5
Pandora, being Pandora, shows up unannounced and lets herself in. James, being James, nearly impales her with a butter knife.
Why he didn’t just use his wand is so far beyond Regulus that he doesn’t even try to rationalize it.
An hour behind Pandora is Sirius, then the rest of their friends. The rest of their friends are there for James, who has been… less than well… following his therapy appointment and the conversation they had with Harry.
It doesn’t help that he’s being excluded from today’s memory travels. Today, spurred forward by Mary, Regulus Black is having a conversation that’s been a long time coming.
Hence the bottles of alcohol Sirius brings in tow.
They’re traveling back to 12 Grimmauld Place together, unpacking where it all went wrong. And first, they’re going to get shitfaced marauder style.
James doesn’t know whether to be pleased or concerned that Regulus and Sirius are confronting their past. On the one hand, it’s a necessary evil that will hopefully lead them on a path to healing. On the other… Sirius is shirtless and dancing on the table within an hour of arriving.
Remus, dutiful husband is he, is catcalling the shit out of him.
“Shake your money maker!”
“Yeah baby! Show us what you got.”
Of course, the obligatory intermittent wolf whistles.
James is grateful he thought to cast a silencing charm after putting Harry into a nap.
He sits with Lily and Evan, watching Regulus’ gloved hands throw back shots like water. Mary and Emmeline are slow dancing like it’s their fucking wedding, which is thoroughly confusing. What’s even more confusing is the way Lily watches them spin round and round with such vigor that James thinks he ought to be frightened.
She’d vowed to stay sober throughout the night to ‘fully witness the glory of a brotherly reunion,’ but she’s got her lips pursed at the mouth of a wine bottle and sobriety is dimming from her eyes with every passing second.
Evan must notice because he jerks the bottle away from her lips and takes a swig himself, nearly finishing it off. Lily is about to protest when Barty swings round and carries him off like a prince, wine bottle still in hand.
Lily downright fucking whines.
“Trouble in paradise?” He asks, mustering his best James Potter smile.
She sees right through him. “Worry about yourself, you fucking mirrorball.”
He’s a bit taken aback by the harshness in her tone, if he’s being honest. Yes, this is the angsty Lily Evans who flipped Dumbledore the bird and once beat the shit out of Mulciber… but she’s never unkind to those she loves.
James assumed he fit into that category. In this moment, he isn’t quite sure.
“I’m sorry,” She slurs hastily. “It’s… um.”
“You don’t have to tell me, Lils.”
She swivels around and grabs a bottle of wine from the table behind them. Then, lips pressed to the opening of the bottle, she mumbles, “Arya packed up.”
She follows the confession with a hearty swig.
“What do you mean?”
“Arya packed up. Grabbed her shit and walked out.”
“That’s not… how? Why?”
“Oh, you know Arya. It was my shoes in the living room or my records on the floor, my shirts on the door handles.”
“She left because you’re a little messy sometimes?”
Lily scoffed at that, lightly punching James in the shoulder. “Or it was that my tone was too mean or I was crying too loudly about my sister while she was trying to sleep.”
“Ah, so she didn’t…”
“Love me at all?” She finishes off, taking another drink. At this rate, she’ll be properly sloshed in about three minutes. If she isn’t already.
“Lily, I’m sure Arya loved you.”
“But not enough to stay. Or to put up with me. Or to comfort me.”
“Yeah.”
“James, that’s not love. Look at your husband.”
James doesn’t need to be asked twice. He’s being twirled by Pandora.
“You stay. He stays. You put up with his issues, he puts up with yours. You are always fucking comforting each other. Arya and I never had that.”
“So you’re… not upset?”
“Of course I’m upset. I’m fucking pissed. I spent two years, James, two fucking years with the wrong girl. I gave her everything I had and she couldn’t be fucking bothered.”
Lily leans into James’ shoulder and he wraps her in a tight hug. It’s eerily reminiscent of their highschool years, when Lily would come to Remus for advice and James for a hot cup of tea and a hug. She always joked that Remus was her twin and James their mother.
He fully accepted the title.
Regulus is going to lose his shit. One, James has got his arms wrapped around Lily, which is just…
It’s scalding. It fucking burns.
He knows there’s nothing romantic there. That’s not why it hurts.
It hurts because James looks so warm. He’s smiling, saying something to her. She looks so comforted and fuck, if that isn’t what Regulus wants.
If he could change the world in any way, he would change himself. He would use his power selfishly, making touch safe no matter the situation. In a crowded room, he would curl into James’ arms and lay there forever.
He wants to be held forever by his husband, not just in short intervals or brief touches. He wants to dissolve into James, to be consumed.
The other reason he might lose his shit… Mary looks absolutely fucking gutted. She’s dancing and drinking with Emmeline but her eyes…
Something’s happened and he can’t figure out what.
Maybe if he wasn’t so spaceless at the moment, if he could differentiate his fingers from the air around him or form a coherent thought that didn’t circle back to Harry and James he could…
Regulus Black is too blitzed to investigate the tears forming in her eyes.
They pull themselves together around 2pm. For the festivities they’ve had, it feels comically light outside. The sun twists through the curtains, painting the floor in shades of gold. James watches it, eyes narrowing. He reaches out a finger, expecting it to have texture. It doesn’t. It’s air. James is crossed as fuck.
Lily’s taken to the guest room, claiming she ‘just needs a breather.’ Emmeline is pretty sure she heard her puke over the balcony railing. Tomorrow, when James heads into the backyard to polish his quidditch broom, a crusted puddle will corroborate Emmeline’s claim.
Sirius is beyond himself with anxiety. He doesn’t understand how Regulus is staying so calm. He’s seated at the kitchen table with Remus and Evan, the three of them numbly discussing the duality of Plato.
“Nah, dude, the ripped bodybuilder is just not the same dude in my head,” Evan asserts.
Regulus nods thoughtfully at this. “Plato is just such a Marcus Aurelius figure in my head.”
“Both philosophers,” Remus concludes.
Sirius is pretty sure none of their conversation has been coherent. At the very least, he’s been able to follow none of it. He might also just be too drunk for philosophy.
“Can we go?” He calls rather impatiently.
Barty tsks as he rounds behind Sirius and reaches for Peter, who has been in animagus form for quite a few hours. “Being an animal just like amplifies the drunk experience,” he’d responded when questioned.
“Go where?” Mary asks from the couch. As if attracted by the noise, Barty scoops up Peter and plops him right atop Mary’s head. Mary, to her credit, just raises a skeptical eyebrow at Barty.
“You know,” Pandora begins from beside Mary, “the Chinese believe that rats are a symbol of prosperity.”
“I’on think I need prosperity on my head,” Mary slurs back. Peter is still sniffing at her hair.
“That was to Reggie,” Sirius corrects then, raising his voice a little, “Regulus, can we go?”
That catches his attention. When he looks up, all that Sirius can see is the image of the boy who came to him, wet and shivering, nearly drowned by inferni in a faraway cave. The image makes him nauseous.
Without a word, he rises and pulls the pensieve from his pocket.
They start with the birth of Regulus. The brothers watch as Sirius holds him for the first time. Regulus scrunches his nose. They move a few years forward. Neither of them are Hogwarts age yet. They’ve stolen lemons from the kitchen and hidden upstairs in Sirius’ room. Sirius has barricaded it with his bedside table. “It’s indestructible,” he tells Regulus. “Nobody’s getting in.”
Reg is too young to know otherwise, so he’s breaking apart a lemon and shoving a wedge between his teeth. He gives Sirius a beaming citrus smile.
Sirius chuckles at this, reaching for some of the lemon. The moment it makes contact with his lips, he’s recoiling and gagging. “Merlin, Reg, how can you eat that?”
Regulus makes a noncommittal hum, reaching into his pocket and producing some eyeliner Narcissa had given him for his birthday. She’d claimed that ‘every girl should have a good eyeliner pen, especially with eyes like yours.’
Regulus was old enough to know that eyeliner wasn’t for him. Sirius, who’s always belonged to all genders, loved that stuff. Even now, Sirius is wearing a ferocious cat eye.
“That was my first good eyeliner pen. Still the best one I’ve had to this day.” He tells Regulus.
Regulus is staring stiffly at his younger self. “Thank Narcissa.”
Sirius knows better than to linger here, so he pulls them forward. To Reggie’s first year. More specifically, to the train ride to school. He’d been too afraid to sit with Sirius’ friends, so the two of them sat alone in a compartment.
Not that distance had ever stopped James. He’d found them about twenty minutes in, swinging open the door with that James Potter gusto. Looking back on it, Sirius thinks it might have been love at first sight for poor Regulus. One glance and he’d never recover.
Regulus surveys the scene, smiling faintly at James once before turning to Sirius. “We’re here for the root of our issues, no? Why don’t we stop dancing around it?”
That hurts more than it should. Something about the brazenness of his tone slices. This is Sirius’ real fear: seeing the things he didn’t save Regulus from.
“Okay,” he agrees, despite the warning bells pounding in his head.
Regulus takes them to the last place Sirius would expect. Walburga is sitting at a desk with Regulus’ diary. Across from her, Regulus’ face is red and snotty.
Sirius remembers this faintly. Regulus had found some unsent letters to James under Sirius’ bed. He’d read them and fallen into a fit about how Potter wasn’t even his real brother.
Sirius remembers writing that James was more family to him than anyone he shared a drop of blood with. Regulus included.
Reg had threatened to tell Walburga. To shut him up, Sirius stole his diary. He hadn’t even given it to his mother, despite what Walburga would tell Regulus. He’d stashed it in his room and it had been discovered by Orion.
Regulus was beaten within an inch of his life that night. But he was the spare, so what did it matter?
The brothers had blamed each other, naturally. If Sirius hadn’t stolen his diary, Orion wouldn’t have found it. If Regulus hadn’t threatened to blab about James, Sirius wouldn’t have stolen the book.
Most of their childhood was like this, actually. Brother against brother.
“I’m sorry I took your journal,” Sirius tells Regulus honestly.
“I’m sorry I ever wrote in that thing,” Reg replies coldly.
Sirius stares at him for a long moment. Around them, little Regulus continues to sob. “You have to try,” he says at last. “If we’re going to do this, you have to try.”
It comes out so quietly that Sirius thinks he must have imagined it. “I am trying.”
He falls into old habits too easily. “Try harder,” Sirius scoffs.
“Oh, yeah? Yeah? Where was this when you were running, huh? Where was this while I was barely alive in that house?” Regulus sounds more weary than angry. “Why didn’t you try?”
“All I did was try. Why didn’t you? I asked you to come with me and you didn’t. I begged you to come and you didn’t.”
“I wasn’t…” Regulus struggles for a second. “I wasn’t there.”
That sentence slaps Sirius across the face. He’s been losing snippets of time since he was a child, but he’d never thought that maybe, just maybe, Regulus lost moments too.
“When did you start losing time?” He asks gently.
Regulus stiffens like a board, eyes widening. “I can’t.”
“You can’t what?”
“Show you that.”
“Show me what?”
“Sirius,” he says it gently, “there were some things you didn’t know about in that house.”
“Like what?”
“Like who,” Regulus corrects then, after steeling himself for a moment, “It was Lucius.”
Sirius doesn’t understand what Regulus is trying to say. Bits and pieces come to him, but none fit into the big picture. He has just a few pieces of the puzzle. He desperately needs more. “Lucius?” He asks slowly.
Regulus breathes in and out at a measured pace before grabbing Sirius’ arm and hurtling them through time.
Regulus is lying on the kitchen table, back exposed to where Kreacher is running diagnostic spells. He’s looking for broken bones, fractured ribs, etc…
Sirius’ eyes are fixed on the handprint on Reggie’s back.
It’s more prominent than the Dark Mark on his wrist.
“Did he…?” Sirius can’t wrap his mouth around the question. He’s not even sure what he’s asking.
Regulus bites his lip and changes the scene.
Regulus is lying in bed, unseeing eyes trained on the ceiling as Lucius tugs his trousers back on.
The truth collapses over Sirius’ head. Salazar save them.
If Lucius wasn’t locked in Azkaban at the moment, Sirius would kill him with his bare hands.
“James,” Regulus says, “he knows too.”
“How long was this happening?”
“I was thirteen.”
Sirius gags a little. If it was possible for anything to shatter his already-broken world, this would be it.
“Can we…” Regulus trails off, “can we leave? I want to be back home.”
“Can we keep talking, though?” Sirius asks a little too desperately for his liking.
Regulus nods.
The moment they return to time, Regulus is collapsing on the kitchen floor, sprawling out in the patch of sunlight like a tired cat. James looks at him as if he’s never seen him before. Regulus unabashedly stares back.
His eyes stay trained on James, even as he speaks to Sirius. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to leave with you.”
“I didn’t know you were gone,” Sirius responds, a few years worth of hatred vanishing with the sentence.
“They wouldn’t have let both of us go anyway.”
“Let?”
“They never came after you.”
It’s something he never considered. It was hell, trying to get out but, once he arrived at the Potters and was protected by their wards, they didn’t pursue.
They disowned him, yes, but never went after him.
“Because they had a spare,” Sirius remarks, pieces fitting into place.
Regulus nods, head twisting as if to get a better look at James. James is still trying to play with the light, but he’s visibly distracted by Regulus’ nearness.
“I have a son,” Regulus says.
“A lovely boy,” Sirius agrees, softened by the angelic look passing over his brother’s face.
“A really, really lovely boy.”
Silence lapses between the brothers. Somewhere in the living room, Remus and Marlene are bickering about quidditch.
“-It could literally kill you!”
“And? We survived a war, Remus.”
“Exactly why it would be embarassing to die by murder balls now.”
“A hero’s death.”
“You’re delusional.”
“I’m worried that I’m Dad,” Regulus says softly.
“Orion?”
Regulus nods. “I’m, uh, scared of myself a lot. When I see him in me.”
Sirius nods. “Every time I lose my temper, I feel like Walburga.”
“You’re not Walburga,” Regulus asserts harshly.
“And you aren’t Orion,” Sirius counters. “We grew up in a bad place, yeah? Walburga and Orion beat the shit out of us, physically and mentally. Have you ever laid a hand on Harry?”
Regulus rears back at the idea, “Never.”
Sirius nods, “You were abused. I was abused. That doesn’t make us like them. If anyone’s gonna break the Black family curse, it’s gonna be you and James.”
Sirius takes a long look at his brother, whose gaze has suddenly found the floor. “You already have. Broken it, I mean.”
Regulus is silent and, just when Sirius thinks he won’t get a response, Regulus mutters, “thank you.”
Sirius can tell there’s something else on his mind, so he continues. “It’s okay to have complicated feelings about them. They were bad people, but they were also our parents. They hit us, but that doesn’t erase the times they held us close too. Or, at least, it doesn’t erase it to a child who’s known no other affection.”
Regulus’ eyes find James again. “I miss them.”
“Sometimes I think I do too,” Sirius agrees. “But I had… other support. You really didn’t. All of your friends, all of your family were from that world. Barty, Evan, Dorcas, Pandora… they all grew up in bad homes too. It’s hard to break a pattern when everyone around you is also trapped in it.”
Regulus nods, swiveling his head to take a long look at his friends.
Barty, whose father looked at him and saw a monster of his own making.
Evan, who came back from breaks with bruises and fresh scars.
Dorcas, whose family hated the core of who they are.
Pandora, the Lestrange girl written off as mad.
So many of them came from Death Eater families. So many of them were stuck in violent cycles. They all made it out. He feels a swell of great pride in his chest. One that is immediately dashed by fear.
“I don’t want to be Dad,” He says, tears escaping his bloodshot eyes. “I want Harry to be…” He trails off into hand motions.
“Regulus,” Sirius says, tone harsher than he meant, “you love that little boy. You love him for him, not who he could be for the family line, yeah?”
Regulus nods, sniffling a little.
“That’s already more than our parents ever were.”
Regulus lets out something of a sob, moving toward James and reaching for him. James, clearly out of his mind, reaches back and takes his husband into his arms.
“Here, hello,” he whispers over and over again, fingers carding through Reggie’s hair. Regulus’ lips curl hesitantly before he’s relaxing completely.
Sirius gives them a final fond look before wandering to go find Remus.
Regulus and James fall asleep there, at 3 pm, in the patch of sunlight on their kitchen floor.