The Return
The liquor stung my throat as it went down. It had been years since I’d drowned my sorrows in fire whiskey, and the muggles just didn’t make it the same. For the first time in months, years even, I had a purpose, a mission, call it what you want, but I would need much more than a glass for what I was aiming to do. The copy of the daily prophet was shoved in my back pocket as I stumbled slightly down the streets of muggle London, likely looking like some cheap drunk as I fumbled down the streets I knew all too well. I looked up, muttering a spell that hadn’t passed my lips in so very long. Grimmauld Place, number 12 emerging from between the solid brick buildings, the cursed house that I was forced to suffer in for all those years. It was never a home. Not for me, and certainly not for him. But knowing he’d escaped, there was only one place he would go. Hence going in search of my old house after all these years, because the truth was, I was in search of something far more important.
Stumbling through the threshold was like being caught in a time loop. The darkened walls that smelt so strongly of dust and dark magic, the dark hardwood where her heels used to click in a haunting rhythm through the house. The entrance hall, wallpaper that hadn’t faded, the mantelpiece that had a thick veil of dust covering it. The stiff leather chairs that were only ever used to entertain guests. When walking through the halls that I’d spent so long trapped in, I took another long swig of my fire whiskey, there was too much here, it was hard to breathe. I wandered further in, lighting the dusty sconces with a flick of my wand. Next was the dreaded dining room, where we spent so many suffocating dinners in silence, the high-backed chairs and table that was far too large for four people… three after he left. Father’s study, where we screamed and writhed in pain on the floor, another swig, it became harder to think. Flashes of a childhood that was hardly lived crossed my vision, my brother’s blood coating the floors, mixed with my own. Green sparks of light, then blinding pain, a shrill voice that always managed to cut straight through. The silence of a father who only ever served as a ghost. I shook it off, and continued deeper into the house that still haunted my nightmares. I avoided the tapestry room like the plague, that was the only thing worse than my father’s study. Up the stairs, there were two doors right beside one another. Silver name plates with black scrawling letters. I trailed my fingers over his name, just as I had done since he left when I was only fifteen. Now, at nearly thirty two, the sight still threatened to sting my eyes with tears, though I was willing to blame the alcohol. Sirius Black.
I turned away, refusing to open his door. There was too much of him that still lingered there, and though there was a chance he was back, I was not ready to face being surrounded by the brother that left me. Instead, I turned to my own childhood room, just as barren and put together as I had left it all those years ago. My old journals were exactly as I left them, my bed neatly tucked and folded with those awful dark linens my mother insisted on. There was no color in this place, it was all suffocated as soon as one walked through the door. I shut the door, knowing I had demons in there to revisit later. Letters that I had yet to read. I wandered even further down the upper floor and the eyes of portraits seemed to follow me as I went. Though this was an unnecessarily huge house, the walls always seemed to close in on you. So many eyes on you. As I wandered, the familiar voice of one portrait at the end of the hall caught my attention. She stood apart from most of the others, ridiculously framed with thick black curtains, wearing her stiff, holier than thou expression. I scoffed, taking another long drink from my bottle, knowing that this was about to get a hell of a lot harder.
The painting’s expression shifted to a look of confusion, her brows furrowed, then there was anger in those all too familiar grey eyes. And that voice that I promised myself I would never have to hear again filled my ears and scratched my eardrums. I winced slightly as a name that wasn’t mine was spoken.
“Sirius Black, you disgraceful blood traitor. How dare you step foot in this house again.” The horrific voice of my mother snarled.
“Wrong son.” I scoffed. I knew I’d changed, and she presumed me dead, that was the point. But I hardly expected to be mistaken for my brother. Perhaps I should have thought of that before wandering the streets of London with the resemblance of an escaped mass murderer.
“Regulus?” She muttered, her eyes widening. Funny, she showed much more expression in her death than she ever did in life.
“That’s the one.”
“You’re supposed to be dead. My son died over ten years ago.” Her voice screeched.
“That would be the purpose of faking my own death. Wonderful observation, mother.” I snarked, rolling my eyes.
This was all too much. Her voice in my ears, the burnt smell of magic that would never leave these damn walls, the memories that flashed behind my gaze so quickly I could hardly keep up with them. She was screaming. It seemed that was all she knew how to do. This woman had no idea how to love. I wasn’t sure if she ever had. I’d learned to tune her out, long ago. It seemed that ability had stayed with me, even fourteen years later. The lectures were all the same, blood purity, responsibility, family loyalty. Ha, family loyalty. This bitch wouldn’t know loyalty if it bit her in the ass. I cut her off just as she began speaking in French, louder and faster than my drunken mind cared to process.
“Et après tout ce que j'ai fait…”
“I’m going to stop you right there, mother. All you have done for me is twist me into someone I hated. You used me, you beat me, then you drove out the only fucking good thing that was ever in this merlin forsaken house. I may not have died, but you fucking killed me.”
“I am your mother, and you will not-”
“You have failed to be my mother for a long time.” I snorted. The tears of a thirteen-year-old boy threatened to burn my eyes, but she would never see my tears again.
I wondered if the dead could feel pain. I took out my wand and mindlessly cast crucio. The green light ripped from my wand and slashed against the canvas, leaving scorch marks, she shrieked, but seemed to feel no pain. Still, a wicked cackle left my lips, I was crazed. There was more yelling, and magic seemed to feel like static around me. The air grew thick. The nearly empty bottle fell to the floor, and everything that had been building up since the moment I stepped through the doors of this house flooded out. All of the anger, all of the pain, every single drop of resentment that had built up from the floorboards of this house every damned time I entered it, it all spilled out of me. The portrait fell off the wall, bursting into flames. I paid no mind to the flames as I kicked, and kicked until the wood of the frame was nothing but splinters. Tears stung my face, and I let them fall for the first time, in a very, very long time. This fucking house was closing in around me. And with each memory of pain, a kick to her face, a curse blown to her head.
Sirius shoving me out of the way as the green light shot toward us. Kick. Bleeding on the floor. Kick. Screaming on the floor as she tortured me, all while telling me I was a failure. Kick. Standing at the top of the stairs, watching silently as my brother left, but being powerless to stop him. Curse. My father sat silently as they burned a brand into my arm, sealing me to this horrible cult for life. I kicked and cursed the horrid portrait until it was nothing but ash and splinters. I fell to my knees, letting out a guttural scream. I was not screaming; no this was ten-year-old Regulus who watched as his brother stitched up his own wounds. It was six-year-old Regulus who’d learned very quickly that children were safer if they were silent. It was sixteen-year-old Regulus who was terrified to join a war that was never his to begin with. The scream ripped from a fifteen-year-old who just watched his brother be beaten, almost to death, with being imprisoned in a curse, unable to stop it. And the same boy who watched his brother limp out of the house with so little of his life intact that night. I was the eighteen-year-old who faced death at the hands of being drowned, for trying to stop the war and fix what he helped start. He had only the light of the sun that he’d driven away to keep him warm. A sun, and a star, the only reasons I was able to pry myself from their cold hands that tried so hard to pull me under.
I was all the pain I had ever lived, and my scream was echoed with all of the ghosts I embodied. This was the version of myself that I buried in my place in that watery grave, letting them all believe I had died. Leaving behind a single note that was sent to the sun, and likely burned him. I wondered what had become of the only man I ever loved after he found out I died. I wondered if he cried for me, if he mourned me like I mourned him, all these years later. My scream broke off into sobs, they all belonged to every single version of me, but at the end of it all, I was still just a kid who was looking for his brother and had failed to find him yet again. All of these years, maybe the hiding I was doing was not simply from the world and the war that I’d left behind, but the versions of myself that always screamed for me to return, to find my brother.
The world fell around me and the alcohol I consumed blacked the already dark world. One thought in my mind remained as my consciousness slipped away. Merlin, I hate my fucking mother.