Not Inevitable

James is panicking, still holding Regulus upright in his hospital bed even though his eyes slid shut.

Should I lay him down? Or would moving him be worse?

James definitely found the memories. And there were so many missing. More than James ever imagined. But they all came flooding in at once. What if it was too much for the younger boy to handle? What if he turned his brain into jelly?

James was so sure they would be able to be friends now, whether Regulus got his memories back or not. And now James went and fucked that up too.

He looks down at his chest, suddenly. Where Regulus’s fingers were still tangled in his shirt. They had gone slack when he passed out, but they were tightening back up, gripping his shirt again.

“Regulus?” James asks, his panic evident in his tone. James tries to fix that. “You’re in the hospital wing. I’m here with you. Sirius is here with you. Just, focus on opening your eyes, okay Reg? I’d really like to see your eyes.”

Regulus brings his other hand up next to his first, scrunching James’s t-shirt between those fingers too, pulling the two boys closer together.

James gets a few seconds to see Regulus’s eyes as they flutter open before the younger boy buries his face in James’s chest and cries.

James tentatively brings his arms up around Regulus, unsure if the pressure would make things better or worse. He doesn’t want to make Regulus feel trapped. But Regulus was the one who pulled James closer, so he decides to try it.

Once his arms are fully around Regulus, the younger boy moves his hands from James’s chest to his back, his arms squeezing around James forcefully, like if he let go James would disintegrate.

“I’m right here,” James whispers into the dark curls. “Sirius is here. We’re not going anywhere until you tell us to, Reg. We’ll be here as long as you want. We’re right here.”

James knew better to make any other promises, promises he couldn’t keep, ones that were outside of his control. He couldn’t tell Regulus he would be okay. He couldn’t even promise him he was safe now– James has no idea what was in that potion or what kind of damage he might have inflicted on Regulus’s mind. He couldn’t tell him his mother would never get a hold of him again. He couldn’t promise anything, except that he won’t leave. He was probably pushing it, making promises on Sirius’s behalf. But if push comes to shove, he just might chain Sirius to Regulus’s side if that's what the younger boy needs.

It takes a few minutes for Regulus to calm down. James repeats the facts and the one promise he can make as he rubs circles into the boy’s back. “You’re in the hospital wing. I’m right here. Your brother is right here. We’re gonna stay right here with you, for as long as you want.”

Regulus loosens his grip around James and moves his head back a little bit. James drops his arms from around Regulus, giving him more space to move. Regulus’s hands end up resting on James’s knees, his forehead still pressed against James’s chest.

“It wasn’t just her,” is the first thing Regulus says, whispers really, keeping his head against James’s chest. James doesn’t know what to do with his hands. He had expected Regulus to put more space between them when he started moving away. He decides to place them on his legs, near enough to Regulus’s that he could reach out and grab them if he wanted to. He doesn’t.

“It wasn’t just her,” he repeats with venom in his voice now. “Fuck my life.” Regulus’s entire body is tense now and his breathing is speeding up slightly.

“Okay. I don’t know what that means,” James replies calmly. “If you are able to explain, I’ll try to help. But if you can’t, we’ll just sit here a little longer alright?”

“Why is this my fucking life?” Regulus says, strengthening his grip on James’s legs. Jesus, he’s got a strong grip.

“Reg, can you do me a favor and loosen your fingers a bit?” James asks. I’m gonna have bruises tomorrow

It takes a minute for the request to register in Regulus’s head, but then he removes his hands completely and separates from James entirely

“It’s okay,” James says, before Regulus has a chance to feel guilty or try to apologize. “You’re just stronger than you look. You didn’t hurt me, I’m fine. Just didn’t want to find out if you could get any stronger than that. It’s okay.”

“Fuck,” is Regulus’s response. He’s breathing normally though. And now James can see his eyes and they seem pretty focused, all things considered.

“Could you try to use some more words? Words that aren’t swears maybe? ‘Fuck’ is a little bit vague, doesn’t really tell me how to help you.” James grins at Regulus, trying to get the other boy out of his own head as much as possible.

“It wasn’t just her,” Regulus says. “She did it, like Sirius thought. She took my memories of him, to try and keep me there, keep me as the perfect Black Heir. But he did it first. That’s why she didn’t try to kill me too. That part hasn’t made sense to me all month. If she took all the memories, then she would know about you. And if she knew about you, I would have been punished, regardless of whether or not I still remembered you. But by the time she got into my head to take Sirius out, you were already gone. He’d already taken you away. Because I was going to do it, and he couldn’t let that happen. And–” Regulus tilts his head and stares very intently at James’s t-shirt, trying to put the puzzle pieces together in his head.

“Fuck! That’s it. That’s what we’ve been missing. That’s what he’s fighting for. Not that I know what that is. I wonder if that’s in my head somewhere or if I never understood that. Whatever it is must be fucking important if he emptied my head for it. I don’t–” Regulus cuts himself off, but the rambling is obviously continuing in his head, given the far away look in his gray eyes.

James gives him a few moments to try and work through his thoughts, but he just seems to be getting dragged deeper into his mind. James elects to try and snap him out of it instead.

“Reg,” he starts. Those gray eyes latch onto his immediately. It’s a little unnerving. James can’t pinpoint exactly what’s wrong, but Regulus seems…off.

“Regulus, do you know what the date is?”

“January 15th.” Technically it’s the 16th now, but when Regulus passed out the first time, at the Quidditch game, it was the 15th, so that’s good enough for James.

“Who teaches Transfiguration at Hogwarts?”

“Professor McGonagall.”

James moves on to questions with less definitive answers.

“How are you feeling?”

“My head is too full, but it stopped buzzing. I remember. I remember all of it, I just– it's going to take me a minute to sort through it all.”

“That’s okay. Take all the time you need. Do you want to try to do that now or later?”

Regulus shakes his head quickly. “Not now.”

“All right. Can I ask you about the stuff you were saying before?” James pauses, looking for the answer in Regulus’s eyes. He doesn’t see an obvious yes or no. James really isn’t sure what to make of the look in Regulus’s eyes. His gaze hasn’t once moved from James’s own. The other boy hasn’t even blinked. It almost seems like he’s in a trance.

“Regulus, if you wanted to lie to me right now, could you?”

“Yes.” Regulus’s head tilts a little bit to the side in his confusion but his eyes stay very focused.

“Answer my next question with a lie: when’s your birthday?”

“Um.” Regulus pauses. “July 8th?” he answers. A lie.

“Okay,” James says. “Just wanted to make sure. We don’t know what that potion may have done to your state of mind. And you’re kind of acting like you’re under veritaserum.”

“I could lie to you if I wanted to. I just don’t see a reason to.” James hopes that’s true, but the boy has still yet to break eye contact.

“Alright. So about what you were saying before… you kept saying ‘it wasn’t just her.’ What did you mean by that?”

Regulus continues to stare at James, but the boy finally blinks.

“My mother took my memories,” Regulus says. “But she only took the ones of Sirius. The ones of you were already gone.”

“Do you know who took the ones of me?” James asks. Regulus was right, James thinks, his life is definitely fucked up for two different people to do this to him.

“Fucking Dumbledore,” Regulus answers hotly, though his eyes start to look glassy, like he might start crying again. James doesn’t know whether to push further or not.

“What can I do to help you Reg?” James asks, desperate to do something.

“Stay?” he says, barely even a whisper. “I don’t want to be alone right now.”

“Of course,” James promises. “I’m with you until you send me away.”

Regulus nods, finally dropping his eyes to look at his hands fidgeting in his lap. Barely two seconds later, his head shoots back up.

“Sirius?” he calls, louder by far than the two boys have been talking since Regulus woke up, but still not at a high enough volume to wake Madam Pomfrey.

“I’m right here,” Sirius responds, from a very different place than James expected. At some point Sirius must have moved across the room from the drawers to sit on his own hospital bed, the one right next to his brother. “What can I do for you, kiddo?”

“Be my brother again?” Regulus asks, his throat tight. Sirius is nodding before Regulus even finishes asking.

“Yeah,” he agrees, standing to meet Regulus between the two beds and enveloping the younger boy in a hug. Both brothers have a few tears rolling down their cheeks. “It’ll be you and me, Reggie. From here on out. Always you and me.”

James reaches up to wipe tears from his own face.

They stay like that for a long time.

Regulus is the first to break away, though he doesn’t go far.

“So, what’d you find in Dumbledore’s filing cabinet?” Regulus asks wryly.

“So much shit,” Sirius replies. “I don’t really know what any of it means though. It all seems vaguely medical, which may be why it’s here and not in his office. But, I don’t know, I could be wrong about that.”

“What’re the chances we can duplicate everything and take it to the room of requirement to look over?” James asks.

Regulus shrugs but there’s a glint of fire in his stormy eyes. “If we can’t copy it, we’ll just fucking take it.”

James and Sirius both laugh, having no qualms whatsoever about stealing.

Regulus and Sirius were both released from the hospital wing the next morning.

Madam Pomfrey, despite obviously wanting to, said nothing when she saw that Sirius had slept in a chair, slouched over onto Regulus’s bed. Regulus, who hadn’t actually managed to get any sleep, even after sending James back to his dorm, continued to card his fingers through Sirius’s hair while maintaining his signature Black Heir Glare in her direction.

Regulus wants to know exactly how much of her questioning look is due to him being nice to Sirius– whether it be because of their known rivalry in general or because it was Sirius who landed them both in the hospital wing in the first place– or because of whatever she had found out while examining him.

James took copies of all Dumbledore’s files with him when he left, so Regulus didn’t even get the chance to figure out what might be wrong with him. But now that he has the memory of Dumbledore erasing his memory, he is choosing to assume missing memories is the only thing wrong with him. At least, the only thing wrong with him that he didn’t already know about.

The lack of files left Regulus with nothing external to meticulously obsess over, so all of that focus went into re-learning and re-organizing his new/old memories.

Regulus feels like he’ll need a lifetime to finish the process.

He can’t quite figure out what’s wrong. Unlike when learning about himself through James, Regulus can remember his thought process behind his actions. He can remember what went through his head as the events of his life unfolded. As soon as James found the memories, they were right back where they belonged, as if they never left.

So why does it all feel so disconnected from Regulus himself? He knows that he kissed James Potter for the first time in the Astronomy Tower because he was drunk and James was there and James was always there. He looked at Regulus like he was something worth looking at. He can remember deciding to be brave, to live up to his name and be the heart of the lion and kiss the boy he liked. He can also remember immediately regretting it, followed closely by confusion when James didn’t hate him afterwards.

But there is a lot of time and space between the Regulus on top of the tower and the Regulus sitting in the hospital bed. The Regulus on top of the tower had a brother. They were on bad terms, but they were brothers– they hadn’t walked away from each other in a way that couldn’t be undone, not at that point. And the Regulus in a hospital bed knows who James Potter is, who he really is– how easy he is to anger sometimes, his insistence that he knows best, his quick judgements with a resistance to re-thinking them.

But then again, the Regulus on top of the tower was starting to know James Potter, really know him– how he would go to any lengths for the people he cares about, how incredibly calm and safe his presence can be, his faith in things that are good and light. The Regulus in a hospital bed hates his brother and all the responsibilities his absence forced off his shoulders and onto Regulus’s. The Regulus in a hospital bed experienced his brother leaving him behind, at the mercy of a family who never loved him.

Regulus became a different person during the months he couldn’t remember. Maybe he changed because of what he was missing. Maybe he changed because he’s sixteen and that’s just what people do. Getting the memories back doesn’t mean Regulus reverts back to the person he was when he made those memories. So where is he supposed to go from here?

Regulus still has no answer as he climbs the stairs to the seventh floor after dinner.

He had been avoiding any and all human beings since leaving the hospital wing, going so far as to hide in the kitchens with the elves during the day’s meals. Pandora let him get away with it, so either James or Sirius must have filled her in on last night’s events. Which means everyone else in his ragtag group of soon-to-be soldiers also knows.

I hate my life, Regulus thinks.

He paces three times in the corridor, opening the door and internally wincing at the onslaught of attention that is bound to come his way the moment he steps through.

None actually does come his way.

All nine of his classmates are buried behind sheets and sheets of parchment.

At the center of the parchment stacks are James and Sirius. Both seated, looking down, they look remarkably similar. Not so much in looks, though they both have dark hair falling into their eyes, but rather in manner. Their shoulders are slouched to the same degree, both periodically run their fingers through their hair, they both have fingers tapping on the table and legs bouncing below it. James has a quill held between his teeth and Sirius has his spinning through his fingers. They really could be brothers.

The parchment is not isolated to the kitchen table however. Lily, Remus, and Dorcas have plenty of it stuck to the wall nearby. They all have quills of their own, making notes in the margins or moving different sheets to different places on the wall, trying to see the whole picture.

And there was nearly as much parchment on the floor surrounding the table as there was on top of it. Pandora, Peter, Evan, and Barty are varying degrees of horizontal on cushions on the stone floor with their own quills scratching away.

Maybe the Great Hall wasn’t as crowded as I thought, Regulus thinks. It’s clear everybody in the room had been there for some time.

The volume of copied parchment hadn’t looked nearly as daunting when they had it all neatly stacked in the hospital wing before James shrunk it down to take back to the Room. Now, re-sized and spread out, it looked like there was more parchment than could have possibly fit into a filing cabinet.

Regulus doesn’t know what to do.

He doesn’t want to leave them to go through the sheets without him– he would feel bad about making them do the extra work alone and also he very much wants to know what it all says. But he also has no interest in drawing all of their attention to himself by announcing himself to the room.

Pandora solves the problem for him.

She’s laying on her stomach on the floor, the closest person to the door. She doesn’t say anything, just waves him over to her with a hand. He walks as quietly as he can to join her cross-legged on the stone. Nobody else seems to notice the movement at all.

She slides him a stack of parchment with a sparkle of mischief in her eyes. Regulus barely has a chance to read the first few words before she breaks the silence suffocating the room.

“I think it’s time we all take a break and get something to eat,” she says, pulling herself up to a seated position.

That’s enough to break everyone but James and Sirius out of their stupor, though no one looks in Pandora’s direction, electing to stretch and groan instead.

Remus goes over to Sirius and gently pulls the sheet of parchment he was reading out of his grasp. Lily goes over to James and, with a stack of parchment in her own hands, whacks him upside the head with it.

“Oi Potter!” she says, wacking him again when he tries to brush her off, “We’re done for the day. If you stare at all this parchment for any longer your eyeballs are gonna fall right out of your head.”

Regulus can’t stop a small smile forming on his face at the interaction as most of the other kids laugh softly.

“So bossy,” James grumbles, reaching his hand up to his head where Lily hit him.

“I cooked breakfast,” Remus says, forcibly removing Sirius from his chair to get him to stop looking down at the parchment, “Someone else is on dinner duty.”

“Dinner?” Sirius asks. “What happened to lunch?”

“We worked right through it I think,” Lily replies

“No, not possible,” Peter says. “Moony never skips meals.”

“I’ll take the dinner shift,” Evan volunteers, ignoring the argument over what meal it is, and walks over to the kitchen to look through the cabinets.

“You’re all corrupting me!” Barty shouts. “I can’t keep hanging out with a bunch of nerds who focus and concentrate all day– I have a reputation to uphold.”

“Yeah?” Regulus questions, catching on to Pandora’s plan– blend into the chaos, pretend he’s been there a while, making everyone question when he got there rather than what had happened the night before. “Don’t you also have a reputation for being a tough guy? That you ruin regularly by holding full conversations with Evan’s cat? I think your reputation can survive one day of secret homework. Your brain cells though? Maybe not so much.”

The other Slytherins as well as Peter and Lily are laughing at the comment before they piece together that it was Regulus who made it. James and Sirius both do not laugh, instead whipping their heads in his direction. Both seem equally hesitant to do anything. Regulus can’t blame them, he definitely has a history of pushing people away who try too hard– both of them know that first hand.

Pandora saves him again before either of the two boys get a chance to say anything and before the rest of the room properly registers his presence at all.

“So what’s for dinner, Ev?” she asks, standing up from the floor before holding out her hands to pull Regulus to his feet as well.

Regulus watches in Evan’s eyes as he processes Regulus’s sudden appearance in the Room and then quickly decides to play along.

“Spaghetti I think,” he responds, pulling a box out of the pantry and shaking it.

Thankfully, both James and Sirius take that as their cue not to make a big deal out of anything.

While everybody else takes the chance to stretch and goof off together, Regulus pulls Pandora slightly away from the group.

“So what have you guys found so far?” he asks.

“We’re not entirely sure,” Pandora says, her brow furrowed. “There’s lots of stuff written in runes so that’s what the proper nerds are working on.” She gestures to the parchment on the wall. “The rest of it is technically in English, but it really isn’t making much sense. There’s some stuff about wards and maybe some stuff about diagnostic spells. And then there are plenty of actual medical records for both students and staff,” she points to a couple stacks on the kitchen chairs that hadn’t been occupied by James and Sirius earlier, “but we’ve left those alone for now. It didn’t seem right to go through people’s private information unless we need to. Nobody read yours either, but we did find it.”

She walked with him over to one of the chairs and handed him a sheet of parchment from the top of the stack. “Here.” She wanders over to the kitchen, joining everyone else in their taunting of Evan’s culinary skills or complaining how much their brains hurt after so much studying. The noise all fades into the background for Regulus as he reads his file.

He snorts a laugh when he quickly gets to the end.

He looks up to see both Sirius and James’ eyes on him.

“Something funny?” Sirius asks carefully.

“Not exactly, but kind of,” Regulus answers, making his way closer to the kitchen and his classmates. “The report says nothing about missing memories. It just says I’m malnourished and that I’ve had Unforgivables used on me over a long period of time and as recently as this summer.”

“And that’s funny because…?”

“Because it’s so fucking typical. He’s got evidence right here that could get me out of that house, that could have gotten us both out long before now, and all he does is put it in a filing cabinet.”

“What about Madam Pomfrey?” James interjects. “She’s not just going to let him sweep this under the rug!”

“Maybe. Maybe not. If Dumbledore convinced her that doing nothing was for ‘the greater good’ or that he would handle it on his own, she would probably let herself get manipulated into staying quiet. People don’t like to think about things like that, especially if they can convince themselves that someone else will take care of it. And if that didn’t work, Dumbledore wouldn’t have any qualms about Obliviating her, I’m sure,” Regulus answers wryly.

Nobody seems to know what to say to that, confirming for Regulus that James and Sirius had filled them all in on last night's revelations. He decides he’ll deal with that later. If they’ve all been staring at parchment all day, they could use the break.

“So spaghetti, was it? Are you sure you can handle that Rosier?” Regulus says, joining the group around the kitchen and taking the chance to just be. He’ll explain what he can after dinner.

James is trying his best not to stare at Regulus. He really is. But unlike the last few months, Regulus is doing a whole lot of staring at James, which he is finding very difficult to ignore.

They cleared away most of the parchment from the main room for dinner, instead setting it all up in a study that appeared behind one of the doors along the wall. They would all continue to look through it and try to put the pieces together whenever they had free time, which they already had little of. Between classes, studying, quidditch practice for some of them, prefect duties for others, legilimency and occlumency training, as well as the dueling practice they’d been starting up, their free time was practically nonexistent anyway. But they’d find time. They would have to. If Dumbledore doesn’t want them to know something, chances are high that it would be worth it to figure it out.

But James can’t really bring himself to care about that when Regulus has looked at him more in the last hour across the table than he had in the last six months. One moment he would be looking at James with a hint of a smile, then he’d furrow his brow or tilt his head. A few times he frowned in James’s direction. Mostly he just looked lost and confused. And whenever he wasn’t looking at James, he was looking just to his left at Sirius instead, going through the same motions.

Thankfully, everyone else at the table did  not try to draw any of the three of them into too much conversation. Everyone else laughed and joked and talked around them, not ignoring them exactly, but giving them the option to stay out of it– an option they all took.

James wants to hear about every thought going through Regulus’s head but he also never wants to know. Because, now that Regulus remembers everything, now that he has a real choice, what if he still wants nothing to do with James? What if that was what he wanted even before his memories were stolen?

James was pulled out of his thoughts after the dishes had been stacked in the sink to clean themselves.

“Alright Regulus,” Barty says loudly, but in a light tone. “Time to face the music. Tell us what you’re gonna tell us so we can all move on with our lives.”

Regulus simply rolls his eyes in response and rises from his seat at the table to stand in front of the pensieve. James and Sirius move quickly to meet him, followed by everyone else.

James has a feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach. This whole pensieve thing has never once worked out well for them. It’s where he first saw Voldemort, it’s where he watched every one of his friends die, it’s where he watched as his best friend nearly bled out at the hands of his mother. James wants to believe that this trip to the pensieve at least can’t be any worse than the last ones, but even he isn’t optimistic enough for that given the history.

Sirius seems to have come to a similar conclusion, given that his hands are shaking slightly. Regulus almost appears to be the picture of calm, but it’s the mask. And even the Black Heir is showing a little bit of anxiety, a tightness around his eyes.

Regulus simply points his wand at his temple, still having yet to say a word, and deposits a silvery strand into the pensieve. The tension in the room is palpable as they all reach towards the basin together.

James is tugged upside-down and right-side up, before finding solid footing in the room of requirement– his and Regulus’s iteration of it with the bed and the armchairs and the bookshelves and the art on the walls and the stars on the ceiling.

James glances at Regulus, who is already looking back at him. Regulus gives him a sad smile before dropping his gaze to the floor, the place his gaze always goes to when he doesn’t want to watch what’s about to play out in front of him. That’s not a good sign, James thinks.

Memory-Regulus is the only person in the room, pacing in front of the bookshelves and the fireplace. He seems to be arguing with himself internally, his eyes quickly shifting back and forth, not really seeing the room around him, but whatever is going on inside his head instead.

The room holds no obvious clues as to when this memory occurred.

“Reg, when was this?” James asks, shifting his gaze from the Regulus pacing to the Regulus staring at the floor.

Storm gray eyes meet his own. “Just after the last time we talked before… everything.”

That explains the pacing, then.

James remembers that night. Of course he remembers that night, the last night. He’s never forgiven himself for pushing too hard, for pushing Regulus away.

They met up just after the Leaving Feast, as soon as James could get away from his friends. James had gotten there before, Regulus– not by too much, but enough that he was nervous when the younger boy walked into the room.

Regulus’s face lit up as soon as he saw James, a full smile, one that reached his eyes.

“Hey you,” James says, smiling back, but not moving from where he’s rooted to the floor in front of the bed.

“Hey yourself,” Regulus responds, coming right up to him and kissing him. James hadn’t been expecting that, and froze for a moment, just a moment, before kissing him back.

Regulus quickly pushed James back so he was sitting on the edge of the bed, Regulus leaning over to kiss him standing between his legs. He had one hand in James’s hair and the other pulling on his tie.

But very quickly, Regulus pulls away. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

“What?” James says, grabbing the front of Regulus’s shirt to pull him back down to his lips. “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong.”

“Jamie,” Regulus says, gently stopping the kiss, “What is it?”

James looks down at the floor between their feet. He had been nervous about the mood Regulus would be in when they met up, having to go home to his parents tomorrow. James hadn’t expected kissing tonight, but now he really didn’t want it to stop, especially not to have this conversation. But at the same time, James needed them to have this conversation or he would go crazy.

“I need to talk to you about something.”

“Okay…”

“I just– I don’t want to fight again. I just want to talk.”

“Is this about Sirius again? James, we’ve already talked about this. I don’t want–” Regulus cuts himself off when James shakes his head at the floor. “What then?”

“Reg, I–” James starts. “I just–” he tries again.

Regulus tilts James’s head up with a hand cupping his jaw. They lock eyes and spend a few breaths just looking at each other, until James shifts his gaze away. Regulus sighs and sits down next to him on the bed.

“Please talk to me?” he asks softly, reaching out to grab his hand.

“I’m trying to,” James answers. “Can you– will you promise not to just up and leave when I do? That you’ll stay and listen to me? Please?”

James can tell that he’s scaring Regulus with his pleading and lack of actual information. He feels guilty about that. He knows that Regulus always jumps to the worst case scenario in situations like this. But James needs him to hear him out.

“Okay,” Regulus promises, though apprehensively.

James pulls Regulus’s hand closer and unlaces their fingers, so he can play with them as he talks, distracting himself from what he’s about to do.

“Reg, I want you to come home with me tomorrow.” James looks up from their hands to see Regulus open his mouth to argue. He looks back down at their fingers and continues before Regulus can interrupt.

“I don’t want you to go back to that house, to your family. And I don’t think you want to either. So come home with me. With Sirius too. Ideally for me, we’d tell Sirius about us, but I know you don’t want that, so we won’t do that, I promise. We can keep this secret still. Or if you really want to, we could stop seeing each other at all while we’re home. Whatever you want. Just come home with me, be safe with me. Please. I don’t– I’m not sure–” He takes a shaky breath. “I can’t stand the thought of you going back there where I can’t reach you, can’t protect you, can’t see you and know that you’re alright. Please don’t go back, Reg.”

James can feel tears threaten to spill over as he finishes talking. Regulus pulls his hand out of James’s grasp and at that the tears do fall.

“I can’t. I have to go back.”

James had been dreading this conversation for at least a month, putting it off and putting it off until the last possible moment. They don’t often talk about Regulus’s family or what it’s like for him in that house, but when they do Regulus is always adamant that he can’t change his situation. James has never understood why he can’t. Not now at least, now that he has somewhere else to go.

“Why?” James demands, his temper rising. “Why do you have to go back there? They don’t love you Regulus, they don’t even know you! They love the idea of you, of you being the perfect Black Heir, doing whatever they say as soon as they say it. They hurt you, and they let other people hurt you, and it’s going to keep happening. Can’t you see that? I know you can see that. Please see that.”

James has tears running down his cheeks at this point, and he looks up from the floor to see wetness in Regulus’s eyes too.

“I can’t James.”

“You can!” James yells.

“I can’t!” Regulus yells back, jumping to his feet. “You don’t understand, you never will. And I’m glad you don’t. I’m glad that you will never have to experience the– the fucking politics of it all, that you won’t ever have to think so hard about surviving in your own fucking house!”

“What is there to understand?!” James shouts, getting to his own feet and pushing his way into Regulus’s personal space.

“There’s nothing for you to understand! You have no idea– literally, no idea– what would happen if I went home with you. You wouldn’t be the first person she’s ever killed, you know. She could do it, she will do it. Not to mention what she’d do to me, to Sirius. There are worse things to be than dead. Whatever you think you know about my mother, I promise you, she’s worse.”*

“That’s all the more reason for you to leave!”

“I CAN’T!”

“You can,” James says, quieter now, shaking his head as he takes a step backwards, away from Regulus. He can tell that if he keeps pushing, he’ll lose Regulus for good. “You can. It’s a standing offer. I want to take you there with me tomorrow, but if you can’t come tomorrow, come when you can. Come when you need to. Because if you go back there, you will need to. It’s just going to get worse the closer this war gets. Just come with me now, please. Just come with me and we’ll live our lives– we’ll stay out of this fucking war, we’ll go to art museums, and we’ll read a million books about your muggle science, and we’ll grow up and grow old together. Or apart. It doesn’t matter as long as you’re around to see it. Please Regulus.”

“You’d do that?” Regulus asks, tears flowing freely. “You’d be able to do that, to stay out of the war with me?”

“Yes,” James says, feeling a flutter of hope in his chest for the first time.

“Really? Even if all your friends join up with Dumbledore, sign up to go running head first into danger– you’ll stay with me?”

James swallows. He hadn’t actually put that much thought into it, he hadn’t even known he was going to make that offer before he did so. But he loved Regulus. James didn’t know if, when the future came, when the war came, he’d be able to sit on the sidelines while other people took the risks. Up until ten seconds ago, he had fully intended to be on the front lines of this war. But he’d do whatever it takes to keep Regulus safe, and that starts by getting him out of Grimmauld Place. The rest is a problem for later.

“Yes,” James answers.

“I–” Regulus starts, sitting back down on the bed. “I don’t think I can,” he whispers miserably.

“Will you take some time to think about it, really think about it? Please?”

Regulus nods. The flutter of hope in James’s chest turns into a tidal wave.

“Thank you,” James says, leaving the room to give Regulus the time and space he needs to think.

The next day Regulus didn’t speak to James. He walked right up to the Blacks on platform 9 ¾ without a single look in James’s direction.

And then, as James and Sirius made their way to the Potters, the three Blacks walked in front of them. Orion pulled on James’s arm, keeping him away from Sirius, while Walpurga grabbed Sirius harshly by the arm and held on. The four Blacks disapparated before James had the chance to take in a full breath.

Regulus’s memory must have picked up where James’s memory of the conversation ended, after he left the room. James knows now that Dumbledore had to have gotten his hands on Regulus between that conversation and arriving at Kings Cross. But what James doesn’t know is what Regulus’s decision had been before his memory was altered: was he planning to go with James or, even with his memories, was he always going to go back to his family?

Memory-Regulus stops pacing, facing the soft glow of the fireplace. He takes a few shaky breaths before he steels himself and the mask of the Black Heir slots into place, divulging nothing– a blank canvas for other people to paint exactly what they want to see. He turns sharply on his heel and leaves the Room.

He walks with purpose down the stairs and through the corridors before landing in front of a gargoyle.

“Lemon drop,” Regulus tells the gargoyle, who reveals a set of spiral stairs that deposit him inside of Dumbledore’s office.

The last time  James had been inside the office had been only a month earlier than this memory. Dumbledore had called all four of the Marauders into his office, individually, to check up on them a month after The Incident. Two weeks after the summons, when the four of them were finally able to talk to each other civilly again, they realized they had all ended up making the same promise– to fight against the Dark. To fight for Dumbledore, when the time came.

James had been proud of his friends for all deciding to do the right thing on their own. Now, James can’t help but wonder if any of them actually decided anything. Or if Dumbledore had spent five years attaching them to puppet strings, so slowly they didn’t even notice, and then tugging them in exactly the right way to make them dance the way he had always intended for them.

When Memory-Regulus enters the office, Dumbledore has his back to him, ruffling through books and parchment laid out on a table.

“The Master of Death,” Dumbledore breathes, in awe. “I can’t believe it– Gellert was right. They’re real, all three of them. He was right.”

The old wizard turns around quickly, probably to look for more information on whatever epiphany he just had, but catches sight of Regulus instead.

“Mr. Black,” he snaps, harsher than James had ever heard the man speak, by tenfold. “What, may I ask, are you doing here?”

Regulus doesn’t respond. He doesn’t look scared– he doesn’t look like anything except the mask– but his lack of action is telling enough for James. Regulus freezes when he feels unsafe, and he’s freezing now.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you leave quite yet, having heard what you did,” Dumbledore continues.

At this, Regulus draws his wand. But with a small flick of Dumbledore’s wrist and the wand flies out of Regulus’s hand. Another flick and Dumbledore casts an immobilization charm and Regulus is really, truly frozen now.

How could he do that? How could he do that to a child, a child he was supposed to be protecting?! James screams internally. He never even found out what Regulus came to tell him. And James can’t imagine how Regulus must have felt, being trapped in his own body with no way to fight off the attack.

And then with another twirl of Dumbledore’s wand, Regulus’s eyes roll into the back of his head and the pensive surroundings get very fuzzy around the edges.

“Oh Mr. Potter,” Dumbledore sighs, wand still pointed at Regulus’s temple. “What did you get yourself caught up in?”

James sees red.

He feels his muscles tense, in preparation for a fight. He feels his wand in the palm of his hand, pointing it at the memory of Dumbledore before his mind catches up and he realizes the action is futile. But his wand doesn’t lower and his muscles don’t relax. In fact, if he doesn’t do something to release all the tension that is now coursing through his body he might just crush his wand to pieces in his hand.

This man stole Regulus away from himself. This man refused to act to protect both Sirius and Regulus from their parents. He will do the same in the future to James’s own son– he has done and will continue to do so to who knows how many others. This man decided against expelling the students that violently attacked fourteen year old Mary MacDonald. This man did nothing to stop Lucius Malfoy from raping thirteen year old Regulus within the walls of Hogwarts for an entire school year. This man, a man nearly solely responsible for the safety and wellbeing of hundreds of kids ten months out of the year, continuously allows his own inaction to put them at risk. And now that he’s finally taking action, it’s by pointing a wand at a student’s head, altering his memory, altering his identity, and his entire future for the worse.

And then Regulus, Now-Regulus, is in front of him, gray eyes locked on his own. He reaches out a hand to rest on top of James’s and gently pushes it down to his side, his wand along with it.

“Not now, Jamie,” Regulus says firmly but quietly. “You can’t do anything to a memory. But we’ve got a plan, remember? We’ll get him. We’ll get them both. It’s just gonna take a little time, okay?”

James doesn’t answer, instead his eyes drift over to the now blank and empty gray eyes of Memory-Regulus. He looks slightly confused, but more than that, overwhelmingly so, he looks hollow and lost.

“I think you were headed to bed, were you not, Mr. Black?” Dumbledore says, guiding the boy towards the exit as the memory swirls around them.

Regulus’s hand is still on his when James finds his footing on the stone floor of the Room of Requirement.

“Reggie, I don’t understand,” Sirius says in a small voice.

“I know,” Regulus says, stepping away from James. The back of his hand feels colder now, without the warmth from the younger boy’s palm. His hostility melts away, replaced instead by guilt.

If I had just stayed with him, James thinks, If I hadn’t left him alone, Dumbledore never could have gotten to him. How could I do that to him? How could I dump all of that on him, shout at him, and then just leave him alone?

Regulus moves back to the kitchen table, slumping down into a chair with his head in his hands. The rest of them follow.

“There’s a lot of nuance, in that memory and in every interaction I’ve witnessed of Dumbledore’s, that’s hard to explain clearly. So much of it is just guessing at his intentions and his reasons for doing things. But at the same time, it’s more than guessing, I know I’m right. I just don’t have anything to back it all up besides my word. And we all know that the word of a Slytherin, the word of the heir to the most ancient and noble House of Black, means less than nothing to anyone who has the power to do something about it.”

“Well you’ve got at least nine people believing you at your word, Regulus,” Remus tells him sincerely.

“Okay well let's start with what you guys noticed for yourselves and go from there? Besides the obvious, I mean.”

Regulus turns to Sirius first.

“I’m sorry,” Sirius says. “I want to strangle him with my bare hands, but I can’t come up with any not-obvious reasons as to why. I know that they’re there, I can feel that they’re there, but I can’t name them.”

James can. He can name one, at least. “You’re not even a person to him,” he whispers. “You walked in and heard something he didn’t want you to, and then you were just an obstacle, something to be overcome. And then after that, when he found out about us,” James can feel his grip tighten around his wand again and has to think very hard about loosening each of his fingers, “it was like you weren’t even part of that equation. He only saw me, what I got ‘caught up in.’”

“Yeah, he’s like that with most Slytherins,” Evan explains. “The ones he’s sure are going to join the Dark side, at least.”

“Nah,” Dorcas says, “it’s all of us.”

“Why was that even a big deal to him?” Peter asks. “What’s it to him who’s dating who?”

James was wondering that as well.

“Because James got Sirius out,” Pandora answers. “At least in Dumbledore’s mind, it was James’s doing. He couldn’t let that happen to Regulus too.”

“Why not?!” Sirius shouts

“Because then he wouldn’t have a weapon anymore,” Remus answers. The Gryffindors all share similar looks of confusion. In contrast, the Slytherins do not.

Is there really such a difference, James thinks, between Gryffindors and Slytherins? The way we think, our views on the world, the way we’re treated– how can it all come down to a decision made by a hat when we’re eleven years old?

Remus goes on to explain, though in a very different direction than James was expecting.

“He did the same thing to me.”

Nobody interrupts the sandy-haired boy, but Sirius’s anger visibly grows.

“I was bitten by a werewolf named Fenrir Greyback,” Remus says calmly. “He has since become notorious, not just because he attacks people, but because he often chooses to specifically attack children. I wasn’t the first child he changed, but I was one of the earlier ones. A year after my attack, he had already turned a dozen children and he has yet to be stopped.” Sirius reaches out and takes Remus’s hand. Both seem more grounded with the gesture. “I was one of the first. There should be dozens of kids just like me, only a little bit younger. And yet, I’m the only werewolf at Hogwarts.”

Remus pauses, letting the information sink in. It doesn’t sink in for James.

“Do you know what Dumbledore asked me last year? When he called us all into his office after what happened last spring? He wanted to know how far I would go to ‘pay it forward.’ At the time, I didn’t hesitate to tell him I’d do anything, both because I wanted kids like me to get the chance to go to Hogwarts and learn and make friends but also because I owed it to Dumbledore to do so. He was the one who got me into school, the reason I had any friends, the reason I had the possibility of a real life. And to an extent, that’s still true. He is the one that got me here. But he’s also the reason that no one else did. He’s the reason there aren’t any other werewolves at Hogwarts, despite there being plenty of school age. He already had his weapon. He had me to be the werewolf on his side, whether that be as physical power or as a link to other werewolves, I’m not sure what his intentions are. But he has me, so he doesn’t have a need for any other werewolves. And if he doesn’t need them, why would he fight for them?”

Remus pauses again. James almost wishes that the information didn’t sink in this time. Wishes he could continue to be ignorant to how long Dumbledore has been setting up this game of chess– years, if not decades. James and his friends' entire school careers had been a set up. All of the good memories James has of Hogwarts, and James has so many of them, are tainted now that he knows all the meddling Dumbledore has done to make them happen in the first place.

Remus pulls his eyes off Sirius’s hand in his own to look at Regulus. “He wants you as a spy, doesn’t he? He lost Sirius as an option when he started going to the Potter’s over holiday breaks. Sirius would have been the easier option for Dumbledore, easier to convince at the least, probably easier to manipulate– no offense Sirius– but he could allow it because he had you. It’s not like he could erase the memory of James from Sirius’s head, they still have to live together and they have a much longer history. But if he took James and his ideas of running away out of your head, you would probably be a Death Eater he could turn into a spy later.”

Remus doesn’t say any of this with malice or judgment. He simply states the facts.

“I think so, yeah.” Regulus says with a sigh.

James marvels at the ease with which the Slytherins and Remus accept that, or worse, already knew that. James wishes he could go back in time and be less naive. He wishes he could go back and pull the Black brothers out of that house when his mother offered during their second year. James wishes he could travel back in time far enough to keep Dumbledore from ever becoming Headmaster of a school.

But then there’s a small smile edging onto James’s face as he has a second, and much nicer, revelation.

“You were going to do it? You were going to leave?” he asks Regulus

Regulus gives him a tight smile before his eyes drop to study the wood grain of the table.

As his eyes drop, James’s heart sinks. Not a nicer revelation after all.

Regulus was going to leave his family. He was going to go with James and be safe and make the choice to change his circumstances. And when he was prevented from doing that, James didn’t go after him. James just accepted that Regulus would never leave his family. James didn’t believe in him.

“I’m so sorry,” James murmurs, feeling pinpricks of tears in his eyes. He blinks quickly to get rid of them– he’s so fucking tired of crying.

“There’s nothing you could have done, James,” is Regulus’s response.

He can tell Regulus believes it. On some level, James knows it to be true. He did, after all, spend three days illegally apparating around London in the hopes of randomly happening upon the Unplottable Grimmauld Place and rescuing the both of them. But eventually he realized he would never find it. Between that and his mother’s explosion when she had found out what he was trying to do– James had never seen her so angry. He honestly hadn’t understood the reaction until later, when his father explained that they both truly believed that if he did manage to find them, he wouldn’t make it back home alive. She hadn’t been mad at him necessarily, she had been scared for his life. And while that made him more reluctant to act carelessly, it made his heart ache even more knowing that Sirius and Regulus were both in that house.

So yes, it is quite likely that there was nothing James could have done. But he hates that he did nothing. He hates that he didn’t have faith in Regulus. He hates that he couldn’t be Sirius’s savior. He hates that everything that happened that summer was his fault for not keeping them both away from Walpurga. He should never have let either of them go. He should have dragged them right through the Floo in McGonagoll’s office straight into his living room to keep them safe and left kings cross out of the equation all together. But he didn’t. He failed them.

While James made his way through all of those thoughts, the conversation continued around him.

“Okay, so Dumbledore’s a bastard. That’s not new, even if you numbskulls are just piecing that together. What is new is this Master of Death shit. And it sounds ominous,” Barty interjects

“And Dumbledore obviously thought it was important enough to Obliviate you over it. He didn’t know about James when he started,” Lily adds

“I have no idea what that means,” Regulus responds. “Anyone else?”

Nine head shakes.

“Great,” Barty groans, “more fucking homework.”