Ricocheted
Parties weren’t really Regulus’s scene.
Loud music blaring from every direction, sweaty bodies dancing and moving all around the room, people bumping into him every second. It wasn’t exactly Regulus’s idea of a good time.
But then again, was that because Regulus truly didn’t like parties or because his parents always told him to obey, never put a toe out of line, never cause trouble? Parties with alcohol and stupid teenagers doing even stupider things was exactly the kind of thing his parents would hate.
Which was why Regulus was here.
He could hear the music from their dorm room, blaring and reverberating and shaking the walls. People were whooping and yelling, and there were sporadic crashes and the sound of glass shattering.
“You coming, Regulus?” Barty asked as he poked his head into the room. He was already soaked in sweat, and his shirt was buttoned unevenly and his tie was undone, handing around his neck. He was grinning.
“Regulus, are you coming?”
A sharp needle poked the back of his eye, and Regulus winced, shaking his head to try and free himself from the headache before it got a good grasp.
“Yeah, I’m coming,” Regulus said, standing up from his desk. He had been reading through the diary he’d found at home, searching for any mention of Sirius.
Regulus exited the room and was hit in the face with how loud the music was without the closed door. It was loud enough to feel it in his bones, a charm on the walls so the music came from every direction. Lights strobes from the disco ball somebody had transfigured and magicked to the ceiling, casting bright, multicolored dots of light all over the room as the disco ball spun. Regulus stood at the top of the stairs and looked down at the many dancing bodies in the Common Room.
His first party that wasn’t a stuffy pureblood ball. Regulus never thought he’d say those words.
Regulus started down the stairs and abruptly pulled to a stop at the bottom of the stairs when a sixth year stumbled back, clearly drunk, and fell into a table that broke under his weight in a splinter of wood. His fire whiskey sloshed all over his already soaked uniform, and he went to tip the cup into his mouth, only to frown when he found it empty.
One of the prefects rolled his eyes (clearly, he didn’t care about the amount of rules they were breaking) and waved his wand, fixing the table. The sixth year passed out where he laid on the floor.
Regulus stepped over him and found Barty, Evan, and Dorcas standing together in the middle of the party. Barty was taking a swig from a bottle of fire whiskey as Regulus walked over.
“Hey, Regulus!” Barty exclaimed, holding out the bottle as an offering. “Take a swig.”
Dorcas rolled her eyes. “Barty, you know Regulus won’t-“
What the hell? Regulus thought, and without breaking eye contact with Dorcas, he grabbed the bottle from Barty and took a swig. It burned as it went down, but he resisted the urge to cough.
Dorcas’s eyebrows shot up, but she didn’t question it, simply taking the bottle from Regulus and taking a swig herself.
“So Regulus, what made you decide to come to a party? I thought you would be in the library researching something or other,” Dorcas said.
“Oh, didn’t you hear?” Barty exclaimed. “Little Reggie’s rebelling!”
Dorcas turned to Regulus with wide eyes. “Really? What brought that on?”
Regulus shrugged. “Let’s just say, some stuff happened over the summer.”
“Which translates to the blood traitor did or said something,” Evan said. “You know, Reg, you don’t have anything to prove to him.”
Regulus had no idea what Evan was talking about. “What do you mean?” He asked as he took another swig of fire whiskey.
“It’s just… he’s always trying to change you,” Evan stated, “saying you’re too much like your parents.”
Regulus didn’t reply, too focused on staring at the ripples in the bottle of fire whiskey.
Too much like his parents? Well, yeah, Regulus was supposed to be like them, but… did he want that anymore after they had Obliviated him? Even past the Obliviate spell, Regulus felt like there was something else he should be mad at them about, but he didn’t know what it was. If Regulus reached, he could just barely touch the memory. He even thought he heard… screams for just a moment before Evan spoke and interrupted Regulus’s focus on the barely existent memory.
“Whatever,” Evan said. “Sirius is just a do gooder Gryffindor, anyway. He deserved everything your parents did to him and more.”
At Sirius’s name, a migraine broke free in Regulus’s head, so strong, Regulus almost dropped the bottle. Regulus clenched his eyes closed and brought his free hand to his head, rubbing his forehead. An invisible needle was stabbing him through the eyebrow, down into his eye socket. It throbbed and pounded in time with the music.
Barty’s expression fell as he noticed the pain flitting across Regulus’s face. “You okay, Regulus?”
Regulus nodded, swallowing as nausea threatened to rise in his throat from the sudden pain. The room was starting to tilt around him. The music was too loud, rattling his skull; the smell of sweaty bodies and alcohol was stuck in his nose; his friends were all looking at him with concern, and their concern felt suffocating. And all of this was on top of Regulus’s intense headache.
“Yeah,” Regulus said, hoping he wouldn’t throw up the second he opened his mouth. When he didn’t, he continued, “Just a headache. I think I need some air.”
Regulus handed the bottle of fire whiskey to Barty and started to walk away.
“Should we come with you?” Barty asked, and in his usual crass way, he added, “You look like you’re about to throw up.”
Regulus felt like he was about to throw up, but he didn’t say that. “I’ll be fine,” Regulus said, wincing as another wave of pain lanced through his head. “Thanks, though.”
Regulus maneuvered his way through the crowd of dancing bodies and exited the common room. The minute the wall closed behind him, the music became nothing more than a distant thrum in the walls. Regulus sighed in relief, some of the pain in his ahead alleviating now that he was in the silent hallway.
“He deserved everything your parents did to him and more.”
What was Evan talking about? Regulus thought as he started to walk, trying to put some distance between him and the dungeons before drunken teenagers started stumbling out of the common room to snog (Regulus had unfortunately witnessed that before on the way back from the library once).
Regulus reached for the memory again, but the second his fingertips started to graze it, his headache increased ten fold. Regulus hissed and fell to his knees in the middle of an empty hallway. His head was splitting open; someone had surely taken an axe to it. That was the only thing that explained this pain.
Regulus crawled across the dusty floor until he made it to an alcove. He used the wall to pull himself up and swallowed the bile rising in his throat as he leaned heavily against the wall of the alcove. His legs felt weak and shaky under him, the nausea and pain almost bringing him to his knees again.
Regulus breathed heavily, trying to fight down the nausea. The pain was coming in waves, crashing over him again and again and only giving him a moment’s reprieve between waves.
Finally, Regulus stopped reaching for the memory, even though it was almost within reach.
The migraine calmed, going from a splitting agony to a dull ache in a matter of minutes. Regulus stayed leaning against the wall, in shock from the suddenness and intensity of the migraine.
Regulus had never had migraines before. Headaches, sure, but nothing like that. And it always happened when Regulus tried to reach for his memories, so close but so distant. The only explanation was it was the memory charm trying to keep Regulus from accessing his memories.
The simple answer was to just… stop trying to remember, but Regulus didn’t think he could do that. Not when such a big chunk of his life was missing.
“James, I’m sure it’s nothing, okay?” A voice suddenly said, and Regulus jumped, pressing himself as far into the alcove as he could. He couldn’t allow someone to see him this weak, this fragile. Even with the headache fading, he still felt like he was about to pass out from the aftershocks, and Regulus definitely couldn’t allow anyone to see that.
“You didn’t see him, Sirius. Regulus looked… off,” another voice said.
Sirius? Curiosity brought Regulus to the edge of the alcove, and Regulus peeked his head around the wall.
Two figures stood at the end of the corridor, talking quietly, but the hallway was empty, so their voices echoed down the hall. One of them had messy brown hair and tan skin, and the other had long black hair and a pale complexion. Regulus could see the red and gold of their Gryffindor ties from here.
He recognized one of them immediately. James Potter. The other took a moment. Sirius. Regulus was only able to recognize him by comparing him to Regulus’s-their family. The pale skin and sharp features, the black hair, the look in his eyes when he was clearly getting frustrated. It was all so familiar and yet so unfamiliar.
“He’s probably just mad I left,” Sirius said and then grumbled, “Not that he has any right to be.”
“Mate, maybe you should talk to him,” James suggested hesitantly.
“What?” Sirius exclaimed like the idea was ridiculous. “I don’t want anything to do with any of them. They’re not my family anymore.”
A sword stabbed Regulus through the chest, piercing his heart. Sirius couldn’t mean that… could he?
“Besides, Regulus hates me,” Sirius continued. “He wouldn’t talk to me even if I wanted him to.”
But that… that didn’t sound right. Regulus may not have had his memories, but the emptiness he felt without them showed how much space Sirius had taken up in his life. How could Regulus hate someone that had clearly been so important to him?
Sirius said Regulus hated him and he seemed to believe it, but… why did Regulus feel like that wasn’t true?
“Sirius, you clearly don’t hate him, so-“
“Yes, I do,” Sirius said, and his voice was hard, immovable. Regulus had no trouble believing him. “Look, James, I’m better off without him.”
Regulus’s heart cracked. It felt like someone had sucker-punched him in the chest.
Sirius hated him. Regulus was trying so hard to get his memories of Sirius back because Regulus was sure he cared for Sirius, and Sirius… didn’t care for him.
Why was Regulus even bothering?
Regulus heard their footsteps growing more distant, and once they disappeared, he slipped out of the alcove and walked to the only place that helped him calm down:
The Astronomy Tower.