do you wanna talk?
In a roundabout way, it's Bellatrix who convinces Regulus to see Narcissa.
He’s at home, arm off, taking down his teenage fascism shrine, and torn between laughter and tears at the goddamn weirdness of it all. It’s very hard to reconcile the person he was with who he feels he is now.
But it's important, he tells himself, that he looks at this and doesn’t forget who he had been.
It would be easy to act like he really had died in the Cave. Like there was a before-Regulus who had been a hateful, spiteful thing and whom he had killed to be born again.
The truth was the water in the cave had not been a repentance, not a baptism, not anything close to atonement.
He’d wanted it to be.
He’d failed.
Forgiveness was not something you could give yourself. You just had to accept it when it was given.
So yes, it was painful, and yes, it made him cringe back from his own writings, but he took the time to look at every single clipping he put down.
And that's when he saw her.
It was a slightly blurred photograph from a battle. The Death Eaters, moving streaks of silver masks and magic, had been caught on camera from an odd angle. One of them, gender indeterminate under a heavy cloak, had been pivoting round to face an Auror. The figures hood had slipped just a bit, their hair exposed and spun out by the force of their turn.
Bella’s hair, curly and dark, was just as distinctive as ever.
Regulus knew she hadn’t been officially identified as a Death Eater during the war. She’d managed to escape the original call up of Death Eaters after the war, only to commit the most heinous crime dating from after the Dark Lord’s death. Regulus had read up on her sentencing, 1983, (that late!), for the attack on the Longbottoms.
He’d read Barty’s too, but stopped when the transcript became just pleading.
Officially, Black children were not introduced to wider society before the age of eight. This was both a measure of propriety and a way to ensure any squibs would be identified before they became known to the public. As a result, most childhood socialisation was done within the family.
Every summer, both branches of the family would travel to the Black family estate in France for at least a month. Of all his cousins, it was Cissy that Regulus would end up spending the most time with. Possibly because as the youngest, he was the easiest for her to play out domesticity with. There’s a family photograph somewhere of the whole Black clan with an eight year old Cissy very determinedly holding a two year old Regulus on her hip.
Sirius had been too wild for Cissy’s tastes. In fact, he had been confirmed as not a squib, after he had managed to squirm out of Cissy’s arms. He’d made his escape and then floated up to the ceiling apparently to escape any more babying. The discovery of accidental magic was probably the last time Walburga had been happy with him, Sirius had said shortly before he had left.
The thing about being a pure blood family with a heavy emphasis on scrapbooking your heritage is that you have to cover up a lot of mistakes. Great Uncle Marius - who had reached the end of his tenure on the tapestry at the age of eleven with no letter in hand - had clearly weighed very heavily on their mother’s mind.
It had taken a long time for Regulus to disprove any suspicions about being a squib.
Bella would constantly tease him about this, telling him all the awful things that would happen to him if he turned out to be a squib. Regulus is almost certain she had repeatedly tried to get him in perilous situations to spark magic. Though, to be fair, that incident with the cursed wardrobe might have just been Bella’s typical sadistic curiosity.
The fallout from that might be the only time Regulus remembered his cousin actually being upset at her punishment. Usually she shook off lectures and canings like water on a dog.
Andy, who was still outspoken and amiable at that point (she had eventually gotten quieter and quieter each summer, Regulus remembered) did not tease him. Still she wouldn’t promise anything to him to reassure him. Not that he wouldn’t be a squib, nor that he wouldn’t be abandoned if he was. Regulus had felt more uncomfortable with the gaps in her words than Bella’s nightmare stories.
Cissy had never done either. She had acted with calm certainty that Regulus would have magic, that his blood was good and ancient and full of his ancestor’s magic. She would help him trace every famous witch and wizard bloodline down to his one name, written cramped and small in cursive, on the family tree.
Funny, Regulus thought, I never noticed all the dead-ends and omissions.
He wondered how Narcissa had justified to herself all the aborted branches of the Most Noble and Ancient House,
Still at the time, the quiet assurance of his belonging had been like air to a drowned man. Sirius had never really understood what scared Regulus about being a squib. He wanted Regulus to have magic because magic was cool and fun and meant you could charm people's shoes to quack with every step.
“Anyway,” Sirius would say, brash and overconfident even with his little boy voice, “even if you were a squib I wouldn’t let père feed you to the Grindylows, [this was Bella’s latest and most graphically described invention as to the fate of Black family squibs], I’d fight him off and we could go live in Kensington Gardens.”
Regulus had not wanted to live in the wilds of Kensington Gardens. He had not wanted to see Sirius duel with their father for his safety. He had not wanted to have magic so he could play tricks on their relatives.
He had just wanted to stay on the tapestry.
While it was Bellatrix, strong-willed and wild, that Sirius had most resembled - even when they disagreed and hexed each other under the dinner table, they matched each other in intensity - Narcissa has shared one quality with Sirius.
They were both incorrigibly bossy.
Perhaps it was a viewpoint thing - Regulus being the youngest was apparently the easiest target for both of them. It didn’t tend to bother Regulus - it was always easiest to just go along with what people wanted. And if anything really was so unbearable, Regulus was a master at waiting for a distraction to slip away.
While Sirius’s domineering attitude mostly reared its head in their childhood games, Narcissa’s bossiness was clearly a form of caring.
When he’d been sorted into Slytherin, Sirius got very hot-and-cold towards him. Sometimes his brother would drag him to sit with his rowdy pack of friends; sometimes he would shun him as part of the ongoing war against Slytherin. Regulus hadn’t made any friends in his first year. Not in his house nor any other.
But straightaway, from the welcoming feast onwards, Cissy had always made sure to take him up to sit with her at the Slytherin table.
By his second year, Cissy had left Hogwarts, but she still wrote to him. Told him which families he ought to talk to and how best to study. Asked some of her Prefect friends to watch out for him. He’d known she hadn’t been reporting to Walburga because he’d once lied about making friends with a Muggle-born. While Narcissa had sent back a scathing instructional letter letting him know what a mistake it was; he’d received no Howler from his mother.
He’d sort of missed her.
The issue with the invite though isn’t actually Cissy.
It’s her husband.
Lucius had been one of the ones to induct Regulus to the Dark Lord’s followers. He, Bellatrix, and the Lestrange brothers had all been very supportive - and in Bella’s case, forceful - of his teenage Death Eater ascension.
Regulus isn’t quite sure where public opinion on him falls from a Dark-Lord-follower viewpoint. He knows that the Order had seemed to suspect he had been killed by his fellow Death Eaters for failing important orders or trying to back out. It’s not so clear whether the Death Eaters also blamed the other side for his apparent murder.
That Regulus is back alive though, and working for Dumbledore, won’t win him any points though. Faking your death and disappearing in the middle of a war are not the actions of a loyal Death Eater.
The sensible thing to do would be to see Lucius, lie his sorry traitorous arse off, commiserate about the outcome of the war, and thus ensure he doesn’t end up on the hit-list of any particularly fervent Death Eaters.
Regulus doesn’t really want to have to look at Lucius and his hair though.
So he sends back a letter saying:
Dearest Cissy,
I was delighted to receive your note. A family reunion is certainly overdue.
I’m afraid seeing me might cause undue stress to your husband - I’ve heard he had a bad time during the war. I wouldn’t want to bring up any memories.
Perhaps you and I can meet near Diagon Alley for tea.
Yours sincerely.
R.A.B
Fuck it. Regulus can take the cowards way out. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Anyway, it’s almost certain though, that anything he tells Cissy will find its way to Lucius.
Two birds, one stone.
Narcissa isn’t quite sure what she expects, when she goes to meet her dead cousin.
Out of all the relatives she has lost in the past few years, Regulus had been the last one she would think would return to her. He had been the first to go, after Uncle Orion, of course. That year had seemed to topple a whole domino trail of Black bereavements. Her mother’s health had not outlasted the war; Sirius and Bella had been taken away to unexpectedly become odd-bedfellows again in Azkaban; a whole plethora of great uncles and aunts had taken their leave of the world after the war; and then, most painfully her father had died just before Draco’s fourth birthday.
It had almost been a relief when Walburga had passed. Narcissa had finally run out of people to lose.
It would just be her, Lucius and Draco. She could be happy with that. She knew how to keep them safe.
Except, then the newspapers the next week had begun reporting on her littlest cousin’s resurrection, though with no clear answers as to what he had been doing in the last half decade.
So yes, she’s not quite sure what to expect, but she did at least hope for a greeting.
Instead, Regulus’ stone-grey eyes slip right off her form and down to her son. She had thought to bring Draco along so he could look at the shops and buy him a new training broom.
She looks at Regulus, just a bit taller than her, face much older than she remembers. There’s some scars, almost entirely faded, on his neck that trace up towards his temples. He has two arms, though she notices the gloves immediately.
Despite all propriety, she cannot help but stare.
Her long dead cousin, still with his stiff upright posture, standing in Diagon Alley. His hair has grown long enough that it reminds her of Sirius. It reminds her of Bella too, though the curls are far less defined.
Her dead cousin, so visibly breathing and so very alive.
“Good morning, Regulus,” she says.
Her cousin does not reply. Instead, Regulus mostly seems to be staring at Draco.
“I missed this announcement”, he said, finally looking up at her, “I didn’t think he would be so big,” he says. He looks completely mystified.
Narcissa is abruptly reminded that Regulus had always been the youngest in the family.
He looks back down at her son, who to her pride matches the stare. Regulus blinks, then addresses her without looking away.
“When…Wh…How long has he been walking?”
“I’m six,” Draco says, screwing his nose up, “I’m not a baby.”
Technically her son would only be six in June, a full month away. He had figured out how soon his birthday was last week and begun to round up immediately.
“Be polite, Draco”, Narcissa said gently, ruffling his hair. “I found out I was pregnant a little bit after you… went away.”
Regulus did not cease to look shell-shocked.
“Oh… well. Belated congratulations, I guess?”
Narcissa wonders if her cousin spent the majority of his death on some kind of uninhabited island where he was not required to talk to anyone. He hadn’t been a particularly charismatic young man, but he had seemed to understand politeness, or at least, when not to speak.
It’s making her feel wrong-footed herself.
The situation is unusual, yes, but there is no reason for her to feel nervous or for her voice to catch in her throat. There is no reason for her to hold a little tighter onto her sons hand or blink a little more frequently whenever Regulus speaks.
She breathes in once, settles the threatening sting of her eyes, and tries again.
“Good morning, cousin,” she repeats with a bit of instructive force. “It is so good to see you after so long. How have you been?”
That seems to do the trick. Regulus stops staring at her son like he’s watching a troll approach, and finally seems to remember how a proper Black should act.
“Narcissa, how wonderful it is to see you again.”
A little later, greeting and introductions finally completed, they are sitting in Rosa Lee’s teashop, exchanging gentle pleasantries and completely skirting the topic of exactly how Regulus has ended up to be alive and drinking tea with her.
Narcissa’s cousin has definitely changed.
She can’t put a finger on how though.
He seems just as cagey as ever, but now she can’t blame his reluctance to speak on teenage moods. His eyes have a certain depth behind them. He speaks with a little less careful diction.
He has spent most of their conversation, diverting any personal questions, by asking about Draco. Narcissa cannot pretend to not be flattered. Draco is a little prodigy already, polite and well-spoken despite his age. He had inherited Lucius shining luminously blond hair, rather than her darker locks. She is sure he will grow up to be as handsome as his father.
At some point, her son, despite his usual limpet tendencies, had grown bored with the conversation and shifted to sit next to Regulus. Regulus had looked momentarily panicked, but when Draco did nothing more than swing his feet and occasionally fiddle with the book she had brought for him, he settled down.
“Your hand is weird!”, Draco exclaimed suddenly. “Mummy, his hand is weird!”
At some point, Draco had tried to tug on Regulus’ left arm. He had succeeded in dragging Regulus’ glove down just an inch or so, revealing an oddly shiny, stiff skin, a shade off from Regulus' light complexion.
Her cousin went very pale. He looked around to each side. He leaned in towards Narcissa and then began to fiddle just below the elbow on his left arm.
Finally.
It seemed they would discuss something relevant to Regulus’ disappearance.
Narcissa took pity on her cousin, and cast a silencing bubble charm to surround the table. There was only one patron in the teashop who had seemed to notice Draco’s outburst - a lady with rigid blonde curls - but Narcissa fixed her with a glare and the woman made a swift retreat to the bathroom.
Regulus finishes what he was doing and hands his now unattached left forearm to an awe struck Draco.
There’s nothing else to say really.
“So that… truly was your arm?”
When she had seen him standing earlier with two arms, she had thought maybe it had been a trick. It was somehow both disturbing and reassuring to know that the severed arm had been his.
By the time that anyone had realised Regulus was missing, it had been a week. He had missed a meeting, and Lucius had let Narcissa know immediately. She had known from her husband’s face that Regulus’ failure to attend would have consequences. She had hoped she would find him sick, or with some good enough excuse, as to why he had failed to attend. She hadn’t expected what she had found.
Walburga had apparently had the presence of mind to amend the tapestry with a new death date, but not to do anything about the severed arm lying on the study table.
By the time, Narcissa had arrived, the arm had already gone putrid. The skin had began to collapse into the decaying flesh. The hand had been further mangled and most of the fingers were missing. Flies had entered into the room through a shattered pane of glass, and made fast home of the limb. All around the room blood had dried into muddy dark patches that smelt of copper and rot.
When she saw the mark on the arm, she had known it was Regulus’.
She had checked with magic of course, but the violence in the room and the way the severed limb had been presented on the table like some smug offering, was clear enough message.
Her cousin had been murdered.
Narcissa had personally arranged for the arm to be buried in the Black family mausoleum. Salazar knows, Aunty Walburga wouldn’t have been able to arrange anything herself. She’d been entirely useless when questioned about what had occurred. Only talking about broken wards, bells, and an awful mess.
Once or twice, Walburga had mentioned an intruder, but the most basic details of the intruder seemed to switch.
When the war ended and no one admitted their part in the attack, Narcissa had slowly learnt to accept that she would never know what had actually happened to her youngest cousin.
Except, here, Regulus was.
Not dead.
“Unfortunately, yes. I kept my life, but lost my arm in the…” Regulus trailed off looking to the distance.
So there had been an attack. Narcissa cannot help it, she speaks her second thought before she has time even to think it.
“Who was it?”
Regulus flinches a little at the force in her voice. Draco too, startles, looking uncertainly between them.
She breathes in, softens her voice. “Lucius still holds weight in society, we might still be able to…”
“They’re dead.”
There’s something flat in his voice when he speaks.
“The person who cut my arm off died before the end of the war. I assume that's why no one ever found out.”
It makes sense, more or less. After the Dark Lord’s end, the Ministry’s propaganda had worked double time to sanitise its own actions during the war. Things like Auror’s use of Unforgivables under Crouch Sr’s direction had been played down.
It would not have been good optics, Narcissa suspects, for the self-righteous idiots in the Ministry to admit that one of their soldiers had attacked a seventeen year old in his own home and left his mad mother to find his severed arm. There had already been some heated discussion regarding the radicalisation of students at Hogwarts, especially after Crouch Sr. had sent his own son to Azkaban.
Perhaps, whoever had injured him, had assumed Regulus had merely stumbled away to die after the attack. If they thought Regulus was dead, there was no real reason to fear discovery as the perpetrator.
But why had Regulus faked his own death. Why hadn’t he…
“I went into hiding after the attack. They knew where I lived. They attacked me with my mother sleeping two floors above. I didn’t think I could go back when -”
“You could have come to us”.
It’s not quite possible for Narcissa to hide the hurt in her voice.
She and Lucius would have protected him. Bella too, she was sure. Her sister and her husband had both taken a steady arm in mentoring Regulus. When everything had gone so wrong with Sirius, she had asked Lucius especially, to keep an eye on him and introduce him to his friends. Regulus had clearly missed his brother. He needed a good male role model.
He would have been safe with them so why…
She tries not to feel pitied when Regulus takes a softer tone. “I… I was very injured after. More than just this”, he waved his stump, “and … I wasn’t myself for a while. By the time I had… recovered. The war was already over. I wasn’t sure if it would be safe to come back though, given…”
At this point, he lifted his stump again, but this time Narcissa knew he was referring to the Mark that had adorned the arm rather than the injury itself.
Narcissa reached out to touch his right hand. She spoke slowly, “As you know, Lucius was under the Imperius curse throughout the war. Terrible experience of course, being forced to act for the wrong side of the war. When I saw reports that you were a suspected Death Eater. I wondered if, perhaps, you had been in a similar situation. I know your friend, the Crouch boy, was very good at Unforgivables.”
Narcissa knew for a fact that the younger Crouch had used Imperius on several figures during the war. She also knew for a fact that Bartemaius Crouch Jr. had died almost three years ago.
No one would be able to question him on who he had or hadn’t cursed.
Regulus takes a second to remove his hand from hers. But he keeps steady eyes on her, and when he speaks, he does so just as slowly and carefully as she had, “Fortunately, Dumbledore understands my situation. When they realised I was breaking free of the Dark Lord’s influence, I was attacked and fled for my life. I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you which of his follower’s harmed me. Everything was just such a blur.”
Good. Her cousin might be awkward but he wasn’t stupid. He still knew how to talk carefully when it was required. How he had managed to convince Dumbledore wasn’t too difficult to understand. The old man was soft, especially to former students, and Regulus with his too long hair and scruffy robes painted a pathetic sight.
She tries to ask him a few more questions about where exactly he had been during his missing years, and who was the dead person who had attacked him, but her cousin refuses to speak any further.
Draco, who had been messing around with the fake arm, was clearly growing bored of adult conversation. He had pulled the glove completely off, and was peering inside the hollow arm. He’d apparently discovered that while the rest of the arm was unyielding, each finger could be slightly bent or straightened at the stiff knuckles.
With abrupt distaste, Narcissa realised the arm was of clear Muggle invention. The skin of the arm created from some kind of soft, rubbery Muggle material. No wonder, Regulus had been wearing gloves.
“Don’t touch that Draco. It's unclean.”
Narcissa levitates it with her wand, and looked at it closer herself.
“It’s a terribly gauche,” she tells Regulus, “I’m sure we could find something else... Silver suits your complexion, of course. Or maybe some kind of wood would be a more suitable material. Surely, there's a more practical solution than this dirty Muggle contraption.”
Regulus blinked rapidly at her, before reaching out to grap the arm and fit it back on. “Perhaps,” he said cooly.
It's a heavy moment that hangs between them before he speaks again, all chill wiped out of his voice. “Actually, Cissy, I have a favour to ask of you - I was hoping you might come with me to buy some robes and a new wand…”
All things considered, it's not a very good reunion.
Things get accomplished to a certain extent. She helps Regulus find himself proper robes and watches him try wand after wand in Ollivander's till finally one sparks. Regulus, in turn, gives her advice on what to look for in a training broom for Draco.
And they do talk, but the conversation never quite flows. Somehow her attempts at light chat keep butting up against some unknown tension he holds. She doesn’t recognise the man in front of her as the little cousin she once knew.
When they say their goodbyes at the end of the trip, Narcissa sees relief in Regulus’ face that she knows must be mirrored on hers.
He hugs her goodbye though - something he never did past the age of twelve - and suddenly she remembers the little boy from her childhood, who’d cried when she’d seen him off at the Hogwarts platform
Narcissa values family. And with both parents dead, one sister stolen by Mudbloods, and the other condemned to a life sentence, she is running low on family.
She doesn’t want to lose anyone else.