"How many fucking times do we have to destroy this bloody thing?" Sirius asked, dramatically kicking the locket for about the sixteenth time into the stone wall in frustration. Remus took his wand away before he could follow up with another round of curses. "It's going to be the death of me!" Sirius growled.

"Or of me," Regulus spoke up, looking sour as he rubbed a smarting red mark on his arm where the locket had pelted him following Sirius's last bout of rage-induced reducto spells that hadn't done the trick any better than they'd done when they had attempted to destroy the locket at Fallengunder over summer.

"Stop whining," Sirius commanded rudely, "It barely glanced off you, you big baby."

"Oi!" Regulus shouted, firing up nearly as quickly as Sirius was prone to doing, "Look at my arm and say it barely touched me! Look at that gigantic welt you've left on me with it! It nearly took my arm clear off!" (James figured now was not the time to follow up the comment with "'tis only a scratch", though he wished that Frank Longbottom was there so that they could share a look of mutual amusement.) Regulus continued, "Could've killed me, you could."

"Oh. My gods." Marlene looked about at Emmaline, "There's two of them." Emmaline nodded, amused, and Lily smirked in response.

Remus muttered, "One was plenty, what were the fates thinking?"

Sirius turned about at Remus, glaring, then turned back to start to say something more to Regulus, but James could see the anger in Sirius's eyes and knew whatever it was about to be said would be something that -- well, he might not regret it, but he certainly shouldn't say it. "Alright," James's voice cut Sirius's off and he stepped between the two glowering brothers. "That's enough fighting. It isn't helping any trying to figure this out. We need to focus." He bent down and scooped the locket up into the remaining bits of the box that they'd destroyed to get the locket out. He stared down at it a moment, then sighed and looked 'round at the others. "Does anyone have any constructive ideas how to destroy this -- ones that don't involve a reducto?" He added this last bit looking directly at Sirius.

Sirius muttered something and sat down, backward in a chair, his chin on the high back and boots hung up on the rungs below.

They all looked at one another.

From the lake's shore, the whole lot of them - Marlene, Emmaline, Alice, Wendy, Lily, Peter, Remus, Sirius, James, and Regulus - had started up the path to the castle, running into Maryrose halfway back. She'd gone for help when Regulus and James had disappeared into the lake, just in case something went wrong with the bubblehead charms, or else they needed it, facing Voldemort, and she'd managed only to find Professor Frek, who had been most unhelpful, saying he was busy and couldn't be interrupted what he was doing - though, to Maryrose, it seemed that all he was doing was staring off into the woods... Maryrose had been in a right panic and was very relieved to see Regulus, dripping wet, trudging along with the whole herd of the others up the hill to Hogwarts.

It had been Sirius's idea to go to the room where they'd once held meetings of the Order of the Phoenix. It had been waiting for them just as it always was back in fifth year, equipped with loads of defensive magic books and cushions, chairs, and dummies to practice spells on. But it wasn't equipped with anything made for destroying hissing lockets that seemed quite determined to survive near to anything.

"Perhaps we could crush it?" Emmaline spoke up. They all looked at her, "Maybe... maybe whack it with a hammer?"

James looked about for something like a hammer to give it a go. They found a heavy mallet, held by a suit of armor like the ones outside of Minnie's office, which stood sentinel by the doorway out of the room. James extricated it from the knight's grasp carefully, and chucked the locket down to the ground. "Everyone use a shield this time, please? We don't need anymore injuries." Justified that he had an injury at this, Regulus looked pointedly at Sirius, who got up and grappled his wand back from Remus.

They all put up their shields and watched as James lifted the hefty mallet up over his head, and brought it down over the locket, slamming it quite fiercely. There was a loud cracking sound and Lily's heart leaped with hope that they'd succeeded, but when James pulled the mallet back it was to reveal the locket had pressed into the stone floor, cracking the stones, but remaining entire itself.

Mystified, Remus lowered his shield charm and stepped closer to inspect it. "Bloody incredible," he murmured.

"I don't reckon that bleeding thing is even natural," Sirius said hotly, and he shoved his wand into the knot of his hair at the back of his head, dropping back into the seat.

James used his wand to levitate the locket out of the cracked stone, and turned it about in the air in the middle of the ring of them, twisting his wrist to turn it over every which way, checking it over for damages, but there didn't appear to be any. "Hell," he said, shaking his head, "I'm starting to think it isn't natural, either."

"I mean, it hisses," Regulus said.

"And it's important to You-Know-Who," Lily added. "It must be really, really dark."

Marlene tilted her head to look at it. "Those markings on it are bloody terrifying. It looks like a snake." She made a face. 

Lily shivered. "Figured Voldemort would have a bloody snake encased in amber." She made a pukey-gagging face.

Regulus muttered, "He's got a pet one, you know. A snake."

"Yeah, bloody nasty thing," muttered James, and he looked down, feeling that anxious racing of his heart again, and shoving the feeling down as far as he could, though a chill went through every nerve of him at the memory of that snake...

Regulus said, "Maybe we could just... hide it."

"That didn't work last time much, did it?" Sirius snapped. 

Regulus's jaw tightened.

James glared at Sirius. Then, "We tried hiding it in an abyss in this passageway that we found out of the Trophy Room," he explained to Regulus, "That's how it ended up in the lake, I guess."

Regulus said, "Couldn't we just... leave it in here? Nobody knows how to get in here. And we could research and try and figure out what it is and try to destroy it."

Sirius muttered, "Yeah and won't it be a shame when it goes missing in the middle of the night and somehow finds it's way back to Voldemort?"

Regulus's face flushed with anger.

James said, "Sirius... please."

Sirius shrugged, "I'm just saying... I'm just saying." He leaned back in his chair so that his arms were out straight before him and his mouth was pursed, "But I'll hold my tongue, I s'pose."

Ali said, "Why don't we take it in turns to guard it? Then everyone knows it's being taken care of, and we're on a schedule and we all know who's got it last and if it goes missing... well, we'll know exactly who it is that's done it."

"We could make a contract," Emmaline said. "One that says we all promise to take care of the locket and if it's lost the person will... suffer."

"Suffer?" Peter trembled, and he reached out a hand to take Wendy's in his. Wendy looked down at their hands, and squeezed his finger tips with her own.

"We all know who it would be with if it goes missing," Sirius muttered.

"We could watch it together," Regulus said, "If you're so bloody suspicious of me, you can baby sit me and the locket both." His eyes held a challenge. Would Sirius despise his brother enough to refuse to sit with him to protect the locket, or would he cede and allow Regulus to be left alone with it?

Sirius's eyes narrowed and he harumphed and rested his chin on the chair again despondently. 

"I like the idea of taking it in turns," James said, shaking his head. "Nobody needs to baby sit anybody else. We'll do that until one of us can either come up with some better solution or a way to destroy it." He looked about at everyone. "Deal?"

They all nodded.

"I'll create a magically binding contract," Emmaline offered.

"I can help," Remus injected.

James nodded, "Go to it. We're signing it before any of us leaves this room." Remus and Emmaline hurried to get some parchment from a row of shelves in the corner.

"I'll take it first," Lily said. "It's my fault we've got it to begin with."

James wanted to remind her that it was actually Snivellus's fault, but he didn't want to think of Severus at the time being. Who knew what Severus had thought James was up to, swimming in the Black Lake? Who knew if Severus Snape actually had an idea already about the locket's whereabouts, how long had he been listening to James's mind? Had James thought about the locket specifically enough for Severus to know? Had he seen the box he'd wrapped it in to give to Lily Evans? 

Lily and James's eyes met.

"Alright," James said lowly.

Lily reached out and took the locket from where it hovered in the air among them, the stone cold and hard and heavy in her fist as she drew it in and dropped it into her jumper pocket safely. She swallowed back her nervousness.

It took them a few moments, and a bit of debate about the grammar involved in their wording, but soon enough Remus and Emmaline had produced the contract and they rolled it out over a low table and gathered around to sign it.

"Anyone who breaks the contract will be cursed," Emmaline said, "In a way that only Remus and I know about. But trust us - it's very awful and very, very noticeable, and you won't get away with any mishandling of the locket. We worded it very carefully so there's way there are any loopholes or anything. Practice deceit with the locket - any kind of deceit - and you'll be very sorry."

"Very," Remus agreed.

The others exchanged nervous glances, and then, one by one, they signed the parchment that Emmaline and Remus had produced. Sirius made sure to be the one that handed Regulus the quill when it was his turn to sign the page, and Regulus took it roughly from his brother's hand, and stared right into his eyes as he signed his name, R. A B.

"Signing with initials? Is that allowed?" Sirius asked, looking at Remus, "Or has he found a loophole already?"

"It doesn't matter what you put down," Remus said, "You could scribble absolute nonsense and it would still be binding." He shrugged, "Don't worry about it, Sirius. I made sure everything was covered, alright?"

"Your boyfriend says it's alright," Regulus said pointedly to Sirius, "You satisfied?"

Sirius nodded, "Yeah. I am. And I can't wait to see what you end up cursed with you little blighter."