Sirius knew what Kyle meant.
If Harry truly was a special living Horcrux of Voldemort, then once they located and gathered all of Voldemort's Horcruxes, Harry would have to die.
Furthermore, it had to be done by Voldemort's own hand to successfully destroy the fragment of Voldemort's soul residing inside Harry's body.
Only then could Voldemort be killed once and for all.
To tell Harry this right now would be far too cruel for him.
To learn that his fate had already been sealed that very night, and that his ultimate destiny was to be struck down by Voldemort's Killing Curse...
Who knew if Harry could even come to terms with such a reality?
For now, it was better to let Harry live blissfully carefree...
Er, perhaps not entirely carefree.
At this very moment, Harry was upstairs drowning in his own worries.
Still, compared to a matter of life and death, romantic troubles were merely a trivial affair.
Best to let poor Harry just muddle along for the time being.
Sirius took the golden cup handed to him by Kyle and stared at the Horcrux in his hands for a long while before finally standing up and walking toward Harry's room upstairs.
Kyle followed right behind him.
"Kreacher!"
Before long, Sirius's booming voice echoed through the Black ancestral home.
A house-elf only half the height of a person—with pale, wrinkled skin hanging loose and tufts of white hair sprouting from its bat-like ears—appeared before them in a crack of Disapparation.
"Master," Kreacher said in his raspy, bullfrog-like voice, bowing low.
When its eyes fell upon Kyle, the cloudiness in Kreacher's gaze vanished, replaced by a sudden flash of fanatical light. It made no attempt to conceal its fervent gaze, causing Kyle to feel a slight chill down his spine.
What was with this house-elf's eyes?
"A true noble has finally entered this house," Kreacher muttered under its breath. "Mistress would have been so pleased if she could see this."
"Kreacher!" Sirius interrupted its whispering impatiently. "I have something to ask you. Have you ever seen a large locket in this house?"
After a moment's thought, Sirius added, "Made of gold, with a serpentine letter S on it, representing Slytherin."
Kreacher fell silent for a moment, then slowly nodded its head.
"Where is it?" Sirius demanded, unable to contain his impatience.
Upon hearing Sirius's words, Kreacher vanished on the spot with a crack.
Scarcely ten seconds later, it reappeared, holding an object in its hands—the very Slytherin's locket Sirius had just described.
Seeing the item, even though Harry had just confirmed through the connection between the Horcruxes that the locket was inside this house, expressions of delighted surprise washed over all three of their faces.
Regrettably, Harry's perception had been strictly limited to this locket and the golden cup they held in their hands.
Whether the other Horcruxes had already been found and destroyed, or whether they were simply too far away from Harry, he was unable to sense any information about them through the cup.
Still, to have unearthed a locket was more than enough to satisfy them.
Sirius snatched the locket from Kreacher's hands and held it out before Kyle. "Can you destroy it?"
Kyle rubbed his smooth chin. "If it's just a matter of destroying it, that's simple enough."
A Horcrux was a piece of highly sophisticated Dark Magic. Whenever an object was turned into a Horcrux, it received powerful magical protections—even a block of tofu could be rendered virtually indestructible.
Yet as the saying goes, no defense is impenetrable.
Even the droplets of the Trisolarians had been destroyed; how much harder could a tiny Horcrux be? Kyle alone knew of at least five different ways to destroy it.
Among them was the Gas Stove technique, their Grindelwald family's specialty.
However, the problem was that the locket, like the cup and the tiara before it, was a heirloom handed down by the Four Founders. It would be a terrible waste to destroy it outright.
If they wanted to purge the fragment of the Dark Wizard Ah-Vol's soul inside without damaging the relic itself, they would need Dumbledore's assistance.
Kyle took the locket and casually stuffed it into his pocket. "I'll take it back for my old man to look at."
Having stowed the locket away, Kyle suddenly remembered a very serious question. His body stiffened slightly before he turned his head toward Kreacher.
"Why was Slytherin's locket with you?"
All of them could clearly sense that the moment Kyle's question was uttered, Kreacher's body froze solid.
After hesitating for a long while, Kreacher finally spoke up in a timid, trembling voice: "That locket belonged to Master Regulus."
"You're saying that locket belonged to Regulus?" Sirius's expression registered a moment of utter bewilderment before shifting into a grim scowl. "You-Know-Who must have valued his loyalty and entrusted Regulus to safeguard something so important for him!"
Kreacher snapped its head up, tears surging wildly out of its sunken eye sockets. "Master Regulus was not that kind of person!"
Tears streamed down its long nose and into its wide-open mouth.
"The Dark Lord kept that locket himself! It was Master Regulus who stole it out and swapped it with a fake!"
The people in the room were left thoroughly perplexed. Why was Voldemort's inner circle so full of double-agents?
Kreacher wept even harder. "Master Regulus died for this very reason! Before he died, he gave the locket to Kreacher, wanting me to destroy this evil thing!"
"But Kreacher tried everything and couldn't leave a single mark on it, so I could only hide it away!" By this point, Kreacher was sobbing hysterically, unable to form coherent words.
With tear-filled eyes, it stared intently at Kyle. "Noble Young Master, you will definitely be able to destroy it, won't you?"
"Of course, no problem," Kyle nodded.
Beside them, Sirius tousled his hair in frustration. He had never once imagined that Regulus was actually a hero who fought against Voldemort, rather than a vile Death Eater.
All these years, he had deeply misunderstood his brother.
Paying no mind to Sirius, Kyle had originally intended to make a quick exit after securing the object of his visit.
However, unable to resist the warm hospitality of the godfather and godson, Kyle ended up staying at the Black ancestral home until after dinner before taking his leave.
Had the matter not involved Voldemort's Horcruxes and carried such gravity, Sirius would have insisted on keeping Kyle around for a few more days before letting him go.
Leaving the Black ancestral home, Kyle naturally rushed without pause to deliver the locket to Dumbledore at Hogwarts, returning the golden cup at the same time.
Inside the Headmaster's office, which had already been restored to its original state via the Repairing Charm, Dumbledore inspected the Horcrux in his hand and let out a soft, long sigh.
How would you like to handle the upcoming confrontation with Voldemort's remaining Horcruxes, or should we move on to the next chapter?
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