The Journal of Regulus Arcturus Black

Chapter 12. Destroying the Locket

Mother and Father are indifferent about the whole Death Eater recruitment. I truly thought that I'd at least get their blessing or some type of reaction when I showed them my Dark Mark. I thought that Mother would be over the moon, or maybe just smile. She seems to be incapable of any sort of emotion any more.

Father just gave me a long lecture about the purity of our blood and then sent me off when he noticed how discouraged I was. I think a big reason for my decision to join was ultimately because of them. I know I should love them as parents and unconditionally always do so, but maybe Sirius was right? Maybe I'll never get their approval.

It doesn't make sense anymore. Sirius is gone and I should be Lord Black. I should be looked upon with respect and not have to demand it. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, why they won't even look at me. I think I much preferred it when they would punish me, at least they recognised that I was here. Living and breathing in their space.

But nothing.

How am I still nothing?

Didn't I become a Death Eater for them?

Do I not do everything for them?

R.A.B.

***

The thing about the Arithmancy exam was that it was a good one and a half hours long. To be fair, that meant that it was definitely one of the shorter exams that he could take, but Draco was particularly restless that day. He had a plan, it was as good as he was going to get, in terms of last minute planning.

His plan, went as followed:

—  Leave everyone and go to the Chamber of Secrets

—  Get Kreacher to apparate into the Chamber with him

—  Take a Basilisk fang and stab the stupid Locket

—  Then take a bunch more fangs (actually use venom in potions)

He was pretty sure that nothing could really go wrong with this devised plan of his. He was not going to be completely reckless about it and all he needed was to time it right. Draco suspected that doing it on the very last day of school would be cutting it too close. What if it didn't work out and he needed more time in the Chamber?

He knew that he needed to perform the task sometime between the last of his exams and the last day of school. There had to be an opening somewhere in which he could sneak off into the Chamber. It was very good of him to actually be a member of the Inquisitorial Squad because that meant he had some privileges.

At some point, if Professor Umbridge needed the Inquisitorial Squad to go on a stupid, baseless mission to get rid of Harry Potter (now that she had successfully gotten rid of Dumbledore, but that's a pretty boring story) then Draco could try and leave for the Chamber. All the members were Slytherin and almost everyone from his house had sworn loyalty to him. So leaving their group to dive off into his own horcrux destroying mission wasn't going to be a problem.

Draco just wanted to be thorough, he had to make sure no one knew what he was doing. Except of course, his entire friendship group. Draco was a dramatic, and needed to tell them all his theories.

They didn't care.

When Draco got into one of his crazed moods, it was like his words went in one ear and out the other. Draco had decided he would tell them about the destruction of the horcrux, after he had actually done the job. It would be embarrassing if he was going to do it and then... fail. So no, he hadn't told them yet.

This was a very big 'yet.'

Draco was in the middle of his Arithmancy exam, and going over the many different formulas he had finished writing down. There were numbers floating all over the page and Draco could probably find them all mixing with one another because he was that distracted. But he made do and went over his calculations again and again.