prologue
autumn. 1974.
memories of a ghost.
There were rumours about a ghost that walked the street, pacing back and forth, hidden in the shadows cast by low hanging branches and a crooked roofline. The children pressed their faces up eagerly against frosted window panes. Daring to peek through the curtains, but their little bellies twisting frightfully with the naive fear that one of these nights they actually would catch a glimpse of the apparition. Of course, they would fail. They had been unsuccessful for as long as they could remember, and would remorsefully report to their friends, who too had been watching at their own windows, that no, I didn’t see it.
The groaning would stop for many months to come. Their young minds would be captured by something else just as exciting as a ghoul until winter, when the noises returned.
It hadn’t taken Regulus long to learn that he was the ghost.
Perhaps it had been Sirius at first. Or before him, Kreacher. The muggle residents were oblivious to the enchanted manor cooped between their little row of townhouses. In theory, and Regulus so often trusts in theory, they should be unable to hear a peep of sound coming from Grimmauld Place. Yet, in his heart-racing endeavours to learn more about muggles he had become certain that there were too many coincidences with the timing of this ghost. The screaming haunted his own house enough.
There was more than enough pain within Grimmauld that Regulus was not shocked how quickly he found himself believing that the misery had seeped out of its very pores. Dripping from the roof shingles. He’d always been terrified of the ghost stories that Sirius would scare him with when they were younger, but he’d still curled up next to his brother on his bed. Clutched the sleeve of his night robes and promised he wasn’t a coward all the while looking at him with fear bright in his eyes. It was only fitting that Regulus himself had become a ghost too.
But there was no Sirius left to tell his story.
It was a deadly secret, of course, that he’d interacted with the muggle children. His mother could never know. That was when he was younger anyway. He had long since lost the nerve to leave the house during the holiday breaks. He never quite understood how Sirius wracked up the courage. A Gryffindor fool at heart, Regulus thought that maybe he always had been. He just hadn’t seen it.
He was gone now. And he’d taken every last shred of humanity that Regulus had left with him. There were times that he felt like he’d been stripped to the bone. That if somebody cut him open to look inside, they wouldn’t find anything but a bloody concave with shreds of meat hanging loosely from his skin. Sometimes he submerged himself in the bathwater just to feel that blissful bite of panic that rippled through his chest and up his throat when he stayed under too long. There were times he delighted in masochism.
Before Sirius was gone there had been quite the show. Regulus could only imagine the stories that the children would come up with. Perhaps they’d heard the screaming match early that summer, the culmination of it all on that night; the wickedly sharp words thrown back and forth, the cutting hexes… the flash of green light, so bright that even Regulus had seen it from the gap under his doorway.
And perhaps they’d seen a shadowy figure making a break for it out into the open street, without a glance back and with nothing but a stick in his hand and a coat thrown over his shoulder. They’d think him mad, but perhaps they’d think him an unfortunate homeless man with a fondness for twigs that had been terrorised by the ghost.
He’d certainly been terrorised that night. And Regulus had done nothing.
He’d been in his room. The door persistently locked despite the banging and attempts to charm it. His mother had always been talented at perma-charms.
She’d had more than enough practice at it, with Regulus locked away at every inconvenience. He made Madame Yegorova mad during his ballet practice as a child? A mere night in the third floor closet. He dared to talk back to her or his father? Now, that was both a guaranteed cutting hex and at least three days locked in his room. But after that night… He had already been in trouble for peering into Sirius’ room to ask if he would be staying for a while. When Sirius was truly gone, he hadn’t been allowed to leave his room for… well, truthfully he had lost count of the days.
It was the lack of explanation to Sirius that drove him mad, and she knew that. He couldn’t tell him that he wished they were children again, sharing a bedroom and playing out in the garden. If Sirius was going to get out, for good, then he couldn’t have a reason to stay behind. And so, it worked.
Never before had Regulus so bone-achingly wished his plan had gone wrong.
Because Sirius barely talked to him anymore, and he had been off at the Potter Manor for most weeks during the holidays, before he escaped to join their family forever. He had been running off there since his first year.
Was it fate then? That Sirius and Regulus were just never meant to be brothers? That the Potter boy, darling James Potter, was always supposed to take his place?
Regulus remembered that first holiday. He had waited for him all of Yuletide. He’d stayed up with Kreacher, illuminated by candlelight, just to make a Christmas card and he had waited with baited breath for Sirius to come home just once during the day. He was a smart boy, Regulus knew it was for the best that his mother and father have more time to cool down from the reeling shock that their heir was sorted into Gryffindor. But… he still waited.
Just once so Regulus could see him. Ask what Hogwarts was like. Apologise that mother wasn’t letting him send any letters, and that Kreacher was forbidden from sending any for him. Whisper in his ear, far away from the ever-watching portraits that lined their creaking halls, and ask if Sirius thought he could be a Gryffindor too.
Sirius didn’t come home for Christmas.
And he had never questioned why Regulus never came out of his room to defend him when he was being punished anymore. He only yelled that he was a coward. A snake. Following in their footsteps. If Regulus pushed deep down there was a little voice telling him that they were both just hurt, but at some point, he had started believing his brother’s words.
He had always taken them as gospel anyway.
Sirius never asked Regulus what happened after the ball back in 1967. When everything had gone wrong. When Regulus had been changed forever. Why Regulus was suddenly okay with taking the beatings quietly, taking the word-lashings without question. Why it became easier just to listen.
Listen to me, Reggie, just be quiet. Shh, don’t cry. Black’s don’t cry.
It’ll feel good, Reg. Just listen to me.
He’d always been a good listener.