Outside the high windows of the Transfiguration classroom, Regulus could see the far away forms of thestrals circling over the forest, the sunlight reflecting off their leathery smooth hides. His chin rested in his palm as he stared, watching the creatures, barely sparing a moment's listening to Professor McGonagall.

Regulus wished he could better see which of the thestrals he was watching, he knew them all by name. Professor Kettleburn had taken to allowing Regulus to feed the thestrals every other afternoon during a block of free time on his schedule, and Regulus loved the thestrals as dearly as he loved the house elves. But then, Regulus had yet to find a creature he did not love.

One day, he thought, watching the bony, leathery wings of the thestrals flying to and fro out the window, he would be a magizoologist, like Professor Kettleburn. Or perhaps more like Mr. Scamander, and he would travel all over the world, studying and collecting creatures of his very own. He would give them all names, and feed them the best of the food their species liked to eat, and he'd live in a great big castle, hundreds of miles from anyone. No one would come there to bother him - least of all anyone evil, only people he liked. Sirius, for one, and James Potter and...

"Mr. Black!"

The sharp bark of the Scottish accent roused him and he looked up in surprise. "Huh?"

Laughter rippled through the classroom.

Professor McGonagall had a very cross expression on her face.

"Sorry, Professor," Regulus said, "My mind wandered."

More laughs trilled through the room.

"That is quite evident, Mr. Black." McGonagall fixed him with The Look and said, "'The minds of the young are far too small to be left unattended, particularly during a lesson'. Do you know who said that, Mr. Black?"

Regulus thought a moment. "Some bloke who didn't have much of an imagination?"

More laughter about the room. McGonagall's lips pressed a hard line and she raised an eyebrow. "No. I did. Just a few moments ago, in my numerous attempts to rouse you from what was clearly a very far-wandering vacation of the mind. However, I must ask you to please -- Pay Attention."

Regulus nodded and McGonagall looked down at her class notes to get herself back on track, and Regulus muttered, "It isn't my fault Transfiguration is boring."

He thought he's said it quietly enough that only Barty Crouch, who was seated right next to him, would hear. But McGonagall, whose hearing was much keener than anyone should have expected given her age, looked up from the desk. "Is Transfiguration more boring than a detention, Mr. Black?"

"No ma'm," Regulus said quickly.

"But how can you be sure unless we do a bit of comparison? My office, tomorrow evening at 7:00."

"Yes ma'm." His face burned with frustration.

When McGonagall had turned again back to her notes, Regulus felt a nudge at his elbow. He looked to see Barty holding out a note. Regulus quickly took it and unfurled it, laying it out on the desk before him. It was a drawing - a drawing of Regulus and McGonagall, and in it, McGonagall lay twitching upon the floor as Regulus administered the cruciatus curse on her. The drawing of McGonagall convulsed and writhed and little lightning bolts and fluttered across the page.

Regulus could only barely register it as Barty chuckled beside him, grinning and seeking Regulus's approval. Regulus forced himself to smile and chuckle, too. He forced on a smug expression, forced his mouth to curve with amusement as he folded the page and shoved it into the pocket of his uniform. Regulus turned his attention to McGonagall as she resumed talking, trying desperately to ignore the note, which now seemed to be burning in his pocket.

Regulus stood outside McGonagall's office door at 6:45 the next night, loitering about until he was actually due to arrive. He didn't want to give up anymore of his free time than he already would have to - though he supposed pacing the hallway outside of the office was really no better than being locked up inside. He was still not doing what he wanted, still missing a quidditch practice. Quidditch had become the only good part of the wretched school these days.

"Pssst!"

Regulus looked around. There was no one else in the corridor.

"Over here!"

He looked in the direction the hushed voice had come from and still saw no one.

"Are you daft?!" the voice hissed. "The painting!"

Regulus took a few steps forward and turned to the painting on the wall. It was a painting of the wizard (whose name Regulus could not remember) who had first discovered the spell that successfully turned a train car into a humpback whale, thereby saving the humpback whale from extinction. The wizard in the painting was levitating a humpback whale over a railway, the whale looking quite disgruntled, his tail furling and unfurling in agitation. The wizard, too, looked displeased, glowering at the corner of his frame.

"I say," the wizard was saying, "Can't you see I am trying to concentrate? What a nerve, coming barreling into someone else's painting and distracting them! Particularly when they are in the middle of transporting extremely large aquatic-marine life!"

Regulus stared at the portrait, and the whale stared dolefully back, and then - "Psssst! Down here. In the brushes."

Regulus's eyes moved from the whale to a small clump of bushes in the corner of the frame. A man was crouching in them. He looked vaguely familiar, though he could not place his visage.

"Ah there you are, finally spotted me did you? It certainly took you long enough!"

"Who are you? What do you want?"

"Hush - not here. Come with me."

"I can't, I have detention to serve."

"But it's much more important then that, what I've got to tell you!" argued the painting. "Come."

Regulus shook his head, "I don't even know who you are! Much less follow you. I told you, I've got detention. I haven't time for some rubbish game you portraits want to play." He turned back toward McGonagall's office, planning to go ahead inside and get it over with, even though it was only 6:55.

"It's about Alabaster Jackson."

Regulus froze, arm raised to knock and all, and turned back to look at the painting.

"Ah I see I've got your attention now, do I?" The man in the painting looked very smug. "Come with me." He dashed off from the painting of the wizard and the whale, reappearing in the next painting and the one after that, waving for Regulus to follow after.

The thing about following a painted man through a series of frames at Hogwarts is that there are so many pictures hanging on the walls that it's very hard to tell which one your subject will traverse through along any given path. One moment, the man would be at eye level, the next higher up by the ceiling. More than once Regulus thought the man turned when really he'd only gone through a picture that was too close to the end of a corridor and actually continued on along the one they were currently on. The man ducked below swinging swords and past women yelling at him for running through their formal tea parties. He made birds squawk in irritation and stuffy old men call for him to return. Indeed, it was easier for Regulus to follow the sounds of the paintings reacting to the man running through them than it was to keep his eye on the man himself.

Regulus was so busy concentrating on keeping up that he barely noticed where it was they'd gone in the castle, until he came up short, panting, in a dark wing of the castle he didn't particularly recognize, far away from any of the classrooms, away from Filch and Mrs. Norris, away from the dormitories, offices, library, or the astronomy tower. It seemed, in fact, that they had somehow ended up in a part of the school that Regulus wondered if anyone at all even knew existed. It was here that the corridor ended. Simply ended. There were no doors on this branch from the main hall, no windows. Simply an empty turn with nothing at the end of it except for one empty portrait frame, illuminated by two dim sconces, which barely flickered.

He stood there, awkward and more than a bit uneasy, wishing he'd gone ahead into Professor McGonagall's office after all, and looked at the empty frame before him. The frame was simple, wooden, and the backdrop painted on the canvas contained within was shadowed, a blurry black-brown sludge of paint. Regulus hesitated, then whispered, "Hullo?"

"Thank you for following me," came the man's voice, and it was a lot older and deeper than Regulus had realized when the voice was a whisper back in the Transfiguration corridor.

"Who are you?" Regulus asked. "Where are you?"

In response, a vague figure stepped into the frame, slowly and far off, deep in the shadows of the paint, coming closer as though walking down a long passageway. Regulus watched, amazed by the sight of what appeared to be a three-dimensional space within the painting. It made him feel uneasy even more still than he already felt and he took a step back as the figure became clearer, approaching the frame and came to a stop when he was finally in the foreground, out of the shadow, though still only partially illuminated by the light from the sconces.

Regulus said, "Alright, now that I know where you are, you might possibly trouble yourself with enlightening me about who the hell you are as well, yeah?"

The man leaned against the edge of his frame and stared at Regulus. "I'd really rather not," he replied.

"Then I'd really rather not be here," Regulus said and started to turn away.

"Wait, wait, don't go - I told you this was important, that it was about Alabastar Jackson! Wait - why are you going away?"

"Because," Regulus said, "If I'm not even allowed to know who you are, then why the bloody hell should I trust anything you've got to say?"

"Isn't me knowing about Alabastar enough to identify me as a credible source?"

"No," Regulus replied. "You're a painting, and you could've followed me about anywhere, depending who you are and what sorts of connections you've got to other paintings in other places. You could've been flitting about anywhere in any of the portraits that were in the room when Voldemort --"

"Horcruxes."

Regulus paused his tirade and stared at the portrait. "What?" He'd heard this word before, it seemed ages ago, and he'd never been able to find out any more information about it. It did not appear in any of the books at Hogwarts, besides a small blip in one in the Restricted Section, which essentially said not to bother looking for anymore information because it was so dark that it was quite impossibly unlikely that there would be any book at the school that would give anymore details about what the bloody hell a Horcrux even was. But he'd not thought of the word in connection with what he'd witnessed that night, when the Dark Lord had hissed and seethed and turned Alabastar's ghost into something like a dementor...

"You're the only one who suspects, you know."

"Suspects what?" Regulus asked.

"That what Voldemort did to Alabastar Jackson is the key to his immortality." This was said with such an air of nonchalance that Regulus felt a chill go down his spine for only the most horrible sort of person could speak about such a terrible thing as calmly and collectedly as the man in the painting had just done.

"Who the hell are you?" he snapped.

The man in the painting ignored this. "You're right."

Regulus felt his mouth go dry. "I can't trust you. I can't believe a thing you have to say. You could be working for - for the wrong side."

"I could. But so could you."

Regulus considered this, his eyes diverted to the carpet.

"Tell you what," the man in the painting drawled. "We'll both remain a bit vague. Let me tell you this, though. What happened to Alabastar Jackson absolutely connects to why Voldemort can live forever. It absolutely does. And what happened to Alabastar Jackson is what a horcrux is. How one is made." Slowly, the voice dipped into a whisper as he spoke the words, making the end of the sentence harder to hear, drawing Regulus closer in order to listen.

"But what is --"

Before Regulus could finish his question, there was a shout down the corridor and he heard swishing robes, a Scottish accent echoed off the walls, and the man in the painting got up and ran off, back into the murky shadows in the backdrop, back into the third dimension of the paint. With him, the light of the sconces went out, and Regulus was left quite in the dark at the end of the corridor.

"Lumos!"

Next thing, he found himself staring up into the stern eyes of Professor McGonagall.