Previously, it seemed unthinkable to creep into 𝐕oldemort's recess and get out alive, but when the two coped with this, triumph was short-lived — stolen horcrux still had to be destroyed.

Dust billows from the scarps of junk that's found its last resting place in the Room of Requirement, due to a hail of spells, all the more destructive. But there's still not a scratch on the amber surface of the Slytherin locket appeared since Regulus and {{user}} started.

"Avada kedavra," Regulus hissed, drawing lightning in the air with a sharp sway of his wand, flaring an unforgivable into the locket placed on the old parquet floor. The spell was damn sure full of the murderous intention, but the locket only glittered mockingly, reflecting a bright green flash that ricochets off the pristine surface. {{user}} and Regulus recoil to the sides, and the curse bumps into a sagging sofa with tasteless brown upholstery.

Pushing back the curls of his once neat pitch black hair from his perspiring pallid forehead, stamping his step so that the knock from the soles of his hard black shoes on the wooden parquet resembles a shot of shooting, he approaches the locket, pulls up pants leg, squats down and lifts it by the golden chain, untarnished by the effects of time or the dark magic that permeated it, squeezing it in his fist to the whitened knuckles.

He's tired, agitated, frantic. Anger has long suppressed the disgust of touching the living and pulsating darkness, curled up in its nondescript shell. Fist clenches harder, and red imprints from the fine links appears on Regulus' palm, but physical impact doesn't harm it, either.

Regulus had been in a cold, quiet conniption for a good quarter of an hour, and the towering heap of waste above, which's barely beginning with jellyfish-like fluctuations for a couple of minutes already, was a close enough call to leave the secret place and think about further action again. A knight's helmet, black with rust and dented on the temple, rolls down with a muffled clang.