Regulus I
3rd December, 1979, 23:55
Grimmauld Place is littered with the sparkles of muggle Christmas trees twinkling from behind curtains, as Regulus Black peers out to look up at the stars. Cygnus peers back, blinking dully next to Draco, whose stars sparkle far brighter than normal. Regulus sighs and hurries to the back of the house.
Leaning over the thin fire escape that wraps around the back of his home and craning his neck to look past Grimmauld Place No. 11’s protruding and rather ugly extension, he finds Orion’s stars shining brilliantly, and breathes a sigh of relief. Bellatrix, nestled in Orion’s shoulder, twinkles merrily away.
Regulus wasn’t particularly fond of Divination and although he had admittedly largely falsified his generally ominous predictions, the subject had still been a constant source of headaches that only ended with his grateful dropping of the subject in fifth year. Despite this, he maintained a steady sense of superstition where the stars were concerned, amplified by consistent empirical evidence that the visibility of his family’s stars did seem to correlate in some mystical way with their health.
The real Bellatrix, now a Lestrange but no less of a Black, had left Grimmauld Place earlier that evening after a quarrelsome afternoon tea with himself and his mother, snarling to Regulus as she left about a gruesome-sounding assault on a family in Northumberland that she was set to take part in this evening. Normally, Regulus would have no fear at all for his brilliant cousin, but today something had made him constantly uneasy.
Perhaps because of the depths of his unease, perhaps because of how disquieted his other predicament is making him, his eyes fall further down in the sky to the spot that, for the last four years, he has fervently avoided observing. A gasp escapes his lips.
Sirius, the sky’s brightest star, is twinkling only dimly. With bated breath, Regulus waits to see if some wispy cloud might be passing over—but as the seconds pass the star only looks even gloomier.
Regulus sits down in a heavy motion onto the metal stair beneath him. Sirius’s good health—however little Regulus wanted to think about him or his health—was a necessary part of what Regulus was planning. Sirius would very soon find himself the last representative of the House of Black, and as much as Regulus already reviled the thought of how Sirius might further denigrate that ancient legacy, all that was for nothing if Sirius wasn’t even going to live long enough to do anything at all.
Not for the first time, Regulus wishes his brother was anyone else at all—someone kinder, who might take pity on Regulus’ misery—someone more brutal, who might be able to solve the situation—someone less headstrong, who might be persuaded by Regulus’s silver tongue. But if Orion Black, considerably more guileful and commanding than Regulus ever has been, had had no effect on his son’s determination to flout his legacy, what hope could Regulus possibly have?
He sneaks another tentative glance at the wayward dog-star, still dismal-looking.
I have no choices left, he thinks. Sirius has to be the family’s future again, whether he likes it or not.
Even more tentatively, he brushes the left sleeve of his robe aside for a moment. The sliver of jarring red ink that lurks underneath writhes in dreadful greeting and he shudders, scratching his wrist in his haste to shove the sleeve back into place. An already frightening secret to keep hidden whilst at Hogwarts, the Mark has become a constant torment in the six months since he left school. The reality of service to the Dark Lord has proved entirely unlike his hopes—or, perhaps more truthfully, he lacks the stomach for the tasks he had previously gleefully imagined carrying out. Bellatrix had been a little disappointed at his reluctance. She had clearly expected a compatriot once he left school and had been forced to instead to cultivate an interest in their cousin Evan instead, who showed a far more promising interest in the practice of the Dark Arts.
Regulus twists his fingers together and forces himself to stand up again and walk down the squeaking stairs to the fragile wooden door he had exited through a few minutes before. The door hums rather resentfully at being opened again but Regulus ignores its complaint, slamming the bolt rather harshly. More and more things in his house seem to complain at being interfered with these days. They had become used to the silence and stillness that had followed his father’s death nearly a year ago and appeared determined to maintain it. Alright, Regulus thinks childishly, just you wait. I shan’t be disturbing you much longer.
Grimmauld Place and Regulus had never got along particularly well. Whilst he tried always to be as obliging as possible to the lurking troll’s feet, the moving shelves, and to not show his resentment of the drawers that swallowed his socks and the mirrors that insulted his curls, the house’s magical possessions had always disliked him. In another uncharacteristic move, he thought again of Sirius, and how—despite the way that Sirius seemed determined to anger and insult their family home—the stairs never tried to trip him or the walls shift to make him lose his way. Perhaps the trick is to be as contrary as possible.
That method certainly seems to work for his mother, who he finds on the lowest level reading in the drawing room. In some vague effort to compensate for his ever-increasing senility and ever-decreasing skill at cleaning, Kreacher had recently covered most of the unused rooms in the house with dust sheets. His mother had shrieked loud enough to give him headache the night that she found the grand piano dust-sheeted, and the drawing room had promptly been excavated. “Burying me in own home,” she had accused Regulus, who’d sighed and tried to quietly explain to Kreacher that he’d better avoid doing anything that might draw attention to how much their lives had changed in the last four years.
Grimmauld Place hadn’t been doing too well back when Regulus was toddling, but its decline since Sirius had left had been sharp indeed. Refusing to face the magnitude of relegating their clever, handsome, and shining Sirius to the likes of the blood traitors he now associated with, his parents chose instead to shut themselves off from the outside world. As tense as dinner parties and evening dances had been with Sirius skulking in corners and hissing rude remarks at honoured guests, facing them without him at all was unbearable for all of them, and so Grimmauld declined from an already faded star into a gloomy, dusty memory. As the stress wore on Orion, it further transformed temporarily—very temporarily, for it was a short illness that killed his father—into a hospice. Refusing to associate with St. Mungo’s and risk having to entertain the mercy of half-bloods and mudbloods, and worn thin and resigned from the loss of his son, Orion died quickly and without making much effort to live.
Regulus sympathises. Living with Walburga as a wife had perhaps never been easy, but there must have been a time when it was at least somewhat pleasant. After Sirius left, she seemed endlessly determined to undermine and aggravate his father at every turn. Regulus supposed she blamed him for driving Sirius away, but as she never mentioned his name he had no way to know for sure.
Surveying his mother’s lined face now, Regulus tries to suppress any physical demonstration of the sigh that leaves him, but she must sense his reticence, because she is instantly snappish when she addresses him.
“Where have you been hiding all evening?” she asks. “You missed dinner. It’s high time you made yourself useful. Kreacher started decorating for Yule without your help and the evergreens are askew. He’s still trembling from that illness.”
Regulus makes the mistake of pinching his nose, which irritates her further. He disagrees with her decision to decorate the house, although he won’t ever say that. He fails to see the point of putting up decorations that neither of them to take any joy in, and that no one else will even see. But his mother persists in pretending that nothing has changed, and he hasn’t the heart or the energy to challenge her.
“I’ll fix them tomorrow,” he says instead, placatingly. “There’s still three weeks before the feast. Plenty of time.”
She huffs, eyes looking critically as his windswept robes. “Have you been flying again?” she demands. “You shouldn’t be leaving the house at all.”
Ever since the toll of the Dark Lord’s requests had become visible on her son’s face, Walburga had decided it was better to pretend that she knew nothing about it. When Regulus disappeared without explanation and when breakfasts were spent silent and miserable after long nights, Walburga asked him if he was with friends, if he had been out flying, or if he might perhaps be taking an interest in some business matters. Sick of having to mutter excuses and sick of the look of worry and guilt that lurked in her eyes as she asked her glib questions, he started making up fanciful lies.
Thankfully, her hold on reality seems as tenuous as Kreacher’s these days, and she doesn’t question when his increasingly outlandish stories about opening a wildly successful potions supply store with Barty (“a good boy, always,” she said thoughtfully, “and good blood, despite his father,”) and becoming the hugely popular Seeker for the English Quidditch Team (“you always had silly notions,” she says, disapprovingly) clash with each other in obvious contradiction.
Today, he doesn’t have to lie. “I wasn’t out,” he says. “I was just looking at the stars.”
She hums. “Everybody’s well, of course?”
“Of course,” he lies, immediately. She nods and turns away and he breathes a sigh of relief at not being discovered.
“Call Kreacher if you’re hungry,” she says, returning to the book in her hands.
Thoroughly dismissed, he backs out into the corridor and closes the door, rapping the doorknob harshly with his wand when the serpent that forms it unwinds and tries to wrap around his hand. It hisses at him sulkily and he suppresses another groan.
Slowly climbing the stairs to the topmost storey, Regulus pushes open his own door, glaring at the childish nameplate he’d inscribed some seven years ago. His room is as he’d left it before rushing out to check on Bella—bed tidy and desk coated in papers. All but one of the candles in the chandelier have blown out and the flickering light creates eerie shadows across the scattered pages. With a muttered incendio, the candles reignite and the room becomes warmer and brighter. The greens of his draping bed and shimmering silver voiles become cosy and for a moment his throat sticks. This room will not be his much longer, and he spares a moment to wonder when it will next have an occupant.
Sirius’s son, perhaps, slips unbidden into his mind, and the lump in his throat threatens to turn into a sob.
Stop being maudlin. He digs his nails into his palms and sits down politely at his desk, shifting some of the papers he’d finished with to one side. Today’s Monday. Five days left.
Five days left until Friday, which is the day he will either live or die, dependent on the mercy of the Dark Lord’s lake and the Inferi that lurk beneath its surface.
Sirius wouldn’t wait. Seeing the dog-star has clearly cracked something in his head. He hasn’t thought of his brother in years—other than when Bella mentions him—and now he can’t keep his brother out of his mind.
It never mattered as children, that Regulus listened to everything their parents told them, or that he did everything they asked. Sirius was always brighter and cleverer, and even when their parents screamed at him there was still a respect—a pride in his fierceness and his endless spiritedness—that neither of them could ever summon up for Regulus. He was fairly sure they both loved him—and certainly they liked him, more than Sirius even—but great emotions were reserved for and devoured by Sirius, not him. Sirius was adored and hated, celebrated and insulted, and ultimately was interesting—an attribute that Regulus, no matter how hard he tried at times, lacked.
Regulus had felt for the last five months that he might be on the verge of doing something as interesting as something Sirius might do—even if he was going to die doing it. He couldn’t however help suspecting that Sirius might do it with considerably more style and—perhaps—manage to not be so dull as to die in the process. But try as he might, Regulus could find no way out of the Dark Lord’s trap. Only bringing another wizard could possibly help, and there was no one alive that Regulus would trust besides Kreacher. Bella and Barty were out of the question; his other cousins were both implicated with the Dark Lord themselves. He couldn’t risk his mother by involving her, and he feared an immediate arrest if he showed himself in the vicinity of Hogwarts. His activities since leaving the school had not remained a secret for long, and any former teacher would be deliver him straight to the Aurors or to Dumbledore himself.
Regulus had no desire to exchange kneeling at one half-blood’s feet to grovelling at another’s for aid—he would simply rather die.
His fingers trace over the thin box that contains the scant records he could find that explained his master’s origins. A throw-away comment about inheriting Slytherin’s mantle had inspired Regulus’ initial curiosity in discovering which noble family the Dark Lord came from. Although the comment could have been figurative, something prideful in the Dark Lord’s tone made Regulus take him very literally. Oddly, it was through a conversation with his mother that he had connected the Dark Lord with Tom Riddle—the tall, clever Head Boy that the Slytherin common room of the 1940s knew as a half-Gaunt, even when the rest of the school believed him to be a mudblood.
Regulus was quite sure nobody else had connected the two wildly different people as one. Sometimes he wondered himself if it was really true—that the Dark Lord who so fervently eschewed the muggle world was half-muggle himself. It makes Regulus’s stomach turn, to think that he and his cousins have for years now knelt at the feet of a half-blood. He has all of us, he thinks. Every son of every family that has not betrayed their blood kneels for him.
Except Sirius. And that is really too much—that, unbeknownst to their parents, Sirius is purer now than he is, untainted by the Dark Lord’s magic that flows, turgid, in the blood of his left arm.
He buries his face in his arms, ignoring the protesting crunch of paper beneath his elbows and tries to force down the thought that has been creeping into his mind ever since he laid eyes on the dimmed Sirius earlier.
I won’t say goodbye to him. He’ll never know what happened to me if I die. He won’t care either way—but…and here Regulus forces himself to stop. What a dead man wants doesn’t matter.
But what happens to the family matters, thinks another side of him—the one that belongs at his father’s knee, hearing the family stories of great Sirius Rigel and the brave Altair Ceres. And Sirius needs to know to think about that.
You think I can convince Sirius to find value everything he threw away four years ago? he thinks back snappishly. Nobody could ever make him do anything, least of all me.
Then you can’t afford to die! screams that same part.
And for that, Regulus has no answer. To leave the family to Sirius is to condemn it to damnation. But to remain serving the Dark Lord is untenable. And to survive the lake is impossible.
I could go to him, he thinks, feverishly. Ask him to see to mother from a distance after I’m gone.
Some childish part of Regulus hope dully that maybe Sirius might even offer to help, if he can only make him understand what he’s planning before Sirius takes his face off with a blasting curse. He has no doubts about what kind of welcome would await him.
But how would I even find him? Regulus refuses to examine how material Sirius has become in his thoughts in less than an hour. Four years of determinedly ignoring him—both in-person and in the privacy of his own mind—have not diminished Regulus’ power of imagination where his older brother was concerned. Narcissa would know his address—but to admit to Narcissa that he is looking for Sirius is dangerous. She will want to know why, and even she herself shouldn’t have the address, it won’t stop her from using it against him. At the very least Lucius will be told, and at the most, Regulus may find the Dark Lord himself investigating Regulus’s newfound interest in his traitorous brother—or even worse, send Bella to find out.
James Potter will know, he thinks bitterly. But James Potter and his new wife had vanished from their family home a month ago, shortly after his parents died. The Potters’ whereabouts have become a mystery ever since. Sirius still appears, with Bella of course angrily informing him whenever she has personally seen him. Sometimes she purrs praise for his considerable skill, other times she hisses vile insults at the man who had been her favourite as a child, and other times she reflects conspiringly on the darker curses he sends her way. Regulus has never seen his brother in any skirmish he has attended, though he frequently wonders what he would do if he did.
What about Kreacher?
Kreacher surely must know where Sirius is. Or has it been too long since Sirius was last inside Grimmauld?
Regulus summons the elf, quietly.
“Master Regulus,” the elf moans, flattening his ears and blearily blinking his great eyes. Walburga is right—his fingers still tremble from his ordeal at the lake, explained away as a lengthy and strange sickness. “How may Kreacher be service to the Master?”
“Kreacher,” he begins, unsure. “You can’t discuss what I’m about to ask of you with anyone, do you understand? You mustn’t mention it to Mother. Promise me!”
“Kreacher assures Master Regulus of his upmost discretion,” the elf says, somewhat agreeably, but slyly continues, “although Kreacher begins to wonder at the many secrets Master is keeping these days.”
Regulus eyes him carefully. “I was wondering—if—if—you might perhaps be able to find—.”
Kreacher’s long fingers stretch out and his forehead creases. “Master is most unsure tonight,” he says. “Perhaps if he had eaten dinner he might be more decisive.”
Regulus glares. “Sirius! Do you know where to find Sirius!”
Kreacher’s eyes widen comically and his wide mouth hangs slightly open. He patters from side to side and gasps “Master cannot possibly mean—but the treacherous Master Sirius is gone—how—.”
“Now who’s unsure,” sneers Regulus, then bites his tongue. “Apologies, Kreacher. I’m a little tense. Please, just answer me.”
Kreacher stays silent for a for a moment before humming. “Kreacher could find the filthy Master Sirius, were Master Regulus to order it, he is sure.” He looks very unhappy about this.
Regulus, for once in his life, doesn’t hesitate. “Do it. Find him. Don’t let him see you.”
———————————————————————————————————————————
It takes Kreacher only minutes to return and only a short while longer for Regulus to tremblingly prepare together a bundle of papers. If he dies because Sirius hangs him from the rafters the instant he lays eyes on him, then Kreacher must explain the mission in his stead. Kreacher looks equally dismal about the prospects of Regulus surviving the next hour and several times glances longingly towards the door as if wishing his mistress might walk through it and put an end to this nonsense.
His papers prepared, Regulus extends a hand to Kreacher and prepares for the nausea of Side-Along Apparition, landing gracefully and breathlessly on the quiet street that Kreacher has brought him to.
“Where are we?” he asks Kreacher. The stars tell him they are still in London, but no more.
“Richmond,” mutters Kreacher.
Regulus laughs disbelievingly, still a little breathless. “I wonder how the neighbours like him,” he says, looking up at the shadowy double fronted townhouses, all shrouded in the darkness of the witching hour. Dull streetlights illuminate the well-kept evergreens as Kreacher hops across to the house named Ingleside and points in a manner Regulus supposes is intended to be secretive and is actually very indiscreet. “The blood traitor sleeps here,” he hisses, sulkily. “If Master Regulus is perhaps intending to dispose of the feckless cretin at last,” he adds, more hopefully, “then Kreacher might be able to prevent him waking so the traitor may not harm Master.”
Regulus eyes Kreacher with some alarm and hurriedly dismisses him. Kreacher leaves very unenthusiastically, but if Regulus is quite sure Sirius will eviscerate him on sight, it is nothing compared to what misery he will deal the elf. Sirius and Kreacher always despised each other with an often bloody passion.
He trips on nothing twice crossing the short pathway, and turns around to leave when he reaches the doorstep. He raises his hand to knock and falters—he raises his wand to force his way in and winces—he looks for a window to Vanish and asks himself what in the seven hells does he think he’s doing?
In the end he simply knocks, in the foolish hope that facing Sirius against a backdrop of muggles’ houses might stay his brother’s hand.
He’s considering leaving again when stumbling noises emerge from somewhere within the house. He grips his wand instead and bites down firmly on his lower lip. In the corner of his eye, he can see Regulus gleaming. If he turns his head, Sirius will be twinkling somewhere behind him.
A muffled voice demands to know who the fuck he thinks he is from somewhere near Regulus’ waist and he jumps, looking for its source.
A gleaming metal plate on the front of the door has moved forwards and there are the tips of his brother’s fingers, propping the small strip open.
“Hey? What kind of time is this? Who the fuck is that?” his brother’s voice spits from behind the door, clearer now the small hatch is opened.
Regulus bites his tongue and hisses his name through closed teeth.
Nothing prepares him for how quickly the door then opens nor for the speed with which he finds himself thrown to the path and disarmed, a rather nasty hex binding the skin of his wrists into one.
Dizzy from his head slamming into the ground he shouts out, somehow desperately hoping for muggle witnesses to materialise in the darkened street.
“Sirius—please—listen—!”
“I’ve done all the listening I’m ever going to do to you and yours,” snarls Sirius, reaching down and scruffing Regulus bodily up to a shaky standing position. Sirius had reached his full height before he finished Hogwarts, but even shrouded in darkness he has visibly filled out since then, complementing his already considerable height with broad shoulders. He looks startled when Regulus can look at him eye to eye and nearly drops Regulus, who is completely legless without his brother’s grip suspending him. Did you think I’d still be peering up at you, Regulus thinks, viciously. My life didn’t stop because you left.
“Get inside,” Sirius says, shoving him roughly towards the open door and glancing apprehensively over his shoulder at a suddenly illuminated house opposite. “Make another noise and I’ll make you swallow your tongue.”
Regulus feels as though he already has as he stumbles into the dark corridor. He can see stairs ahead and a light coming down from somewhere on the first storey. Sirius closes the door behind them and casts some rather foul warding spells on it. Regulus is suddenly rather glad he didn’t try to open the door himself.
Regulus is pushed through the darkness through a doorway into a room that illuminates with a swish of Sirius’s wand. The room bears all the signs of Sirius being its primary carer—books, clothes, and used crockery is littered over every surface. Sirius pushes a pile carelessly off the nearest sofa and gestures for Regulus to sit, which he does gratefully, allowing his shaking legs to stretch out. Sirius looks down at Regulus’s wand, still clutched in his long fingers, blankly, and Regulus fears irrationally for a moment that Sirius might simply snap it. Instead, his brother slips it into the deep pockets of the baggy trousers that are apparently serving him as nightwear, and keeps his own trained sharply in Regulus’s direction.
“How did you find me?” he asks, but Regulus can barely form a response. Every time he opens his mouth, his throat seizes and his stomach churns and—most terrifyingly—there is a sore pressure from somewhere behind his eyes that is threatening to overspill. Regulus cannot afford to let Sirius see him cry. He has no doubt that Sirius will simply curse him into nonexistence if he were to do something so childish.
Sirius already looks disgusted enough at Regulus’ silence. “Well?” he demands. “What have you got to say for yourself? You’re damn lucky I don’t just take you straight to the Ministry and dump you at their door. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t!”
Regulus thinks, rather stupidly, that taking a wanted Death Eater to the Ministry at two in morning might reflect rather poorly on Sirius. He’s incredibly shocked to so far still be alive and only a little bruised.
“Can I have some water?” he starts with. Perhaps the liquid will unstick his tongue. Sirius gawps at his audacity for a long moment but reluctantly summons a glass and conjures some clear water into it, then hesitates as he looks at Regulus’s bound wrists.
“Sit forward,” he says, and holds the glass up to Regulus’s mouth, who shuffles forward and tentatively drinks. Sirius’s wand presses into his jugular as he swallows and he moves back, attempting a grateful nod of his head.
“I’ll—uh—leave it here,” his brother says, setting the glass down on the low table next to them. Something about that tiny hesitation loosens Regulus’s tongue finally and he closes his eyes and tries to let his words come out without sounding strangled.
“Kreacher showed me here,” he says. “Apparently he can still find you.”
“That fucking elf—,” Sirius snarls. “I should have set a ward to decapitate the little monster if he ever showed his face around me again.”
Privately, Regulus doubts that’s even possible, but he bites his tongue. Sirius’s threats, however outlandish, have been so frequently realised that it’s only tempting fate to challenge him—a lesson their parents learned the hard way.
“He wouldn’t come looking for you,” he says instead, placatingly. “I asked him to find you. I need to speak to you Sirius—please—I don’t even know where to start—.”
“I think I can guess,” Sirius sneers. “If you’re not ambushing me to kill me then either you’re here on Voldemort’s orders to try and recruit me again or you’ve turned chicken now that you’re out of school and actually having to get your hands dirty. Spit it out, which is it?”
“Recruit you?” Regulus repeats, stupidly, trying not to wince at the Dark Lord’s name being uttered so casually. “Who tried to recruit you?”
Sirius eyes him suspiciously. “You don’t know? Dear Narcissa showed up here three months ago and tried to plead Voldemort’s case.”
So Regulus had been right to suspect that Narcissa would know Sirius’s whereabouts. Of course she would.
“I had no idea,” he said, truthfully. “What did you say?”
“Told her to fuck off, of course,” Sirius says coolly. “She didn’t seem particularly invested anyway. Seemed to think I’m more trouble than I’m worth.”
Is she wrong? Regulus thinks. “I’m nothing to do with that,” he says. “It’s something more like the second.”
This seems to please Sirius, because he lowers his wand for the first time. “I was sort of expecting you, I think,” he says, slowly. “I reckoned you would be too much of a coward to stick it out after the Aurors published your name in the paper.”
Regulus isn’t clear on which Auror or on which mission gave away his identity but certainly, a mere month after Hogwarts had ended, he was included in the subtitle of a front-page Daily Prophet article denouncing suspected Death Eaters that Aurors were interested in questioning. Regulus had done his best to leave the house as little as possible ever since, safe from the interference of the Aurors behind wards his father had placed many decades before.
Sirius pushes another pile of mess to the ground and curses as a mug collides with the table leg and shatters. He sits down roughly across from Regulus and leans his elbows on the table between them, balancing his chin atop his clasped hands as he regards Regulus thoughtfully.
“Alright, then,” he says, more softly. “I’ll hear whatever you’ve got to say for yourself. But if I get wind that you’re leading an ambush or if anyone else mysteriously appears at this hour, I’ll hang your head next to Flunky and Lacky.”
Regulus, accepting that the gods must be smiling on him tonight, explains hastily that earlier that night the dog-star had been very dull. He counts his blessings when Sirius doesn’t even make fun of his superstitions and instead simply gives a vague explanation that he’d been helping out a friend in Northumberland that evening and been hit with some strange hex. Regulus, trying very hard to look unsuspicious, says oh really? And of course, Sirius looks immediately mistrustful.
“Yes,” he says. “And I’ve a bloody good idea who cast it, too, if the shrieking after I was hit was anything to go by.”
Regulus must look very guilty now, because Sirius straightens and glares. “Did you know about this evening? You little shit—do you know what they’ve done—to Benjy Fenwick! Gentle Benjy and his old parents! There weren’t even pieces of them left when we got there—just blood and half a house!”
Regulus flinches as Sirius’s voice gets louder. “I didn’t know where they were going,” he says, defensively.
“Bella was there,” Sirius says, accusatorially. “She’s the one who cursed me—.”
“And?” Regulus interrupts, angrily. He’s already sick of Bella reporting on every move Sirius makes, and having the reverse happen is more than Regulus can cope with. “I’m not responsible for what she does. It’s not like I could rock up and warn you. Besides I didn’t know what they were planning.” A blatant lie, which must show on his face, but Sirius lets it go.
“I don’t know why I’m letting you breathe a second longer,” he grumbles, but he gestures for Regulus to continue.
“I just was worrying,” Regulus says, rather lamely, “about you. Because…”—and here he has to hesitate—“…I might not be here for much longer,” he ends, vaguely.
Sirius doesn’t seem much fazed by this declaration: “And? What I am supposed to care what happens to you? You haven’t spoken to me in four years—you did everything at Hogwarts to pretend you didn’t know me and that I didn’t even exist—you didn’t come to Uncle Alphard’s funeral—none of you did, I might add, just me and Andy—to be quite frank, Regulus, it’s like you’re already dead to me. I don’t give a fuck when finally you stop breathing.”
The pinch behind Regulus’s eyes is threatening to overspill again. “I had to,” he says, “Mum and Dad would’ve—.”
“Done nothing,” Sirius interrupts, dismissive. “I walked out on them, not you. You just didn’t have the guts to do one thing—one single thing—that might have cheesed them off a bit.”
Regulus has no answer for that. The truth was that he had hated Sirius himself, back then, and blamed him, however unfairly, for the gloom that has spread endlessly over his life ever since the front door of Grimmauld Place No.12 had slammed shut one final time after his brother. But to say that is to admit that at one time, Sirius was his favourite person in the world, and he has too much pride to ever admit that out loud, least of all to Sirius himself.
Instead, he pushes on with the vague outline that he’d thought of earlier. “It’s just that—when I’m gone—there’ll be no one left to look after Mum—.”
Sirius’s barking laugh, malicious and intentionally dramatic, drowns out the rest of Regulus’s sentence. “And you think I’ll crawl back to look after her? Are you mental? I’d say I’d kill her but I reckon it’s fairly likely she’d off me first.”
“From a distance,” Regulus says, desperately. The Sirius in his imagination had been much more cooperative. “The house will be hers until she dies but the vaults—she’ll need permission—.”
“She’ll get it,” Sirius says, his mouth set in a grim line. “I won’t starve her to death. Does that make you happy? Now fuck off out of my house and go die.” He stands and makes to grab Regulus’s shoulders.
“And I need your help,” Regulus finally spits, miserably, trying to evade his brother’s hands and falling over in the process. He feels especially pathetic as Sirius gawks down at him, mouth opening and closing. “Don’t look at me like that. I don’t like it anymore than you do.”
“Help you?” he shouts, incredulous. “Who the fuck do you think I am? Who the fuck do you think you are?”
“Someone who wants the Dark Lord dead!” Regulus screams back, struggling to a half-sitting position.
Sirius’s disbelief only grows but he takes pity on Regulus and shoves him back up against the cushions. Regulus wiggles and finally flops back, staring down dully at his feet, stretched out between Sirius’s legs. He can’t meet Sirius’s eyes.
“What in the seven hells are you on about,” Sirius finally says, rather flatly. “You—you, who used to scribble the Dark Lord’s sigil in your schoolbooks—you want him dead?”
Regulus feels that explaining that he wants the Dark Lord dead because he doesn’t want to have to kneel to a half-blood any longer might not go down too well at this point, so he launches into a not-entirely-fabricated story denouncing the Dark Lord’s brutality instead. From the look on his face, Sirius seems to smell bullshit somewhere, but he also seems sense enough truth in Regulus’s words to not immediately dismiss him, instead sitting down on the table between the two sofas and knocking Regulus’s water over in the process. The smash doesn’t seem to register as Sirius stares somewhere beyond Regulus’s head.
Finally, Regulus trails off nervously and plucks up the courage to meet Sirius’s eyes. His brother looks tired and worn and a fair bit older than twenty and Regulus remembers the faded star in the sky earlier that night and suddenly feels rather sick. His brother sighs and looks down at his hands, pulling disinterestedly at a bloodied scab on his thumb.
“How,” he begins finally, “are you going to be any use in bringing about Voldemort’s death? And don’t say you’ll turn spy. Nobody has any reason to trust you.”
Regulus scrambles nearer. Sirius is willing to listen. He hasn’t murdered him in anger and he’s willing to listen. His heart jumps from the bottom of his stomach to somewhere in his throat.
“Because I know a secret,” he says, not breaking his gaze from the pale grey of Sirius’s eyes, willing his brother to see the truth in his own eyes. “Something I don’t think anyone else alive knows. Something that the Dark Lord himself doesn’t know I know—I only discovered it by accident. I shouldn’t know—if he finds out that I do, he’ll kill me and everyone I’ve told.”
Sirius laughs harshly. “So you bring your little problem to my door. I always suspected you wanted me dead, and here’s some proof finally.”
Regulus blinks. That—really couldn’t be further from reality. “It’s more that—,” and here he has to break off again. Admitting that Sirius is cleverer than he is has never come easy as it is and to tell the man to his face would only make him unbearably smug. “You might have another perspective on the matter,” he says instead, quietly. “A solution. That means neither of us have to die.”
“My solution to things these days is usually to use whatever method ends with the most Death Eaters dead,” Sirius sneers, ever unable to take a compliment, however cagily it might be phrased. “You dying seems to fit quite nicely into that.”
Regulus is hit with a flash of inspiration. “Alright—let me tell you something else first. Something useful. If I were to deny I’m a Death Eater, how would you disprove me?”
Sirius looks mildly confused for a moment and then suddenly wolfishly interested. “Veritaserum?” he says. “Torture you into admitting it?”
Regulus grins, pleased by how quickly his brother has figured out where Regulus’s thoughts have gone.
“There’s a much simpler way,” he says. “A foolproof way—that can’t be concealed. Let me loose and I’ll show you.”
Sirius hesitates for a moment but his eyes betray how curious he is, and he lets Regulus’s wrists free with a wave of his wand, keeping it trained on him once more.
“What I’m about to show you is supposed to be kept deathly secret,” Regulus says. “But since I’m as good as dead anyway there’s no reason why I mightn’t tell you—only so you understand how serious I am about this. I truly want him dead—for my own reasons, fine—and I’ve only come to you because you’re the only person who I thought might even give me a second to explain myself—not because I want you dead. This—,” and here he shoves his left sleeve up in one swift motion, “—is how we identify each other. Only Death Eaters have this Mark—and none of us are allowed to share it with anyone else. It’s not a guarantee—sometimes spies or other random accomplices don’t carry it. But if someone has this, I can promise you they deserve Azkaban.”
His brother’s eyes are trained hungrily on the red tattoo on Regulus’s forearm, watching the twisted serpent coil endlessly through the skull’s gaping mouth. “It’s the same as what they leave over their kills,” he says wondrously, reaching out tentatively to touch it. “May I?”
Regulus nods. “It can summon him,” he says softly. “If I want it to. And he can call us to him at anytime.”
Regulus is relieved to see some wariness creep into Sirius’s face and his brother meets his eyes again. “Deserve Azkaban?” his brother repeats, mildly, the withdrawal of his warm fingertips leaving Regulus’s skin cold. “Are you amongst that number, too?”
Regulus swallows, drawing his arm back and watching the sleeve fall down. “I think you know I am,” he answers, equally blandly.
His brother hums noncommittally and stretches. “Alright, then. You’ve given me something big there. I’m listening. What’s this great secret that only you know?”