Chapter 2
Regulus Black had always been an inquisitive person by nature. When he was younger, that had taken the form of voracious questioning, usually directed at Sirius who was the only one who would listen. Sometimes the questions got answered, questions like “Why am I called Regulus?” or “Why do I have to be quiet?”, but a lot of the time they went unanswered and questions like “Why are muggleborns inferior?” and “How is it even possible to steal magic?” got beaten out of him. Eventually, Regulus learned to stop asking.
That never meant that Regulus didn’t remain curious, though, he just learnt how to hide it better. That had always been what he excelled at, hiding. He put together a carefully curated mask and locked away all of his emotions in a tiny box in his mind and that worked for him, this mask hadn’t slipped once since he was ten years old watching Sirius go off to Hogwarts without him.
Sirius had been so clear about what Regulus had to do in the year he was gone: keep quiet, stay out of their way, do not get into trouble. And Regulus hadn’t. He had managed to cheat the system in a way that Sirius could never manage, to keep all of his emotions below the surface and not betray a single grievance that he felt.
What Regulus wasn’t expecting was for Sirius to resent him for this, for Sirius to come back with all of his wonderful new friends in Gryffindor and look at his blank face and hate him for it. Of course, Regulus had understood years later that maybe that wasn’t what started the end of their relationship, maybe Regulus looked too much like a Black with that impassive face, devoid of emotion. But how was that Regulus’s fault? He was ten. Why should he be punished for surviving?
On Regulus’s first time on the train, he had sat with Sirius and his friends, keeping quiet and observing like he often did while Sirius showed off proudly. Even at eleven, he had remembered thinking that Sirius and James had just shined together - they were the real stars, or more accurately James was the sun and Sirius was the brightest star in the sky, both feeding off of each other’s excellence.
James had barely looked at him on that train, as if drawn to Sirius but there had been one singular moment when he was introduced, when James had turned his full gaze on Regulus and Regulus had felt trapped. Like he was melting under the full force of the sun’s gaze who happened to have the warmest brown eyes that he had ever seen and a big kind smile for him.
That all obviously changed when Regulus was sorted into Slytherin, he could actually feel the weight of Sirius’s disappointment watching from the Gryffindor table and he spared one small glance to look at his brother and friends only to flinch away from the slight curling of James’s lip. He had at first been devastated by this change, how could he survive in the cold now he knew how loving the light was?
But Regulus was smart. Ridiculously smart actually. Sirius had always been clever and was naturally good at magic, but he was never intellectual or talented in the way that Regulus was. Sirius had always thought that he would end up in Ravenclaw because of this, which the hat had deliberated on, which was partly the reason Sirius had felt such disgust when he ended up at the snakes table.
He wasn’t stupid enough to believe in extreme house prejudice like apparently a lot of the Gryffindors did, one person is obviously not going to have three singular qualities that embody them? People were complex and multi-dimensional and Regulus hated being judged just because of the house he was from.
This meant that he never had any qualms about speaking to people of other houses, even if he didn’t really have any other friends. Regulus was always too smart, too cold or too intimidating to actually make friends from other houses. Except for one girl. Pandora.
Pandora was for Regulus what James must have been for Sirius, a breath of fresh air, a release from the oppressive grip the Black household had on the two boys. He had met her in the library studying alone in his first year, she was a slight, dainty girl with shockingly pale features and a small toothy grin but her eyes had been what drew him in. They were a light crystal blue, incredibly clear and perceptive.
She had sat down next to him, smiled at him, stuck her hand out and firmly said “we are going to be friends” and Regulus believed her straight away. To be totally honest, he was pretty sure she was a seer anyway, she always seemed to know things.
Which is why it was so insulting that she was now suggesting he fix his relationship with her brother and even become friends with Potter? He had demanded to know why but she just hummed softly, looking at him with that smile that meant she knew something he didn’t and it was infuriating. Besides, Regulus was definitely not going to become friends with James.
He used to hate James because of his relationship with Sirius, Regulus had felt robbed as a child, robbed of his brother and that manifested into intense jealousy and hatred directed at James. However, he had grown up and again, Regulus was smart and rational and had come to understand that James hadn’t actually done anything wrong, all he had done was make a good friend and offer up his house to that friend when he ran away.
Sirius was the one who replaced him, called him ‘no better than the rest of the family’ and repeatedly said the Potters were his only family. So no, Regulus didn’t hate James because of his relationship with Sirius, Regulus hated him because he was arrogant and obnoxious. He was also certainly a perpetrator of house prejudice considering that the pranks that the Marauders played were so obviously targeted towards Slytherin.
Regulus scoffed at the name, The Marauders , it was such a silly disguise. An incredibly obvious one as well, considering that the nicknames they had given each other directly correlated with what Regulus assumed to be their animagi for Remus Lupin.
He had figured out that Lupin was a werewolf in his second year, he found it exceedingly obvious and something that was very easy to figure out if you were just observant. And Regulus had been ridiculously observant of Sirius and his friends until his fourth year when he had given up on putting so much effort into caring.
But seriously, Moony ? Sirius and his friends had clearly only managed to figure it out in Regulus’s third year as they started disappearing at breakfast the next day and spent a whole month being uncharacteristically quiet which Regulus knew meant that they had a mandrake leaf stuck to the top of their mouth, a feature involved in becoming an animagus.
Regulus was never one to be trumped, and maybe, just maybe, he still cared about Sirius’s opinion of himself and so even if Sirius never found out, Regulus silently competed with him by undertaking the challenge of becoming an animagus himself. He succeeded of course.
A black cat, amusingly an opposite to Sirius, with large grey eyes and a perpetually haughty expression on his face. Pandora thought it was hilarious and spent ages cooing over him while Regulus just stared back at her unimpressed but allowed her to pet him anyway.
This was just the beginning of Regulus’s academic achievements. In his third year, he taught himself how to be an animagus, his fourth, he had taught himself occlumency and legilimency - partially for fun, partially to protect himself when he went home and his mother tried to rip into his head. His greatest achievement, however, was in his fifth year when he decided he had enough of the school curriculum and learnt the entirety of fifth, sixth and seventh year by himself.
In his current sixth year, he was learning wandless magic, something that was surprisingly less difficult than he anticipated. It helped when he did not have to learn any content in classes though so he suspected that was a part of it.
Regulus was pulled away from his thoughts when he heard a loud and abrasive “Regulus!” shouted across the library. Pandora winced looking up from her defence against the dark arts textbook that she had been napping on. “Oh you have got to be kidding me” Regulus whispered furiously at her as he spotted glasses and a mess of black hair making his way towards him.
Regulus immediately started to pack up, apologising to Pandora who just nodded sleepily, accepting that this was now a regular occurrence. In the past month that they had been back at school, Regulus had been cornered by James about ten times. Ten. He always seemed to find Regulus and it was absolutely infuriating.
“Regulus, wait!” James yelled as Regulus started to swiftly exit the library, “come on! I need to talk to you.”
Sighing, Regulus waited until they were out of the library and next to an alcove before turning and grabbing James by the sleeve and shoving him into the alcove. James blinked in surprise at the close proximity and stared at Regulus’s piercing grey eyes that were scanning him with anger.
“Um hi?” James breathed out weakly, looking at Regulus with something he couldn’t decipher.
“What do you want from me Potter?” Regulus spat out, glaring at James, “you keep on following me and disrupting my life so for Salazar’s sake, just spit it out.”
James sighed slightly exasperated, what right did he have to be exasperated? He was the one following Regulus around everywhere. “I want you and Sirius to be brothers again.”
Regulus resisted the urge to groan out loud, “you have got to be kidding me Potter, this cannot be what you have concerned yourself with for the past month,” James bit his lip nervously and ran his hands through his hair which Regulus tried not to track the motion of.
“Can you at least tell me one thing? Where are you staying? Sirius is going out of his mind trying to figure it out and we have literally had to stop him from owling your mum.”
This made Regulus step back in surprise, Sirius almost owled Maman? He hated her, he would rather burn in hell than talk to her again, so what on earth was he doing by trying to contact her?
Conceding because of this, Regulus tilted his head up to look at James in the eye. Regulus was certainly not short by any means at 5”11 and he often looked taller because of his skinnier frame but James was clearly taller at 6”1, and Regulus disliked having to look up at him.
“Fine.”
“Fine?”
“I’m staying at our Uncle Alphard’s, Sirius has probably told you about him, he was removed from the family for being gay.”
It was James’s turn to look surprised, “gay? And you don’t have a problem… with that?”
Regulus frowned, “why would I have a problem with that? Do you?” he suddenly looked more annoyed and stepped forward at the last question, glaring at James, daring him to say something.
James spluttered and shook his hands quickly, “no no of course I don’t have an issue with that, I mean how could I, what with Sirius and Remus!” Regulus nodded, that was true. “I just thought you would have an issue with that because it has been known to be quite a muggle concept.”
Regulus once again resisted the urge to scoff, something about James kept on making him want to laugh at his idiocy. “So?”
“So… you don’t like muggles?”
“Ah and who told you this?”
James looked frozen and dreadfully confused, “everyone knows that. You think that muggleborns steal our magic and that they are a danger to the wizarding world.”
This time Regulus actually did scoff, “don’t be ridiculous Potter of course I don’t believe that, how would muggles steal our magic? Magic isn’t something tangible like that, it doesn’t die out nor get transferred to a muggleborn, it simply just is.”
“Oh, I just thought that all purebloods in Slytherin thought that.”
“Well yes that’s because you have extreme house prejudice that is a result of a singular person you don’t like in that house forming your opinion of everyone there. Besides, if you read a book once in your life, you would know that it’s incredibly clear that the idea of muggleborns stealing magic is ridiculous and that many Slytherins have been good people.”
Regulus thought that was the most he had ever spoken to Potter and he had certainly reached his quota and turned to leave. James grabbed his sleeve hurriedly trying to stop him and Regulus narrowed his eyes having his wand out ready to hex him but James was too quick and grabbed his wand.
“Potter” Regulus crossed his arms, “give me back my wand now.”
“I will in a second I swear, just promise me you will consider meeting with Sirius and talking.” James pouted looking at Regulus with brown puppy dog eyes.
Regulus rolled his eyes and said, “No.”
“I’m not giving you your wand back until you at least agree to think about it.”
Regulus considered his options. There was no way that he was agreeing to that. He was debating between doing a wandless spell to hex James or a wandless spell to get his wand back… he settled on both.
The wand flew into his hand, followed by a quick stinging hex which James jumped from. He gaped at Regulus, “that was wandless magic.”
“Yes thank you for stating the obvious Potter, now leave me alone if you know what’s best for you,” Regulus strode out of the alcove leaving James still shocked.
James Potter decidedly did not know what was best for him.