those bloody horcruxes
august 28th, 1979
less than a week until the Hogwarts express would leave from platform nine-and-three-quarters again, and Regulus still didn’t have a chance to tell the others about what he heard, he was busy; attending death eater meetings, and directly after that, attending meetings of the order. Even tho he was still attending meetings of the order, he didn’t have a chance to tell them.
Peter only attended one meeting of the order this past week, one. he covered it up by ‘having to visit his mother’ obviously everyone bought it, but he was still suspicious.
the meetings, of both, were almost always at night, or late evenings. they also happened to be at the same time, which made it even more difficult; to Voldemort, he was a loyal follower, and according to him, loyal followers should always be at meetings, or thats what others told him, at least. The death eater meetings also caused Regulus to not be able to attend most meetings of the order, causing him to miss a lot of important information, but luckily everyone caught him up on all the basics he should know.
today was the last meeting before Regulus returned to Hogwarts, he was curious to see if Peter would be here today; if he wasn’t, Regulus had to shoot his shot.
“Reg! there you are! it’s been a while.” James shouted as he opened the door of the Potter’s mansion, that served as the current, unofficial, headquarters of the order. But Regulus wasn’t interested in anything they were currently saying, he was interested in seeing if Peter was there as well.
he walked into the house, their large, but cozy dining room being filled with a lot of people; Gideon and Fabian Prewett, Remus and Sirius, who Regulus just realized, looked incredibly cute together. Obviously Lily and James, Frank and Alice Longbottom , Dorcas Meadowes, Marlene McKinnon and Emmeline Vance. but no Peter.
such a massive amount of people together, and yet it was so different from the death eater meetings; it obviously was, these people weren’t murderers, these were good people, fighting for people’s life’s.
“ah! my dear Regulus, its so great to see you!” the voice of Euphemia Potter suddenly appeared behind him, making him turn around; seeing a smaller, heavily smiling woman, her brown hair, which was slowly turning grey, up in a bun, being held together with her wand. Regulus went in to shake her hand, but she insisted on hugging him. He never necessarily liked physical contact, but a hug from Euphemia always felt different; it felt like what a mother’s hug should feel like, even though Regulus wasn’t her son, she made him feel appreciated, almost like he was her actual son.
“how have you been my dear?” she asked him, motioning for him to sit down. “i’ve been good, it’s just you know, a tough spot.” Regulus admitted, “but i think i’m doing alright, so far, at least.” he said. Euphemia nodded, she was always understanding; and how selfish as it may sound, Regulus wishes nothing more than his mom actually being like Euphemia, even though he knew that was just a silly wish, Walburga could never be that way.
he talked to some people, Dorcas and him had always been pretty close, she was for sure one of his best friends. Regulus even attempted to learn how to braid once, because he learned that it took her hours to do her hair, and he wanted to help her out best as he could. After a couple of tries, he got pretty close to what it should look like, and Dorcas was so very happy.
“Reggie-boy! how have you been, you’re still such a little rude nerd shit aren’t ya?” Marlene suddenly spoke as she walked towards him, Marlene almost felt like a cool sister to him, almost like Andromeda, but also not like her at all; they were both incredibly cool though, making Regulus feel quite, boring?
“ha-ha! Marls, you’re still an asshole, right?” Regulus laughed, swinging his arm around her shoulder, making her laugh as well. “yup, that’s me.” she eventually said.
even though Regulus wasn't in school with any of them anymore, for the first time in his life, it started feeling like he had actual friends. he had Evan and Barty at school, who were his absolute best friends, but these people here were just totally different.
that thought made him sick, friends. Peter had all of this, he was friends with all of them and he still stepped over to the dark lord’s side? One thing Regulus knew for sure was that he would never, under whatever circumstances there might have been, betray his friends.
did Peter just… not care? about them, or about anything they were fighting for?
“you don’t understand this, Lily! he’s obviously-” Remus spoke, the rest of the table had gone quiet by now.
“oh I don’t understand this? have you gone totally mental, Remus? i don’t know if you noticed, but Voldemort is after people like you and me, don’t pretend like you’re the only victim sitting at this table.” Lily was now standing up, Regulus would definitely cry if he was in Remus’s place; Lily was quite scary when she got angry. James tried to tug on her arm to get her to sit back down, but it didn’t work.
“you need to understand that all of us, sitting at this table, are already in great danger. not just you, not just me, all of us.” Lily finished, she sat back down on her chair.
“look, Voldemort is after everyone who doesn’t fit his standards of what a ‘proper wizard or witch’ should be like.” Sirius eventually spoke, making Remus speak up.
“sort of like Hitler, you know, in the second world war. Voldemort is like him, but with magic.” Remus said, making half the people at the table look confused. It still flabbergasted him that kids in the wizarding world weren’t taught about things like that happening in the muggle world; its like it doesn’t even exist to them.
“okay but, there’s two case scenarios if we were to, you know, what we talked about earlier,” Lily said, looking around the table. ‘the thing they talked about earlier’ was murder, it seemed so easy. yet so hard. “there could either be a successor, who’s going to make things even worse, or every follower of Voldemort would just, you know, vanish?”
it seemed way to easy.
“Voldemort’s followers don’t just vanish.” James said.
at this point Lily and Remus were having a conversation, and the others were listening to them; even though they didn’t quite know who this ‘Hitler’ person was, it seemed to make sense.
“Lily, death eaters are almost like the Nazi’s, right? would the Nazi’s have stopped standing for whatever Hitler stood for if someone killed him. Of course not, they would go mad.” Remus eventually spoke. “i know what you mean, and killing Voldemort is the only way to stop him, but we need to realize that killing him is a goddamn suicide mission!”
that stopped them all, of course they wanted to save others, but dying while doing that wasn't exactly in their planner for this year. or any year, really.
“we can’t even kill Voldemort, even if we wanted to.” Regulus said, after a long time of silence. “he might be evil, but he’s not stupid. He wouldn’t let himself get killed with a simple curse…”
you could practically hear people’s minds spinning, the answer was right there.
now, the answer might not have been the most obvious of all, but the members of the order were smart; they weren’t your basic group of young adults trying to fight evil, they were a smart group of young adults, who wanted to change the world for the better.
“of course,” Sirius eventually said with a sigh. “those bloody horcruxes.”