regulus
Perhaps it was in spite, jealousy of what he couldn’t have, perhaps it was rebelliousness that he could never succeed in, perhaps it was because he was always second when it came to Sirius and wanted the limelight for once, but it doesn’t matter now, he’s here, clutching a fake locket in his hand, and nothing will change it.
Regulus swallows and looks at Kreacher, “I command you to make me drink this even if I command you not to, don’t argue with me,” he adds as he watches Kreacher open his mouth.
“Sorry, Master Regulus,” Kreacher bows his head.
“It’s Regulus,” he murmurs, looking down at the clear water-like poison before taking the first sip. First sip was always the best one, preparing him, he’d done his research.
Second sip.
Third sip and that’s when his throat started to burn ever so slightly, a flash of Sirius and his Mother.
Fourth sip, a flash of Sirius again, this time bloodied on the floor, crying out his name.
“Regulus, Regulus help me,”
Fifth sip, a longer vision of James this time,
“Regulus, please, don’t leave me, I’ll do it with you, I can’t leave you, please, you’ll die in that house,”
“James, please stop, I won’t make you bad, I wouldn’t ever forgive myself,”
“Is this goodbye?”
“This is goodbye,”
Tears pricked at the edge of his eyes, thought he couldn’t feel it, numbness washing over him.
Sixth sip.
Sirius again, sobbing, eyes filled with horror, “You’re just like them now, Regulus, what happened to my Lulu?”
“I can’t Sirius, you know I can’t,”
“Yes you fucking can!” Sirius shrieked, falling to his knees.
“I can’t,” Regulus whispered, holding back tears, “I’m not brave like you,”
Sirius looks up with him in horror, “You are no longer my brother then,”
“I haven’t been your brother in a long time,” Regulus repeats what Sirius had told him a year ago, “Have I?”
“You’re a monster,”
Tears flow freely down his face, not bothering to wipe them as he takes the next sip. Gripping the basin as he watches visions of Dorcas, Barty and Evan, Pandora, Lily, Remus kissing their partners with a loving smile across their lips, watching in the distance as he sees James do the same, locking eyes before Regulus gets up and walks away, swallowing back tears, and running to the bathroom, breaking down in the bathroom.
A pair of scissors glint in the distance.
Cut, cut, cut your way into extinction, cut, cut, cut your way into happiness, why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?
He takes the next sip, gasping for air as it prickles the back of his throat, bringing his hands to his throat, hurts, hurts, hurts, hurts. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.
Nimble fingers carefully and tenderly peal his hands away from his neck and put a small cup in his hands, his eyesight is blurring, who was that again? Where is he?
“Regulus, I-I can’t fucking do this, I’m fucking in love with you! I’ll do anything! I’ve already told you! I’ll take the bloody mark! I can’t …” his words get trapped in his throat.
“James. What’s the worst that can happen to someone like me whose already gone through enough shit, don’t worry about me, darling, please don’t make yourself go through this pain again, you know it’s best if you stay away,” Regulus speaks softly, trying to comfort his love, though failing.
“Reg…” James looks at him sadly, “I don’t want to,”
“You have to,”
“No I don’t,”
“Yes you do,”
“No,”
“Please don’t make this any harder than it has to be,” Regulus murmurs, fingering his wand and looking at James with a anguished smile.
James flicks his eyes to his wand and Regulus’ eyes, “I don’t want to forget,”
“It’s the only way, and you know it,” he smiles again, tilting his head before kissing the top of James’ forehead, “You and Lily are so much better than what we would’ve become, we’re messy and we’d squabble our hearts out, please don’t resist, mon amour,”
James opens his mouth to say something else but closes it and muttering a soft goodbye, “Goodbye, love,” a single tear drops onto his cheeks, “I’ll see you sometime,”
With that last goodbye, Regulus lifts his wand to James’ forehead, “Goodbye, Jaime,”
“Obliviate,”
“No please,” Regulus softly cries out into the vast cave, “I’ll fix it, please, James, I’m sorry,”
The same nimble hand (or was it a different one?) brings the goblet to his face once more and he swallows, blindly forcing the pain down his throat.
James’ eyes go blank and for a whole, endless minute Regulus is sure he messed the spell up before the colour returns to the boys eyes and with a smile he faces Regulus, “You’re Regulus right?”
And oh, he was not expecting that one, and even if he was he was not ready for it, maybe a small part of himself was hoping that it didn’t work, that James had remembered all their shared moments, that, like some fairytale, their love was strong enough to repel every spell. But it was merely that, a fairytale.
“Yeah, tell Sirius I say hi,” he forces himself to turn away, hiding the quick flow of tears softly trailing down his face like some beautiful river, he wishes it was for a beautiful reason.
“Please, please, please, please,” Regulus collapses down onto hard rock, where was he? Why is lying on rocks?
“Master Regulus told me to keep doing it, Master Regulus told me to keep doing it,” someone chants from next to him, he can hear the sobs filling the person’s voice, changing his voice ever so differently.
“I don’t want to anymore,” he whispers, “Why?” He knows he’s not making much sense to whoever is helping (?) him but somehow it makes sense to him, and that’s all that matters right now, at least he has himself.
“Master Regulus, one more sip, one more,” the person pours the deathly liquid into his throat and he lets out a mangled scream.
He watches from a distance, that’s how he’s always done it, also the shadow, never the limelight.
Regulus watches as James slowly falls for Lily once again, all thought of him gone as they should be. He watches how his old best friend falls right back with a willing hand, he knows obliviating them all was risky, but it was more risky to not.
He watches as they get closer, he watches as they hang out more, he watches as they kiss for the first time at a stupid party he was dragged along to like a dead lamb and he watches as they start to date, and he watches the look in James’ eye that was supposed to only be reserved for him.
Maybe in some other miraculous world it’s not like how it is here, maybe in some other miraculous world they’re cuddled up by the fire with a cat, maybe in some other miraculous world they’re dancing around the kitchen, maybe in some other miraculous world it isn’t this god-forbidden shit hole where it’s only anger, anger, anger, anger.
“Water,” he gasps out, blindly reaching out to some water substance, “Water,”
“Here, here,” a small… thing (he’s not so sure, his eyesight isn't helping him as it usually would) scuttles over to him and scoops the water from the lake (?) into the goblet and almost trips over it’s feet to get to him.
Regulus quickly gulps down the water and pants as he lowers it to the ground, “Thank you, Kreacher,” oh yes that was who it was.
“Are you okay now Master Regulus?”
“Regulus will do, Kreacher, thank you it’s best we get going-”
Water.
Water.
Inferi.
Inferi.
A skeletal hand grabs his foot, where’s his wand?
He scrambles away from the hand, trying to find even a fragment of his wand, just even a piece of wood will do right now.
Regulus feels a small hand clawing away at his foot trying to get rid of the skeleton hanging off of his ankle.
“Kreacher,” he sighs and swallows, “Go,”
“No, Master Regulus,” the elf’s voice strains as he struggles to pull the hand off of his ankle.
“Kreacher,”
“No,” he grits out.
“Kreacher, I command you to go back to Mother-”
“No,”
“- And tell her that I have gone missing, that you could not find me anywhere-”
“No!”
“- That you’ve been looking for awhile and that’s why you’ve been gone for a couple of days-”
“No! Master Regulus!”
“- And I command you to not tell anyone about what happened in this cave unless they're looking for into it for a reason,”
“Master Regulus,”
“I said I command you,”
Kreacher swallows and lets out a small sniff and lets silent tears tumble down his cheeks messily, “Goodbye, Master Regulus,”
“Goodbye, Kreacher,” and with a pop, Regulus’ only source of comfort left him, like everyone else, at least he’ll be safe though.
He lets out a loud choked sob and kicks the Inferi in the face before crawling over to the middle of the island and curling up into a ball, just like Sirius used to tell him to do what they were only small children, hiding from their parents.
“Just curl up, Lulu, they can’t hurt you when you’re curled up in a ball, remember that?” Sirius smiles at him brightly.
“Promise I will,” Regulus squeaks, matching his big brother’s energy.
“Pinky promise?” Sirius sticks out his pinky and looks at Regulus hopefully.
“Pinky promise.” Regulus curls his pinky around Sirius’ and they giggle quietly together.
“I didn’t break it, Siri,” he smiles sadly to himself, closing his eyes and curling up in a ball, “I pinky promised,” he lets out another sob and squeezes in on himself tighter.
The black waves start getting higher, lapping over the island higher and higher so that it gets smaller, the dead bodies crawling up him.
“You’ll save me right?” He whispers, shaking with fright like how he remembers he used to, “You said you would save me,” he swallows the ball in his throat painfully.
“I’ll save you, Reggie, I promise,” James whispers into his ear when he thought he was sleeping.
“I don’t need saving, Jaime,” he whispers back, half-asleep.
Silence wraps around them, a comfortable one but before Regulus can sleep he hears a soft voice speak, “I’ll save you anyway,”
He softly hums and falls asleep on a beautiful sun, soaking in his warmth and trying to cure the coldness of his own star.
“I miss you,” he lets his tears go, feeling the hot tumble of them falling rather gracefully down his cheeks and messily landing on his shredded clothes.
“I wish you were coming,” he whispers again into the darkness and the creaking of old bones from the creatures climbing closer.
“Beautiful boy, that’s what you used to call me, I miss it,” he blindly says to the dark, “You used to call me Lulu, Siri, I miss that when we were little,”
He swallows and feels the light, teasing tap of the skeletal creatures sidling past him, “I’ll see you later, ‘kay? We’ll fix it later, pinky promise,”
Hands clutch around every part of his body dragging him down but they didn’t need to really, he wasn’t going to go with a struggle, he’d already accepted everything that would come after this. You can’t meddle with fate.
Eventually his head goes below the surface and he smiles, yes he’s aware he’s supposed to be thrashing and trying to get away right now, but really he’s lived his life hasn’t he? There was nothing else for him back there, at least now people will know what he did instead of calling him what he knows exactly what he is. A nasty Death Eater who deserves everything coming his way.
So he smiles because he’s lived and loved and he’s kept all those he loved safe so really, he’s succeeded in life, it was coming sooner or later, it’s always best for it to be sooner, no torture of endless living because if he’s correct he’d live far too long for his comfort.
‘Say goodbye to the world and drown in despair’ his own quote, he thinks as he slowly loses consciousness, he supposes it’s quite accurate in the situation he’s in at the moment.
Goodbye, horrid world.
James’ heart feels like it’s getting punctured in about a thousand times, and it really is quite annoying if you think about how bad being punctured a thousand times can be.
So he gets up and goes over to the bathroom, closing the lid of the toilet and sitting down and staring.
He does this sometimes, it’s easy to just stare and stare instead of being present in the world itself because why would someone want to be present in a time like this?
And he stares at that same tiled wall, not thinking of much, for an hour and a half and that’s when he feels it again, the tug on his heart, this time it gets worse, and it snaps.
Just like the sound.
It snaps.
Snap.
And a rush of memories fit into the forgotten spaces, a smile, a flirt, a kiss, ‘I love you’s’, dates, first everythings; and a simple but complicated goodbye that breaks his heart even two years later.
And one person is at the centre of it.
Regulus.
One boy, but one boy who changed everything he ever thought or knew about himself, one boy changed everything he knew.
A scream tumbles out of his throat.