Chapter Text
The journal was brown, plain, and utterly unremarkable. Except that it had survived, somehow, when nearly everything else in the Room of Hidden Things had not.
Since returning back to Hogwarts for her eighth year—without Ron, without Harry, without a single crisis demanding her immediate attention—Hermione had found herself restless in a way she hadn’t expected.
She loved her classes. Loved getting to spend extra time with Ginny, Luna, and the others who had come back. Loved interning with Madam Pomfrey and already charting a clear path toward her Healer’s Mastery.
But three weeks into the term, Hermione was forced to admit something faintly embarrassing: without some sort of threat of death or some sort of mystery to uncover, she was… bored. Achingly, maddeningly bored. Her life had been defined for years by danger and purpose; now, even surrounded by books and friends and the safety she had once craved, she felt hollowed-out.
So when it became clear that some parts of the castle had fallen so low on the post-war repair list they might never be addressed, Hermione found herself compelled to do something.
Starting with the Room of Hidden Things.
It was easy, brainless work. Nearly everything had been reduced to ash and cinders after the Fiendfyre had run its course. Most of the hard work was just trying not to cough when each new Scourgify kicked up a new cloud of dust.
Every so often, she uncovered something half-burned: an edge of fabric, a melted trinket, a warped book spine that had been shielded for a moment before the flames claimed it.
But the journal was the first thing she found that was completely intact.
It had been nestled inside a scorched pot shoved behind a row of singed bookcases. She vanished the bookcases, then the pot. But when her wand hovered over the journal, something made her pause.
It was probably cursed. Probably dangerous. At the very least, suspicious.
And yet Hermione found herself reaching for it, opening it with the detached curiosity of someone caught between instinct and fate.
She flipped to the first page.
And immediately dropped the book as though it was aflame.
Heart hammering, Hermione crouched and nudged the journal open again with trembling fingers just to be sure she wasn’t hallucinating.
But no. There it was. In handwriting she recognized from the locket, from the notes he had left behind, from hours spent researching a dead boy who had sacrificed everything:
Property of R.A.B.
And underneath it, as if it had been copied directly from her upper thigh, was an exact copy of her soulmark.
Hermione’s breath left her in a rush.
Before she could think better of it, before she could talk herself into sense or caution, she snatched up the journal, shoved it into her bag, and fled the ruined room, heart pounding, mind racing, and utterly, terrifyingly certain:
Whatever she had just picked up was going to change her life.
Hermione didn’t tell anyone.
She had taken the journal out of her bag, slipped it beneath her mattress, and spent two long weeks pretending she wasn’t thinking about it.
And, for a while, she managed. Sort of. She buried herself in coursework, in helping Madam Pomfrey, in spending time with her friends. But the journal lingered at the edges of her awareness like a heartbeat beneath her floorboards, persistent and utterly impossible to ignore. Every night she lay in bed, she felt it like a faint tug at the space just behind her ribs.
Curiosity, she told herself. Nothing more. Just curiosity.
But eventually curiosity won.
Once she was certain that all of her dormmates had tucked themselves into their respective beds for the night, she snuck out of hers just long enough to steal the journal back from beneath her mattress.
Hermione dove back into her bed, yanked the curtains shut, cast a silencing charm, and only then allowed a tiny, whispered Lumos to light the tip of her wand. The journal sat like contraband on her lap, just waiting to be opened.
The first page still looked exactly like the image that had seared itself behind her eyes. She didn’t have a reference for Regulus Black’s handwriting, not anymore, but she was almost certain that the looping, elegant script matched the note that was now in Kreacher’s possession.
She did have a perfect reference for the drawing.
Hermione hesitated only a second before she pushed down the blankets, stripped off her pajama bottoms, and sat with her knees wide and her breath tight in her chest.
The faint wandlight illuminated the familiar mark on her upper thigh, just below the line of her underwear and about the size of her palm. A pattern of delicate loops and curls, spell-like but not quite a spell, one she’d had since birth. A soulmark.
Hermione had researched soulmarks in the Hogwarts Library the moment she had learned about them. She had researched them again at thirteen, when hers first appeared, and again at fifteen, at sixteen, and once more after the war.
She had never found anything that explained hers.
Why her mark wasn’t an image or symbol like everyone else’s. Why it was a series of looping lines and curling strokes that looked more like an unfinished spell than a destined connection.
Nothing had ever explained why hers was so different. Nothing, until now.
Slowly, as if approaching a precipice she still might step back from, she placed the journal beside her bare skin.
The leather brushed her inner thigh, slightly warm where it touched her leg.
It was a perfect match.
Her breath caught. How had Regulus Black had a drawing of her soulmark before she had even been born?
Hermione swallowed, throat tight. She had to know.
She turned the page.
Blank.
She frowned and turned the next one, brow furrowed, certain that it had to be a mistake. Blank.
And the next: blank. Every page the same. All blank.
A terrible, horrible thought crawled into her stubborn, way-too-brilliant brain before she could stop it.
She remembered Riddle’s diary. The blank pages that had confused her as a child. Ginny’s compulsion. Harry’s fascination. The blank pages, to them, had felt less like a mystery and more like an invitation. A friend. Exactly the same way she felt about this journal now.
No. No, this was impossible. Regulus Black couldn’t have—
But Hermione knew better than anyone: impossible things still happened.
There was only one way to be sure.
Quiet as a church mouse, Hermione reached for the quill and ink that she always kept on her nightstand. She set the ink pot carefully in the folds of her blankets so that it wouldn’t spill and dipped her quill into it.
With her heart pounding loud enough that she doubted her own silencing charm, Hermione wrote a single word on the first page.
“Hello?”
She watched the word seep into the page with her breath caught in between her heart and her throat.
Until, just a moment later, a reply appeared.
Hello.
And it was not her handwriting.
Hermione barely stifled her shriek, dropping her quill and splattering a thin arc of ink across her bedspread. She didn’t notice the stain, though, as her eyes had yet to leave the open journal in front of her.
Her brain worked incredibly fast, trying to think through the options. She should probably tell someone. Harry. Ginny. Anyone.
But she knew they would make her destroy it immediately, and she wanted to know—
No, she needed to know: Why was her soulmark on the first page?
Squaring her shoulders, Hermione picked up her quill and wrote her next three words:
“Who is this?”
I believe my initials are on the first page. Why don’t you tell me who I am?
Hermione didn’t know how it was possible on the neutral parchment of the journal, but he sounded exactly like the smug pureblood Sirius had always claimed he was. Hermione wasn’t going to put up with it.
“How do I know you won’t just take on the persona of whomever I write?”
If you are correct, I’ll tell you things no one else knows. Forgive me for wanting to make sure you didn’t stumble upon this by accident.
“Regulus Arcturus Black,” she wrote, forcing her hand to write neatly, confidently.
Middle name too? Impressive. Go on, then, who do I have the pleasure of talking to?
Hermione hesitated for a long moment. This was quite possibly the dumbest thing she had ever voluntarily done.
“A friend.”
There, that was a safe deflection. One the journal refused to let her hide behind.
You know my full name.
“And you promised me more if I got it correct.”
So I did. What would you like to know?
Her pulse tripped. She went straight for the heart of it.
“The mark on the cover. What is it?”
I’d rather show you. But you’ll need to tell me more about yourself first.
Hermione’s stomach dipped. She knew this pattern. The Horcrux wanted to feed off her magic, just as Riddle’s diary had with Ginny. It wasn’t strong enough yet to show her anything, and she absolutely didn’t want it to be.
But she did want to know.
“Why don’t you just tell me?”
It’s impolite.
There. That alone should have been all the confirmation she needed. She should put the journal away, tell someone about it in the morning, destroy it, and then never think of it again.
She should, and yet…
Regulus Black had been good in the end, hadn’t he? He’d given his life to destroy a Horcrux. He had regretted everything, voluntarily helped the Order’s cause when it mattered most. Surely she should at least hear him out before she destroyed his journal forever. Besides, what if he had made more? It would be irresponsible of her to destroy it without knowing the full picture.
“I don’t think that counts as a proper answer. If I asked you another question, would you answer it?”
Depends on the question.
Hermione huffed, dipping her quill in the ink again. But before she could reply, another message appeared in his handwriting.
I am a gentleman of my word and I believe I promised you more information.
Her stomach fluttered treacherously. She shoved the feeling down and focused on what was important.
“Why did you create this Horcrux?”
There was a long pause before his next reply appeared.
You’ll certainly need to tell me more about yourself before I answer that.
Hermione needed to know this answer. She hesitated for a long moment, considered waking Ginny, but then decided against it and instead wrote:
“My name is Hermione. I was born the year you died. And I suspect we share a soulmark.”
There was a pause. Then:
Do you now? Bold girl.
Hermione rolled her eyes even as her stomach did something mortifyingly fluttery again.
Before she could retort, more ink unfurled.
Yes, Hermione. I have the mark you see on the first page. Same place as yours, I assume: high on the thigh, where only someone very close would ever see.
Heat rushed to her face. Before she could write anything else, ink bled across the page, blooming into the faint outline of a thigh—his thigh, presumably—pale, sharply defined, and marked with the same sigil embossed on the journal’s cover.
Hermione sucked in a breath.
The image wavered, dissolving into words:
I’ve always wondered who she was. Who you were. On bad days—well, the curiosity got me through a lot of hard moments in my life.
Her throat tightened. This wasn’t a joke to him, not really.
Are you upset? he wrote, but his writing seemed fainter, more hesitant. I don’t wish to frighten you. But I will not lie to the witch tied to my soul. The witch who holds my soul in her hands.
Hermione swallowed hard, clutching her quill tighter instinctively. “No. I’m not frightened,” she wrote, though she wasn’t entirely sure it was true. “Just… surprised.”
I am too, Hermione. But not unpleasantly.
“You don’t even know me,” she wrote before she could think better of it.
But I cannot wait to get that chance.
Hermione knew that what she was doing was bloody irresponsible and dangerous. She was knowingly and willingly engaging with a Horcrux, intentionally making it stronger, possibly so strong that it could influence her, twist her mind, possibly even use her without her even realizing.
But the maddening thing was, she didn’t believe that he would hurt her.
She should. She absolutely should. But every time she picked up her quill, every time the ink bloomed across the parchment in his elegant hand, she felt that stubborn certainty deep in her gut.
Regulus Black would not harm her.
Especially as the nights went on, and she wrote to him under the cover of darkness in her room, always late at night when no one else would discover her. At first, she’d been cautious. She’d shared only harmless details: the year, her age, the war’s end. His true, sincere joy at Voldemort’s death had struck her like a visceral thing, warm and startling and very, very real.
He was so kind. So curious. So interested in her. Interested in a way no boy had ever been, not just in what she did, but what she thought, what she liked, what she feared. Interested in her.
And he flirted. She was almost certain of it. The subtle way his words softened, the way he called her clever girl, the way he thanked her for things she hadn’t realized she’d given. Her time, her honesty, her trust.
Three weeks after that first night, she lifted her quill and wrote:
“Good evening, Regulus.”
She watched her neat script fade into the parchment and wished, not for the first time, that she could save the record of their conversations, of him.
His reply came instantly:
Good evening, Hermione. How was your day, darling?
Heat bloomed up her neck. She snuggled further into her blankets, quill in hand, ink pot nestled safely where it couldn’t spill. She recounted her classes, interning with Madam Pomfrey, the small triumphs and tribulations of her day. Regulus responded quickly, asking precise questions, follow-ups that proved that he was listening, that he cared.
It gave her the confidence to ask what she truly wanted to know.
“Reg,” she wrote, heart racing. “Will you tell me about the Horcrux?”
His reply did not come immediately. The pause stretched long enough that she started to worry that maybe he wouldn’t reply.
Finally, ink began to seep across the top of the page.
Voldemort didn’t mean to tell me.
He needed Kreacher’s help, so he requested a private audience with me. My mother was all too eager to grant it, even helping coach me for the occasion. I didn’t want to see him, but I didn’t have a choice.
And for a reason that I still don’t understand, he told me that he had a piece of his soul he needed to hide. A way to ensure that he would never be truly gone, even after death. He called it a Horcrux. Said he had learned about it at Hogwarts. From Slughorn.
I could tell, even then, that he hadn’t meant to give me that much information. So I pretended to be flattered, pretended to be honored with his attention. I was careful to supplicate properly in front of him and ask only questions that would further inflate his ego.
But when I returned to Hogwarts, I found a way to get Slughorn alone. I bribed him with some fine wine from my parents’ cellars and Imperiused him to tell me what I needed to know.
I’m not proud of that, Hermione. Truly, I’m not. But I couldn’t think of any other way to get answers. No doubt you would have found a better plan. One that didn’t involve unforgivable magic. But I was running out of time, and I was—like I’ve always been—utterly alone.
Besides, my soul was already tainted. My cousin Bellatrix had seen to that.
Hermione felt her heart jump into her throat when he paused after that line. Regulus had been so young, just like her and Ron and Harry. Except he hadn’t had anyone beside him. He hadn’t had anyone looking out for him.
She hadn’t thought it was possible for her to hate Bellatrix more than she already had. She’d been wrong.
Once Slughorn told me, Regulus continued, I Obliviated his memory so that he wouldn’t remember what happened.
This was my journal for the year already. I had poured so much of my heart and soul into it that it felt natural to use it. I practiced the spell again and again, waiting for the right moment.
Because I was terrified, Hermione. Absolutely terrified.
Hermione blinked hard and pressed her palm to the page, as if she could comfort him across the decades.
Being a Death Eater was not at all what I had expected. The hypocrisy. The sycophancy. The two-faced ideology. Muggles were stupid and worthless, but also brilliant and dangerous enough to fear? None of it made sense.
My chance finally came. I was still young enough to be shielded from most missions, but one thing people rarely know is this: Voldemort funded most of his operations through Muggle bank robberies. Purebloods, like my parents, were eager to give him their support if they believed his cause would bring them power and wealth.
He had convinced them that Muggles didn’t deserve the money. That they would waste it. That they’d somehow stolen it from the Wizarding World in the first place.
I’m ashamed to admit that I believed those lies for far too long. Until I saw firsthand what was done in the name of that greed—lives ended, families torn apart—and I couldn’t unsee it.
But I still had to play the part.
So when I was ordered to accompany the Fowlers, a young Death Eater couple, on what was supposed to be a routine bank robbery, I went.
But it wasn’t routine. They were overconfident, careless. They didn’t notice the Muggle accountant working late at his desk. He had a leather jacket draped over his chair. His hair was shaggy and brown, and he looked exactly like Sirius.
I saw Fowler raise his wand, saw the tip light up green, and before I could think, I heard myself casting an Expelliarmus so strong it disarmed them both. Their wands flew to me, and I didn’t even look at the Muggle when I used Fowler’s wife’s wand to cast the Killing Curse.
Hermione’s throat burned as she reread the last words. She pressed the heel of her palm against her sternum, trying to quiet the sudden swell of grief.
I trained with Bellatrix. I was very good. And I hated Fowler for what he was about to do to an innocent person—all in the name of money—when we could have simply Obliviated him.
It was simple to Imperio Fowler’s wife to take the fall, and simpler still to Confound and Obliviate the Muggle so that he left quickly, remembering nothing. The Horcrux ritual I performed later that night, while my soul was still raw and broken, was more complex but still within reach.
I wish I could say that I felt remorse over it. But even when Voldemort killed Fowler’s wife—when I remembered the toddler she’d leave behind—I didn’t regret it.
Because in that moment, Hermione, I felt… alive. I wasn’t ashamed anymore. I had outsmarted the Dark Lord. Even if he discovered the truth and killed me, at least I had this journal. At least I could pass on what I knew. At least I could continue to fight him in some way.
I wrote in this journal every day until the day I followed Kreacher’s instructions and traveled to the cave. That was the last entry.
And I feel so much lighter now that I’ve confessed this to someone. I feel like I can trust you, Hermione.
No, more than trust. I— The words formed, then scratched themselves away in a violent blur of ink. Hermione held her breath until new words appeared on the next line and she finally exhaled.
Even if this doesn’t amount to anything, even though you already defeated the Dark Lord without my help, it comforts me that someone knows. That someone like you knows.
His writing stilled after that, and Hermione clutched the journal to her chest for a moment, trying to take everything in.
“Thank you for sharing that with me,” she wrote at last, choosing her words carefully. “That must have been incredibly difficult.”
It was, he replied. But the most difficult thing is knowing that it amounted to my death. All of my hard work, all of my planning, and I died anyway.
“I imagine your body is still in that cave,” Hermione wrote.
After a brief pause, Regulus’s answer inked itself slowly across the page.
I try not to imagine it. But yes. That is where I died.
Hermione chewed the end of her quill, heart twisting. “I hate the idea of it being there. Stuck with the Inferi.”
There was a longer hesitation this time, the ink bleeding slightly as if he were choosing his next words carefully.
It is not a place for the living. And it is not a place I would ever want you to go.
Hermione set her jaw, stubbornness humming in her veins. “I could go get it for you. Maybe. If you told me how to get there.”
The reply appeared instantly.
Absolutely not. I can’t ask that of you.
“You aren’t asking. I’m offering. I hate the thought of you—your body—being left there.”
Another pause. Longer this time. She imagined him pacing if he had legs to pace with.
Hermione, it would be extremely dangerous. More dangerous than you understand. It’s too risky. I won’t— The ink blotted, as if he’d stopped himself mid-sentence. I can’t lose you.
Her cheeks warmed; her pulse quickened. “You won’t,” she wrote gently. “Because you’ll tell me everything I need to know.”
The answer came slower, tense.
I only know what I wrote before I left for the cave. It wouldn’t be enough to keep you safe. It isn’t worth the risk, Hermione. Not for me.
She stared at the page—at his fear, at his refusal, at the tenderness beneath it—and then a terrible, glorious thought unfurled in her mind.
She thought of a book she had read, back during fourth year, after Harry told them about Voldemort’s return in the graveyard. A book about soulmate magic. A book about resurrections.
It was a thought that changed everything.
“It is worth it,” she wrote, hands shaking. “If we had your body—and your soul here in the journal—I think we might be able to bring you back.”
She hesitated only once before finishing:
“I think I can resurrect you.”
Nothing happened for several seconds.
Then several more.
Then nearly a full minute.
When his reply finally appeared, the letters were small, fragile, nothing like his usual elegant confidence.
Hermione…
Another pause.
Are you certain?
She pressed her palm to the page, as if he could feel her determination through the parchment. “Yes.”
The next line came slowly, unsteady but resolute. She knew he was still scared, still unsure, but maybe—maybe unable to hide the spark of hope.
Then… let’s talk about what you’d need. Not yet. Not tonight. But soon.
A final line, barely more than a whisper of ink:
And promise me you won’t go near that cave until we’ve planned every detail. I couldn’t—Hermione, I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you.
Hermione was going to need Kreacher.
That realization had settled into her over the course of several nights—quiet nights where she inked confessions to Regulus and received his in return, nights where she noticed her pulse jump at the elegant curl of his handwriting, nights where she found herself smiling into her blankets like an absolute child.
She needed Kreacher… but she couldn’t go to him yet.
Not without a plan.
Not without Regulus fully believing she wasn’t going to get herself killed.
Not without coming to terms with why she was doing this in the first place.
Because it wasn’t just a curiosity anymore. Not just righting a wrong or honoring the memory of a boy who’d died fighting the same war she had.
She wanted Regulus—sharp, thoughtful, infuriatingly proper Regulus—back in the world. Wanted to meet the man behind the ink. Wanted, more than she was willing to admit even to herself, a future where he wasn’t just a journal she clutched to her chest at night.
But she couldn’t resurrect him alone. She needed Kreacher, who loved Regulus with a fierceness few people ever understood.
And that meant going to Grimmauld Place.
Which meant going near Harry.
And that simply could not happen.
Harry would never understand. He was too rational, too protective, too bruised by the war. He would take one look at the journal—at the Horcrux—and demand she hand it over to be destroyed. He wouldn’t listen. He wouldn’t see what she saw.
He wouldn’t see the way Regulus apologized when he thought he’d upset her. Or how he called her darling in that absentminded, old-fashioned way that made her stomach swoop. Or how he quietly admitted that he feared losing her.
Harry wouldn’t understand why she couldn’t let the journal go.
And Hermione… Hermione couldn’t bear the thought of losing Regulus now. Not when she had only just found him. Not when every night she felt herself sinking deeper and deeper into him.
So she told no one.
And then, unexpectedly, the opportunity presented itself.
Harry’s letter arrived at breakfast, dropping neatly into her lap. Hermione wiped jam from her fingers and opened it automatically, expecting the usual updates: too many reports at work, Ron doing brilliantly in training, a polite inquiry into her coursework, reassurance that she did not need to return the sweater Mrs. Weasley had knit for her last Christmas.
She skimmed it with half a mind until she reached the end.
Please come stay with us at Grimmauld for the holidays, Hermione.
I know you. You probably want to stay at Hogwarts and study something you already know better than everyone else, but we all miss you—Ron and I most of all.
Ron and I will have to work most days, but the three of us will be together at night just like old times. And, of course, we’ll all be together for Christmas.
Hermione stared at the page, her heartbeat quickening.
Her quill moved almost on its own as she penned her reply, politely enthusiastic, assuring Harry she’d be there.
She posted the letter before she could second-guess herself.
When the owl flew off, Hermione pressed her hand to the journal hidden in her bag. Regulus.
She would bring him back.
And now, finally, she had a way to begin.