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Regulus
2nd September 1976
Regulus woke up that morning with the knowledge that his parents were now probably dead. He couldn’t be certain about it because it hadn’t been in the paper yet, but it was sure to be soon.
None of his friends knew about what he had done so he had to go about his day as usual, watching Barty and Evan joking about with each other, finishing off his summer homework, listening to all of Pandora’s weird thoughts. A normal day at hogwarts. But his mind was working at a thousand miles a minute, what if it hadn’t worked? What if Kreacher had figured out what they were doing? What if Sirius had put the poison in the wrong bottle?
There were so many things that could’ve gone wrong and he couldn’t help but worry about them.
He wished that he had someone to talk to about this, but he hadn’t seen Sirius since last night's feast and he was pretty sure he hadn’t left Gryffindor tower, so he couldn’t go to him. The only other people he was pretty sure also knew about it were the other marauders but he hadn’t seen any of them either, so he was just going to have to suffer in silence for now.
By the time he saw Sirius it was lunch time, but he couldn’t walk over there and talk to him because, for one, his brother was surrounded by people, and secondly, his friends would definitely find that highly suspicious, so he’d have to wait.
He decided to go to the library next to return a few of the books he had taken home over the holidays and maybe get out some more, maybe that would be good distraction. He got there and he found Remus sat on the table Regulus usually sat on, he assumed that his brother had probably told him, because when he spotted him, he gave Regulus a look dripping with pity and a strange sense of respect. He thought to himself that Remus was better than no one and went over to sit with him.
Regulus and Remus got along a lot better than he had originally thought they would, they had the same dark, dry sense of humour and he found himself thinking that if Remus had been in Slytherin, or a year younger, they would have been friends a lot sooner. In fact, Regulus had no idea why or how he had become friends with his brother and James Potter in the first place. They were in the library together all afternoon and didn’t leave until dinnertime, and by the time they left Regulus felt a lot better and didn’t feel the need to go and talk to Sirius anymore.
When he fell asleep that night, he felt relieved; he was thankful that he had spoken to Remus because that had calmed most of his worries
Everyone went to breakfast that morning as normal, and then the post came.
The front page of the paper read:
Daily Prophet
Orion and Walburga Black found dead in their home early Thursday morning
Mr Orion Black and Mrs Walburga Black were both found dead in the Black family home 12 Grimmauld Place in Islington in the early hours of yesterday morning by niece Bellatrix Lestrange. Their cause of death is unknown at this time. They are survived by son Regulus Arcturus Black II, as well as various siblings and nieces. A private ceremony will be held and they are set to be buried in the Black family cemetery. The family have requested privacy at this time.
It had worked then.
He stared at the article blankly for a few seconds before his thoughts were interrupted,
“Hey Reg, are you okay?” he looked up from the paper to look for his brother on the other side of the great hall, “Reg, answer me” came from Dorcas who was looking at him with a worried look in her eyes
He muttered a distracted “I’m fine" and stood up in sync with his older brother without breaking eye contact.
They both walked in silence together until they reached the tallest point of the castle: the astronomy tower was – in Regulus’ opinion – the most beautiful part of hogwarts. They sat down together, staring out at the sky that stretched above them.
Eventually, a tear began to stream down Regulus’ cheek, he didn’t know why, he hadn’t cried in years, but he was so happy to finally know for sure that they were gone.
Sirius pulled him in to hug him and whispered, so low that he wasn’t sure if he’d actually heard it or not, “we’re free”
“Yeah, we are, we finally did it”
“Yeah, we did, didn’t we”