Hogwarts: Harry Returns from Azeroth

Chapter 263, Section 262: Regulus' Funeral and the Three Deadly Sacraments

The Black family cemetery.

Even though Harry had expelled the lingering effects of Dark Magic from Regulus's body, the corpse could never find peace; its grotesque face seemed to tell of the suffering its owner had endured in life.

In the end, Sirius chose to cremate Regulus's body. He stared blankly at the flickering flames, watching that familiar face gradually melt and turn to ashes in the flames.

Without saying much, Harry simply stood beside Sirius Black and gently patted his godfather on the back.

"...I...I never expected this..."

Sirius's voice was unusually choked with emotion, but mostly filled with bewilderment.

"...Regulus is two years younger than me, but completely different from me. He has an unwavering belief in my parents' pure-blood theory...a typical 'good boy'..."

“But clearly, he’s not a good boy,” Harry said softly, then handed the note from the fake locket to Sirius. “He’s much braver than most people.”

Staring at the words on the paper, Sirius was already in tears.

“…Regulus used to idolize me, until I ran away from home and was expelled.” Wiping the snot off his face haphazardly, Sirius said in a muffled voice, “He idolized Voldemort when he was 16, and later he did become a Death Eater, which made my parents extremely proud.”

"Then one day he suddenly died. I guess he was either killed for failing his mission or he regretted it and wanted to quit... But how could the Death Eaters let him quit so easily..."

"Without a doubt, Regulus is also a hero, Sirius," Dumbledore said leisurely as he slowly approached. "A hero unknown to most people who discovered Voldemort's secret and dared to rebel."

Not knowing what to say, Sirius simply nodded silently.

“Now you should be able to admit it, right?” Harry suddenly turned his head and said, “Even Slytherins have extraordinary courage, even more so than most Gryffindors.”

"...even Slytherin."

Sirius mumbled something.

Refusing help from others, Sirius Black dug a grave for Regulus himself, shovel by shovel, and finally buried Regulus's ashes inside.

A tombstone that looks no different from the other Black family members' tombstones, with only a simple sentence on it: "A brave warrior who rebelled against the Dark Lord, Regulus Arcturus Black."

For Regulus, perhaps the thing he longed for most in his life was to hear such praise from his brother.

Harry took out both lockets, handed the real locket to Sirius, and then took the warhammer from his waist and handed it out as well.

“Go ahead,” Harry said curtly. “You must want to take revenge yourself… right?”

"……certainly!"

Wiping away the tears from the corners of his eyes, Sirius took a deep breath, took the warhammer forged from the basilisk's fangs, and threw the locket on the ground.

Suddenly, perhaps the fragment of Voldemort's soul hidden within realized that it was about to die, Slytherin's locket suddenly opened, and a soft wisp of smoke emerged from it, with many figures changing within the smoke.

Harry clearly saw his parents, not the Bloodhoof family, but his own parents. They were waving at him, as if begging him to save them and not kill them.

Sirius stood frozen in place, for he saw Regulus's figure in the smoke—the figure he felt guilty about for not recognizing his brother Courage sooner.

Everyone present saw their deepest desire in the smoke, and no matter how different what they saw was, the impulse that surged in everyone's heart was the same: to rush forward and protect the locket.

"Young Master Regulus!!!"

Kreacher let out a bloodcurdling scream. In the vision Voldemort had shown him, he saw the person he longed to see again, not even his mistress.

Without offering any resistance, Kreacher scrambled towards the locket, determined to protect it.

"Get out of my way! Kreacher!!"

Without any hesitation, the order was given, and driven by his instinct to keep house-raised Pokémon, Kreacher's charge was forced to a halt.

"Do not!!!"

He could only scream in agony as he watched Sirius forcefully swing his warhammer down, watching helplessly as the beautiful, exquisite locket dented and shattered under the force of the hammer.

A powerful howl, seemingly capable of piercing everyone's eardrums, was being killed by the venom secreted from a warhammer forged from the fangs of a thousand-year-old serpent, which was killing the last vestiges of power in this fragment of soul, causing it to vanish and dissipate.

Just like the way Harry had seen the two soul fragments die, what should be the memories of this soul fragment were gushing out rapidly, and then quickly dissipating until nothing was left.

Within seconds, all that remained was a broken locket, its joints twisted and broken, and even the huge emerald had developed a crack.

Gasping for breath, Sirius bent down, picked up the broken Horcrux, and threw it into Regulus's grave.

“Regulus died because of it, so I’ll throw it in to keep him company, is that alright?” Sirius whispered.

“Of course, I have no objection,” Harry said calmly. “It’s no longer a Horcrux.”

“Neither do I,” Dumbledore said with a smile. “That is the best reward for the brave.”

Without saying another word, Sirius simply and quickly filled the grave with the last bit of soil until it was level.

"Let's go." After taking one last look at Regulus's tombstone, Sirius suddenly stopped. He took out the Slytherin locket that Regulus had made from his pocket, hastily stuffed the note with the provocative words to Voldemort into it, and then threw it directly into the arms of Kreacher, who had been staring blankly at the grave since earlier.

"For you!"

Speaking in a gruff voice, Sirius quickly left the cemetery without lingering.

He needs a quiet night to calm down.

....................................

“Just like I said, Harry, you are the one who can truly kill Voldemort,” Dumbledore said leisurely, sitting on a bench in Grimmauld Place. “Isn’t it interesting? You found Voldemort’s real Horcrux by sheer coincidence—and I’m not afraid to tell you, Harry, I actually found the location of that cave as well.”

“That’s where Voldemort first terrorized other orphans when he was young, no, maybe not even the first time… Anyway, I’m pretty sure it meant a lot to him.” At this point, Dumbledore suddenly turned his head and said, “So that’s the crux of the matter, Harry. If it were me, I could only get the fake Horcrux made by Regulus after drinking the potion in that stone basin… I wouldn’t even know who the RAB on it is—but you are different. That’s fate.”

“You’ll find it eventually,” Harry said calmly.

“Perhaps, but I’m more likely to die in that cave after drinking the potion. He’s really cunning, isn’t he?” Dumbledore suddenly laughed. “Although you had Kreacher Apparate you directly to that island, I’m pretty sure Voldemort left other traps along the way—he certainly didn’t want to kill anyone who came to the island immediately.”

“Who knows?” Harry shook his head. “You’ll always find a way.”

“Oh, thank you for trusting me so much. I must say, such trust is truly touching,” Dumbledore said, pretending to wipe away a tear. “But I must say, I have not let you down, Harry—yes, I have also found traces of a Horcrux.”

"You've already got it?"

“Not yet,” Dumbledore’s expression showed a rare hint of hesitation. “I’m wondering if I… can face it so calmly.”

"It?" Harry asked. "So what treasure has Voldemort defiled this time?"

"The Resurrection Stone," Dumbledore said softly. "You may not have heard of its legend, after all, you grew up in the Muggle world, but for wizarding children, the story is quite familiar."

"They come from The Tales of Beedle the Bard, which you can think of as Muggle fairy tales. The legend tells of three brothers who were skilled in magic. When they were crossing a dangerous river, they used magic to create a bridge. Instead of dying, they attracted Death, because travelers usually drowned when crossing the river. Death thus lost three sacrifices."

"But Death was angry, angry and cunning. He pretended to praise the three brothers' magic and then said he would give each of them a reward."

"The eldest brother was a warlike man. He asked for the most powerful magic wand in the world and became invincible—until one day he was killed in his sleep."

"The second son was an arrogant man who decided to continue to humiliate Death, so he asked for the ability to resurrect the dead—but when he returned home and used the stone that Death had given him, the girl he had loved but who had died young appeared in front of him."

"But the girl was sad and indifferent. There was a thin but thick barrier between them. She returned to the human world but did not truly belong here. In the end, the second brother was driven mad by the hopeless longing and chose to commit suicide."

"Death thus obtained the souls of two people, but the third one, who was the most humble and intelligent, and who did not trust Death, asked for something that would make Death unable to find him no matter where he was. So Death gave it his invisibility cloak."

"From then on, Death searched for the third brother for many years, but he could not find him no matter what he did. Until the third brother lived to a very old age, until he no longer wanted to live and chose to take off his invisibility cloak... he calmly welcomed Death's arrival and left the world with him."

Dumbledore finished telling his story, gently stroking his wand as he waited.

"...You mean, this fairy tale is true?" Harry's gaze inevitably fell on the wand in Dumbledore's hand. "Death is real?"

“I don’t know, Harry,” Dumbledore shook his head. “No one has ever seen Death with their own eyes, not even me, but I did pursue the existence of the Deathly Trinity when I was young.”

"And that is the result?"

“Yes, it’s called the Elder Wand, the Death Wand, the Wand of Fate, call it whatever you like,” Dumbledore said, gently raising his wand with a series of joints. “Even I have to admit how powerful this wand is. Any spell cast with this wand will be amplified incomparably, and can even achieve results far exceeding the effects of the spell itself. It’s as if you can never fail as long as you have it.”

Harry had long been curious about Dumbledore's wand, since other wizards' wands were just smooth sticks, while Dumbledore's wand was made of elder wood, segment by segment.

“No wonder…” Harry murmured, “No wonder you could use the Repair Charm to repair the magically enhanced ceiling, while I couldn’t do it no matter how hard I tried… I thought it was because I hadn’t mastered the spells.”

“Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth back then, Harry,” Dumbledore chuckled. “I must admit I had a bit of fun seeing how confused you were.”

“That’s not important,” Harry shook his head. “So Voldemort used these…Deathly Hallows to make his Horcruxes?”

"I'm afraid so."

“So now that the Elder Wand is with you, Voldemort could only have used the other two as Horcruxes,” Harry concluded. “Which one did you find trace of?”

“There’s only one,” Dumbledore said lightly. “You probably haven’t used your father’s belongings in a long time, have you? That invisibility cloak.”

Harry suddenly froze.

"Could it be that?"

“That’s right, the Potter family’s invisibility cloak has been passed down for hundreds of years,” Dumbledore said with a smile. “I’ve seen your borrowing list in the school library. You’ve read several books about magical creatures and magical items, so you should know that ordinary invisibility cloaks are made from the fur of invisible beasts—these cloaks only last for a few years before losing their effectiveness.”

Harry opened his mouth, but for a moment he didn't know what to say.

He suddenly remembered what Dumbledore had just said about fate: one of Voldemort's Horcruxes was the only one of the three Deathly Hallows remaining, and one of the remaining two was in Dumbledore's hands right in front of him, while the other was in his bag at that moment.

“This is really…wonderful,” Harry said softly. “I haven’t used it in a long time.”

(End of this chapter)