Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes and Whatnot

Normal POV:

I was running. From something or towards something, both I think, but there was definitely something chasing me. Something ominous and terrible. There was also a voice, someone calling my name, at first I thought it might be George but then I relaized it was female. Harry was beside me, also running. I heard the person calling both our names.

Then, Hermione was shaking me, saying “Caroline, wake up, wake up!”

“What? What?” I sat up, slapping her hand away.

“Why are you over here? We thought you were gone! We can’t find Harry either.”

“What?” I was suddenly wide awake.

“Come on! Ron went downstairs to look for him.” she said urgently, pulling me to my feet.

“Harry! Harry!” we called.

“I’m here!” we heard from down the hall.

We ran in the direction of his voice, he was in one of the old bedrooms, Sirius’s I saw when we entered.

“What’s happened?” he asked.

“We woke up and didn’t know where you were!” Hermione exclaimed.

She leaned out the door and shouted downstairs “Ron! I’ve found them!”

“Good! Tell them from me they're both gits!”

"Love you too!" I shouted.

Then, I looked around the room, which seemed a disaster, apparently somebody had been here before us because all the rooms had evidence of being searched. Harry had been looking for the rest of a letter written by his mother he had found. It looked to contain information on Dumbledore, so it might have been stolen, or it could have been lost, but either way, it wasn’t in the room.

On our way down to get breakfast, Harry stopped and called us back up.

“What is it?”

“What’s the matter?”

“R.A.B. I think I’ve found him.”

Hermione gasped and I ran back up, taking the stairs two at a time. Hermione followed quickly, saying “In your mum’s letter? But I didn’t see-“

Harry was standing by a door, pointing to a sign that read:

Do Not Enter
Without the Express Permission of
Regulus Arcturus Black

“Sirius’s brother?” I asked.

I saw Hermione gripping Harry’s arm tightly as he said “He was a Death Eater. Sirius told me about him, he joined up when he was really young and then got cold feet and tried to leave- so they killed him.”

“That fits!” she gasped. “If he was a Death Eater he had access to Voldemort, and if he became disenchanted, then he would have wanted to bring Voldemort down!”

“Ron!” I yelled over the banister.

“RON!” Hermione yelled louder.

“Get up here!” we said together.

If the locket was in here, we were much closer to figuring something out than we originally thought. Regulus’s room was much different than Sirius’s. He was a very proud Slytherin back in his day. Well, that was an understatement. Anyways, we began searching the room and after looking around for a bit, Hermione raises her wand.

“There’s an easier way. Accio Locket.”

Nothing happened.

“Is that it then? It’s not here?” asked Ron.

“No, it could still be here” I said.

“But under counter-enchantments. Charms to prevent it being summoned magically, you know.” She added.

“How are we supposed to find it then?”

“We search manually.” Herms said.

“That’s a good idea” he rolled his eyes and I laughed a bit before we all returned to searching.

We didn’t find it in his room, but it seemed the more discouraged the rest of us got, the more excited Hermione was.

“It could be somewhere else in the house, though,” she was saying.

I tuned out, thinking back to the few times I had stayed in this house. There were quite a few dangerous items come to think of it. Like that old clock that shot bolts. They could be protecting something, something like the locket. Wait a minute…

“There was a locket.” I thought it the same time Hermione said it. “In the cabinet in the drawing room.”

“Nobody could open it.” I added.

“And we…we…”

Merlin’s pants, we had gotten rid of it with a box of other rubbish.

“Kreacher nicked loads of things back from us” said Harry.

We ran down the steps as quickly as possible, to Kreacher’s cupboard. Harry pulled it open, but all that was in there were a pile of dirty blankets. None of the shiny trinkets that Kreacher usually had stocked.

“It’s not over yet,” Harry said, “Kreacher!”

A loud crack resounded in the kitchen and the tiny house-elf appeared. He was dirty and ugly, and the look on his face showed that his attitude towards Harry had not changed.

“Master,” he croaked, “back in my Mistress’s old house with the blood-traitors and the Mudblood-“

“I forbid you to call anyone ‘blood traitor’ or ‘Mudblood,’” Harry said. “I’ve got a question for you and I order you to answer it truthfully. Understand?”

“Yes, Master,” the elf bowed.

“Two years ago, there was a big gold locket in the drawing room upstairs. We threw it out. Did you steal it back?”

“Yes”

“Where is it now?” he asked, and the rest of us hopeful.

“Gone”

“Gone? What do you mean it’s gone?”

“Mundungus Fletcher. Mundungus Fletcher stole it all: Miss Bella’s and Miss Cissy’s pictures, my Mistress’s gloves, the Order of Merlin, First Class, the goblets with the family crest, and – and- and the locket, Master Regulus’s locket, Kreacher did wrong, Kreacher failed in his orders!”

I gasped as Harry grabbed Kreacher, yelling “I order you to stay still!” just as Kreacher lunged for the fire poker to punish himself.

As much as I disliked this particular elf, I still felt bad, seeing him crying there on the floor. I was completely on Hermione’s side with how horribly house-elves were treated in the wizarding world.

Kreacher told us that he saw Mundungus stealing things from the house, and when he told him to stop, Mundungus just laughed and ran. You know, I never really liked that guy. Then, he began the tale of how Regulus had gotten the locket in the first place.

Voldemort had needed a house-elf, and Regulus had volunteered Kreacher. The three of them went to a cave by the sea. Beyond the cave was a cavern, inside which was a big, black lake. There was a flicker of something, sort of like recognition, in Harry’s eyes when Kreacher said this. There had been a boat, and a basin full of potion on the island in the middle. The Dark Lord forced Kreacher to drink it, dropped the locket in, and re-filled it with more potion. At this point, I truly did feel sorry for Kreacher despite how rude he always was to us. The potion makes the person who drinks it painfully thirsty, but when they go to drink at the lake’s edge, the dead hands of the Inferi drag them to the bottom.

Kreacher managed to get away because his master had told him to come back. Elf magic is different in that the orders from their master’s exceeds everything else.

Afterwards, Regulus made Kreacher lay low, never leave the house and such. Then, it seemed he had a change of heart towards the Dark Lord because he took Kreacher back to the cave, and told Kreacher to take the locket, destroy it, and then leave without him.

Regulus drank the potion and was pulled under by the Inferi.

Kreacher had to leave him, and bring the locket back home, but nothing he tried would destroy it.

Kreacher looked more and more pitiful as he told the story. It destroyed him to have not been able to obey his Master’s orders. I started to tear up looking at the poor, helpless creature and I noticed Hermione had started sobbing with him. Even Ron, who disliked the elf greatly, looked troubled.

Eventually, when Kreacher had calmed down enough to sit up, Harry asked him to find Mundungus and bring him back so we could question him. Having something to look forward to, some sort of hope of discovering what we were looking for, put us in better moods. However, he did not return as soon as we expected, which put a damper on all those feelings.