The moment Sherlock finished speaking, Harry couldn't help but glance toward Kreacher, who had curled himself into a tight ball on the floor. The small face, creased and ancient as old leather, now wore an expression of unexpected resolve.
It was as though a fog had suddenly lifted from Harry's mind—every question found its answer, every tangled thread pulled clear.
No wonder even a wizard as powerful as Dumbledore had been unable to Apparate within that cave.
And yet this house-elf, whom most wizards dismissed without a second thought, had managed it.
"But I still don't understand," Harry said. "How could someone like Voldemort make that kind of mistake?"
Dumbledore's voice was cool when he answered: "Because of arrogance. Weakness and ignorance are never the true obstacles to survival—arrogance is."
He paused, and when he looked at the small creature standing before them, his voice softened. "In Voldemort's eyes, house-elves were nothing more than talking tools. Animals that happened to speak. I will admit that Voldemort possessed powers I will never have. But Voldemort could never have imagined that the beings he held in such contempt would possess magic he lacked—and a loyalty he could never begin to understand."
"It wasn't only Voldemort," Sherlock said. "As far as I can tell, the vast majority of pure-blood wizards in the magical world share that same view of house-elves. Dobby of the Malfoys. Hokey of the Smiths. Winky of the Crouches—not one of them was treated any differently."
Harry found himself nodding.
Compared to pure-bloods who treated house-elves' lives as utterly disposable, Hermione's burning desire to establish S.P.E.W.—the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare seemed refreshingly admirable by contrast.
Though admirable wasn't quite the word, was it.
If Hermione could just do something about that bushy brown hair of hers—properly tamed, paired with that fierce, determined look in her eyes—she'd actually be quite—
Sherlock couldn't see him, of course.
"Don't think in extremes, my dear Harry." Sherlock's gaze had already found the change in his expression, cutting straight to his thought. "Binary thinking will get you nowhere. Not treating house-elves as inferior creatures doesn't mean you must campaign for them to have the same rights as people. Respect and over-interference are completely different things."
"Ah—right," Harry said automatically.
He was long past being startled that Sherlock could see straight through him. It had become something like habit.
He now understood why Kreacher had been able to leave the cave. Just as Dumbledore had said: the house-elf's loyalty to his master, combined with a magic that ran deeper than Voldemort had ever bothered to understand, had pushed through the impossible—carrying Kreacher out of a place where Apparition should have been impossible.
"Yes." Kreacher straightened suddenly, his voice ringing out with a clarity filled with reverence. "The highest law of house-elves is the command of their master. Master told Kreacher to go home. So Kreacher went home—"
His words confirmed what Harry had suspected. Harry pressed on: "And after you came back? When you told him everything—what did Regulus say?"
"Master Regulus was very frightened. Very frightened." Kreacher's voice cracked, his sunken cheeks were trembling with the force of his emotion. "He grabbed Kreacher's arm—his fingers dug right into the flesh—he told Kreacher to hide in the attic cupboard and not to leave the house.
"Then—after some time—one night—Master Regulus came to find Kreacher at the cupboard."
The house-elf's voice dropped, heavy with grief. "He looked strange. His hair was wild. His eyes had gone hollow. Kreacher could see that his mind was churning like a kitchen garden after goblins had been through it—
"He ordered Kreacher to take him to the cave at once. The same cave Kreacher had gone to with the Dark Lord—"
At these words, a scene formed itself clearly in Sherlock's mind:
Moonlight.
Young Regulus standing before a cabinet door, the grand and ice-cold corridor of Grimmauld Place stretching behind him, the slight figure of a house-elf before him.
The two of them setting off together down a road that led only to death.
Kreacher, who had already made this journey once, knew exactly what was required: how to offer blood at the archway, how to find the hidden boat beneath the lake's surface, how to row it across the dark water and carry his proud young master step by step toward the island where the lethal potion waited.
Just as he had done once before, following Voldemort.
"So—" Harry's voice had gone tight. "Did Regulus make you drink the potion too?"
Kreacher shook his head violently. His clouded eyes were filled all at once with tears that fell in great drops onto the dusty floorboards, landing with dull, heavy sounds.
Harry froze. His fingers hovered mid-air.
Sherlock lifted an eyebrow, and let his hand fall from the arm of the chair.
Dumbledore closed his eyes gently; when he opened them, they were full of something between shock and sorrow.
The two exchanged a glance.
In each other's eyes, they both found moved.
"Master Regulus took a locket from a silk pouch," Kreacher said, wiping at his tears as they came faster and faster, streaming down both side of his long hooked nose. "It looked exactly like the Dark Lord's. Master Regulus told Kreacher to hold it—and when the potion in the basin was gone, to swap the two lockets—"
His sobbing had become rough and rasping, like a worn bellows being worked.
Sherlock, Harry, and Dumbledore all leaned slightly forward to catch the broken words.
"He told Kreacher that once Kreacher had the locket, to leave immediately—not to look back. Kreacher would not. Kreacher knelt and grabbed at his robes and wept. And so, he used the master's command to force Kreacher—"
The house-elf's voice suddenly rose, torn through with despair: "He told Kreacher not to breathe a word of it to the Mistress when Kreacher got home. He told Kreacher to destroy the real locket. And then—then—he made Kreacher force him to drink the potion, one sip at a time!
Kreacher did not want to. But Kreacher had no choice—this was the master's command—
Kreacher had to make Master Regulus drink every drop of that potion. And at the breaking of dawn, Kreacher could only watch as the Inferi rose from the water and dragged him down into the darkness of the lake—"
With that, Kreacher could hold himself together no longer. He collapsed to the floor with a hollow thud, curled tight upon himself, and let out a howl of grief.
Harry felt his heart seized by some invisible hand. He couldn't breathe.
He thought of Sirius, and the way he'd spoken of his brother. He thought of how the whole world had dismissed Regulus as nothing more than a Death Eater who had gone astray.
And yet—this young man had lit a small flame in the dark, and done it in a way no one would ever know.
And come to think of it—some of the Inferi that had swarmed them in the cave might well have been Regulus himself—
Dumbledore's lips pressed together tightly, and what showed in his eyes could not be hidden: he too was moved.
Sherlock had anticipated the truth before the telling was done, and so he was calmer than either of them. He recovered quickly, tapping his knuckles twice against the armrest, then turned to Harry. "Let it finish telling the story. We need to understand the full sequence of events."
"Kreacher brought the locket back home," Harry said, drawing a steadying breath and pressing through the emotion that surged in him. He looked at Kreacher. "Did you follow Regulus's orders? Did you destroy it?"
"Kreacher could not make so much as a mark upon it." Kreacher raised his head, his bloodshot eyes full of guilt and anguish. "Kreacher tried everything. Every method Kreacher could think of. But nothing worked—not one thing succeeded—
"There was such powerful magic on that locket. Kreacher knew it could only be destroyed from within. But Kreacher could not open it—
"Kreacher punished himself and tried again. Punished himself again and tried again—
"Kreacher could not carry out the order. Kreacher could not destroy the locket!
The Mistress went mad with grief when Master Regulus disappeared. She spent every day clutching his photograph and weeping."
Kreacher's voice sank lower, brimming with a loneliness that had nowhere to go. "But Kreacher could not speak of it. Not one word. Because Master Regulus had forbidden Kreacher from ever speaking of the cave—
"Kreacher could speak, if someone asked. Kreacher could have answered—
But in all these years, not one person ever asked Kreacher where Master Regulus had gone—
Not one person!
Until today—until young Master Harry asked Kreacher—"
He pressed himself against the floor, his body was shaking so violently with sobs that he could barely draw breath.
"Have it bring the locket down," Sherlock said at last, when the whole story had been told. He exhaled slowly and turned to Harry. "We need to see it."
Harry nodded, then said to Kreacher, "Go on, then—go upstairs and find the locket, and bring it down to us."
Kreacher began to pull himself slowly off the floor, his slight body still trembling.
At that moment, Harry had a sudden thought. He turned to Dumbledore, something almost beseeching in his look. "Professor—could I—with the locket—"
"Of course, Harry." Dumbledore smiled gently before Harry could even finish the question. "Do what you feel is right."
Harry nodded, then took the note Regulus had left for Voldemort and tucked it back inside the false locket.
"Kreacher—I'd, er, like you to have this."
He held the locket out to the house-elf. "This belonged to Regulus. I think he would have wanted you to have it—to thank you for everything you did for him—"
He had expected the gift to bring Kreacher some comfort.
Instead, the moment the locket came into view, Kreacher let out a cry—startled and stricken at once, as though scorched and collapsed again with a resonant thud, his limbs were shaking against the floor.
"Er—"
Harry stood there, locket extended awkwardly, completely at a loss.
He understood now, belatedly: for Kreacher, this relic of the Black family was not merely a keepsake. It was a weight—of responsibility long carried and guilt never lifted.
The sudden gift was too immense, too overwhelming for the creature to contain.
It took Harry the better part of ten minutes to coax Kreacher calm with a steady, gentle voice.
When the house-elf could finally stand again—unsteady but upright, he turned first to Harry and bowed deeply, his forehead nearly touched the floor.
Then he turned to Dumbledore and bent low, his thin hands pressed rigid against his sides.
Finally, he turned to Sherlock. His body went stiff for a moment, as though fighting something within himself.
But then he jerked, once—a small, awkward spasm of his frame that served, after a fashion, as a bow.
There was nothing graceful about it. But it was there.
Clearly, Sherlock's Muggle origins still sat uneasily with Kreacher. And yet this reluctant, angular acknowledgment said more than any elegant courtesy could have.
When he had gone with the false locket clutched to his chest—Harry finally let out a long breath.
"I'm sorry—I thought it might calm him down, but I seem to have had the opposite effect."
"Don't trouble yourself, Harry," Dumbledore said, shaking his head with a warm smile. "He exceeded what any of us might have expected, didn't he?"
Harry nodded, but a new question was already rising in him.
"I don't understand," he said—and the emotion in his voice made it waver, even his accent slightly altered by the force of it. "Why didn't Regulus tell anyone? He could have gone to Sirius. Why face all of this alone?"
"I think I know the answer to that, Harry." Dumbledore spoke slowly, and his gaze, just then, was difficult to read.
"Regulus had once been one of Voldemort's followers. And it was precisely that experience which gave him a clearer understanding of Voldemort's cruelty than almost anyone else alive. He had witnessed with his own eyes what became of those who betrayed him—obliterated, and their families along with them."
He paused, his eyes were drifting toward the window and the sky beyond, which had begun to darken.
"Though it was Voldemort's own atrocities that caused Regulus to turn—though he was even willing to sacrifice his life to swap out the Horcrux—he knew that as long as the Black family clung to its pure-blood principles, they would remain, in Voldemort's eyes, one of his own. Only that way could he keep his family safe.
"Remember, in those days, no one believed Voldemort could be defeated. His silence was an act of protection. He chose it for the whole of the Black family."
Dumbledore turned then to Sherlock. "What do you make of it?"
"Brave. Admirable." Sherlock's tone was without mercy. "And deeply foolish."
His gaze sharpened. What followed was logic stripped to the bone. "The facts have already proven that a house-elf is completely capable of escaping with its life after drinking the potion. Moreover, given that Kreacher had already made the journey to the Horcrux cave once, Regulus had every means at hand to devise a far more reliable plan.
He could have prepared fresh water in advance—had Kreacher drink to counteract the potion's effects the moment it was consumed. Even if something went wrong, he could have had Kreacher Apparate home the instant the potion was finished. Under normal circumstances, Regulus could have made it back from the island entirely on his own.
His value alive was far, far greater than his death by potion.
Severus Snape is a perfectly obvious example of that."
Harry: ...
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