Hang On To Yourself
Regulus drowned eight more times over the next three years. He started having visions of smaller things - what kind of pie Kreacher was going to make, what Mother’s next grievance with him would be, and annoyingly, the end of the book he was currently reading - about a year ago. The more tame visions typically happened while he was sleeping, but sometimes they struck at random points throughout the day. Sirius said that whenever this happened, his eyes would glaze over for a moment and he would go unresponsive. One time Regulus did this while they were practicing quidditch and directed his despondent silver gaze towards his brother to say “duck.” Sirius narrowly avoided losing his eye to the snitch (which the younger boy promptly caught) and was sufficiently creeped out.
The boys found a common love for quidditch over the years and would spend their summers taking frequent trips to Uncle Alphard’s manor to play two-person games in his sprawling backyard. It was during one of these games that 7-year-old Regulus was struck with another vision, this one different from all the rest.
The grassy field was gone in an instant, replaced with a large, dark chamber illuminated by sharp cracks of light coming from all around him. Wands, he recognized vaguely. They’re fighting. This was the first time he’d ever had a vision where it truly felt like he was just watching an event unfold, not taking any active part in its progression. I wonder why that is.
His answer to that came when his eyes fell upon a figure that was both familiar in a bone deep way and also a complete stranger to him. The unknown man had wild black hair and stormy grey eyes set into a sallow face, signs of aging showing in the form of crinkly crow’s feet. Sirius, he realized with a start. The man across from him was Sirius, albeit much older than the version he had come to know and love. Regulus took in his gaunt appearance in a new light, wondering what the hell had happened to make his older brother look so sickly. He was pale now in a way that looked decidedly ill, not in the porcelain doll-esque manner that both of the young Black brothers seemed to maintain despite how much time they spent in the sun.
Regulus reached out for him just as Sirius was raising his wand towards the person in front of him. The woman’s face was obscured by a mane of coiled brown hair, but he didn’t need to see her expression to know that she was not all there in the head. The way she held herself felt unhinged and her aura screamed danger. Regulus wanted to yell at his brother to get away from the woman, but his mouth was glued shut and his feet were stuck to the ground as he was forced to watch the scene unfold with growing dread.
There was another flash of light and Sirius’s eyes widened as he wasn’t fast enough to stop the spell that hit him directly in the torso. He flew back and Regulus heard an echoing scream as he watched his brother fall through a veiled archway.
He was dead. The fact hit Regulus like a train, followed by the odd sensation of falling.
“Reggie!”
Oh, right. They were playing quidditch. Only, the rules of the game stipulated that you had to stay on your broom at all times for the entirety of the match. Based on the wind whipping through his hair and the lack of a broomstick in his hands, it was safe to assume that Regulus would’ve been disqualified were this a regular game.
The knowledge that he was going to land face first in the dirt from a hundred foot drop was overshadowed by the understanding that he had just watched his brother die. Sirius, his big brother, the person he loved most in the world, was going to die before he turned forty. He looked bad in the vision, but it was obvious that he was still young despite his sickly appearance. And he didn’t just die, he was murdered.
There was a flash of movement underneath him and Regulus felt his head crack against something at the same time that an arm banded around his stomach in a vice-like grip. His fall came to a screeching halt as labored breathing wracked through the person holding onto him.
“Bloody fucking hell, Reg.” Sirius was twisted at an uncomfortable angle where his legs and left arm were wrapped tightly around his broom while his right arm had snatched Regulus’s limp figure out of the air and was holding him tightly against the side of his torso. He shifted to get a better hold on the boy and flew them to the ground at a much more controlled pace than they had been going previously, what with his younger brother’s sudden interest in skydiving.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Sirius was mumbling as he lowered them down to the grassy floor. “C’mon, Reggie. Open your eyes, baby.”
Huh, he hadn’t even realized they were closed. He wanted to open them, to listen to his brother and do what he said, but he just couldn’t get rid of the image of older Sirius’s face right before he fell. He was terrified, desperate for anyone or anything to step forward and help him. Regulus managed to crack his eyes open and was met with the exact same expression on a far younger face. He laid there, frozen as he stared up at the look of abject horror that was ingrained into his mind.
He’s going to die, he thought helplessly. Sirius Black was going to suffer a horrible death and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Vaguely, he was aware of words being spoken to him. After a while of soothing hands and babbled words yielding no response, Regulus felt himself being scooped up by a pair of warm arms. He felt fuzzy, like his mind was separate from his body and all he could do was stare blankly up at the face that was haunting him. His body was settled down onto something soft and Sirius disappeared from his vision. He wanted to cry out but was stuck, blank gaze directed up at an equally empty ceiling. A new, deeper voice entered his muffled brain and a faint blue glow appeared somewhere off to his left.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“I’m not sure, the diagnostic charm is showing a mild head injury from where he hit his head but other than that it’s not picking up anything.”
“There’s blood all over his face and he’s completely unresponsive, how in the world is that considered mild?”
“Head wounds tend to bleed a lot more, I’m sure once we wipe it all away the cut will be relatively small. I’m not sure about the unresponsiveness, though. His eyes are open but it’s like he can’t even see us. Has anything like this ever happened before?”
“No! Well, sort of, but not to this extent! He zones out sometimes but it’s only ever for a few seconds.”
“Define ‘zones out’. Is he just losing focus or is it something more?”
“I-I can’t tell you.”
“Hm, well, then we have two options. We can either take him to St. Mungo’s or, if you feel that this could just be an extreme case of him ‘zoning out’, we can take turns watching him and wait until morning to see if he snaps out of it. Either way, I’m going to have to floo your parents and tell them something.”
Regulus let his mind drift away from the conversation. He felt bad, Sirius was probably going to get in trouble because of him, but he just couldn’t seem to pull himself out of the fog he had fallen into. He’s going to die. Silver eyes slipped shut as he simply laid there and let the new knowledge fit in with his previous visions. He’s going to die, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it because I’m going to die first. Regulus realized sometime after his fifth drowning that he was experiencing his own death in those visions. He remembered sobbing in his bed and avoiding everyone for a few days after he felt his soul be ripped from his body by those spindly hands. Sirius was understandably concerned, it had taken about a week for him to break down and confess his realization.
Now, he knew that they would both die horribly. Must be a family trait, he thought morbidly. I just wish there was something I could do to stop it-
Wasn’t there? He would die first, yes, but if he could just get some more information then who’s to say that he couldn’t change their futures? Regulus thought back to all of the books he’d read about Seers for any information on practitioners that were able to use their Sight to alter what they saw. Marelius Northcutt in 1907 reportedly dreamt that his beloved family cat would disappear, so he kept the cat inside the day it was supposed to vanish and it proceeded to live for another three years. Solomon Flavius had a vision that his rival would invent a brilliant dental restoration potion in 1939, so he used the knowledge to invent it first. Regulus himself had a dream last month that Kreacher was going to make boiled eggs and hash for breakfast, so he requested the elf make cinnamon bread instead. He could change things and make sure that Sirius - and himself - didn’t have such a terrible end. But he needed more information, he couldn’t just tell the boy to stay away from ominous veiled archways and hope for the best. No, Regulus needed to learn how to look into the future internationally and hunt for specific events instead of sitting around and hoping for something to hit him. He needed to teach himself how to induce a vision so that he could find his brother’s murderer and prevent his gruesome death. He had to.
He didn’t know what he’d do if he failed.