"I reckon this gent was right cracked."

Regulus looked up from Breeding of the Basilisk.

Cadmus Peverell was leaning against his frame, looking like somebody sitting on a tree branch more than a painting in a frame, staring up at the top corner of the frame with a distant look on his face. "Mmm, he was a character," Cadmus mused.

Regulus sat on the floor of the library, the book on the floor before him, legs splayed out. He'd found a pack of Sirius's cigarettes left behind one of the times his brother had been home. He'd lit one and found he didn't like the taste, gagging on it but being oddly comforted by the smell, so he'd laid it on an old ash tray and let it smoke away like it was incense.

"Master is making the library smell," complained Kreacher.

Regulus ignored the comment, leaning forward to stare at the book. "Says here he named the basilisk Anastasia. What the bloody hell kind of name is that for a gigantic snake?" Regulus looked up at Cadmus Peverell's portrait. "It sounds like the sort of name that ought to be given a poodle more than a horrid fanged poisonous beast."

"And what does Anastasia mean, Regulus?" Cadmus asked in a bored tone. He looked like he was about to fall asleep or something the way he had his head leaned back.

"What?"

"The name. Use your Latin, boy. What does it mean?"

Regulus stared at it a moment, breaking it down into parts. "Up.. rising up... a raising of the dead - a resurrection." He paused. Then looked up, "Like what the horcrux does."

"Yes," Cadmus said. "Exactly."

"You reckon Herpo's basilisk was his horcrux?" Regulus asked, flipping forward a few pages to a detailed drawing of Anastasia the Basilisk. He stared at her ugly fangs.

"More than likely," Cadmus answered. "It was never confirmed. If Herpo actually utilized his horcrux is unknown."

Regulus stared at the horrible snake-monster again, then turned back to one of the pages without illustrations, shuddering.

"Won't Master please use a bigger ash tray?" Kreacher moaned suddenly.

Regulus realized he'd ignored the cigarette long enough it had started to molt ashes and he took his wand and cleared up his mess, repairing a small hole he'd burned in the carpet. "Sorry, Kreacher." He moved the cigarette so it was better positioned for the ash tray to capture the fallen bits, but he didn't put it out.

"Does the horcrux have to be something... alive?" he asked Cadmus.

"No," Cadmus answered. "In fact, it is rather rare that a living thing is made into a horcrux."

"You Know Who has a snake," Regulus commented. "Nagini."

Cadmus frowned, "She's less snake than you think boy." But he offered no more than that before his eyes went distant again.

"Do you think maybe he used Nagini as one, though? Symbolically, since Herpo did?" Regulus was excited, thinking he might've solved it already, but the wind was let out of his sail by the expression on Cadmus's face.

"That would certainly complicate things. Murdering in order to destroy a horcrux could create a paradox..." Cadmus mused, half to himself. "I say this because I believe in order to destroy the horcrux one's intention must be purely against the evil contained within, but indeed to commit a murder to destroy it would call into question the integrity of the individual..."

Regulus said, "Isn't it the same though that you're trying to kill You Know Who anyway, so you're already considering murder if you're going after the horcruxes...? Or is it because it's a - a 'noble killing'? Is there such a thing as a noble killing, though?"

Cadmus was quiet, considering the question.

Regulus turned back to reading the book.

Then, "If I was going to make a horcrux for myself, I would use something that isn't terribly obvious and I would hide it somewhere so that only I knew about where it was. None of this giant snake business."

"I would do the same if it were me," Cadmus agreed. "I believe that the object the Dark Lord has turned is my own resurrection stone."

"Is it as small as the paintings that have been done of the deathly hallows make it appear?" Regulus asked.

"Smaller. For instance..." he paused and slid off the frame edge, disappearing from the waist down, and bent double, disappearing behind the frame moment before coming back out. "This," he said, holding up what looked like a big black disc that was larger than his hand, "This is what I was painted with in the version of my portrait at Hogwarts and it's far too large. It was closer in size to a sickle or a knut in the palm."

"Well that could be hidden anywhere."

"Yes. That's our problem."

Regulus sighed. "Where would you hide it if it was yours?"

Cadmus looked offended. "I would never have made a --"

"No but if you had, where would you hide it?"

"Somewhere safe."

"Like a vault at Gringott's?"

"No where so obvious as that. Somewhere nobody would guess, somewhere only I knew of. Probably with a great deal of protective charms on to keep others from stumbling upon it. And once there, I would make it as hard to find as possible. Which is why I would probably choose something ordinary, something common place." Cadmus said, "But the Dark Lord has already done differently than I ever would have done. The resurrection stone is certainly not ordinary or common place."

Regulus thought about it quietly for a few minutes. "I'd give mine to Kreacher to hide," he said, knowing this was absolutely true, since he'd given Kreacher his most precious object already. His hand absently felt for the pendant at his throat, but it wasn't there. He'd felt for it about a hundred times since he'd given it to Kreacher, and had moments of panic, thinking he might have lost it, only to remember that he was no longer Regulus Black, the brave boy that Maryrose Jenkins had loved, but Freddie Jenkins - a ghost, a shadow, a hunter.

"Give a horcrux to a house elf!" Cadmus laughed, "As though such a thing could be trusted with the miserable creatures."

Kreacher's ears flattened and he slouched down behind the chair, as though embarrassed of his own existence.

"I would trust Kreacher with my life," Regulus answered, looking at his elf reassuringly.

Cadmus Peverell snuffed and crossed his arms. "Which is the brilliance, I suppose... Who would ever think to ask a house elf where a horcrux might be?"

James and Lily appeared on a walkway beside the Seine, under a bridge. It was raining, curtains of water falling over either side of the bridge like waterfalls down-pouring, and the ground beneath their feet was wet and glistening, warm-white street lamps glowing, reflecting on the cobbled stones. James had instantly taken out his wand and shaken an umbrella out of it, a spell he often used which Lily had always admired. The umbrella was bright red compared to the grey of the city and the rain.

She loved it. Rain and all, Paris was beautiful, and quaint, with narrow roadways and little cafes with empty tables on the sidewalk but warm lights in the picture glass windows. There is a hundred thousand reasons to see Paris in the Spring or Paris in the Fall - all the guidebooks will direct you to those ideal times, but Paris in the late winter, when January's dreariness and February's cold were still on, was like appreciating the undeniable beauty in black and white photography when most people are going mental over technicolor.

James put his arm around her shoulder, the wand-umbrella in the hand that lazily hung across her frame, slouching slightly so that he could fit under, too, a bit. Although half of him was getting wet as they walked, he didn't seem to mind. The morning air was cold - warm compared to Godric's Hollow, but it was enough to turn Lily's cheeks and nose pink, giving her a glow that was heightened by her excitement for everything her eyes were landing on.

"I can't believe we're here," she gasped. "Oh look at it, it's so darling, like a picture book come to life!"

James smiled at the side of her face as she talked, enjoying her happiness, his lip hung up on his tooth as his mouth quirked. If she'd looked at him then, she would have felt the love coming through his eyes as plainly as she had ever felt anything using magique amour, perhaps even more so, for James's eyes tarried upon her as intently as the stars fawn upon the moon.

He didn't know it was possible to love as strong as that.

"What are you thinking about?" Lily asked, realizing he had been quiet for a much longer time than was usual for James. She paused and turned to look up at him. Rain dripped from his hair onto the right side of his face, right over his cheek bones and jaw, his eyes positively shining at her. "What?" She asked at his quirked-up lip.

"I knew you were a witch before of course but if there'd been any doubt in me, it would be gone now," he said, grinning.

"What are you on about?"

"It's just that somehow or other, Evans, you're even more beautiful in the rain in Paris than you are everywhere else and the only explanation is witchcraft."

Lily flushed. "Hush you."

"No its true... You're radiant. I love you so much. You've no idea how much. I swear -- it just keeps growing and growing inside me and eventually if you don't stop becoming more beautiful, I'll likely explode with my adoration."

Lily didn't know what to say. It was very hard to believe in such things when he said them, even though she could see in his eyes he said them with his entire heart.

"Oh my stars," she said, then she giggled, nervously flattered, and her nose blushed and she shook her head, "You're as dramatic as Sirius."

"Not dramatic," he said, "Just in love with my wife."

She melted, a thousand times over she melted. That moment, standing by the gentle Seine under the downpour of the rain under a red umbrella in the black and white world of Paris in Winter, staring into her husband's eyes as the rest of the world became bokeh-blurred, would be her patronus thought, and it would be the moment she thought of first when she finally got to do her love magic for James Potter.