Not Inevitable

Regulus is very grateful to be back in his own Slytherin dorm in the dungeons rather than bunking in the room of requirement now that school has started back up. Unlike the other four Slytherins.

Regulus can admit that it’s probably a good thing that everyone he drafted into his version of the war is getting along. But they’re doing more than getting along– they’re becoming friends. And Regulus doesn’t like it.

Ten is too many people to have in a friend group. It gets much too loud and much too chaotic. People get distracted more easily which leads to more disruptions in training. And the worst part is, Regulus is getting to know them, really know them. And they’re getting to know him.

The morning of the last day of break, Remus knew to put two cubes of sugar and a splash of milk into his tea. And Regulus himself knew to pass Peter the butter to put on his bagel rather than the cream cheese. And that knowledge just came from spending time in the same physical space as his classmates. That doesn’t hold a candle to all the things they’ve learned about each other through legilimency.

He knows exactly how many girls his brother has kissed in his attempt to be straight. He knows that Evan had an imaginary friend named Bob when he was eight years old. He knows that Peter wants his parents to get a divorce just so he can hear himself think in his own house. He knows that Dorcas has a massive crush on the Gryffindor beater (the one that’s not Sirius, obviously).

Lily knows about Regulus’s favorite hiding spot behind a tapestry on the third floor. Barty knows that he and Sirius used to build snow forts together in the backyard in the winter, before Sirius left for school. Remus knows that Regulus prevented Snape from putting a chunk of silver in his cup at dinner at the end of the last school year. Pandora knows that he kept every letter Sirius had ever sent him.

And James– James knows much too much even without legilimency.

Regulus still can’t figure out how James projected his thoughts right into Regulus’s head on Christmas Eve. So rather than give James any more knowledge about him, whenever the two of them were paired up for training he insisted on James trying to teach Regulus how to project rather than letting him look around in his head. By the end of break, James said he could catch a few snippets of the memory Regulus was trying to show him, but nothing sustained.

At night, when neither of the two boys could sleep, James told him about their relationship. He said that he had told Regulus he loved him, but he never said it back. He said that he liked to trace the lines in the palm of Regulus’s hand. He said that he would’ve listened to Regulus talk for hours if he would have let him.

He said that he wants to be friends with Regulus now.

So, yes, Regulus has been very glad to get out of the room of requirement and put some distance between himself and his classmates.

Pandora hasn’t let him go all the way back to his solitary ways, but she gets a pass simply for being Pandora. Which is how the two of them ended up in an empty classroom after dinner on Friday working on their potions homework together. Together, meaning they were in the same general vicinity, as neither one of them needed help with their essays.

Regulus looks up from his parchment when he notices Pandora’s quill has stopped scratching. Regulus still has six more inches to write, so there’s no way Pandora has finished already.

There’s a large splash of ink on her essay from when she must have dropped her quill. She’s leaned back against her chair with her arms hanging limp at her sides. Her head is rolled back, staring at the ceiling, and her eyes are moving back and forth and back and forth at an alarming speed.

“Pandora?!” Regulus exclaims and he jumps out of his chair and takes the few steps to kneel at her side.

“Pandora, can you hear me? What’s happening? What can I do?”

Pandora gives no indication that she heard him. But when Regulus takes her hand, she squeezes it.

“Okay,” he says. “It’s okay. I’m right here, I’m staying right here.”

Her eyes start to slow their movement as Regulus’ thumb moves in circles on the side of her hand. Eventually they stop altogether and she blinks a few times before tilting her head back down to a normal level. She stops squeezing Regulus’s hand but doesn’t release it completely. He lets her capture his pinky and twist it with hers like she has done so many times in the past.

“Sorry,” she says quietly, like she’s trying to catch her breath, though her breathing seems steady.

“That was a vision, wasn’t it?” Regulus asks. Pandora nods, causing long blonde strands to fall in front of her face. Regulus reaches up to tuck them back behind her ear.

“It was the same one. Or, close enough to it. It was the same– I don’t know, flavor?-- as they all are lately. The same as the one I showed everyone in the pensieve. I haven’t seen anything different in months. Sometimes the individual snippets are different, but I think that’s just because I’m getting random moments from the same story. They all come from the same story. And they’re getting stronger.”

“What does that mean?” Regulus asks. It means we’re gonna fail, doesn’t it?

“It doesn’t mean anything, not for certain,” Pandora says. And he can tell that that’s her true answer, not an answer she’s giving him to keep his hopes up. It doesn’t mean they’re going to fail, not inherently. But it certainly doesn’t mean they're going to succeed either. She continues, “But it feels… inevitable.”

Well that’s encouraging, he thinks sarcastically.

Pandora moves her free hand to rub circles into her temple.

“Come on,” Regulus says, letting go of her pinky to shove his belongings into his bag before packing Pandora’s away for her too. “Let’s get you back to your dorm.”

She stands slowly, seeming unsteady on her feet. Regulus throws both of their bags over one shoulder and lets her use the other to support some of her weight.

“Sorry,” she says again. “I get really tired after I See things sometimes. If you can just get me to Evan, he knows what to do. I know you’ve got an emergency Quidditch practice tonight before tomorrow’s big game.”

“You say that as if I need practice,” Regulus says in mock offense

“My apologies,” she teases back. “How dare I assume Regulus Black is anything but perfect.”

“Precisely.”

They slowly make their way down to the dungeons. Neither of them talk again until they’re on the last flight of stairs. Not in an awkward way, quiet between the two of them is never awkward. It’s one of the best things about their relationship: there aren’t any expectations, they simply coexist in the same space. And even when Pandora asks her questions, she doesn’t expect any answers from him, she just gives him the option to share.

“Is tomorrow’s game going to be any different for you now that you’re on speaking terms with Sirius?” Pandora asks. Regulus wonders why she leaves James out of the question. He’s been avoiding talking about the both of them.

He considers a sarcastic comment as his response. But Pandora would see right through it.

“Probably,” he admits. “But it will be for him too. And that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna catch the snitch.”

Regulus catches the snitch 9 times out of 10. Unfortunately, the rest of the Slytherin team is absolute shit at Quidditch– you’d think a bunch of Death Eaters in training would have better reflexes and strategy– so even though Regulus might be the best player at the school, the team only wins half the time. And Gryffindor tends to be able to outscore them even with a snitch caught by Regulus. That is even more true this year, now that James is the captain of his team.

“I think it makes it more likely that you’ll catch the snitch,” Pandora says, with a knowing twinkle in her eye. Having a Seer on my side is gonna be quite handy, Regulus thinks cheekily.

When they reach the door to the common room, Pandora removes her arm from his shoulder and Regulus hands her back her bag. They both know she can’t walk into that room looking weak, for any reason.

Pandora gives the password, revealing Evan on the other side when it slides open. He’s sitting at the table closest to the door with Barty and Dorcas. His leg is bouncing up and down anxiously, like he knew something was wrong with his twin, though he stops when the wall slides open to reveal his sister.

She sinks down into the chair next to him as he reaches into his bag for a vial filled with a dark green potion. She downs it as soon as it’s in her hand, and both Rosiers finally seem to relax a little.

“Sorry,” Evan says. “Potion just finished brewing an hour ago, I didn’t realize how fast we went through this batch. I’ll get the rest divided up for you later.”

She gives him a soft smile in thanks, placing her hand on the back of his neck as she leans back in her chair and closes her eyes.

“I’m fine Baby Black, go on now. You’ve got a snitch to practice catching. And Barty’s got a club to swing. Off you go boys,” Pandora says, without opening her eyes. Regulus decides he needs to hex Lily Evans for giving him that nickname. He rolls his eyes and leaves the common room with Barty following behind.

Approximately 4 hours after Quidditch practice ends and only one hour after falling asleep, Regulus wakes up in his bed screaming. It’s a good thing he wards his bed curtains, or he would have woken up the whole dorm.

The nightmare he was just starting to get used to– drowning in the lake with the white hands pulling him down– took a sinister twist tonight. Instead of the pale hands of the inferi, the hands pulling him under were his brothers’.

Regulus decides he does not want to psychoanalyze that, and ignores the nightmare entirely instead.

He stares up at the dark ceiling for a few moments, trying to catch his breath. But, in the dark, the ceiling looks too much like the inside of the cave for him to really calm down. He feels trapped. And, fortunately, he’s not actually trapped in a cave, so he figures he should make the most of it while that’s still a true statement.

He slips quickly but quietly out of the fifth year boys dorm, and then out of the Slytherin common room. He wanders the halls, no real destination in mind. He should probably cast a disillusionment charm on himself in case he runs into any adults in the corridors, but he doesn’t bother. Besides, that’s one of the many things he knows how to do that he’s not supposed to know how to do yet and the longer he can keep his skills on the down low, the better.

He doesn’t know how long he wanders, barely even keeping track of where he is, when a voice interrupts his dissociation.

“Hey Reg.”

Regulus turns around abruptly and takes a step away from the voice, raising his wand out in front of him.

He quickly lowers it when he recognizes the person in front of him.

“What are you doing here?” Regulus asks.

“I could ask you the same thing,” James replies lightly. His brown eyes look into Regulus’s and the playfulness falls away. “Couldn’t sleep?” he asks, knowing the answer already.

Regulus shakes his head.

“Me neither,” James admits quietly.

The two boys stare at each other awkwardly for a few moments. Regulus looks down at the other boy and rolls his eyes when he sees socks– no shoes. Who wanders around the castle without shoes on? he thinks, incredulously.

“Well come on then,” James says, light-hearted once again. “This calls for a midnight snack!”

James turns on his heel and starts walking towards the fruit bowl painting that leads to the kitchens. Regulus follows without really thinking about it. He blames it on sleep deprivation.

Once in the kitchens, James waves Regulus towards a small table tucked into a corner. Regulus sits. He watches James.

The older boy looks right at home, as if this were a small kitchen in his family home rather than an industrial sized kitchen meant to serve all of Hogwarts. He passes many of the elves as he goes to a cabinet, but he merely greets them and makes small talk, he doesn’t ask for their help. In fact, he turns down multiple offers. All of the elves seem to know him, and don’t seem annoyed by his presence. They seem rather thrilled with his presence actually.

At the cabinet, he pulls out a can of some sort that Regulus doesn’t even try to make out at this distance and with the dim lights. Then he moves to a different wall and pulls two mugs off of a rack. From a lower cabinet, he pulls out a small kettle and fills it with water from the sink above it. He moves to the far side of the set of stoves, so as not to disrupt the elves who are already preparing breakfast for the school, and sets the water to boil.

He walks around a corner, out of Regulus’s sight, but he reappears before Regulus even fully realizes he left. His brain is being exceptionally slow tonight. He comes back with two muffins in his hand and sets them down in front of Regulus before going back to the stove.

He adds something from the can into the two mugs, then adds the water once the kettle starts to whistle. He walks to yet another part of the kitchen to grab two spoons from a drawer and slips one into each mug. He disappears around another corner to find a bag and then he brings the bag and the mugs over to where Regulus is sitting.

“You like marshmallows?” he asks, passing Regulus one of the mugs. Hot chocolate.

James adds a large handful to his own mug.

“Do you already know the answer to that?” Regulus asks

James freezes. That’s a yes. Regulus rolls his eyes, trying to convey that he’s not mad about it, and pushes the mug towards James with the bag of marshmallows still in his hands. James drops exactly seven marshmallows in, just like Regulus always does.

“I’m sorry,” Regulus says quietly. “You don’t have to pretend not to know things. It’s not your fault that you do.”

“But you don’t like it,” James says, as if that matters. As if what Regulus likes and doesn’t like is truly important to him.

“Yes,” Regulus admits. “But I’d rather know what you know than have you pretend you know nothing.” From the conversations they’ve had thus far, James seems to know everything.

James nods with his eyes on his hot chocolate. They sit and sip on their drinks, listening to the elves bustling in the kitchens around them.

The older boy pushes one of the muffins closer to his hands, then takes his own and starts unwrapping it before asking, “Do you want to talk about it?”

Every other night– when they were still sleeping in the room of requirement with the other eight students and sat against the wall together when they couldn’t sleep– James would ask the same question. And Regulus wouldn’t answer.

This time Regulus does.

Once again, he decides to blame sleep deprivation. He’s gotten about ten hours total in the last week, so it is probably, genuinely a contributing factor to the decision to open up. But with Regulus’s brain the way it is tonight, it doesn’t even feel like he makes a decision to speak. This whole interaction feels more like a dream than reality.

“It was different tonight,” he whispers. James freezes again. Then quickly continues to pick at his muffin as if Regulus isn’t doing anything out of the ordinary by speaking those words. Regulus is grateful for it.

“There’s a couple different ones– nightmares. But they’re the same version each time. One of them changed tonight.”

Regulus brings his eyes up to meet the deep brown of James’s. Any other time, that move would make Regulus stop talking. But James is looking at him and for some reason it seems like James is actually seeing him and doesn’t hate what he sees. Sleep deprivation, Regulus thinks again.

“There’s one about the lake. And the hands pulling me down, drowning me. But this time the hands weren’t the hands from the lake. They were Sirius’s hands. Why would it change? Why would it be his hands dragging me down now?”

Despite looking directly into the other boy’s eyes, he managed to forget he was talking to James until James reaches out and lowers Regulus’s mug back down to rest on the table, careful to touch only the mug. Regulus’s hands are shaking, gripping the handle. There are small drops of spilled hot chocolate on the table. James pushes the muffin towards him again and Regulus starts unwrapping it by rote.

“I can’t stop watching Sirius die,” James tells him, still maintaining eye contact with Regulus. “Or, really, I can’t stop watching Remus watch Sirius die. Between the look on his face and the scream from–”

James drops his gaze to the mug in his hand.

Regulus can’t imagine how strange that must be. To know your kid, to watch your child suffer, before you even meet them. To know that you’re going to fail them before they even exist.

With his eyes still on the mug he says, “Remus is the one who found the kitchen for us, way back in first year.” His eyes are tight. If Regulus had to guess, James was watching the scene from his nightmares unfold again behind his eyes.

“You know you’re a wizard, right?” James picks his gaze back up. His eyes are filled with confusion at the question, but they seem a little less haunted. Regulus feels the corners of his lips tick upwards. “You didn’t use any magic to make the hot chocolate,” he explains, lifting his mug to his lips again, now that his hands have stopped shaking.

“Oh,” James says with a small chuckle. “Yeah. I like to do it the muggle way. My mum says it tastes better that way. I don’t think it really makes a difference, but I like the process. It’s… grounding? I don’t know if that’s quite the right word but– I like doing it that way.”

“Well you do seem to know your way around the kitchen.”

James smiles at him. Regulus smiles back. They sit quietly and finish their mugs of hot chocolate. Neither of them make a move to leave the table, even once the mugs are empty.

“Do you think–” Regulus starts, remembering the reason for this late night adventure. “Do you think Sirius and I– Can we be brothers again? Like, really brothers? Or is it all going to fall apart even worse than the last time?”

“Yeah I think you can be,” James says. Then he winces slightly. “But I don’t think it’s going to come easy, for either of you. You both want that. But you guys don’t know each other, you probably haven’t really known each other since you were eleven. You are both different people than you were then and you’re both scared of what the other will think of who you are now so you shut each other out. You’re not going to be brothers the way you want to be until you open up to each other.”

Regulus doesn’t particularly like that answer, but he can tell that James thinks it’s the truth. He hit the nail on the head there– Regulus wants to know Sirius without letting Sirius know him, but that’s never going to work.

“You can be brothers again,” James repeats. “You will be. I believe in you.” Regulus nods, though he isn’t as optimistic.

The score is 300 to 80, in favor of the Gryffindors. James is in top form despite staying up until 2 in the morning with Regulus in the kitchens the night before. It’s probably a good thing this was an afternoon game, rather than a morning one. But then again, Regulus, for one, got more sleep after the kitchens last night than he had gotten the three nights before combined. Regulus wonders if the same was true for James or if he is just always this good.

Honestly, after playing for an hour and a half, Regulus is surprised that the Gryffindors aren’t leading by more. Neither him nor the Gryffindor seeker have spotted the snitch the whole game and that task is only getting more difficult as the sun goes down. Internally, Regulus is praying that the snitch turns up in the next ten seconds so he can just end this already.

He looks over at the green section of the stands, spotting Pandora’s long blonde hair easily. She lifts one eyebrow up and smirks. He takes that as a soon-to-be-answer to his prayer.

Approximately eight seconds later, he spots the snitch in his peripheral vision.

He can’t believe how simple it is.

Regulus doesn’t even move his broom. There’s no speed, no dives, no rolls, none of his signature flying required. He just sticks his hand out to the side and wraps his fingers around the little gold ball and raises it above his head.

Given the lack of action, he’s not surprised that it takes both the referee and the announcer at least 30 seconds to realize the game is over and pass the message along to the rest of the pitch.

The Gryffindors cheer in the stands at the final score, 300 to 230, but not as enthusiastically as usual, obviously still confused about how the game ended.

James Potter, also confused, looks across the pitch at Regulus who wiggles his eyebrows and holds up the little gold ball. James nearly falls off his broom laughing in the light of the setting sun. Regulus smiles.

All the players make their way to the ground with less fanfare than usual, probably due to the anticlimactic ending of the game.

The Slytherins make their way quickly and angrily towards their locker room, though Barty stays a few steps behind to wait for Regulus.

He crosses in front of the seven Gryffindor players as they head to their own locker room. His eyes are on James’s smile, so he doesn’t properly notice the fist that connects with the side of his face.

He staggers backwards as a body tackles him to the ground.

“Sorry Reggie,” Sirius whispers, straddling him, as his fist connects with Regulus’s face again.

Regulus wakes up in the dark for the first time in weeks without having a nightmare. Or any dream at all, for that matter. One minute he was on the Quidditch pitch, and the next, everything went black.

Fucking Sirius.

It only takes a few seconds for Regulus to remember the events that led him here– here being the hospital wing. What he can’t for the life of him figure out, is why Sirius was punching him at all.

It’s definitely not the first time the brothers had fought, physically or otherwise. But every other time, Regulus had at least seen it coming. It’s not exactly hard to figure out when Sirius is mad, and therefore not hard to figure out when he’s likely to throw a punch or shoot off a spell. But Regulus has no idea what he was mad about this time.

He groans as he sits up, pain shooting up behind his eyes.

Speak of the devil.

Sirius is sitting anxiously in a chair at the foot of Regulus’s hospital bed with bruised knuckles and a black eye, holding one arm across his ribs. Obviously, the Slytherin team retaliated after he beat up their seeker.

Regulus gets straight to the point.

“What the fuck Sirius?!”

“Shh!” Is his first word. Not a very good one, in Regulus’s opinion. “I’m gonna explain, but you can’t go waking everyone up when I do.”

Luckily for Sirius, his head still hurts and yelling didn’t help, so Regulus refrains from more shouting despite wanting to cause his brother trouble. He simply raises an eyebrow and moves his hand in a ‘get on with it then’ motion.

“I needed us both in the same place so I can get you your memories back. At least, I think I can.”

That was definitely not an explanation Regulus expected.

“So you’re punching me in the face for my own good?” Regulus spits. Sirius looks appropriately guilty at the reference to Walpurga, but then his face hardens.

“Yep.” Regulus glares. Sirius rolls his eyes and adds, “Sorry not sorry. Also, you’re a little shit and you’ve had that coming since you were like, twelve.” Now Regulus rolls his eyes

“And you needed to put me in the hospital wing because…?”

“Because it’s a sure fire way to be in the same space for a solid 8 hours. We’ve been working on this potion to help get your memories back, but we haven’t been able to test it.” Sirius explains, holding up a vial, as Regulus’s eyes widen. “I mean, we have tested it. I drank it myself and nothing happened. But we couldn’t exactly test it on somebody who’s got missing memories, so if it works on you, we don’t know for sure what the side effects might be. Hence the hospital wing. Two birds, one stone.”

Regulus narrows his eyes. “Who’s ‘we’?”

“Oh relax Reggie,” Sirius says. Regulus does not relax. It seems like quite an important question to ask. “Me and Remus and Lily and Evan and Dorcas all worked on it together. Even if you don’t trust me, you trust at least one of them, right?”

Under normal, not life or death circumstances, Regulus mostly trusts Evan and Dorcas. And he will admit that all five of them are competent enough at potions that they would think through the consequences of mixing ingredients and calculating precise stirring times. But there’s no way that it was a simple potion. They may have had to do a little experimenting or altering of a recipe. That is, if they didn’t make it entirely from scratch. All of which are dangerous even for people who have a NEWT level education, which none of them do.

Not to mention the number of people Regulus trusts in life or death situations, like this very well might be, is exactly zero.

“I’m not sure I trust them this much, no,” is Regulus’s answer.

“Don’t you want your memories back?” Sirius asks softly.

Yes. Regulus very much did want his memories back. And the longer he has had to think about it, the more he’s thought about what other memories he could be missing. Memories of the Dark Lord or Dumbledore, for example. Memories that could help his plan succeed, help them win the war before it’s too late.

But Regulus was saved having to answer that question when James Potter suddenly appears from behind the curtain drawn around his bed.

He watches James’s eyes land on him and smile. And then he watches his eyes land on Sirius and his smile is replaced with a scowl.

“What the fuck Sirius?!” James whisper-yells. “I thought you wanted to be brothers again? What the hell are you going around punching him for?”

“Relax James,” Sirius answers. “I’m getting him his memories back and I need him in the hospital wing in case something goes wrong.” His eyes move back to Regulus. “Which it won’t.”

“And that required assault?!” James says, bringing the guilt back into Sirius’s eyes. “You of all people should know better than that. Why would you do that to him? Why would you do that to the both of you? Why do you keep trying to fucking sabatoge your relationship?”

“Don’t talk to me about sabotaging relationships, James Potter.”

“This is so not the same thing as keeping a secret Sirius. What is wrong with–”

“Can you both shut up?” Regulus interrupts, bringing his hands up to his temples. His head is pounding.

Over the course of their short argument, Regulus decided he needs to know what is missing from his head.

“If it works I’ll forgive you for punching me and if it doesn’t I’ll hit you back some time when you least expect it. Deal?”

“Deal,” Sirius says, handing him the vial.

Regulus refuses to change his mind or get cold feet, so he doesn’t even look at the contents of the vial, just swallows it. And then he waits.

And waits.

“Is anything happening?” Sirius asks

“No?” Regulus says

“Shit,” is Sirius’s reply.

“Shit,” James adds, though he looks over his shoulder as he does. “Footsteps,” he explains.

Sirius hops out of his chair, wincing as he does so, and gets into the bed next to Regulus’s. He didn’t see where James went as he watched Sirius move, but he’s out of sight so Regulus figures that’s probably good enough. He closes his eyes, pretending to sleep.

The footsteps falter as the door opens, then continue on past Regulus’s bed, then past Sirius’s. The footsteps come to a stop and then there’s a soft knock on a door, probably the door to Madam Pomfrey’s quarters. The door opens.

“Oh,” Madam Pomfrey exclaims softly in surprise. “Headmaster, I wasn’t expecting you. Is everything all right?”

“Oh yes Poppy. I apologize for the late hour,” Dumbledore says, “I was finishing up some business in my office and didn’t realize the time. I just came to check on your patients. Did you find anything… unusual, from Mr. Black’s examination?”

“Which one?” Madam Pomfrey says wryly.

“Well either one, but I was specifically curious about Regulus Black.”

Why the fuck was Albus Dumbledore expecting there to be something unusual in my exam? Regulus thinks, panicking. Dumbledore knows what the Blacks are like, has for a long time, so he wouldn’t have any interest in evidence of abuse or neglect. The only other thing Regulus knows is wrong is his memories. But how would Dumbledore know about that? What if there’s something else wrong with him? That would be just Regulus’s luck.

“Let me go grab the report,” Madam Pomfrey says morosely.

That’s not a no.

He listens to the shuffling of parchment as she finds the right report and lets the headmaster read it.

What the fuck is wrong with me now?! Regulus thinks, begging the two of them to talk about it out loud so Regulus isn’t left in the dark once again. Regulus is not a lucky person.

“Could you make a copy of this report? I’d like to add it to the personal files that I store here for safekeeping,” Dumbledore requests. Madam Pomfrey doesn’t answer verbally, but Regulus assumes she does so.

“Thank you, Poppy. I apologize for interrupting your night. I’ll be on my way now.”

Regulus hears a door close, must be Pomfrey’s quarters as he hasn’t heard the headmaster’s steps yet. When he does hear them, they’re heading in the wrong direction, away from the hospital wing’s entrance. He hears a metal drawer slide open and the shuffling of parchment. Then the footsteps head the right way, towards the door, as the drawer slides closed, presumably with a flick of his wand.

Regulus waits for a full minute after the door closes before he opens his eyes and sits up.

Sirius sits up right after.

Regulus looks towards the far end of the wing where Dumbledore must have stored the report and spots  a metal filing cabinet against the wall.

In an instant, James appears at that same filing cabinet, with his hand in the drawer, keeping it open. A shimmering piece of fabric now at his feet.

The Black brothers both hop out of bed and join James at the cabinet.

“You have an invisibility cloak?” Regulus asks when he reaches the other boy’s side. James just chuckles and nods. “That explains so much.”

Sirius is already digging through the files.

“They’re not labeled,” he complains. “What kind of psychopath doesn’t label a whole drawer full of files?”

Regulus’s head is starting to feel a little funny now. Like it’s buzzing with flies or something.

“My head feels funny,” he says and leans against James slightly.

“Shit,” the other two boys say at the same time

“I’ve got him,” James says, putting an arm around his waist. “Make sure the drawer doesn’t close,” he says to Sirius, “it probably has an automatic locking charm.” Sirius nods.

“Okay, let’s get you back to bed, Reg,” James says, moving the pair of them back across the room.

“Feels weird,” Regulus says, mumbling a little. “Find them, you can find them James.”

“Find what?” the other boy asks, sounding worried. They reach the bed and he eases Regulus down onto it. Regulus grabs the front of his shirt and makes him sit across from him, at the foot of the bed.

“Find my memories.”

“Reg, I don’t know how.”

He can’t explain why, but Regulus is sure James can find them now. “Use legilimency. My head feels buzzy.”

“Maybe that’s a good reason for me to stay out of your head.”

“No,” Regulus says, trying to say the words forcefully, but the connection between his brain and everything else, including his mouth, feels loose. “Do it. Find them. Please, James. Do this for me?”

“You’re sure?” James asks. Regulus tries to smile, to reassure him. He can’t tell if he manages to or not. He nods too, just in case. “Okay,” the older boy concedes. “Anything for you, Reg.”

And then he’s looking into James’s eyes.

The buzzing gets louder when James finds his way into Regulus’s mind. Regulus fights against the instinct to try and push him out.

At first, nothing seems to happen. He can feel James’s consciousness in his head with him, the other boy is flipping through moments, but they’re all moments Regulus already remembers.

But then the flecks in the older boy’s brown eyes seem to shimmer, just a little bit. And then a bright flash of light that starts in the center of his head expands outward rapidly and all the books in his mental library fall off the shelves. And then the light blasts the walls apart and so much more comes flooding in.

Sirius, fifteen, standing in front of him, Walpurga’s wand pointed at his chest

Sirius, eight, letting Regulus sleep in his bed after a nightmare

Sirius, twelve, telling Regulus about the ten Christmas trees in the Hogwarts front entrance

Sirius, sixteen, begging Regulus not to heal him, not to draw their mother’s wrath

Sirius, ten, sneaking him a present on his birthday

Sirius, fourteen, locking him in his room before running down the hall, pulling Walpurga’s focus away from Regulus

Sirius, three or four, holding his hand

Sirius, nine, telling Regulus they’d run away together someday and be a family, just the two of them.

And more. So many more moments. So many more versions of Sirius.

And then the buzzing intensifies and James scrunches up his nose in determination and then

BOOM

He feels like his head explodes. Like he’d been living with a bunch of rubber bands encircling his mind and they all suddenly snapped and his brain expanded to the correct size much too fast.

James Potter, twelve, shaking Regulus’s hand, welcoming him to Hogwarts

James Potter, thirteen, congratulating him on his first snitch catch

James Potter, fourteen, passing him the quill he dropped on his way out of Charms

James Potter, fifteen, telling him his brother is safe in the owlery

James Potter, fifteen, winking at him across the Great Hall at dinner

James Potter, fifteen, kissing him back on top of the astronomy tower

James Potter, looking at Regulus like he put the stars in the sky

James Potter, reading a book quietly across from him in their room of requirement

James Potter, looking at the stars on the ceiling, Regulus holding his hand with his own to point him in the right direction

James Potter, telling Regulus he loves him

James Potter, telling him about astronauts

James Potter zooming beneath him on the Quidditch pitch

James Potter, kissing him in a broom cupboard

James Potter, begging him to come home with him for the summer

Regulus has a death grip on the front of James’s t-shirt, his nails probably drawing blood beneath it. His eyes roll back in his head at the influx of information, breaking eye contact and ending the Legilimens spell.

But it doesn’t matter. The memories keep pouring in. But it’s getting easier to think around them. Or maybe they’re starting to slow down. Regulus doesn’t know.

He can feel James’s hands gripping his arms, keeping him upright. He might be calling Regulus’s name. Regulus can’t tell if that’s real life or a memory. Both could be true.

The buzzing hits an all time high, with another rush of memories coming in so fast he can’t even make anything out.

And then his head is quiet, his library walls slot back into place. The books, the old memories he always had and the new memories he regained, fly back into place on the shelves. His eyes slide shut.