The Marauders: Year Six Part 2 #Wattys2017

Breaking Tradition

Breaking Tradition

Regulus sent Kreacher to tell Walburga he wouldn't be coming home that night. "Master Regulus knows that Kreacher's Mistress will be wondering after where he is?" Kreacher croaked quietly, staring up at his Master.

"Yeah, well, don't tell her. Tell her I commanded you not to tell her. I'll deal with it myself tomorrow."

Kreacher stared up at Regulus.

"I command you not to bring her to me, even if she commands you to," Regulus added. "I forbid you to tell her anything about my location or who I am with. Do you understand, Kreacher?"

Kreacher murmured something about her ironing his fingers for this, but he nodded and his ears twisted flat to his head. "Is Master needing Kreacher to transport him some place?" Kreacher asked lowly.

"No," Regulus replied.

Kreacher bowed. "Very well, then." And with a crack, the old elf had disapparated.

Regulus stood there in the dusty corridor of the Leaky Cauldron for several moments, staring at the spot where the old elf had been, and then he took a deep breath and turned 'round to go back to the room.

Maryrose was kneeling before the floo, stoking a fire. She looked up at him when he came in, her hair a soft shade of buttermilk blonde. He closed the door and locked it, leaning against it and watching the fire catch in the grate, watching it reflect off her hair. His eyes flickered to the window and he walked over and closed the shutters.

Maryrose looked up. "We're okay, Reg."

Regulus was sealing the shutters. He turned around. "I don't think you really get how serious this is."

Maryrose had finished fixing the fire and she turned around and leaned forward against her knees, looking up at him, "So tell me, then."

"I can't. It makes you in danger if I do." He started pacing.

"I feel like you think I'm in danger anyway," she replied with a shrug.

Regulus gnawed his lower lip.

Maryrose got up and stepped in front of him, cutting him off from his pacing route. "Regulus, I trust you. I'd tell you literally anything. Do you trust me?"

He blinked a her.

She tilted her head.

"Remember I told you... about Severus Snape... reading minds?"

Maryrose nodded.

Regulus motioned for her to come over to the chairs by the fire and he sat down, his wand clutched in his fist. He hadn't put it away since the fight with James at Fortescue's. No. Not James, he told himself, Snape. The fight with Snape.

Maryrose looked at the wand, then back up at Regulus's face.

"That was Snape. In Fortescue's, Maryrose. Not James." Regulus bit his lower lip, "I don't know what exactly, or why, but he's used Polyjuice potion to look like James Potter... and it has something to do with Voldemort being at the school."

Maryrose's eyes widened, "Voldemort being at the school? He's at the school?"

"Well, not anymore." Regulus hesitated. "Listen. If I tell you this... it cannot - absolutely cannot for any reason, any reason at all Maryrose - go past us."

"I swear to you that it won't," Maryrose replied solemnly.

Regulus said, "Professor Gaunt was Voldemort in disguise. Also using polyjuice potion. That's why he's been sacked, I'm guessing Dumbledore got suspicious or something. But while he was at the school, I figured it out and he took me one day down in the dungeons, there's a secret passageway that leads to the old Divination room - behind Mopsus's portrait." Regulus paused. "He was looking for a clock, a specific clock, one that doesn't stop ticking when you try to stop it." He paused and got up and grabbed a bookbag he'd been carrying all day from the bed where he'd left it, next to Maryrose's purse, and he pulled out a clock.