fifth year
Regulus wasn’t convinced that he wasn’t ruining Pandora’s life by planning to marry her until January of fifth year. He had even gone to a Death Eater meeting over Yule. His mother said it was an honour that he was invited, but of course he still remembered what had happened to Sirius the previous year when he had refused to attend. Some honour Sirius had considered it.
But he went and listened to the Dark Lord quietly for four hours. He was quiet as the Dark Lord introduced him to the group; he was quiet as he heard about plans to target the families of Muggle born witches and wizards in the Ministry; he was quiet as he watched them torture a hostage; he was quiet as Bellatrix gave a speech, and in the middle of it, full of gusto, announced that the Dark Lord would never be defeated. There was a glimmer in her pale eyes as she said it, a glimmer that made Regulus certain that she was privy to some sort of secret knowledge about the Dark Lord. He was quiet as he wondered if he could discover the Dark Lord’s secret.
And so he resolved to not be brave, not to do as Sirius had done and leave.
He resolved he would—probably fruitlessly—try to bring the Dark Lord down from within. Ultimately, it was better to die trying to make Sirius safe a few years in the future than to die now trying to make him proud. He would never make his brother proud.
Sirius wouldn’t even let him call him his brother any more.
Regulus knew he would never be able to tell a soul about his plans. He knew he would lose the only friends he truly cared about.
Pandora wouldn’t want it; he would have to break the engagement.
He didn’t feel committed to her any more, so he looked at Barty too long the first day he was back after the holiday. Barty would know what that meant. Like the sadist he was, he had become aware of how Regulus acted around him—much more distant, of course—after he came back from the summer holidays with half a stone more muscle and somehow, stubble that didn’t look ridiculous. Throughout the autumn term, Barty would touch Regulus slightly too long, waiting to see when he would run.
Regulus had never been as close with Barty as he had with Evan, but that changed when Barty, like an absolute sociopath, hopped into the shower with Regulus that night as he washed his hair.
“Can I?” he asked, placing his hand on Regulus’s arse.
Regulus nodded. He shouldn’t have, for plausible deniability, even though Barty had seen that he was already half hard, but he did anyway.
And the next day the girl he was effectively engaged asked him to meet her in a music room. As soon as he met her, she cast a silencing charm and told him to use legilimency on her to see a whole memory of hers from the holiday. It was possibly the greatest gesture of trust one could show to another person.
“Dora, you don’t want that. You don’t want to marry me; you don’t want to trust me. With anything.”
“Why? What changed?”
In a panic he said what he felt more comfortable sharing, what she would have been less shocked to learn from other things she knew about him.
“I sucked off a boy in the shower yesterday.”
“Oh, that’s lovely, Regulus! Unless it wasn’t? Did you enjoy yourself? It doesn’t sound pleasant to me, but I assume we feel differently about that act in the abstract. But what I meant was—did you get soap in your eyes or something? Did he… not reciprocate?”
Maybe there actually was no way to shock this girl.
“Um, no, it was… it was good?”
“Then that’s lovely! I’m happy for you, Regulus.”
He looked at her, concerned. Did she really not see any issues?
“Do you trust him to keep everything a secret?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Do you want to run off with him and escape everything?” she asked.
“No. He wants to be a Death Eater. And I’m pretty sure this doesn't mean anything.”
“Oh, it’s Barty, isn’t it?”
Regulus’s mouth opened. He shouldn't have let Pandora know that. “Dora,” he said quietly. “You… you can’t ever tell anyone. You… I shouldn’t have said that. You shouldn’t know that.”
“I won’t tell anyone, Regulus.” Her eyes were wide and earnest. “Here, why don’t you look at my memory, and then you can have dirt on me as leverage.”
Pandora offered him her complete, open gaze. “Legilimens,” he whispered.
A boy, a pureblood boy Pandora didn’t know had been invited to a dinner party and sat next to her. He was tall and blond, and he was a few years older than she was. He was a cousin to the Greengrasses, but he had lived most of his life in Greece. He had some eccentric theories, and they amused her, although she maintained decorum and didn’t laugh at them. He also seemed shockingly earnest, and that impressed her; he genuinely believed that nargles were in everyone’s ears.
As the party dispersed, he confronted her alone and threw a silencing charm around the two of them.
“You know what I’m saying when I say no one here knows the truth.” He looked her dead in the eye, and she didn’t block any particular thoughts, but she didn’t let him in either.
Regulus knew she thought the foundations of their culture were rotten, but he wasn’t entirely sure whether this man’s opinions matched Pandora’s or his own. Perhaps they did. But he didn’t see any reason from his crackpot theories to trust him, and perhaps neither did Pandora.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean,” she said demurely.
“Of course, you feel you must say that. But you know you can speak with me.”
“Well, thank you. I’ll contact you if I have anything important to say.”
He looked at her with what she had to believe was hope, and she was confused but left.
The morning of Oestara, a week after their return from Hogwarts over the holiday, Pandora came down the stairs to find her mother weeping.
“I feared you wouldn’t be here,” she said.
“Wherever else would I be, Mother?” she had asked.
“Do you remember Xenophilius Lovegood?” her mother asked. The memory of the party rushed into Pandora’s head within this memory.
Pandora nodded. “Why? Did something happen to him?”
“No, he’s abroad. But there was a prophecy that you might run away with a lover of the foreign before Oestara of your sixteenth year. But you haven’t.”
“I haven’t fulfilled a prophecy? Surely that’s the most horrific auspice.”
“No, Dora. Tragedy would befall mankind if you fulfilled that particular prophecy. It was different from others.”
“There’s nothing that useful to have as confidential information in that,” Regulus said.
But Pandora spoke. “I could have done something. I could have run away. Apparently in another world I ran away with Xenophilius Lovegood.”
“He’s in France. I’ve heard he’s opposed to the Dark Lord. Do you wish you were with him?”
“It would have been a way out. But I… I barely spoke with him, Regulus. How was I supposed to know he was my way out? And my mother said tragedy would have befallen mankind if I had left, yet I know she did nothing to prevent my leaving. What am I supposed to make of this?”
He studied the table. “I wonder if in another world you would have loved Lovegood. If it was overpowering, your mother would not have wanted to stand in the way of that, not if it was prophesied.”
And Regulus wondered—perhaps this changed things. While Regulus had maintained that Pandora might find someone she could marry and never brought up their de facto engagement even though Pandora did, mentioning potions she could make so she could bare a child without physical intimacy between them, he changed his mind now; the prophecy indicated that Pandora might be a key—or the key—part of the insane and likely suicidal plan he had. He knew that Pandora trusted him now—that she showed him inside her mind for something like this… Regulus could scarcely think of something more vulnerable. The two of them had tried testing each other’s occlumency shields before, but with the full intention of leaving the other’s head as soon as they found weakness.
“Then in this world I’m incapable of love, but somehow that’s possibly for the better.”
“You’re not incapable of love, Dora. You’ve never fancied anyone; that’s different. He used to love me, you know. You’re capable of things like that.”
Regulus still never mentioned Sirius by name.
He continued. He might not be attracted to his fiancée, but perhaps they would marry nonetheless. He knew his relationship with her would be healthier if he told her the truth about his thoughts and plans.
He knew he would be more likely to succeed if she wanted to join him. And secretly, he now wondered if she would want to. And he didn't think he would succeed, but that was his only chance at keeping Sirius safe, at repaying him for saving his life as a child, so many times, but primarily in the incident with the diary.
So he spoke now. “And it might be for the better—I’ve learned something, and if your mother speaks the truth I wonder if you would be the one to solve what I’ve learned. We might need to be married for it to work, though.”
“What did you learn?” she asked.
“Bella let it slip that the Dark Lord can’t be defeated by the Order.”
“And you want…?” She knew he hated the thought of joining the Dark Lord, hated what the Dark Lord had done to Sirius, hated himself for being a part of the bulwark surrounding his power.
“You know what I want. I have to do this. He won’t ever be safe otherwise.”
Pandora’s breath hitched. Regulus had never before suggested openly that he wanted to work against him.
When she spoke, her words were full of magic, and Regulus could feel himself magically bound with her in a way. “May magic guide us to fulfill the prophecy which has been spoken.”
"May it be so."
Pandora looked at him. "We'll have to practice Occlumency all the time. We have to be impenetrable at it. And I've been thinking about how to make an antidote to veritaserum."
"Why?"
"Thought it sounded interesting. Maybe it's prophesied."
He might have sucked Barty off in the shower the previous night, but he was effectively an engaged man.
Most likely, he was engaged to his own death.