My eyes blink open.
What the fuck?
Aren't I dead? Or stuck in the veil?
I'm in my old bedroom. My bedroom in Grimmauld Place. I chuckle slightly when I see the muggle posters and Gryffindor apparel covering the walls. I guess mother never did figure out how to counter charm the permanent sticking spell.
I get up and walk over to my bedside table, opening the draw that I hid my letters from Remus in. They're all still there.
As I begin to read them, I catch a glance of my reflection in a mirror and I drop the letters and inhale sharply.
I look like my teenage self.
I look like I did when I used to live at the Potter's.
Just remembering them makes me feel like I've been punched in the gut. They gave everything to me. They treated me as there own. I miss them so much it pains me. They died of dragonpox before James died.
Effie and Monty were people that didn't deserve to go so soon. I guess I could say that for James and Lily too. And Marlene. And Dorcas. And everyone, really. Most of my schoolmates joined the Order of the Phoenix and died.
There were people that weren't in the Order and died.
Like Regulus, I guess. But no, Regulus wasn't on the Light side. He was a Death Eater.
I shake my head, trying to stop thinking about Regulus and how I wish he hadn't died, and I force myself to think that he deserved his untimely death.
I hear a familiar voice say, "well, that's rather offensive," and I nearly jump out of my skin.
I whip my head around and there he is.
Regulus Black.
My dead little brother. He died at 18, I'm not sure why. All I know is that I spent months missing him with all I had. Even if he was a Death Eater, he was still my baby brother that I failed to protect.
Regulus is in his teenage body as well, but I guess that's because this is what he looked like when he died.
Is this the afterlife? Or is it just some strange dream before I realise I'm actually dead? I did fall through the veil after all.
I take a closer look at Regulus. He has purple bags under his eyes and he looks thin, too thin. Is this what he looked like when he died? Depressed and sleep deprived?
There is also blood, everywhere. In his hair, on his clothes.
"Why are you covered in blood?" Is this first thing that makes it out of my mouth, out of the millions of questions I want to ask.
"It's how I died," he shrugs.
Ah, yes. He drowned in a dark cave with deep wounds from the rocks he landed on. I was told he was in the cave on a mission from the Dark Lord. It's what Reg told everyone.
It's bullshit and I know it.
"What are we doing here, Reg?" I ask.
He just shrugs again.
"Why do you look like you haven't slept in years?" I ask.
"Glamour charms don't work after you die, I guess," he laughs.
"What, so you used glamour charms when you were alive?"
"Yeah, every scar and every mark I wanted to hide is on display now." He says bitterly.
When I give him a confused look, he scoffs and take of his jackets and unbuttons his shirt.
Scars.
Everywhere.
Covering his torso. Snaking down his thin arms. His ribs are prominent and his hip bones jut out, looking almost unnatural.
"Mother did that to you?" I whisper after moments of silence.
"Well yeah," Reg says while rolling his eyes.
Was that supposed to be obvious?
I didn't think that Reg would get treated like this. I did, but Reg wasn't like me. He was in Slytherin and didn't question anything mother or father said.
"Why?" I whisper shakily. I shouldn't be taking this so hard, but I've spent far too long missing him so I am not going to start ignoring him like I did when we were still alive.
"She was drunk," he says, casting his sterling grey eyes to my bed.
I follow his gaze, curious as to why he seems so interested in it. There are spots of crimson blood on the old bed sheets. When the Order used this as a safe house, mine and Reg's rooms where locked off. Nobody could access them except for me. So where did the blood come from?
As if he can read my mind, which I guess he can, he says, "I used to sleep in your bed."
"What?" I say, slightly startled.
"After you left. It's not as if I could go to the Potter's every night after mother got drunk and hug you, could I? So your bed had to do. Sorry about all the blood, by the way. I cleaned it most times. Guess I forgot once or twice." He says.
"You...you wanted to give me a hug?" I say in an unusually small voice.
"Uh, 'course I did. You were my brother in case you've forgotten."
"Reg, you could've come with me. You could've come at any time."
He lets out a forced laugh.
"If only it were that simple." He says wistfully.
"It is- was, I guess."
He just laughs again.
I reach out to him, to pull him into a hug. But I don't miss the way he flinches. But he's not fast enough. I've already wrapped my arms around him.
My hand moves to rub his back but not before I hear a soul splitting scream.
I almost jerk away from Reg, but I keep my arms around him. I'm already dead, I don't need to be afraid of screams.
But then it's as if I'm looking at a memory through a pensieve.
-
I see Regulus curled in a ball in my bed, eyes wide and body tense.
I see the wounds on his frail body.
I can see mother calmly telling him the horror of what would happen if decided to follow in my footsteps and run away. How she would take me from the Potter's house and kill me slowly while he watched, knowing that it would be his fault.
I hear fragments of his screams and see visions of what mother used to do to him while she was drunk.
I can see Regulus writing letter to me, some asking how I am, some that read how he thought I was selfish. How I left him behind. None of those words were ever read by me, though.
I see him staring at himself in the mirror, I can hear his thoughts whispering dark thinks to him.
I can hear him wondering why he 'isn't more like Sirius'.
I can hear him begging mother not to perform legilimency on him. Not to violate his mind, his only source of privacy. I can hear him screaming as his occlumency walks crumble away by the painful legilimency mother demonstrates.
I can see him kneeling before Voldemort and getting branded, I can hear him struggling to keep the horrified and pained scream in.
I can see him wasting away, being prisoner to the darkness around him. The darkness I tried so hard to escape from and succeeded.
I can see his buying a muggle drug that you smoke from a girl in Hogwarts after curfew.
I can see him inhaling the poison. I can also see him pressing the still burning hot cigarette to his arms and hissing from the intended pain.
I can see him looking at me in the hallways at Hogwarts. I can hear him thinking about how he must be so pathetic and unlovable that his older brother thought he had to leave him in a house where your thoughts were to be displayed for whoever could read them.
I hear his mind slowly being corrupted. I can hear the dark thoughts his mind whispered to him in the darkness of the night.
'Just die. No one is going to save you.'
'You have no one to live for and no one who cares.'
'Sirius left. He doesn't care.'
'Just end this pain.'
'You've been replaced by someone. You're not Sirius's brother anymore. James Potter is.'
'Just have one more cigarette, your left forearm is already burning, who cares if your lungs are too?'
I see Regulus being tortured because Voldemort thought he wasn't loyal to the Death Eater cause.
I can hear his screams, full of anguish and anger.
I can see letting the nightmares haunt him until no return.
I can see him poring over dark magic books, specifically soul splitting and immortality.
I can see him going to dark cave where he died, Kreacher by his side.
I can see him drinking pain potion, refusing to give up and let Voldemort continue his reign of darkness and torture.
I can see inferi rising out of the murky waters on the cave.
I can see Regulus being dragged across the rocks on the cave floor, bleeding out and too weak to fight it.
I can see him being dragged under into the depths of the icy sea, never to emerge again.
And I can hear his last thought.
'I did it. Maybe Sirius will miss me now.'
Regulus Arcturus Black died with a haunted smile on his ghostly face, his last thought being of his arrogant and selfish older brother.