The Pub
Sirius brought Regulus to a pub called the Three Broomsticks, and the name made Regulus snort. It was only a twenty-minute or so walk from the Black Manor. The temperature continued to drop as the afternoon aged, transitioning into the awkward period of dusk when streetlights flicker on and off, confused as to what they’re supposed to be doing.
“Not a fan of the name?” Sirius asked, cutting his gaze to Regulus.
“It’s just odd,” he said lightly.
“I think it’s charming,” Sirius said. “Gives the place a magical vibe.”
The magical vibe in question was nonexistent upon entering the pub. It smelled of strong liquor and bleach – someone had probably thrown up recently, and the harsh chemicals they’d used to clean it up burned in Regulus’ nose. The floors creaked as Sirius and Regulus crossed the threshold of the pub, headed towards the stools lining the bar. The lighting was dim and orange, making everything glow as if a bonfire had been ignited in the center of the place and was reflecting light. It was nearly empty, but another glance at his watch told Regulus that that made sense. It was around 4:30 now. People had better things to do than visiting a pub, like working or spending time with their families – something Sirius and Regulus were actively avoiding.
A woman stood behind the bar, chatting idly with the only other two customers, and she broke off to wave at Sirius upon noticing him before returning to the conversation.
“That’s Rosmerta,” Sirius told Regulus as if the other boy couldn’t read the nametag that clearly spelled that out. He didn’t say anything, though, and held his tongue for once, not needing to fight with him again.
Though fighting with Sirius was inevitable, he figured he’d save it for something better, something that would irk him even more.
It was strange to be reunited with Sirius.
They went from throwing punches and spitting in each other’s faces to getting drinks and chatting like nothing had ever transpired between them – and these events happened within minutes, even seconds of each other. The pendulum that was their relationship struck him hard in the chest; he hated how much he missed it. An oddly vulnerable urge to open up to Sirius came over him, and he found the back of his throat burning from the unusual desire.
So many things had changed.
So little things had changed.
Sirius was someone new and reshaped, someone Regulus would have to relearn and reimagine whenever he felt the sharp sting of abandonment.
Sirius was the exact same person he’d always been, and Regulus could picture him with the same clarity as he could his own face whenever the familiar sting pinched at him.
Regulus wasn’t quite sure how both of these things could be true at the same time, but the Black family was never one for conventionality, so why wouldn’t this be unusual too? Why couldn’t the past and the present intersect into something eccentric?
He checked Orion’s watch as he and Sirius slid into the barstools, pressing his lips together in consideration.
He hadn’t been lying when he told Sirius he had time for this, to get a drink with him, but he knew there came a point where it was too much. He only had eleven days to stop the end of the world. And after tonight, he would only have ten. There was a chance ten days would be sufficient, though, which was the only reason he’d given in and agreed to come with him to the pub. Regulus hadn’t had a day of rest for years now, so he supposed he’d give himself one afternoon (which would inevitably extend into the night) to get absolutely wasted so he could stop thinking. He needed to stop thinking.
Regulus Black was a chronic overthinker, a tortured and obsessed man capable of fixating on anything and everything. When he was younger, music pulled him out of it. Now that he was older, the only escape was death or getting drunk.
Or saving the world from ending. Solving the problem he never stopped mulling over was the quickest and easiest way to release himself from the obsession over it. He just needed to find the solution.
Everything always led back to that. He couldn’t escape it. He couldn’t escape it – not that he really wanted to.
Obsessed.
Utterly and completely obsessed.
And it wasn’t a savior complex, which was something he suspected a certain someone might tease him about. It wasn’t. This need to save the world came from a fierce desire to protect himself and his family; a gruesome protectiveness drove his hand, nothing nearly as honorable as a savior complex.
Savior complexes were gentle, right?
They weren’t all-consuming and full of endless and bloody devotion.
Surely not.
Regulus was having an identity crisis. This is what he got for trying to think about something outside of his old job or saving the world.
He needed a drink and fast.
Regulus and Sirius slid into two of the chairs at the far end of the bar, down where the orange glow of the light barely reached them. Everything was dim. Everything was quiet.
Rosmerta finished up her conversation with the only other two people in the pub and then came over to the Blacks, sliding a menu across the bar table towards them both.
“Thanks, Rosie,” Sirius said, which made the bartender huff and roll her eyes affectionately.
“You come here a lot, then?” Regulus asked Sirius, opening the old menu. The spine crackled when he peeled it open, and he wrinkled his nose, disgusted to think that Rosmerta hadn’t washed the menu. Spilling was inevitable at a bar but there was no need for the menu to still be sticky hours or even days afterward. He experimentally pressed his index finger to the menu, displeased when the surface was tacky.
If he managed to float the world over the next few days and prevent the apocalypse from ever occurring, he for sure wouldn’t come back here.
And if the Dark Lord’s forces didn’t catch him and kill him sometime soon, he figured it would be the unsanitary conditions he faced tonight that would be his demise.
“Kind of,” Sirius answered, studying the menu. “Remus, my boyfriend, likes it here, so we go every couple of weeks or so. James likes to come along sometimes. Do you remember James Potter?”
Regulus couldn’t not remember James Potter.
Forgetting James would’ve been like forgetting the warmth of the sun, the feeling of pure happiness, the taste of blood. Forgetting James was impossible; the boy was too engraved in Regulus’ soul. He would know him blind from the sound of his breathy half-laugh when he was trying to be quiet and his footsteps creaking on the wooden floors. He would know him by touch alone, would instantly recognize his warm smooth skin and the swell of his lips and the impossible softness of his unruly hair beneath his fingertips. And when they shuffled from their mortal coils, Regulus was convinced their spirits would know each other immediately, so familiar with every aspect of each other’s being that they could find each other through energy only.
So yes, Regulus did remember James.
How could he not?
Not that Sirius knew, of course. Regulus suspected he might’ve been told by James, eventually, but it seemed like that had never happened.
He didn’t know how to feel about that.
On one hand, he liked being a secret, liked knowing that James tucked him into a private corner of his heart where no one else was allowed to see it.
On the other hand, he worried that the silence might’ve meant it was ingenuine, worried that James might’ve regretted their relationship which was why he’d never talked about it.
That was another thing he didn’t have time for, not until he managed to save the world.
Part of Regulus almost hoped that James had a partner now, one that he was completely and wholly committed to, one that occupied his thoughts just like James occupied Regulus’. They'd never technically broken up since Regulus just disappeared, but he wasn’t going to hold it against him. No, as long as James was happy, that was all that mattered. At least, that’s what he told himself.
“Yeah, I remember James,” Regulus found himself murmuring.
Sirius nodded absentmindedly. “Oh, this looks good,” he said, pointing to a drink that was fittingly named DOOMSDAY. “It must be new on the menu. I’ve never seen it before.”
Regulus hummed in agreement, barely suppressing the urge to snap at Sirius and tell him to hurry up and order. He had to remind himself that he’d given himself the night off, which meant he could slow down and properly live in the moment.
He could slow down.
As a Death Eater, there was no time to slow down, not really. The Dark Lord was insistent that his finest assassins stayed on task even when they were back at the Graveyard – the nickname given to the dimension where they all worked out of.
Regulus barely had time to chat with his fellow Death Eaters unless the Dark Lord wasn’t around. But even then, he needed to research and prepare himself for his next target, and that alone was time-consuming. Pair that with the task of trying to save his entire family from dying and it was clear how busy Regulus was. But he still chatted with a few of them.
None of the Death Eaters knew his real name.
Only the Dark Lord did, but the man held his tongue, and no matter how much Regulus hated him, he couldn’t help but be grateful for that one mercy.
He insisted on being called Number Two, and none of the others dared to bring up the topic of his real name, not after the consistent demonstrations of his deadly abilities.
Regulus worked alone in his field per his own request. Some of the other Death Eaters operated like this, but it was more common to work in pairs. Having someone with you made everything easier, even killing.
He wouldn’t have wanted a partner, though. It would’ve been more trouble than it was worth.
Sirius and Regulus made their drink selections, and when Rosmerta came around, they placed their orders. Still bruised from the wound of Bellatrix suspecting him, Regulus made sure to use proper etiquette and manners; she’d seen right through him when he hesitated at lunch, and though he wasn’t quite sure what she took it to mean, he knew he didn’t want a repeat of that moment. He didn’t need to be polite less than twelve hours ago – fear was a better motivator, he found – but he knew that would give Sirius a mile where he meant to only give him an inch.
He didn’t want the others to find out. It would have been dangerous if they knew, and the first step to them uncovering this secret was building a mental file of everything he let slip and compiling it together to create an ugly picture of the truth. So, if he could limit what they discovered it would’ve been nice.
No one would believe Bellatrix if she figured it out, Regulus comforted himself. Even before he’d disappeared into the future, they all understood her to be. . . full of more fissures than the rest of them. Her words didn’t hold much weight besides being often unsettling.
“I’ll pay,” Sirius reassured Regulus once Rosmerta brought them their drinks.
Regulus hadn’t even thought about money.
All his liquid assets were locked in some vault at the Graveyard, which meant he technically had no money to his name. He wondered what they’d do with his money now that he’d technically deserted. Maybe the Dark Lord would take it all; he didn’t expect them to recycle it back through the workers – that was too moral.
“Thank you,” Regulus murmured, watching as Sirius handed Rosmerta his card.
“Closing your tab early, hmm?” the bartender teased.
“We’re trying to be good, Rosie,” Sirius quipped back. He was acting lighter around a stranger – well, a sort of stranger – than Regulus had ever seen him.
Seeing the change in all of them was so jarring.
In his mind, they would always be eight and fighting over who could jump the highest, ten and competing over who hit the bullseye the most whenever they threw knives, thirteen and bickering over who was taller (even though they were all the same height).
“Tu es plus gentil que tu ne l'étais autrefois,” Regulus whispered. The gentle roll of French over his tongue was a comforting and familiar thing. He was always more vulnerable in French. He didn’t know why. Maybe it was because it reminded him of childhood – and even if that was a twisted and warped and loveless time, it was still the only home he’d ever known, and that was worth something, right? He knew the others had different relationships with the language than he did, but nothing could ever poison the comfort he found in slipping into it around the others.
Sirius smiled softly. “Je suis aussi plus aimée.”
Regulus held back a flinch. “Je t'aimais, Sirius,” he whispered, fighting the burn in the back of his throat. It didn’t matter that their relationship ended rocky or that it was currently still volatile enough to warrant the awkwardness growing between them. Sirius had to know that someone loved him back then. Regulus couldn’t stand to think the other boy reflected on their youth and came to the conclusion that he was completely and utterly alone.
Because if Sirius didn’t think Regulus ever loved him, what proof was there that Sirius ever loved Regulus? None. None at all.
You don’t grow up thinking you’re loveless and find it in yourself to love the people around you. At least, that’s not how Regulus thought it was. If she were here, Narcissa might’ve disagreed, and the knowledge that she had a different narrative was enough to calm him down.
Maybe there was hope.
Maybe he could still find proof.
“Je t'aimais aussi,” Sirius assured him. Regulus didn’t realize how badly he needed to hear that. “Mais être entouré d'amour et seulement d'amour, c'est différent. Everything is lighter.”
“The Potters?” Regulus guessed.
“And my friends,” Sirius said, nodding. “Remus, too, maybe even more so than James.”
James James James.
“You’re still angry, though,” Regulus said. He grasped tightly to the remaining traits from their youth, twisted them like thread around his fingertips, and held tight. “You still can’t help but want to fight.”
Sirius’ face darkened. “Everything is lighter, not necessarily changed.”
They sipped their drinks.
“I might be overstepping here. . .” Sirius continued. “But I don’t think the future was like that for you. After you disappeared.” He cut his gaze over to Regulus, studying him, and Regulus felt completely see-through.
In a moment of complete vulnerability, Regulus whispered, “It was so quiet, Sirius. So quiet.”
Rosmerta thought that to be the perfect moment to interrupt. “My card reader must be broken,” she lamented. “I’ve run your card a few times, but it’s determined to stay broken. Here, have the card back while I run to the back to try and fix it.”
“Oh, I can pay in real pounds, Rosie,” he said.
She waved him off. “I need to fix it regardless. This will just encourage me. Don’t run off, now,” she teased, winking.
“Thanks, Rosmerta,” the other pair in the pub called out as they slipped out the front door.
She wished them a good night, but Regulus had quickly grown bored and stopped paying attention. He didn’t like being interrupted. He also didn’t like the idea of Rosmerta overhearing him when he was being so open.
Once Rosmerta ran to the back of the bar, Sirius and Regulus were alone.
He’d suspected Sirius had brought him here because it was neutral territory and there would be people around.
That was all thrown away, now.
It was fine. It was going to be fine.
Sirius dug through his pocket, muttering something under his breath as he searched for the pound notes he must’ve tucked away. Regulus watched him pull out a wad of the notes and sort through them, ignoring the bell on the door ring as someone opened the front door.
Or maybe several someones, from what it sounded like.
Their footsteps were heavy almost like they were all wearing boots. Heavy-duty boots. High-quality heavy-duty boots.
Regulus was just being paranoid.
Surely.
They all breathed as if something was blocking their faces. Almost like a mask or a helmet was covering their mouths.
He definitely wasn’t just being paranoid.
He knew what would happen just a second before the muzzle of a gun kissed the skin on the back of his neck. He didn’t jump. He held himself perfectly still.
Sirius, now, was a different story.
Sirius jumped.
And yelped.
Which just made the soldier press the muzzle of the gun deeper into his skin, no doubt.
“I wondered when they would find me,” Regulus murmured, more to himself than anyone else. He had an unbecoming habit of talking to himself – something he’d developed during his few weeks in the apocalypse.
“What the fuck?” Sirius hissed.
Don’t use my name, don’t use my name, don’t use my name, Regulus silently begged the other man, still not moving to look at him. He stared straight ahead, not wanting to provoke the gunner at his back.
“Let’s stay professional, yeah?” the soldier said, emphasizing his words by adjusting his grip enough on the gun to send a ripple of pressure onto Regulus’ skin. He barely refrained from shivering.
A pureblood.
And probably a newer one, based on the way he talked. Almost like he respected Regulus.
He'd made a name for himself, he knew, but only the newer recruits seemed to regard him in awe. The recruits who’d been around longer than he had and the recruits who’d been brought in around the same time only steered clear of him. There was no reverence there, only respect.
But this pureblood – the grunt soldiers the Dark Lord dispensed without much of a care for their wellbeing – spoke to him as if he knew of him, like he was in awe and in fear of him at the same time.
Regulus took note of the novelty.
“Of course,” he agreed.
“What?” Sirius snapped.
“Stand up and put your hands where we can all see them,” the pureblood soldier grunted. “I don’t want to make this hard.”
“I have nothing to say,” Regulus murmured.
“I don’t want to shoot,” the man warned, “but I will if you force my hand.”
“You’ve got the wrong people,” Sirius started, turning his head with his teeth bared. Regulus could see his overly sharp canines flashing in the dim glow of the pub, a warning that this dog bit and liked it.
“I’ll shoot,” the other pureblood insisted.
“Calm the fuck down,” Sirius spat.
Regulus couldn’t see the pureblood soldiers behind them, but he bet everything that Sirius was managing to briefly distract them. Though it was accidental, it was just enough to allow a split second for Regulus to do this:
He picked up his drink and turned, bringing the glass down as hard as he could against the side of the soldier’s helmet.
The glass shattered and alcohol spilled everywhere, raining down onto the floor.
It wouldn’t kill the soldier, but the hard impact would definitely cause him some pain. If he was lucky, maybe the man would be dazed.
Regulus curled his fists and snapped the blue light around him, Apparating to the other side of the room as bullets began flying through the air towards where he’d been sitting only a few moments prior. They were semi-automatic guns, and he could hear the clattering of shells hitting the floor at a pace he’d never quite heard before as bullet after bullet poured from the barrel of the gun.
Sirius yelped and shifted into a dog, leaping over the bar just as the first bullet flew, barely missing him by a couple of centimeters. He sailed over the bar top, and Regulus heard bottles rattle as he landed on the other side, probably slamming into Rosmerta’s stock of bottles.
Regulus trusted Sirius was smart enough to survive this, so he decided not to worry about the other man.
The bullets did nothing but ruin the chair and the portion of the table he’d been sitting at, mercilessly tearing through the wood and breaking it into shards. The destruction was immediate and harsh.
He hoped Rosmerta wasn’t fucking stupid and didn’t try and come out to see what was going on. He also hoped she had insurance.
“You missed,” he cheekily noted from where he was perched on a table behind them, legs swinging and kicking in a carefree manner.
Wordlessly, the squad turned their fire onto where he was sitting.
Regulus Apparated with a bright blue flash once again, dodging the bullets.
There were seven pureblood soldiers total, which wasn’t anywhere near enough of the number of soldiers it took to take him down historically. He almost scoffed at the sight. Who did they take him for, a fool? It was almost insulting.
When Regulus reappeared, he popped up in the center of their group, just behind one of the men. Quick as a flash, he snapped the man’s neck, twisting his head violently and listening to the gross snap as the man went limp in his arms. He Apparated away again – a game of cat and mouse, and these soldiers were at his mercy here.
Bloody fights with guns blazing and knives flashing were always Regulus’ arena. In a fight, he was all instinct and meticulous training. In a fight, he completely trusted himself and his ability to stay alive while dealing out death. In a fight, his worries ceased to exist, and all that mattered was making it to the next moment, getting the next hit in, dodging the next blade.
Make it to the next moment.
The soldiers were too quick with their fire; they pulled the trigger without looking, seemingly unremorseful when their bullets tore through the wrong chest and made the wrong blood splatter. It was good for Regulus and Sirius, though.
Two of the men fell at the hands of their own squad.
That meant there were only four left.
Regulus reappeared next to where Sirius was army-crawling through wood shards and pieces of glass, back in his human form once again. He joined him in the crawl mostly out of solidarity.
“What the fuck is going on?” Sirius demanded once again.
Regulus wrestled his knife out of his pocket, flashing the weapon at Sirius with an unwilling smile tugging at his lips. He liked doing what he was good at, sue him. Besides, it was nice to prove a point. Maybe he could defeat the whole squad in under three minutes. That'd be an impressive feat, wouldn’t it? Maybe that’d make them think twice before sending another squad after him to try and drag him back.
“Get one without leaving a mark behind,” Regulus suggested, though it sounded more like a demand with the sharp way he said it.
Regulus Apparated back into the now-silent scene, snapping his fist out and driving his knife into one of the man’s stomachs and twisting harshly. The man let out a gurgled cry as he was effectively gutted, and then Regulus grit his teeth and tore, ripping the knife through the layers of muscle and fat and organs until it reemerged bloodier than it had been just moments ago.
The man collapsed onto Regulus where he was crouched on his knees. Blood spurted from the gaping wound, pooling around them. With a disgusted grunt, Regulus shoved the man off, rolling his limp body away.
The wooden floor was slick with blood, which made it easier for Regulus to propel himself out of range of the gunfire. Bullets peppered a trail after him, but he moved too fast to be grazed, weaving through the pub until he heard the sound of another pureblood soldier’s body hitting the floor.
Another one down.
Two left, now.
They were making it easy for him. So easy that it was laughable.
In fact, he was actually laughing. It probably looked deranged – and it was – but he couldn’t find it in himself to stop. He'd thought he’d had a little more time before the Dark Lord’s forces found him. He thought he’d have time to sit down and actually sink into the chair tonight.
Regulus figured there was some higher being fucking up everything in his life. This was probably some sick joke by the universe.
He swept a leg out and knocked one of the men onto the ground just as a deep snarl filled the pub. In dog form, Sirius leaped from the top of the bar table and tackled the last man, digging his teeth into the man’s neck.
Regulus focused on the other guy.
The pureblood soldier still had a gun. Regulus grabbed the barrel and redirected the aim just as the man released another round of bullets.
“Fuck!” Regulus cried – the kickback of the gun was strong, so he was fighting against both that and the man trying to aim at him. He'd be lying if he said he didn’t struggle for a minute.
Then he got control of the gun.
The soldier’s finger slipped from the trigger, and Regulus grabbed the gun and pulled it, tearing it from his grasp. He bashed the grip of the gun into the soldier’s temple, recalling Cygnus’ lessons when they were learning to fight.
“The skull,” the elder Black explained, gesturing to a projected image of a human head, “is thinner at the temple. That is, the place between the forehead and the ear. Feel it?”
Regulus pressed his thin fingers into his temple - not hard, just enough to feel the structure of it. He nodded.
“I can feel it on Number Four,” Bellatrix proudly announced, her thumb pressed hard against Andromeda’s face. The other girl scrunched her nose and moved her head to the side, throwing Bellatrix’s hand off her face.
“Hit someone there, children, and you can render them unconscious. Hit them there hard enough, and you can do even further damage. The swing has to have enough force behind it, of course.”
Regulus’ swing was hard enough.
He felt the delicate skull cave under his harsh hit, felt the way the bones collapsed and cracked, and then the man’s eyes rolled back into his head. His breathing quickened for a few seconds like he was panicking, and a low, pain-filled moan came from his lips. Then it was abruptly cut off.
He was dead.
He heard no struggle from where Sirius was crouched over the last remaining man, poking his dog nose into the skin to double-check he was dead.
Regulus stood up slowly, his knees shaking beneath him from exertion.
He checked his watch.
Four minutes.
Damn.
It might’ve been enough to prove his unwillingness, though. Just maybe not enough to fully frighten them.
He walked through the pool of blood, heading towards his knife where it lay abandoned on the floor next to the still-bleeding body of the pureblood soldier he’d torn apart.
Regulus bent down to pick it up but noticed something else, something blinking beside it.
A tracking device.
Regulus picked it up slowly, pressing a button. A large red dot appeared on the screen, and a small arrow sat right on top of it. He could see the street names as well as the name of the pub. “The Three Broomsticks” blinked up at him.
“Ah, fuck,” he murmured.
“What is it?” Sirius asked, voice quiet and steps even quieter as he came up behind Regulus. The front of his shirt was covered in blood, as was his chin and his hands. Regulus knew he probably looked no better.
He turned the tracker to show Sirius.
“Oh, fuck,” Sirius echoed.
“I know.”
In a blink, Regulus Apparated behind the bar and tugged open drawer after drawer, searching for a knife.
He found one relatively quickly, then braced his left forearm on the table.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Sirius hissed, crossing the pub in a hurry to try and stop him.
“Getting rid of it,” Regulus said simply.
He’d been a Death Eater. He knew where they kept the trackers on their targets. He just wasn’t sure when he’d become a target and not an esteemed worker – he didn’t remember getting the device inserted, and he definitely didn’t remember any of his fellow Death Eaters getting it either.
So how the fuck did that happen?
Regulus sliced through the skin of his left forearm without hesitating, gritting his teeth down hard. Tears pricked in his eyes, but he refused to let them fall.
He'd been through worse.
There was no use crying over something like this.
He cut quickly and carefully with the precision of a surgeon if he said so himself.
Sirius was quiet, thank God, as he watched Regulus work.
Regulus set the knife down once the cut was deep enough then probed his fingers into the wound, hissing his breath in as he fought down a wave of nausea. He found the metal device quickly and wrapped his fingers around it, pulling it out slowly, careful not to brush against anything important. His arm twitched in a fiery pain, but he ignored all instincts.
“Okay,” he said when it was out, voice sounding hoarse. He dropped it into the sink and turned on the water, sending it flying through the pipes of the city. “We need to get out of here.”
Sirius looked grim. “I know a place nearby. Then you can explain what the hell that was.”
Dorcas Meadowes was having a good dream when she got the call so that immediately put her in a bad mood from the beginning.
She blinked in the darkness, trying to wake up her sluggish mind. The phone next to her on the nightstand glowed brightly as it rang – she must’ve forgotten to silence it before she went to bed. The name of the caller flashed over the screen: ALASTOR MOODY (WORK). She’d set his ringtone to Psycho Killer by the Talking Heads a few years back, and it was funny at the time, but she started to rethink it as the lyrics blasted through their bedroom, an ominous warning of how her night would go.
Dorcas’ girlfriend, Marlene McKinnon, groaned from where she lay next to her, kicking her heel into Dorcas’ leg. Marlene could’ve probably slept through the world ending, so it was likely she was still asleep as she did this.
Dorcas stared at her girlfriend fondly before the song picked up again and Marlene kicked her harder.
She pressed the ACCEPT button and pressed the phone to her ear.
“Hello?” she whispered.
“Meadowes?” Alastor Moody asked as if he hadn’t called her first. Dorcas rolled her eyes. He was absolute shit at operating technology despite only being fifty or so. This inability to operate technology bled into his work, and he was one of the only detectives at the station who did things completely traditionally. Dorcas both respected it and was fed up with it.
“It’s me,” she confirmed to the man.
“Do you know that little pub down over by the station? The Three Broomsticks?”
Alastor better not have been calling to invite her out for a drink. She was going to strangle him if that was the case. It was only nine at night, but Dorcas and Marlene preferred to go to bed early whenever they could, so they were often in bed by eight. Dorcas used to get teased by her friends for it when she was growing up, an experience Marlene shared that had bonded them together when they’d first met.
“Yeah,” Dorcas answered, rubbing a hand over her eye. “What about it?”
“We need you down here for an investigation. I didn’t want to pull you in, but we need another expert opinion,” Alastor said, his voice gruff and crackly through the phone.
“An investigation of what?” Dorcas asked, frowning. Her brain was moving slowly courtesy of being so rudely woken up.
Alastor paused on the other end of the phone. “Are you daft? A fucking crime, of course.”
Oh.
Dorcas looked over at Marlene’s still frame, watching her breaths even out as she fell back into the deep sleep she’d been torn from. Her tank top straps were all twisted up, and the leg she’d thrown over the sheets was missing the sock she’d had on earlier.
“Give me a half hour to get down there,” Dorcas murmured into the phone.
Instead of answering, Alastor hung up. Though, considering his track record with technology, it was likely that it was an accident.
With a last longing look towards Marlene, Dorcas threw the covers off and slid out of bed.
Dorcas and Marlene had been together for maybe a year now, and they decided to move in together late last November. They’d met at a pub and hit it off easily. By the end of the night, Dorcas knew she had found the girl she would one day marry.
It might’ve been assumptive and a little delusional, but she knew it was true. There was no world where Dorcas and Marlene wouldn’t end up together. Dorcas had never understood the phrase “when you know, you know” until she came face to face with the pale brown eyes, cropped blonde hair, addicting smirk, and dark eyeliner that was Marlene McKinnon.
One look and Dorcas knew. She could see their future so clearly that it was almost like she’d become suddenly psychic.
They would date for two years before Marlene asked Dorcas to marry her. The wedding would take place in the spring, right when the flowers bloomed so they could have a colorful floral-themed wedding. They would have two cats, both named something ridiculous like Toaster Strudel or Staple Gun or Dog (which was a real fucking name that Marlene suggested, something that made Dorcas consider ending their relationship for a second). They would never have kids but rather would be the cool aunts to Dorcas’ older sister’s kids. And when Dorcas got tired of being a detective and Marlene grew bored of sculpting, they would retire down south by the beach and spend the rest of their days shopping and reading and baking.
Dorcas had never been happier.
But work had increased randomly as of late. She was getting more and more calls when she was technically off duty so she could investigate scenes and give, as Alastor called it, an “expert opinion”.
Marlene insisted it was a good thing that Dorcas was getting recognized for her work, and Dorcas knew she was right. She just didn’t like it. Working more meant spending less time with Marlene and their friends. It meant going down to the coroner’s office in the middle of the night to double-check check a friend’s parents didn’t die in a suspicious way. It meant going down to the Three Broomsticks for an investigation of a crime where the details were too vague to guess what she was walking into.
Dorcas moved through the darkness to get dressed, not wanting to disturb Marlene. She had the routine pretty much down by now and could feel her way through the darkness by muscle memory.
She tugged open her drawer and pulled on the first pair of jeans she found.
Dorcas and Marlene were nearly the same height (Dorcas has two inches on her, though, something she was proud of) and were around the same build, so it was easy for them to share clothes. In fact, she couldn’t really tell whose shirt had belonged to whom or whose socks she was tugging onto her feet. It didn’t matter, really. In previous relationships, Dorcas never had that kind of intimacy, and even though it was such a mundane thing, she found herself absolutely thrilled about it. It started with Marlene stealing Dorcas’ shirts one too many times before the girls realized they didn’t know whose clothes were whose anymore. Then they decided fuck it and threw everything in together. She liked it better this way.
The window was cold when Dorcas pressed the back of her hand against it, so she tugged a sweater on – she'd grab her jacket from the hook by the door when she left.
Dorcas crossed the room and pressed a kiss against Marlene’s forehead; the addicting warmth of the other girl’s skin nearly managed to make her crawl right back into bed, but she didn’t really feel like getting fired. It was regrettable how she truly enjoyed her job so much to not even consider risking getting in trouble over something like this. It was a matter of desire versus practicality, and Dorcas was always overly conscious of what the right choice was. Maybe too conscious.
Their collection of keys lay in a bowl by the door. Inside the bowl, they had two keys for the front door, a mailbox key, a key to both Mary and Lily’s respective apartments (friends of Marlene’s who adopted Dorcas into their friendship easily), and a key for Dorcas’ sister’s house just in case they needed to pop over.
None of the keys were labeled save for the keychains Marlene so lovingly attached to each of them. Their two front door keys had keychains of Snoopy and Woodstock hooked onto them. The mailbox key had a letter keychain attached, which was a little on the nose for Marlene, but it worked. Lily’s key had a strawberry dangling from it, and Mary’s had the golden arches McDonald’s was so reverently known for – a play off her last name, MacDonald. Dorcas’ sister’s key was plain and boring, with just a purple cord tied around it so they wouldn’t lose it. They needed to get something better for it eventually.
Dorcas snatched the Snoopy key and shoved it into her purse. She left a note out for Marlene detailing what happened in case the other girl woke up during the night, confused and alone. Marlene probably wouldn’t wake up, though, but it was the thought that counted.
Love made Dorcas so thoughtful.
Before Marlene, she would’ve probably just come and gone, not bothering to inform anyone where she was going or why, especially not when they were unlikely to even need an explanation.
She loved being in love. Loved the way it made her more careful with her words but careless with her laughter. Loved the confidence it gave her once she realized how unconditional Marlene’s affection was. Loved how it made her pay more attention to things she never thought she cared about before, like where Marlene’s sunglasses last were or when Marlene needed to stop drinking caffeine lest she wanted to have a panic attack – mundane things that proved she knew her girlfriend and understood her better than anyone else.
Dorcas locked the front door behind her as she left, then hurried down the stairs of their flat– they lived on the second floor, so she often chose to forgo the elevator in favor of the stairs. She figured it was probably healthier, in the long run, though Marlene insisted that the thirty or so steps she forced herself to take wouldn’t actually matter in the grand scheme of things.
Their apartment was only a fifteen-minute walk from the station, but the pub was on the other side, so that added five or so minutes onto her trip. Dorcas hit the street before she realized she didn’t call a car for herself. It wasn’t the long walk that was the problem, nor was it the cold biting at her despite her jacket. She just didn’t like being out after dark, especially alone. She was a detective, for fucks sake, so she knew how those kinds of things could end.
But she didn’t really have a choice at this point.
Dorcas hurried and shaved two minutes from her twenty-minute walk. Nobody was on the streets, which was odd. She wondered if a note had been sent out warning everyone to stay put or something. It was always rare that a notification like that was pushed out, but she wasn’t so sure what she was walking into, so she figured anything could’ve been going on. Besides, they needed another expert. It must’ve been a serious case if they needed more people brought in.
Blue lights flashed all around the pub and a siren rang out in the distance. Dorcas ducked under the police tape blocking anyone from entering the scene, pulling on her leather gloves as she did so. The evidence collection team wasn’t here yet; the pub was open only to first responders and fellow detectives so they could get an initial read of the scene. Further testing would be done, of course, but baseline assumptions worked wonders for cases like this.
She could see Alastor standing next to Dorcas’ friend and partner Pandora. Pandora and Dorcas were around the same age – Pandora was a year or so younger – and they’d done training together. They both got the job at around the same time, so Alastor had partnered them up. They went from classmates to partners to genuine friends fairly quickly.
Despite Pandora’s tendency towards whimsy or her eccentricities, she was actually quite smart. Dorcas knew better than to underestimate her or dismiss her opinions. They worked well together: Pandora had endless patience and liked cracking puzzles whereas Dorcas had a strong determination and wanted to dole out justice. Alastor had made a good decision when he put the two girls together, and Dorcas didn’t think he’d ever regretted it since.
Pandora offered Dorcas a tight-lipped smile as she approached. She was a strangely beautiful girl. She had long blonde hair twisted into butterfly locs and warm brown skin. There was a small gap between her two front teeth, and a dimple adorned her left cheek. Her eyes were large compared to the rest of her features, and she had this unnerving way of staring without blinking. Though she usually wore colorful graphic eyeliner and long, wispy eyelashes, her face was nearly plain tonight save for a bright splash of blush across the apples of her cheeks.
“What are we looking at?” Dorcas asked as she approached Pandora and Alastor.
Alastor grunted. “A confusing scene. Pandora and I already made our assessments. I’m eager to hear what you’ll make of it.”
Dorcas nodded.
Though Alastor had a harsh edge to his voice, he was sweeter than he’d ever let on. He cared a lot about his employees, and though he never said it out loud, it was clear in the way he looked out for them. He'd been in the business for a while, and he had a strange array of scars and injuries that he never quite confirmed the origin of. He was blind in one eye, so it was murky, and the pupil was faded, but his other eye was just fine – Dorcas figured he’d been born like that. His face was marred from a mixture of scars, as were his arms, and it made him look a lot scarier than he really was. Because of that, he often sent in Pandora to talk to children or young women when they needed to talk to witnesses since he figured they’d be less scared of her.
“I’ll just take a look then,” Dorcas said. “Has the scene been touched?”
“The bodies have been moved, though I got here before they did it, so I can answer any questions you have. We photographed the findings and now there are chalk outlines around where they were,” Alastor explained. “But all the material evidence – the blood, the weapons – it's all been left as it was.”
Dorcas nodded once again, then broke away to begin looking through the scene.
The first thing she noticed was that the windows had been shot out. The shattered glass had landed on the outside of the pub, which suggested to her that the damage had come from within. That was important to note. It wasn’t a drive-by shooting or anything. And she knew it was a shooting based on the bullet holes peppering the two windowpanes that hadn’t shattered. Bullet holes were unmistakable.
The door was propped open, so she slipped in easily. Officers moved around her, but they only nodded out of respect for her position and let her do what she needed to do.
She liked it when people complied like that.
The next thing she noticed was the blood. Pools of it specifically concentrated around one of the alleged victims. Shells peppered the floor – a lot of them. The shooting must’ve been bad.
Just as Alastor had promised, the places where bodies had been found were outlined in chalk. They were all spread out and crumpled in various manners. The guns the victims – shooters? Both, somehow – must've been holding were in the same place where they’d been found lying next to the bodies.
A strange idea struck her.
Dorcas cautiously stepped towards one of the bodies, envisioning what it would look like if they were standing up and holding the gun. She positioned herself where she imagined that would be, then turned and looked straight ahead. Right in the line of fire was another one of the bodies. Experimentally, Dorcas lined herself up with each of the bodies and found the same thing.
She looked down at the ground, investigating the blood splatter. When someone gets beaten or stabbed or shot, blood tends to splatter in a very specific way that tells investigators what direction the blood came from. It's like that when someone drips blood while walking, too. Blood is a very telling piece of evidence, one that Dorcas had found fascinating when she was first studying forensics. Originally, she’d wanted to be a Serologist, but detective work sounded more appealing when she actually got to talk to people. But that knowledge confirmed her suspicions of what had happened in this case.
She left the Three Broomsticks pretty quickly, walking towards Pandora and Alastor once again.
“They all shot each other,” Dorcas said, sure of herself.
“That’s the conclusion we came to as well,” Pandora confirmed.
“There’s only one problem with that,” Alastor said.
Dorcas frowned. “What?”
“You both didn’t get to see the bodies,” Alastor said. “Yes, they were all shot, but there were a few more things going on. One of the victims – the one with a large pool of blood around him – was brutally stabbed in the stomach. Based on the wound, I believe he was stabbed before the knife was ripped through him until it emerged from his side - the look of the wound on his side suggests it was an exit wound and not an entrance wound. He was completely torn open when I got here. Another of the victims had fresh bite wounds and claw marks around his neck and face. I suspect it to have been a dog that did this.”
“What the fuck?” Dorcas asked, frowning. She’d never seen a crime scene quite like that. “Are you sure it’s dog bites and not human?”
“Dog bite marks and human bite marks look distinctly different,” Pandora chimed in softly.
“I guess,” Dorcas said. The fact was true, but that didn't make this any less confusing. “That just makes no sense. The dog would’ve gotten scared from the guns firing, don’t you think? Unless the wound was a few hours old, and it happened before he got here. Also, who brings a dog to the pub?”
“The puncture wounds were fresh,” Alastor said. “Still bleeding. They would’ve clotted by the time he got to the pub.”
Dorcas paused for a minute. Then she realized, “I didn’t see a knife. You said he was stabbed? The other guy? There’s no knife in the building.”
Alastor looked grim. “I know. It’s an odd case. Ultimately, it appears they all shot each other. But there’s something weird going on here. The knife is gone, which means someone might’ve survived. And there’s also a dog on the loose.”
“Get them to check for dog hair on the scene,” Dorcas suggested. “Then figure out their identities. Maybe the dog belonged to one of them and we can crossmatch the dog hair.”
Pandora asked, “Any witnesses, Alastor?”
“Just one,” he grunted. “Rosmerta, the woman who runs the place. Have a chat with her while I update the team.”
Alastor pointed out where Rosmerta was sitting on the curb numbly staring at her shaking hands. Together, Pandora and Dorcas walked towards her. Rosmerta had dried mascara running down her cheeks in streaks, and her eyes were red and puffy from tears. A hollow look had overtaken her features, making her look haunted.
Pandora dropped to a crouch in front of the woman, a kind close-lipped smile plastered on her face. “Are you Rosmerta?” she asked softly.
The woman nodded.
“Do you own the Three Broomsticks?”
Again, Rosmerta nodded.
“Were you here tonight when this all went down?” Dorcas asked, slowly sitting down beside Pandora. Pebbles dug into her legs, but she remained seated despite the discomfort.
“Yes,” Rosmerta said, her voice broken and ragged from misuse.
“Can you tell us what happened?” Pandora asked.
Rosmerta swallowed hard. “I don’t know. I went to the back to try and fix my card reader. The stupid thing broke this afternoon, so I went to fix it. I was back there for probably five or ten minutes. My last customer must’ve left, I think, because when I finally came back out, they left money on the counter. But that was later. So, I’m in the back, and suddenly, I just hear gunshot after gunshot. I hid under my desk in case they tried to come in, but nobody did. I just sat there until it was over. And then I sat there for another twenty minutes just in case they were trying to lure me out. When I finally came back, they were all dead.”
Dorcas didn’t say anything, but the story matched up pretty well with what she assumed happened. The poor woman was clearly traumatized – she was shaking still, and her eyes had a distant look to them. She felt awful making her relive it so she could understand it better, but it was the only way. Talking to witnesses always left Dorcas feeling terrible. She could grow used to a lot of things, but hearing people talk about something they witnessed, something awful, was never something she thought she could become desensitized to.
“Did you recognize any of the bodies?” Dorcas asked carefully.
“No,” Rosmerta said, shaking her head. “I didn’t look too hard, you know? But I do know that I’d never seen any of these men before in my life. Not in my pub and not on the street. I was so worried I would see the two customers I had just before I went to the back dead on the floor. But, like I said, there was money left on the counter, so they must’ve left before anything happened.”
“Could you give us the names of those customers and where we might find them? I wonder if they saw anything suspicious as they were leaving,” Pandora murmured.
Rosmerta said, “Sure. But I only know who one of them was.”
“That’s fine,” Dorcas assured her.
Pandora brought out the little notepad Dorcas had given her for Christmas, biting at her bottom lip. She waited with her pen, ready to write down whatever Rosmerta said.
“Sirius Black,” Rosmerta said. “And he was with some other boy, a younger man. They both have dark hair. They might’ve been related, but I’m not sure. I’ve never seen him before.”
And oh, wasn’t that just such a strange coincidence?
“I don’t know where you can find him, but he’s pretty well known, so I’m sure someone knows,” Rosmerta continued, but her voice was distant in Dorcas’ ears.
What was Sirius doing here with a mystery man? What was Sirius doing here at all?
Orion and Walburga, the last of the elder Blacks died. Dorcas figured he could’ve been drinking his sorrows away, but she figured Remus would’ve encouraged him to find a healthier way to grieve.
The Black Academy was well known to be involved in odd shit like this, but Sirius had been free of them since he was sixteen, she knew. The Black Academy also didn’t operate anymore, not after the last of the children left. Maybe it was just a coincidence that Sirius was here only minutes before this fatal shooting took place. Maybe. Unless his powers were prophetic, and he’d known he needed to leave.
The vagueness of the Black Academy surrounding their powers made her even more curious now. She'd always itched to ask him, wanting to be one of the few people in the world who actually understood what Sirius Black was able to do that made him so other-worldly, but she figured it wouldn’t do any good. Now, she wished she’d had that information.
Could he turn invisible, and was that how he escaped the scene?
Could he teleport?
Dorcas knew she needed to find Sirius for a multitude of reasons now. Maybe the Black Academy was just bluffing about the powers thing. Maybe he was a completely ordinary man who got lucky somehow and managed to escape this fatal shooting. Or maybe not.
What a collection of strange coincidences she’d collected over these past few days.
That random detective who had been investigating Orion and Walburga Black’s death was clearly hired by one of the Black children, and now here Sirius was cropping up just minutes before a heinous crime took place. Meanwhile, all the Black children were supposedly grieving the loss of their predecessors. It was an odd and peculiar thing to have happened.
Dorcas didn’t like coincidences because she didn’t know whether to believe in them or not. Especially now.
But she knew Sirius, and she also knew that he wasn’t the violent type. He wasn’t involved in this; he couldn’t have been. He must’ve just been caught at the wrong place at the wrong time. Or the right time, depending on how you looked at it, considering he managed to escape unscathed.
Pandora finished up the conversation while Dorcas was deep in her thoughts.
She needed to find a way to talk to Sirius. Maybe he saw something to help solve the mystery of this. Maybe he knew something more.
“Do you remember his name?” Rosmerta asked as Pandora and Dorcas stood, ready to finish this conversation.
“Yes, I have it all written down,” Pandora promised, waving her notebook.
“Sirius Black,” Rosmerta emphasized. “He didn’t do this, but I bet he saw who did.”
Dorcas found that she agreed with the woman.