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Prologue
Regulus wishes he could say he saw it coming.
That’s what they always claim, isn’t it? When tragedy strikes, there’s always the one. The one who felt it coming the entire time. The sheep who cried wolf. He wishes with everything he has that he could say he had some inkling, some deep rooted feeling in his chest that something was deeply wrong.
But he didn’t.
As it was, Regulus didn’t feel anything at all.
The snow fell in what seemed to be waves. Through the skylight above the dining hall, Regulus watched it fall. The entire room was apparently overcome with a sense of mass hysteria over the wonderful ‘white Christmas’.
Regulus didn’t care for it either way, despite Sybill Trelawney’s cries that it was a bad omen.
Instead, he stirred his tea with the ridiculously small spoons they supplied and surveyed the hall. Almost nobody ever stayed for Christmas day, only the faculty and exactly ten students, including himself and Barty.
Sirius was there.
He watched his brother from afar, his head pressed to Lupin’s, seemingly deep in conversation. How strange it is, to watch someone you used to be so close with act as if you’re a stranger.
Regulus wondered if Sirius noticed he hadn’t returned home for the holidays. He wondered if he was proud.
He wished, and he wondered, and he did it all over again until it made him sick.
The first crack in the glass came in the form of a shake. Soft, gentle as a butterfly's wing, the tea in his glass rippled. Once, and then twice.
Then the doors swung open.
At first nothing happened. For a moment, time stopped entirely. Nobody breathed. Nobody moved.
Lily Evan’s came stumbling in, one stocking covered foot over another, covered in blood. It’s not like they say, or the way it looks in movies. It wasn’t just splattered across her face.
It was everywhere.
Caught in her snow-covered hair, across her blue nightdress, on the floor, a handprint up the side of the wall.
On her hands, slipping as they tried to keep their grip on a brown, blood-stained wrist.
James Potter's.
The feelings came like the roll of a tide, at the same time as Sirius stood up in his seat. Lily crashed into the wall and let herself slide down it.
The entire world fell apart at the seams.
Because there he was, on the floor next to Lily Evans.
James Potter, four stab wounds to the chest.
Dead.