Chapter 1
August 24th, 1979
2:41 am
Regulus had considered multiple times, on multiple separate occasions, how he would die.
They were the kind of morbid thoughts that struck him at the dinner table when it was fraught with silences, some days they crept up on him when he stared out onto the Black lake on a quiet morning alone - escaping from his dorm unnoticed. It happened whenever he and Barty were hungover, crippled with headaches and their bellies churning and the empty bottles of elf wine they’d stolen rolling under his bed.
He’d kill for a glass of wine at this point. Anything would be better than whatever swill he’d been served in the Hogs Head.
It was near empty save for a few faces that seemed familiar with the barman, probably regulars. The only name he caught was an older witch called Peggy who was tucked away in the corner with more gin than tonic, perusing over old tomes which looked old enough to be every bit as questionable as some of the reading material in his own family library. There was also Leopold who was apparently five beers in and three sheets to the wind as he kept telling everyone, sporting some ridiculous bright red shirt and banging on about Manchester .
There were a few others coming and going on a regular Friday night but Regulus clearly stuck out like a sore thumb. They were either too drunk or too kind to bring it up. Small mercies unlike whatever shite he was drinking.
A dead man’s last drink.
Regulus wasn’t stupid, he had a slim chance of making out of this stupidity alive. He was on borrowed time from the moment the mark was bestowed upon him as if it was some great honour. His parents' approval had turned to ash as soon as the realisation had sunk in. Now, the cave beckoned and the duplicate locket he’d had made from Kreacher’s memory alone weighed like an anchor. The house-elf's sobs rattled around in the confines of his mind, growing louder and louder with the tick of a clock beginning its final count-
Sirius had always laughed at his histrionics.
(He sipped his drink absentmindedly, a drink for every time he thought of him - of every regret he had when he approached the Sirius-shaped blackhole in his life.)
“Another?”
He glanced up to see the barman staring him down, not down his nose like Lucius tended to do but the man towered over Regulus. His face haggard, beard unkempt but something strangely familiar in it all.
“Please,” he was smart enough to ask what he was buying another of , putting his near empty pint glass within reach and trying to ignore how the galleon stuck in place when he tried to slide it across the bar. It was entirely too much for whatever he was being served but it wasn’t like he’d ask for change . Not when the barman scowled, instead of fetching him a clean glass, he simply refilled the empty glass Regulus had given back.
Regulus considered his choices.
He could forget about the cave. Just finish his drink, hope it didn’t kill him and call it a night. If he called, Kreacher would fetch him home and it was far less embarrassing than having to floo locally since his flat hadn’t even been hooked up to the network yet. Entirely by choice since he didn’t want any unwanted visitors at his new home, like his mother, whinging and begging and demanding he return to their ancestral home. Her wroth was easily ignored when he didn’t have to see her, out of sight and out of mind.
He could go to Barty’s, the Crouch’s would put him up for the night - Regulus was fairly certain that they considered him a stray which their son had brought home one night and never really left. Not that Barty’s mum really minded and even Barty Senior just twitched his moustache at him. Did he want to have to deal with Barty himself though? The little twat would find it hilarious to see him in this state and he didn’t have enough energy to explain or put up with it.
There was a third option which seemed entirely too stupid and Gryffindor in nature - it was probably safer to actually just go to the Cave rather than considering the third.
The rusted bell tinkled from over the entrance door, nearly unheard as Regulus lost himself in his thoughts.
“I thought I told you not to come back here.”
“You always say that.”
“Because you always come back.”
The voice was young, familiar.
He chanced a look out of the corner of his eye and masked his grimace with a tentative sip when he realised that the voice was more familiar than he would’ve liked.
Valentina had been his yearmate in Hogwarts, not a friend and not an acquaintance either really. They’d simply co-existed in certain spaces for periods of time, Barty thought well of her as a fellow Ravenclaw but then again he always did have a screw loose considering his and Evan’s strange thing.
She hadn’t changed much since he’d last seen her but it had only been a few months since they’d graduated. If anything she looked… tired . They’d all looked tired after their N.E.W.T.S but there were deep circles under her eyes and pallor to her skin but that could’ve been the shitty lighting. It could have been his blurred vision. Merlin it might’ve even been wishful thinking, maybe she wasn’t there at all? Simply a dream or perhaps a waking nightmare? Depended on the perspective he supposed.
Valentina never bothered to notice him before, why would she? Different houses, different circles.
“Regulus?”
Ah. Maybe he’d taken going unnoticed for granted.
He nodded at her, not trusting himself not to stutter or slur out a greeting. Merlin knew how he was supposed to apparate anywhere tonight. Regulus’ focus was torn between trying to keep himself upright on the barstool and trying not to stare when Valentina smiled at him, a wide and beaming expression that he’d never had directed at him before. In their years, their classes, Valentina had seemed perpetually thorny or somewhat sullen. As if itching for a duel or a fist fight.
“Mackenzie,” he couldn’t abide her ‘ Just call me Mack! Everyone does ’ - it offended him on a visceral level.
“You’re looking…” her head tilted and words seemed to fail her for a moment, the corner of her mouth twitching. Part of him, some sort of sickly pride which rotted away in the corner of his mind, drew up in offence. How dare she enjoy his misfortune , not that she had any idea of what he was dealing with - all she probably saw was his bleary drunken state; day and night to the put together appearance he tried to keep up despite his spiralling mental state.
“Shitfaced?” he offered her, almost like an olive branch.
“That’s one way to put it,” Valentina agreed with an easy smile, less of a beam but still no less confusing. One which was wiped clear when she caught sight of the glass in his hand. “What has Abe been giving you?”
He said nothing when she snatched the glass from him, eyeing it dubiously before taking a long swig and spitting it back into the glass without a care that the barman could see her clear as day. Clearly , he was Abe, if the glower she shot his way was anything to go by. Not that the man gave a damn since he blatantly ignored her disgust - something effortless and no doubt practised if the way Valentina huffed was anything to go by.
“Abe? What is this shit?”
“Gillsbury,” the barman eventually admitted.
Regulus frowned, an expression which Valentina mirrored - the pair looking into his pint glass before looking back up at the barman in an unpractised unison.
“Isn’t that-?”
“Didn’t they go out of business like a decade ago?”
The barman said nothing for a moment before shrugging.
“Leopold likes it,” the man squawked, having slipped in unnoticed and saw the opportunity, stealing the near full pint glass out of Valentina’s hands and necking it like it was his first taste of water in the desert. They both blinked at the display whilst the barman grimaced, no doubt thinking about the aftermath he’d be having to deal with that night.
“I don’t think that’s really saying much by those standards,” she muttered and the barman gave a soft sound that might’ve passed as laughter. “You got any blackberry wine from last time?”
Mixing was a big no-no but after the literal grime he’d been drinking, Regulus thought it sounded like heaven and Valentina probably had the same thought when Abe placed the bottle in front of them. He was getting a little tired of her smile, of her eyes upon him but he couldn’t turn away either.
“You gon’ buy me a drink first or do I have to do everything around here?”
Absolution or devastation, did it really matter?
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August 24th, 1979
2:28 am
The patronus woke her as well as any muggle alarm clock could.
It was just past two in the morning when it drifted through her half-open window, not that she’d been asleep for long. Dreams had been getting the best of her for the past few weeks, they seemed to get worse with every passing day. The bones of Hogwarts castle laid to smolder, a laugh that rattled her to her core, a picture of ghosts-to-come. It’d be enough for anyone to lose sleep but Mack knew that weird dreams came with the territory at this point, she made do with whatever scraps of sleep she could steal.
That wasn’t to say that she slept deeply, just the faint glow of the patronus had Mack tumbling out of bed, knocking over her bedside table entirely whilst she fumbled for her wand. These were dire times as her brother liked to remind her, over and over again like she hadn’t heard him the first hundred times. She still listened to his words, especially in these past few months when care and caution took precedence.
Her wand pointed, Mack blinked up blearily at the ghost-like goat which spoke with Aberforth’s husky timbre.
“He’s here.”
Still half-asleep, Mack let her wand arm fall as she sat on the floor in a tangle of blankets and debris. “Who’s here?”
Not that the patronus answered her, instead it dispersed in a mist, vanishing without a trace. The unhelpful fuck, who sent that kind of cryptic shit at two in the morning? She was surprised he sent a message at all since she was sure his disdain for her far outweighed whatever good will she’d tried to garner with him.
Against his wishes, she’d slowly worn Aberforth down over her years at Hogwarts and she’d consider him the most reluctant of friends. Not that Mack had given him any choice otherwise since she’d been visiting him ever since her first trip to Hogsmeade back in the day. Only a few years ago but some days it felt like decades, time seemed to blur and bend and escape her.
It took her longer than she’d care to admit to realise the ‘he’ which Abe was referring to.
She didn’t scramble per day but she definitely almost killed herself in her tangle of blankets - reaching for the same clothes she’d peeled off an hour or two ago. Yesterday's jeans with mud stains around the knees and an old band tee that Marlene had stupidly left behind one night so kindly gifted her. As she grabbed her satchel from its armchair, nearly sending her half-kneazle flying, she had the distinct thought she was forgetting something as she chucked the floo powder - throwing herself in after it.
It was also raining.
Fucking. Brilliant.
At least there was no one around to watch her stride through the shower, it might’ve been August time but the weather could change at the drop of a hat as they inched into the throes of autumn.
“I thought I told you not to come back here,” Aberforth greeted her the second she darkened his doorway, slightly damp from the short walk in the rain from the floo station. She didn’t take it personally, it was the same greeting he gave her every time she showed her face. Volleying insults as if it was a sport and she was certain that Ariana was probably keeping score in her portrait somehow.
Shaking off the rainwater, she stepped inside - fluttering her eyelashes. “You always say that.”
“Because you always come back.” Aberforth was smiling, deep deep on the inside but his eyes cast off to her left - just where the ‘he’ in question was perched.
“Regulus?”
She never imagined him as a drinker.
Shame on her, she guessed since it definitely wasn’t his first drink if the way he was leaning to one side was anything to go by. From the few times they crossed paths, in the corridors and a glance or two at him during Slughorn’s dreaded parties - she imagined him at a party in the corner lazing in an armchair swirling a single glass of wine. An image which was quickly shattered when he turned to look at her.
“Mackenzie.”
Regulus Black looked like his brother.
Sure, he probably looked like his parents too but Mack didn’t give two flying fucks about Walburga and Orion Black. From the stories which Sirius had unknowingly told her in a drunken haze, she was almost certain that they’d arrest her if she did ever make their acquaintance. Merlin knows she had the temper for it. When she looked at Regulus, she saw him through Sirius-tinted glasses out of sheer familiarity. The similarities and differences stark in shitty lighting.
It didn’t matter that they both had the unfairly sharp, aristocratically high cheekbones - or that they had the same dark hair and slightly uneven jawline. The same haughty elegance which had multiple other students weak in the knees back when they were in classes, both Regulus and Sirius were guilty of it. Whilst Sirius kept his hair long, in lustrous waves which were probably a rebellion of itself, Regulus’ curls hung close to his face and framed his features nicely. In the Hog’s Head, with his heavy cloak cast aside and his top button undone, he seemed older than he was.
He was seventeen.
(Regulus would have never seen eighteen.)
Divination was a joke, she’d taken it in third year for a laugh but also to keep Pan company. From the moment she’d crawled into that ridiculous tower with Madame Zhao, the crone going on about her so-called third eye that she was blessed with - she’d hated it. Her roommate had passed with flying colours whilst she’d flown out the door as soon as class was over. Mack didn’t need to be there a second longer to know that seers didn’t work the same way her dreams did.
It was just a knowing. Instinctive, definitive. Alice and Frank would be tortured to insanity but she didn’t know the who’s or the why’s; Peter Pettigrew was a rat in more ways than one; Marlene wouldn’t make it out of the war brewing.
Half of her knowledge would never come to pass, denial was a girl's best friend because why acknowledge something she would never let happen? Marlene was her cousin and none of their family survived. She and their family were slaughtered and Valentina would give her life before she let that happen again.
She also knew that Regulus would die.
Alone and cold and afraid in a fucking cave.
“You ‘re looking…”
Regulus was barely considering an adult in the eyes of Magical Law, nevermind Muggle law. He’d shed his baby-fat over the past few years but he also had the weight of the world resting on his shoulders. So she smiled, wide and bright and entirely forced because he was alive today and if everything went to plan, he’d be alive tomorrow too.
“Shitfaced?” He offered in lieu of any real answer she could have given him.
Sure, they’d go with that.
“That’s one way to put it,” it definitely wasn’t the worst state she’d seen someone in, she and Pan had probably done permanent damage to their livers after their graduation celebrations. Both of age with too much money and not enough good sense to know when enough was enough. Her brother Joe had no sympathy for either of them the next day, not even a drop of hangover potion, the good one which his partner brewed religiously. Regulus had made a good go of it though, ruffled feather, dishevelled even. His curls askew and collar crooked and it was glaringly obvious considering how well he dressed.
Instead of thinking too much about his clothes though, she glanced at the almost grey pint in his hand. He was obviously pissed out of his tree since he didn’t say a thing when she snatched his glass from him. “What has Abe been giving you?”
It looked like dusty water, like something had died and liquified but it didn’t stop her from taking a sip - survival skills kicking in since she spat it out immediately. Something which had her rounding on Aberforth sharply with a scowl that he paid no heed to, instead he pottered around, anything to avoid her glare. The bastard knew what he was doing. “Abe? What is this shit?”
“Gillsbury,” he eventually admitted.
The name was familiar, something which itched at her brain - apparently Regulus’ thought so too since he was frowning in thought. Both of them glanced down at the pint glass in her hand before she turned back to Aberforth, the name clicking into place and she hoped she was wrong.
“Isn’t that-?”
“Didn’t they go out of business like a decade ago?”
Aberforth’s silence was damning of his guilt but he shrugged, almost sheepish.
“Leopold likes it,” Mack barely had a moment to process it before said man, Aberforth’s longest and most annoying customer, plucked the pint glass out of her hand and drank it like it was ambrosia. Even Aberforth grimaced at the sight and she gave a quiet prayer for Leopold’s long-suffering wife, merlin bless her for putting up with the lump of a man, it wouldn’t be long before Agatha came storming in to drag him home. It was always good entertainment.
“I don’t think that’s really saying much by those standards,” considering the Leopold would and has drunk a spilled bottle of whisky off of the filthy cobbled streets with just a bendy straw. Aberforth was probably remembering the same instance since he gave a low chuckle. Now she was up and awake and at a bar, Mack considered the unlabelled dusty bottles lining the back shelves. “You got any blackberry wine from last time?”
Technically, it was her blackberry wine but the laws of finders-keepers were absolute and it was her own damn fault for leaving it the last time she’d had a drink with Abe. The midnight blue bottle was a little more intricate than the others and had also been tucked just out of sight. Abe placed the bottle down in front of her, no glasses or even a corkscrew - rude. Still, Mack smiled at Regulus, having invaded his evening so thoroughly but that had always been the plan.
“You gon’ buy me a drink first or do I have to do everything around here?”
Regulus seemed to be pulling his thoughts together before his eyes dipped, turning a little sharper and the glaze fading a touch.
“Are you going to tell me what had you coming here in such a rush that you didn’t even put on shoes?”
Mack glanced down at her damp bare feet, pearly-pink painted toes waggling.
“Knew there was something I was forgetting.”