the execution
31st August 1976
Regulus
Regulus knew it was going to be difficult.
No matter how much planning he out into it, or how detached he made himself and Sirius from it. Things were not going to be the same after this. Not ever.
It was strange, because Regulus had been waiting for this his whole life. He couldn’t remember a time where Sirius hadn’t wanted to run away, and Regulus hadn’t desperately wanted to go with him, even if he wouldn’t or couldn’t say it. But now that it was about to happen, Regulus found himself slipping into old bad habits. He found himself trying to excuse his mother’s abuse and his father’s cold, uncaring nature. He had to remind himself so many times that it wasn’t actually normal for parents to act like that towards their children. They were supposed to offer unconditional love, like how Sirius had. Truthfully, Regulus thought, Sirius had been the best parent he could’ve, given the circumstances. And that wasn’t right. Siblings should never be forced to be the parent, because that isn’t their job. But old habits die screaming.
Maybe in another universe, Walburga and Orion could’ve been better parents, maybe they could’ve found it in their hearts to love Sirius and Regulus, rather than, quite literally, torturing them. Regulus would need more hands if he wanted to attempt to count the number of times he had witnessed Sirius on the wrong side of his mother's magic. The scars on both their bodies were daily reminders of how undeserving Walburga and Orion were of being their parents. Sirius may have had more than him, but they all hurt the same when it came down to it.
Unforgivable curses are unforgivable for a reason, they are pure evil, they are dark magic, that had never stopped his mother. His father never cared enough to punish them, or talk to them, or even acknowledge their existence. Except for when it came to the cruciatas curse. He’d seen his mother use it on Sirius a total of five separate occasions. His father had joined in every time. He acted as though it were nothing more than a levitation charm.
It made Regulus feel fucking sick.
How had he come from them, how had two people as awful as them managed to give birth to children like him and Sirius. Sirius, a Gryffindor who would do anything to protect those who he considered to be family, like Regulus, and the other marauders. Regulus, who was secretly still terrified of open water, and avoided the great lake at Hogwarts, who had a book full of poetry that he had written. How had they come from this family that seemed to be full of almost pure evil.
Their family motto should be changed to obscurité pur in his opinion. The Black family was full of it, if you wanted to find a dark witch or wizard in England, their family was probably the best place to look. He could think of only five exceptions to the rule that all the Blacks were awful: Sirius, himself, Andromeda, Narcissa, and his uncle Alphard; over 500 years of being the ancient and most noble wizarding family in Britain and he could only think of 5 members that weren’t awful people.
They had to get out.
Luckily their preparation started tonight. Firstly, they had to get Kreacher to cook the poison into their parents' lunch, it couldn’t be breakfast because it would be too suspicious, and they still needed some way of getting to kings cross. Sirius had stolen it three weeks ago from a shop in knockturn alley, how he had managed it Regulus had no idea, but that didn’t matter. Luckily, Kreacher always made their family meals on a bi-weekly schedule, so they knew exactly what they would be having for lunch, and all that Sirius had to do was pour some of the poison into one of the bottles of ingredients that would be used tomorrow.
Regulus didn’t know how long this would take, because they had to ensure that Sirius wasn’t caught by anyone, he couldn’t get caught by Kreacher, his parents, or the portraits. It would be difficult but Sirius had said that he would be able to do it. He'd been sitting in his room for around twenty minutes waiting for Sirius to come in and tell him it was done, but the longer he waited, the more worried he became that maybe Sirius was not in fact able to do it. What if one of the portraits had caught him and told their mother, although this wasn’t likely, because he hadn’t heard any curses being thrown yet, or any of their mother’s shrill screaming. So that wasn’t very likely. It didn’t stop him from stressing about it though.
This time tomorrow, Sirius and Regulus would be orphans, this time next year, they would both have been living at the Potter’s for a year. Maybe this year they’d get an actual Christmas, a nice big warm family Christmas full of real joy, and unconditional love. Without bullshit dinner parties full of almost every family from the sacred twenty-eight (everyone except the Weasleys). Maybe Regulus would be able to listen to some more muggle music and figure out what his favourite was, he couldn’t predict everything that would happen, but it was nice to dream.
Turns out Regulus had done a better job of distracting himself than he’d realised, because he looked up and Sirius appeared as if out of nowhere, surely, he was seeing things. Anyway, Sirius came over to tell him that he’d done it, and confirmed that he was not caught by anyone. This was good, it meant that if everything went according to plan, then it would work, and they would be free by this time tomorrow.
For the first time in a long time, this summer Regulus allowed himself to hope. He had hoped that Sirius would come to him, he had, he had hoped that they would be able to improve their relationship, they had. So maybe hoping wasn’t such a bad thing, maybe he should let himself hope more often, it seemed to be going well for him recently.
Sirius
Sirius still had not told James.
He had asked James to borrow his invisibility cloak a few weeks ago, he’d told James that it was so he could sneak out of his room at night to speak to Reg while being undetected. In reality, he needed it so that he could steal some poison from knockturn alley, and to sneak it into the kitchen; which he was doing right now.
The cloak had been the only possible way of doing this that Sirius could think of because it seemed like recently, Kreacher had been lurking around corners more and more, and the portraits had been telling his mother and father more things than ever. Even wearing the cloak, he still had to be careful, he couldn’t make a sound – that would give him away. It took him about half an hour in the end, but he made it all the way from Regulus’ room to the kitchen and back completely undetected, he forgot to take of the cloak before walking back into Regulus’ room but it seemed as though his brother was so caught up in his own thoughts that he didn’t realise anyway.
He went over and let Reg know that he’d managed to do it and didn’t get caught then left to return to his own room.
When he fell asleep, he fell asleep dreaming of the future, and how, for the very first time since he was 12, it was guaranteed that Regulus would be part of his.
***
They had quite a normal morning, they finished their packing- they had done the majority of it a few days ago but they had to grab the last few bits. Sirius searched around his room to ensure he hadn’t missed anything, he then done the same thing to Regulus’ room before going down to breakfast together.
They ate breakfast in silence as they usually did, but as they would be going back to school today, Walburga and Orion joined them. Sirius avoided any eye contact with them, he didn’t want to have to look at them. Regulus seemed to be doing the same thing because every time Sirius looked at him his gaze was fixed, unmoving, on his plate.
They both sidealonged to kings cross station, Regulus with Orion, Sirius with Walburga, luckily neither of their parents, nor Kreacher noticed that they had more luggage than usual. Realistically, it was probably because they didn’t care enough to take any notice of how much stuff they would usually take with them, but it was still good that none of them realised.
Their mother followed the usual routine of straightening up his brother’s clothes and hair, and reminding them both to remember their duty to their family and all that other bullshit.
For the first time since Regulus had come to Hogwarts, he followed their mother’s orders that they must sit together on the train, for half of it anyway. Regulus left the marauders’ carriage after they had moved topics from them running away (and quidditch, Sirius knew Reg was a quidditch player, but he didn’t realise how much he liked it, it was like having a conversation with two James’ at one point), he said his goodbyes and went to find Barty, Evan, and some of his other friends. Then Lily came in to look for James (“We’re supposed to be in the prefect's car I've been waiting for you for ages Potter!”), as usual James was convinced that this would be the year Lily Evans finally saw how great he was and fall in love with him – the other marauders were less than convinced, he’d said it every year – Peters girlfriend came looking for him not long after that, which just left Sirius and Remus.
Remus seemed quite relieved that the others had left because it meant he could smoke without any of the others moaning about it, Sirius took the one he’d just lit and realised how much he had missed smoking during the summer. He hadn’t taken any cigarettes home with him to 12 Grimmauld Place, and hadn’t taken any opportunities to go and buy some in town. They smoked in comfortable silence for a while before either of them felt the need to speak.
“You look happy, everything went to plan then?” Remus observed
“Yeah, in just a few hours me and Reg are gonna be orphans” Sirius said this with a huge grin on his face
“I’m really proud of you y’know, that took a lot of courage to do that” Remus added
Sirius thought for a moment before he spoke, taking a long drag on his cigarette, “Thanks moony, it’s gonna sound really silly but that means a lot” he settled on
“Have you told Prongs yet?”
Sirius panicked for a second before he realised that Remus had understood where he was coming from with everything else, why wouldn’t he understand this? “No, but to be honest I don’t know if I can, which is ridiculous cause I never feel like I can’t tell him things, but I don’t know if he’d understand. I know that I should tell him, but I just don’t want him to see me as if I'm a different person or something”
“Yeah, I get that. There’s loads of things that I don’t tell people for that exact reason, I would hate for anyone to think different of me just because of one thing” Sirius was really glad that Remus got it, he really needed that.
“D’you mean your furry little problem?” he knew that it probably was that, but Remus had just said that there were loads of things, and Sirius was a very nosey person.
“Yeah that, but other things as well, it’s just that I don’t want to be defined by one thing, because when people only know one thing about you, they’ll base everything else on just that.” Remus replied thoughtfully, Sirius could tell that he was trying to avoid the topic a bit, but now that he’d brought it up Sirius was not going to drop it, Remus should know that by now.
“What sort of other things?”
“Are you really going to make me say them?” Sirius was pretty sure that Remus knew exactly what he was doing, because he was sat there with a signature Remus Lupin smirk on his face.
It wouldn’t take much to get it out of him at this point, “Yeah” he replied with a shit eating grin.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
Remus rolled his eyes before taking a deep breath and the whole atmosphere inside the carriage seemed to dampen slightly, he looked back at Sirius, staring at him as though he was trying to read his mind before saying, “I'm gay”
Sirius suddenly became more than aware of many things all at once: how much closer they had gotten over the course of their conversation, how quickly his heart had begun to beat since Remus had made eye contact with him, and how hot he had suddenly gotten. For some inexplicable reason, more than everything else, he became very aware of how easy it would be to close the small gap between their faces and kiss him.
They stayed there for a bit longer while Sirius processed this, however this was taking a lot longer than he would’ve liked, literally the only thought that he could form fully, was that he wanted to kiss him. So, Sirius leaned in and did exactly that.
It had never been like this with the girls he had dated before, he’d kissed them because they’d kissed him, never because he really wanted to. This kiss with Remus was different, Sirius felt as though this was inevitable, this was always going to happen. He could feel Remus pulling away, but he didn’t want to stop. What if Sirius had just ruined everything? Shit.
“Sirius? What's going on?”
Fuck. What was he meant to say now?
“Shit, I'm so sorry I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I just-” he took a second to breathe, was he really going to do this? “- I just really wanted to, I don’t know why, I’m sorry”
He was terrified of what Remus was going to say, he was even more terrified of what Remus wouldn't say. Luckily, he didn’t have to worry for very long, because before he knew it, Remus had his hand in Sirius’ hair, pulling him back in again. This kiss lasted longer, and by the time they were pulling away he knew that something had definitely changed between the two of them, and he could tell that Remus knew it too.