassing his own defenses, he would have used them; the Dark Lord is a competent necromancer, with inferi to spare on defenses that he might’ve never had to use; Regulus Black, at age seventeen, betrayed the Dark Lord. The locket is not a Black family heirloom – it’s a Slytherin one, which paints a particular picture when paired together with Voldemort’s Parseltongue ability. One horcrux the heirloom of a Hogwarts founder, and another hidden in or around Hogwarts itself. What he knows about Tom Riddle feels like a jumble of disparate puzzle pieces, for now, but it’s only a matter of time before they start fitting together.
He looks up when Sirius reenters, and isn’t sure whether or not to be surprised that the face of Regulus’ older brother is wet with tears.
“I had no idea,” he mutters, swiping over his eyes with the back of his hand. Then he presses his lips together, and Zorian feels him swallow down his grief before glaring at the horcrux. “Well, how do we f*cking destroy that thing?”
“It would seem that we have to get it open first,” Zorian sighs. He turns to Zach. “Any luck?”
“It resists every brute force method to pry it open that I can try without blowing up this kitchen,” Zach tells him, obviously frustrated. “I can see the seam, but it acts like it's completely soldered together.”
“So, that’s a no,” he translates. “There’s probably a specific spell used to open it, or it’s keyed to the Dark Lord’s magical signature, or his wand…” Although, if it’s a Slytherin family heirloom, and he suspects the Dark Lord would probably want to honor his own heritage, and the Slytherin bloodline trait is– “...or you need to say a specific phrase in Parseltongue. Can Parseltongue be learned? And,” he realizes, “we need a plan for when we manage to open it, since it may not be possible to destroy it by ordinary means. Opening the locket may also activate other wards and protections that are currently dormant, or even alert the Dark Lord that his horcrux is being tampered with, drawing his attention.”
“Let me guess,” Zach jokes. “You have to do some research.”
Zorian eyes Sirius and Kreacher cautiously, since they are the two with desperation radiating off of them in waves, like heat distortion. He never would’ve thought he’d see the day where he was describing Zach as level-headed, but he also supposes that it wasn’t Zach’s younger brother who got violently drowned by the Dark Lord’s undead. “I do think that would be wise,” he says. “There’s also so little information on horcruxes available at all –I would like to examine the locket further to see if there’s anything notable about the soul fragment or the vessel that could help us find and destroy the others.”
“Get up, Kreacher,” Sirius orders, after a moment. Kreacher picks himself up and bows low, eyes and nose still streaming. “Find a magic dampening box, the best one you can find, and bring it here to contain the locket until it can be destroyed.”
“As Master wishes,” Kreacher croaks hoarsely, and apparates away with a loud pop.
