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The Art of Self-Fashioning	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 26077 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter Fifty-Five—Opinions on a Disaster
“I think it was a disaster all around, and you sacrificed far more than we gained.”
Harry raised one eyebrow. He was still dealing with magical exhaustion, but if he had the strength to lie on a couch as Regulus ranted at him, which Regulus seemed convinced was the case, then he had the strength to respond.
Regulus stopped in his pacing to scowl at Harry. “The Dark Lord knows that we know about his Horcruxes. He’ll immediately take steps to secure the remaining one.”
“It’s already pretty secure,” Harry said. “If it’s in Gringotts, where I think it is, then him taking it out would actually make it less secure. And easier to get.”
“You don’t know that’s true, and you don’t know he’ll take it out!”
“He might, because he might panic and think any place that he hides them now isn’t secure.” Harry struggled up a little on the couch and studied Regulus. He already felt strength flowing back into his muscles, although he didn’t try to get up yet because Regulus didn’t look as though he would believe that. “But even if he doesn’t, then he can’t add that many more protections. Not without interfering with the goblins and drawing attention.”
“What kind of attention does he have, besides ours?”
“What would happen if the goblins started wondering what he’s so desperate to protect?”
Regulus hesitated, then slowly nodded. “You might be right. If he’s going to do all these things.” He sat down on the overstuffed chair across from the couch and stared at Harry. “How can you sound as if you understand him so well?”
“Because that’s the way he is.”
Regulus rolled his eyes the way he did when he was dissatisfied with Harry’s answers, but he already looked more relaxed. “You know that you’re going to have to spend a day or so resting before you’re up to full magical strength?”
“I know.”
“And in the meantime, I’ll get to work enchanting a room where we can use Fiendfyre to destroy the locket, and the ring, once your birds bring it back. I think it might be surer than the basilisk fang. We don’t know how much venom the fang has in it.” Regulus got up and stood with his back to Harry, waiting. Harry waited, too, and finally Regulus said, “You know that we haven’t thought of a way to get the Horcrux out of Neville yet.”
“Yes, I have.”
“You have?” Regulus whipped back around, his cloak flapping and settling around him as if he was a tern banking in for a landing. “What? I mean, Fiendfyre would destroy his body as well as the Horcrux, and the fang would still—”
“Cast the Killing Curse at him.”
Regulus went still, and stared. Then he said, “I thought he was your friend.”
“He is.”
“I thought you would want to preserve his life at any cost.”
“I do.”
Regulus looked as if he was a few centimeters away from lowering his head into his hands in despair. Harry watched him, not understanding, and then something like understanding came to him and he nodded. “Listen, we’ve only had one other living Horcrux. That was Nagini. Lucius’s Killing Curse hit her, and she lived, but the Horcrux inside her died. It’s Neville’s life I want to take care of, not the Horcrux’s. I think Fiendfyre or the basilisk fang would probably still kill Nagini, but the Killing Curse didn’t. So that’s our best chance to use on Neville.”
Regulus’s head had cranked up bit by bit as he listened. Then he said, “I’d forgotten we could use her as an experiment. We could use the fang or the Fiendfyre on her, and see what happened.”
“No, I need her for something else. Besides, she doesn’t have the Horcrux protection anymore, so we can’t use her as a substitute for Neville. She’d just die and not tell us anything about what would happen to Neville.”
“But you’re hanging everything on a thread. The thread of Neville’s Horcrux maybe reacting the same as Nagini’s.”
“Yes? And of course I’m going to ask Neville before I cast the Killing Curse at him. Or maybe it would be better to have Lord Dudders do it. Malfoy managed to kill Nagini’s, but she’s a snake, and he didn’t know she wouldn’t die. Lord Dudders has the greatest connection to the Horcrux, and it’s probably what he wants to do anyway, hit Neville with the Killing Curse.”
Regulus stared at him again. “That would require us confronting him in battle.”
Harry studied Regulus, looking for another of those clues he had missed. Sometimes there were a lot of them. “Right. You—did you think we might be able to get away with not doing that?”
“I had hoped,” said Regulus, in a voice as dry as Yar’s claws.
“Of course not. I have to be close to him to make sure he really dies. And to use some of the weapons I’m planning on, including the one that I’m going to plant in Nagini.”
Regulus gave him a close, careful look. “Do you realize that you’re not responsible for defeating him? According to everything I’ve heard since the night his parents died, that burden belongs to Neville.”
Harry stared at him. “Why?”
“Because he survived the Killing Curse.”
Harry shrugged. “And no one knows why, and the only thing that apparently happed because of that is him becoming a Horcrux. And then Dumbledore wanting to train and sacrifice him. I can defeat Lord Dudders because I know how. And he can’t stop me because he’s spent too much time focusing on Neville and Dumbledore.”
“He’s going to focus on you now,” Regulus said quietly. “And when he learns that Dumbledore is dead…” He shook his head. “I can only assume that they’re striving to keep that quiet for now, or we would have heard something. It probably depends on who found him. One of the professors, is my guess, and they’re trying to keep everybody from panic.”
“But that’s the way things are,” Harry said, dismissing the notion that bad things might happen immediately because Dumbledore had died. Dumbledore had kept a lot of secrets, and that probably included what Harry could do and where they were. Even if someone figured it out, they wouldn’t be able to attack Grimmauld Place any more easily. “That’s the way I have to fight.”
“You, and not Neville?”
“People have expected Neville to do enough. Even I have. I’m going to ask him to risk death. I can at least do everything else.”
Regulus kept frowning, but at last he gave a sharp nod and stepped aside so that Harry could walk to the door. Harry took careful steps. His legs were shaky under him, but he made it without tripping or needing help.
He paused with his hand on the doorway and nodded at Regulus. “Thank you for helping me instead of trying to hold me back.”
He’d meant specifically letting him walk instead of chiding him back to the couch, but Regulus looked into his eyes and said, “I’m doing it because I realize that nothing can stop you. And I’d rather help you than be mowed down because I’m in the way.”
Harry nodded, and left.
*
“I just—maybe what Dumbledore did was wrong, in some ways, but then he should have been tried. Not murdered. And not by being stung to death by wasps. It sounded like it was a horrible way to die.”
Neville picked hard at the thread sticking out of the end of the blanket on his bed. He wanted to look at Hermione and say she was wrong, tell them about the training, but he didn’t have the words. It was—he’d always been aware that something was wrong with him. Other people wouldn’t have broken under that kind of training. Harry wouldn’t have. He didn’t want to make Hermione more certain that Dumbledore had been murdered.
“But who can we tell? Even if we send an owl to the Aurors, they can’t get in here.”
“I have a plan for that.”
Neville’s shoulders tightened, and he found his tongue at last. “Hermione, we can’t break the wards! You-Know-Who and his Death Eaters would be in here in seconds.” He stared beseechingly at her, and Hermione gave him a gentle smile and patted his hands.
“I know that, Neville. And I don’t want us or Professor McGonagall to get in trouble. If they thought we were helping him or staying with him, then we would be. What I’m going to do is wait until he tells us that he’s going somewhere. Then I’ll just send an owl to the Aurors telling them that Dumbledore’s murderer is going to be that place at that time. Simple.”
Ron nodded as if it was, but Neville closed his eyes. He couldn’t imagine Harry in any kind of prison, any kind of cage. He would pine himself to death like an animal closed away from wild places.
Either that, or he’ll break out, and the way he does it will result in a lot more dead people.
Neville was going to draw breath and speak, no matter what it cost him, when he heard a scratching at the door. Hermione whirled around with her wand drawn. She probably thought it was one of Harry’s cats, spying on them, Neville thought, trying to control his own breathing.
But when Ron opened the door, warily, the cat that bolted in was Dapple, the cat Harry had made for him. He’d spent most of his time since they got to Grimmauld Place wandering around and playing with the other cats. Now he sped towards Neville and leaped on his shoulder and leaned against his neck, purring.
Neville patted Dapple. He was grateful that he was here, but a little confused by why he’d come back. Most of his time at Hogwarts, Dapple was as loyal as a dog. He seemed to think other people could take care of Neville now that they were at Grimmauld Place, though.
Then Hermione said, “I think you should go and talk to Potter about when he’ll be going somewhere, Neville.”
Dapple turned around and hissed so hard that little flecks of spittle from his teeth touched Hermione’s face. She gasped and brushed them off, looking at Neville blankly.
Neville could only shake his head. Dapple had never acted like this before, especially not around Hermione, who he seemed to like better than Ron most of the time.
“I don’t know if we can trust him, either,” said Ron, and for a horrible, hurt moment Neville thought Ron was talking about him, until he realized Ron was staring at Dapple. “What if he runs and betrays us to Potter? Or if Potter can look through his eyes, or listen through his ears?”
Neville stared back. “Dapple is loyal to me.”
And that was the reason Dapple had come back now, Neville realized then. He had sensed, well, something, about the way Ron and Hermione were talking. Or he had felt Neville’s distress. Either way, he was here now, and Neville didn’t intend to let Ron and Hermione send him away again.
He stroked Dapple’s back. The rumbling sound that hadn’t been a purr dimmed and disappeared under his touch, but when Hermione said, “I don’t think we can trust Potter,” and Neville tensed, it started again.
And it would, Neville realized dismally. It would keep going, and keep going. Not because Dapple was loyal to Harry, but because it distressed Neville to listen to two of his friends talk about another of his friends this way.
It would go on—
Unless Neville put a stop to it.
A month ago, he would have done that by running out of the room. But everything since then, even Dumbledore’s death, had somehow been good for him.
Now, Neville swallowed back his panic and said, “I’m not going to help you betray Harry.”
Hermione gave him a kind smile. “I know it must be hard for you to hear bad things about him, Neville. He’s your friend, even if he doesn’t like us much. You don’t have to tell us when he leaves the house. We can figure that out ourselves.”
“Yeah, it’s not like he’s quiet about it.”
“But I would still be helping you if I kept quiet about it,” said Neville slowly. He wondered if the bravery guiding his words now was the bravery the Hat had seen in him long ago, and the reason he’d been placed in Gryffindor. Even Gran had been more surprised than pleased about that. “I would be part of the reason he got arrested. So I can’t do that, either.”
“But—people who do wrong things have to be arrested.”
“Like leaving Hogwarts when Dumbledore said I couldn’t? And sneaking back in when we knew Harry was going to steal something? And not objecting to living in a house saturated with Dark magic, with prisoners in the cellars?”
Hermione’s lips were a little parted. Then she said, “But none of us have killed anyone.”
“I’m going to have to kill You-Know-Who.” Neville touched Dapple’s back and felt a deeper, different kind of rumble there. “Or that’s what they keep telling me.”
“But that’s—he’s done all sorts of things, Neville! Of course no one but a Death Eater could object to you having to kill him!” Hermione glanced at Ron, and when she got a firm nod of support, faced Neville again. “But Professor Dumbledore—”
“He wanted me to train with Snape.”
Hermione paused. Neville hadn’t told her everything about his training, but she did know the way that Snape had sneered at him and belittled him. Neville had told her that after Snape went missing and he had to admit the source of his relief and constant small smile.
“He wanted you to train with the best Potions master available though, right?” Ron put in. “And you told us once that your Gran thought about the one in Beauxbatons, but she didn’t approve of her, and the one in Durmstrang is too far away.”
Neville swallowed something that felt mostly like air. Dapple continued to purr against his neck. “Yeah, but why should he have been in charge of that? And it didn’t work. I never learned anything about Potions, nothing that would really benefit or protect me.” He narrowed his eyes at Hermione. “Unless you’re going to tell me that I’m just being ungrateful for training that was meant to protect me.”
“I would never tell you that!”
“You’re sort of suggesting it, though.” Neville turned his head to the side and buried his nose in Dapple’s fur. “Aren’t you? You’re telling me that I should understand Dumbledore and think killing him was murder, but me killing You-Know-Who wouldn’t be murder.”
Hermione started to speak, and then fell silent again. Finally, Ron said, “I just don’t think we can be sure of Potter. He wants to kill You-Know-Who right now, but what if he turns against us next?”
“Why would he?” Some of Dapple’s calmness was traveling into Neville. He could stand up and turn around. “He’s my friend. He has been for years. And the cat he made me is still loyal to me,” he added, scratching under Dapple’s chin. The purr got louder.
“Yeah, but Potter doesn’t like me or Hermione, does he? What would you do if he asked you to sacrifice one of us for his plans?”
“He wouldn’t.”
“You sound so sure—”
“I know Harry, and I know you don’t,” Neville interrupted. This was something to stand on that was as firm as the stone floor, at least. “He doesn’t care for you in the sense that you’re his friends. He would probably hurt you if you got in his way. But he knows you’re my friends. He wouldn’t hurt you randomly for the same reason he wouldn’t hurt Gran.”
Ron and Hermione exchanged uncertain glances again. Neville nodded at them. “You weren’t thinking of him hurting Gran, were you?”
“No. We just thought he would want to hurt us because we want to get him arrested.”
“Well.” Neville turned his head back to pet Dapple again. “Stop wanting to do that, and then you don’t have to worry about him.”
“Neville!” Hermione sounded a little whiny. “He’s your friend, but he did something wrong.”
“So did we, according to the Order of the Phoenix.”
That made them finally pause, or at least Ron. Hermione looked as though she was about to argue, but Ron whispered something to her, and pulled her out into the corridor. Hermione went while looking back at him and still opening her mouth, but the door shut between them before she could say anything else.
Neville breathed in and out shakily and sat down on the bed, moving Dapple from his shoulder to his lap. Dapple curled up and patted at Neville’s knees with interested claws.
He’d stood up to his friends. He could if he had to. And it hadn’t been so bad after all.
*
“I was going to cast it.”
Regulus pushed Harry gently towards the wall, and Harry went, struggling not to hop as his muscles tensed. “I know you were,” Regulus said. “And Fiendfyre is a spell that should be cast by someone stronger. Or can you resist right now? Are you sure that you’ve overcome the magical exhaustion?”
Harry had thought he had—he wasn’t stupid, no matter what Regulus and Professor McGonagall believed—but he should have been able to resist the push, and he couldn’t. In the end, he subsided against the wall. He had only wanted to destroy the locket and the ring himself because he had his animals standing by, and he knew they would help him if the Horcruxes turned out to have any more traps.
But as long as he was still in the same room, the one they had strengthened the walls and floor of with Dark charms, then he could send his animals to Regulus’s aid. Professor McGonagall was there, too, standing silently by the door, her wounds almost healed from the potions she’d taken. And Terry stood next to her, a faint frown on his face as he watched Harry.
None of the animals were there except the mice and the ants and the krait Harry always carried curled up in his pockets. He would have liked Spellmaker, but she still grew agitated around magic and tried to interfere to do something with it; he wasn’t going to bring her into the same room as Regulus and his concentration right now.
Regulus faced the Horcruxes, which lay next to each other on a small patch of carpet. If Harry squinted, he could make out the glassy shimmer of a spell around the carpet. Rather than trying to create a whole new room that could stand up to the Fiendfyre, Regulus had simply added those charms around the whole space and then created a smaller one in the middle of it.
Now, he stood there with his eyes closed, seemingly meditating, in the moments before he opened them and stepped forwards.
Harry stared. Somehow Regulus had transformed, and in a way that had nothing to do with Transfiguration. Thinking back, Harry supposed that he had never seen Regulus cast a major Dark spell before.
Regulus turned on one heel. The magic around him snapped and flared, suddenly much bigger and easier to sense. If Harry had had to create an animal for him the way he’d made Dapple for Neville, it would have been a python, a huge snake capable of flowing around him and warding him.
“Ignis, ignis, ignis in aeternum!”
The incantation broke out of Regulus like a wave of mice, and the flames caught hold of the Horcruxes. Harry saw them rage up the sides of the glassy spell that surrounded that portion of the carpet, but Regulus had cast the protective enchantments strongly enough. They had to fall back in rippling waves of red and gold against the floor, and then turn their attention to the locket and the ring.
There was a low noise, a buzzing on the edge of Harry’s hearing. He stiffened, his hand going to the krait in his pocket.
Regulus fell back one step, but his face wasn’t frightened. He looked as though he had half-expected this, and even if he wasn’t armed with animals the way Harry was, he had all the Black family’s knowledge.
He had to be all right. That was what Harry told himself as he leaned forwards on his toes to watch.
Regulus spun out of the way of the lashing black tendril that extended from the ring. He said something Harry couldn’t hear over the confined roar of the Fiendfyre. The similar black tendril coming from the locket recoiled. Regulus threw back his head and laughed.
But that meant he didn’t notice the glistening dead silver net that was creeping out of the ring, spreading along the floor. Harry shouted. Regulus more than likely didn’t hear him, as he slowly opened his eyes.
Harry snapped his hand forwards. The krait went sailing from his fingers and landed in the middle of the net.
Thrashing, snapping, it became a husk of dry skin in less than a minute. But the net had stopped spreading towards Regulus, whose face had taken on a mask of bone-like calm. He spoke, words Harry couldn’t hear, either, and the net suddenly shriveled around the husk of the krait.
Then Regulus pointed his wand at the locket.
The Fiendfyre closed in before Harry could hear the spell he cast. The air filled with wailing, too, the same kind of lonely, disgusting cry Harry had heard when the diadem was dying in the Room of Requirement. Professor McGonagall reached out and held his hand. Terry looked as if he was going to be sick.
Regulus walked out of the glassy spell as it began to twist on itself, swallowing the Fiendfyre, compressing it into a smaller and smaller area of glowing yellow. Regulus sighed and took Harry’s other hand for a single hard, wringing second.
“The locket and ring are over.”
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The Art of Self-Fashioning