One Can Only Hope
“Crucio!”
Regulus doesn’t have time to flinch before his mothers curse connects with his chest as searing pain shoots through his whole body. It felt as though every single one of his nerves were being electrocuted and his bones were on fire. His mother stops the curse only briefly, putting a temporary pause on the physical pain, so she can inflict some mental damage.
She points her wand at him again and he quickly looks away as she casts legilimency and breaks her way into his mind. She makes him relive his worst memories.
The time he broke her favorite vase when he was 7 and she crucio’d him for a minute as a consequence.
When he was 11, Regulus found a stray black cat in the park and brought him home and named him Salazar. Salazar was a black cat that Regulus kept in one of his drawers until his mother found him.
As a result, he was forced to watch his mother torture and brutally murder Salazar as he was petrified on his knees in front of him.
He didn’t leave Salazar’s side as his mother cast the Cruciatus curse on him. He didn’t leave when Walburga released him from his petrified state. And he walked alongside Kreacher as they walked to the backyard and buried him. Regulus found a large rock to place on top of the grave.
But the worst memories are the fights he has had with Sirius. His mother makes him relive each one, over and over. Every single bad memory he has of Sirius is replayed over and over in his head as his headache grows worse and worse and he feels dizzy.
The pain stops, and right before Regulus passes out he hears his mother say “He is a traitor to this family, to the wizarding world and to you. If I ever find you in his room again, I will be forced to take away all your memories of him. Good and bad. Do you understand me?”
She leaves, and as Regulus passes out, his hand finds his pocket and wraps around Sirius’ favorite necklace. A simple chain with a crescent moon pendant.
Surely Sirius misses it, he thinks, but for now, Regulus will hold onto it as tight as he should’ve held Sirius’ hand when he offered to take him with to the Potter’s. Regulus thinks of Sirius happy with his best friend, James, as he loses consciousness in the remains of his older brother’s room.
Regulus wakes up with a poster of one of his brother's favorite singers staring down at him. Regulus never understood the appeal of pictures that don’t move, but it is his brother’s, so it becomes one of his favorite posters ever.
As he lies on Sirius’ cold floor, he remembers his brother rambling about the man in the poster, and Regulus remembers tuning him out. Sirius frequently talked about his favorite muggle artists and his conspiracies about them being wizards. And after a while, Regulus learned how to nod his head at the appropriate times and remember random bits of information for when Sirius accuses him of not paying attention.
Those one-sided conversations are something Regulus never thought he would miss.
He tries to remove it from the wall, but it won’t budge. Sirius must have placed a permanent sticking charm to it before he left. Regulus gives up on removing the poster and decides to go back to his room.
He doesn’t want his mother to find him awake in there again, so he grabs the door handle and closes the door, vowing to never step foot back into that room. No matter how much he misses Sirius, or how bad it gets, he will never go back in there.
It felt wrong, being there without Sirius. The room looked void of color despite the red Gryffindor Posters and memorabilia covering the walls, that Regulus assumes also has a permanent sticking charm placed on them.
Regulus passes the portraits of his family members. His Uncles, Aunts. Grandparents, Great Grandparents, almost every member of “The Most Noble and Ancient House of Black” to date.
He sees his mothers portrait, she is only 17 in the painting, 3 years older than Regulus, but the similarities are still very obvious. Sharp features, black hair and grey eyes.
Walburga Black still resembles her painting even years later, but Regulus notices a small detail. She looks slightly happier. It is such a small change that Regulus isn’t even sure it’s there, but he still finds it curious.
Was there ever a time his mother wasn’t the cruel mother he knows? Could she have perhaps been caring or even kind?
Regulus finds himself longing for that version of her. A mother who loves him and reminds him of that everyday with hugs, and freshly baked cookies when he is sad.
He craves for the motherly love she never gave him so much he doesn’t realize he has been daydreaming about it in the middle of the hallway for 10 minutes until one of his great-great-great-Grandfathers rudely interrupts his train of thought.
“What are you staring at?”
Regulus suddenly realises he had been staring at one of the portraits the whole time he had been thinking and quickly looks away out of embarrassment.
“Nothing. Just thinking.” Regulus responds to the portrait who perks up a little at his response.
“Oh, why thank you. I don’t believe anyone has thought about me for some time now, other than that grouchy old house-elf that dusts my frame every couple months.” Say the man in the portrait.
Regulus doesn’t want to explain what he was actually thinking about to a painting, so he just responds awkwardly with “You’re welcome” and continues to his room, trying to recover from the sheer embarrassment he got from that interaction.
Once he gets to his room he notices through his window that it is dark. He doesn’t know how long he was passed out for, but it must have been a few hours. And despite being unconscious for who knows how long Regulus is still very drained and exhausted.
He gets ready to go to sleep, and as he does, he imagines that perfect life. The life he wishes he had, instead of the one he is stuck in. He aches so much for it that he almost feels it is real, somewhere. As though there is another version of him experiencing all of it, with parents he doesn’t flinch from, and a brother who didn’t leave. Maybe that Regulus and Sirius even have a good relationship, where they can o to each other about anything, and not expect judgement in return.
Maybe that Regulus knows who he is, and came out to a world that loves him for who he is, no matter who he loves. Maybe that Regulus told James how he feels, instead of avoiding him in the hallways at school, or getting distracted looking at him playing quidditch.
Regulus finds himself wishing for nothing more than to live how that Regulus does. He lays in bed for hours, mapping out his perfect life. He obsesses over the idea of it, and clings to the hope that it is real, somewhere.
Regulus misses Sirius. He doesn’t want to admit it, because he chose to stay. He chose to continue living at number 12 Grimmauld place with his parents. Sirius begged him to come with, but Regulus refused.
What would happen if his mother found out where they were?
What would she do if she caught them?
So Regulus stayed, and he watched his mother destroy Sirius’ room, and blast his portrait off of the family wall. He stood by as his mother told him that he is now the Black family heir, and is to take that title seriously and responsibly. After that, he went back to Sirius’ room and found a small necklace on the ground and put it in his pocket.
Regulus falls asleep as he thinks about Sirius, and the perfect life he constructed in his head.