Back to Black

They were shouting, then again they were always shouting. It was the same old routine mother would say something —sometimes father would—, and then Sirius would fly off the handle like always. It was always the same, had been ever since Regulus' older brother had returned from his first year of Hogwarts. His brother had always been outspoken, even when his parents brought out their wands and sent a warning shot his way or would smack him so hard he'd get a busted lip. It was always the same. Sirius would say something against them and they would shout back. Then the hitting would come, and then Regulus would sneak to his brother's room to make sure he was okay.

It had only been a month since they got back from school, Sirius from his fifth year and Regulus from his fourth. They only have one more month, one more month of the screaming and the fighting and the hitting. Just one more month. The shattering of glass downstairs reached his ears, and Regulus winced inside his bedroom as his mother shrieked after his older brother. Unable to pretend like he was unable to hear the cursing, he left his bedroom at the end of the hall and walked the cramped stairwell towards the sitting area.

He pointedly refused to glance up at the walls, knowing he'd be met with the godawful wallpaper of a dusty burgundy, and the sickening faces of his ancestors. If he climbed the other set he'd be met with the mounted wall of deceased house elf heads. All lined up and dried out like shrunken dolls on display. Eyes sewn shut and lips cracked, dry with weathered skin and drooping ears. When he had been younger the display had given him nightmares, now all it did was churn his stomach in pity for their own house elf, Kreacher. He would be the next to go on the wooden pegs next to his old predecessor, Gripply.

As he came upon the sitting room he could easily hear the reason for the shrieking and shouting. He carefully walked over the shattered ceramic fragments on the floorboards. From the painted strokes on the fragments Regulus knew it to be one of their mother's many heirlooms from her old home. Not that she cared much about those ties anymore either. She was a Black, and only a Black. Anything and everything else was unimportant.

Even if she had once been Crabbe, the daughter of Irma, through her mother's maternal side. She instead claimed only her paternal side, as the daughter of Pollux Black—a man Regulus had never met thankfully, but was told by many he was a man without a backbone. A man who was a coward through and through with little ambitions and more like a doormat than a true Black. Regulus pointedly tried to avoid thinking too hard on how everyone was related, despite the tapestry tests both he and Sirius were given thrice a month on their heritage. Just like the mounts of House-elf heads in the hall, the amount of incest in the Black family was nauseating to say the least.

"You are a disgrace to your name!" His mother shrieked in her nasal tone. Regulus skirted around the edges of the room to see his mother standing over his brother shouting. The younger Black heir didn't know how Sirius managed to stand tall amongst the shouting— only flinching upon a few phrases that left her cruelly down-turned lips. He had never been able to understand it, never been able to wield such an uncaring and neutral positioning when being subjected to such rage.

"Worthless is what you are Sirius Orion! How dare you befoul our House name!" Their mother had long since stoped referring to her eldest son with their surname. Until he earned the right to their family name, in Walburga's cold and dark grey eyes, he would no longer be addressed by it. Regulus, though hardly perfect, hadn't been given that treatment as of yet— though he waited the day he too brought shame upon their home, their family, with some minor slip-up.

"Mother!" Sirius snapped, his cold exterior gone with his eyes ablaze like a bright grey fire. He didn't hesitate for a second as he spoke, clear and sharp. "Shut up!"

Regulus flinched at the resounding sound of his mother's ring clad hand swiping across his older brother's face in anger. It was loud and angry in sound, deafening to his ears as he adverted his eyes from the action. He ignored the resentment curling in his stomach folds and the feeling of helplessness as it filled his jittery hands.

"You will take the mark!" His mother seethed through clenched teeth. The angry red mark on his brother's face didn't dissuade the woman from further snipping at him in cold fury. "Even if I have to curse you there myself. You have brought enough shame to our ancestral walls with your sorting and mingling with half-breeds and blood-traitors!"

Regulus knew this was when the line would be drawn. It was easily seen in the clenched jaw, and balled up fists barely concealed from the pressed white shirt sleeves and the black vest that was skewed along Sirius' chest. The youngest Black Heir, knew before the words were even past his brother's mouth, that this would be where the minor curses would disappear and the other, the illegal ones would make an appearance as he completely came undone.

"Fuck. You."

It was like clockwork in the way his mother's hand flew to her side, jabbing her jagged blackthorn wand at his brother and seething at him in spite. "Crucio!"

Regulus' brother's screams filled the sitting area as he fell to the ground in torturous pain. This was familiar too, getting more and more common as the boy's grew. The younger heir was wondering if his brother would ever be able to rid himself of the slight tremor that filled his hands from the onslaught of Unforgivable's. Regulus had been at the curses' wrath twice, enough so that he knew just how horrible it was— Sirius had been having in thrown on him weekly for his rash behaviour and upstarting rebellion against the families ancestral ways.

The screams echoed and echoed to the point of unbearable. Regulus himself was shaking as his brother writhed on the half-rug covered floorboards over the broken glass. His arms being cut up and slashed at from his struggles. When Regulus' own grey eyes finally saw the blotches of blood start from his brother's hands and neck, he couldn't stay silent anymore. Even if that meant that their shared terror of a mother would then turn her wand to him.

"Mother, stop!" Regulus pleaded, his mother —likely having not heard him enter the room— sent a malicious sneer his way at his words. The younger boy tried to keep his voice steady and stifle the tears welling in his eyes. If he cried he would be exactly where Sirius was, if not worse. Black's were to never show weakness. "You're hurting him, please! He didn't mean it I—, I'm sure of it."

"Perhaps, he will learn his lesson then!" She sneered, unkindly and malicious. Regulus hated the way his mother's eyes danced with glee at the pain she was causing, the damage she was doing to her firstborn. It wasn't right, none of this was right at all.

She held the curse, bright red light filling the room before finally ending it with a simple flick. Regulus let a small breath leave his lungs that he hasn't realized he had been holding in. Sirius moaned in exhaustion and pain on the now bloodied and glass skewed carpets. Their mother kicked at the shards that had scattered onto the hard wood floors, just close enough to be seen from the edge of the room. Regulus wanted more than anything to run over and see if he was alright but he knew— he knew the moment he tried it would start all over again.

His mother casted one last glare towards the sorry excuse of a firstborn she had so graciously gifted life, before narrowing her eyes and spatting at him in contempt. "We will talk when I return from tea with my sister. Hopefully, by then your head will be on straight."

Regulus chewed at the inside of his cheek, as she loudly called throughout the house, stowing away her wand into it's hidden holster. "Kreacher!"

A loud crack filled the air as the house elf appeared. Wearing nothing but a stained and fraying rag-like a tunic, with his gnarled hands and weather skin stretched across his body like it was the only thing keeping the house elf's bones in place. The few wispy grey hairs on top of his head stood chaotically around his large bat-like ears.

"Yes, Mistress?" Kreacher rasped through his low voice, his eyes never meeting the maternal head of the House of Black. He stared resolutely at the floor, whether from fear or awaiting his mother's hand or wand to be turned on him— Regulus couldn't be sure.

"Clean up this mess," She snapped cooly to the elf, who instantly bowed in respect towards the order. Regulus knew him to be wavering on the implications, however— seeing if there was a flaw in the delivery. Though it was true that Kreacher held no love for Regulus' older brother, he didn't often leave him to suffer in pain if it could be avoided, he was to be the next Lord Black after all.

Before slipping her wand into the pouch of her skirts and straightening her back like a iron pole, Walburga Black added sharply. "—and leave the disgrace as he is. Let him bleed out for all I care, maybe that will finally teach him some manners."

Regulus' throat tightened at his mother's words but didn't say another word, as the elf responded like a recording on repeat, "Yes Mistress."

The words echoed throughout the youngest heir's cranium as his mother fled the room in her pointed shoes, clicking against the polished mahogany floors and the many decorative rugs. It was only when he heard the crack of the door slamming down the hall, that Regulus moved from his statuesque position at all. Moving before hand was a death sentence in itself. If his mother hadn't really left the house, or had waited to see his response to her actions as she had done more than once when they were younger, he would be subjecting them both to her torment.

Regulus loved his mother, or at least that is what he told himself and anyone who asked on a daily basis because he had too. If he didn't love her, or by extension their father who never tried to stop her horrific lessons, then Regulus would have to come to terms with her abuse, her torment and the pain she caused unthinking. And that was quite frankly something he could not bear— not now, and likely not ever.

"Kreacher," Regulus spoke softly. His eldest and only brother panted and moaned on the floor in pain as he struggled to sit up from the shattered glass and broken ceramics. "—bring us a washcloth would you?"

The order, or question as it was spoken by Regulus and not any other member of their family, was softly spoken and muttered under his breath. Though his mother had forbade the house elf to help Sirius, she had not done the same to Regulus and he was hardly going to let his brother bleed out and be left on the floorboards to create stains. There was no manners in lessons to be learned from such an act from his viewpoint.

"Sirius, are you—" Regulus cut himself off. Of course Sirius wasn't okay, he could see that with his own two eyes. Sucking down a deep breath he rephrased his question and helped his brother away from the shattered fragments. "—will you be alright?"

His brother didn't reply for a beat as they moved him, moaning and groaning onto the nearby rug that was glass free, and propped him up against the side of one of the leather sofas. Kreacher soon reappeared at the young Black's side and held out a white cloth to wipe away the pin pricks of blood along his brothers arms, neck and face. Regulus dabbed at his brother face first, ignoring the winces of pain that followed as he carefully picked and prodded a few of the fragments from his brother's torn skin.

When Sirius finally did spoke, he avoided Regulus' question and instead replied hoarsely, "I hate it here."

Regulus didn't even pause in his movements to clean up his brothers cut-up face as he agreed simply and still painstakingly soft, "I know."

"I hate her."

This time he did pause, not sure on how to reply. How could someone reply to such a statement? Sirius had good reason to hate her, she had never been a mother to him but to Regulus there has been moments, few and far between but moments nonetheless. Lessons were learned through pain and upholding the family customs. If Sirius has just followed the rules, followed the customs, he never would have been hurt in the first place— maybe their family wouldn't be as fractured as it currently was. Held together by nothing but spite and broken glass.

"...I know."

He resumed dabbing at his brother's face, ignoring the way Sirius' bright grey irises sought him out, as they always did during moments like this. Watery but hard, like he wished Regulus would agree with him, that Regulus would hate their mother and family too. But he couldn't, they were the only thing constant in his life, most importantly they were his family.

"I can't live here anymore, Reg." Sirius spoke again, hard like stone. As if he had already made up his mind on the topic, which knowing Sirius he likely had. "—I won't."

"Sirius—"

"No Regulus!" Sirius snapped coldly, resolute in his words as he shoved Regulus and the cloth in particular away from his face. Replica grey irises met, both so different and so similar in contrast that they looked window like from their light colouring. "—and get that damned rag away from me!"

Before Regulus could even think up a reply, his brother stood up from the carpets, his arm likely still stinging from the glass and open wounds, and shaking from the after effects of the Cruiciatus Curse. Not knowing what else to do, Regulus called after him as he scrambled to his feet, while Sirius retreated from the room as if it had personally burned him— which in his memories it likely had. There likely wasn't a room in all of Grimmauld Place that didn't haunt Sirius.

The eldest of the Black brother's only reply was his heavy and jagged footfalls up the twisting corridor of stairs in the middle of the landing. Regulus felt his throat constrict and his stomach plummet to what the silence could mean, but foolishly he never followed his brother up the stairs.

Regulus stood at the door of the stairs for what felt like hours but was likely only minutes, staring up the stairwell with an even heavier feeling chest than in the room he had just left. He stood there, with a few locks of ebony hair falling in his eyes as he tried to quell the shaking in his limbs from the clunking sound of luggage in his brother's room. Sirius couldn't leave, he just couldn't. Regulus was in a disarray of thoughts at how he could convince his brother, his only brother, to stay. It was stupid to think he had any sway of Sirius, no one had any sway over him he was an enigma— an uncontrollable hurricane, a storm  without an eye of calm to be seen.

Regulus heard his brother and his bags tromping down the stairs before he saw him. All filled with spite, rage and pity—which was the worst of all the emotions that flirted across his brother's usual mask of nonchalance. Though the pity that flirted across his face soon dispersed entirely as he came to the last three steps of the stairs and Regulus couldn't think of anything to say. He was a coward, just like all Slytherin's in his family before him, but he was also selfish. Regulus knew it was his own selfishness that made him step in his brother's path and effectively blocking him from the door.

"Move, Regulus."

Regulus' heart skipped a beat at the look of fury slowly solidifying on his brother's face. His brother's cut with glass, and slightly dried and blood covered scrapes around his cheeks, stood out more brazenly then before. Especially the small, and distinctly deep one across his thin and straight nose. The same nose Regulus held and most of their Black ancestors did.

"Move out of my way."

Regulus shook his head and despite every nerve ending inside him screaming at him to just step aside and not get involved, he stood his ground. "I—I can't."

"Move," Sirius tried again, his less hoarse and more firm as he came back to himself and the affects of the curse faded away entirely. "— or I'll make you."

Feeling his palms begin to sweat and his blood begin to race, the youngest of the Black's changed tactics and quipped, "Where will you go?"

He was met with silence and a burning glare.

"Uncle Cygnus won't have you," he rushed out in what he could only be described as a deadly combination of both fear and adrenaline thrumming through his bloodstream. "You know he won't, not with Andy—"

"I've always been welcome at the Potter's." Sirius cut off snappily, his eyes narrowed and lips tight. The words that followed his initial statement were like that of a rusty dagger in Regulus' chest. Twisting and turning painfully. Infecting his blood with every turn as his hands clenched to fists and a bubble of an emotion he couldn't name, filled his gut. "—with James."

The pain the words brought him and how his brother thew aside their family and him by association in favour of his best friend, burned him. The words, that ignited the metaphysical matchstick, and he himself was made of nothing but gasoline, as he burned. Regulus always knew that should it come down to it Sirius would choose James, it was always James. James was his only true companion in his eyes, the one who understood him best and would always be there for him. A brother in everything but blood.

"Move Regulus," His brother sighed once again but his expression didn't lesson. Despite the pain billowing in Regulus' chest and stomach, and how his eyes suddenly felt glassy and wet, he didn't budge.

Regulus shook his head, and forced his expression blank and his eyes dry. He would not cry, he would not show emotion. He was a Black, and Black's do not weep over such ridiculous things. He was fine, everything was fine, he knew this day was coming sometime, but sometime seemed so far away ago yesterday. He thought they had more time, that he had more time to fix things.

Tired of his younger brother's antics, Sirius forced himself past, his shoulder clipping Regulus' on the way by. The younger dark haired boy stumbled slightly, but didn't let that dissuade him. He wouldn't, no couldn't', let Sirius make such a mistake. Sirius was acting rashly like his true Gryffindor nature—, he never thought anything through to the bitter and horrid end. Never had to suffer the consequences of some of his actions. Regulus had always been there to pick up the pieces, to smooth over the jagged edges. Had he not been there Sirius may as well have been dead two weeks prior.

"So that's it then?" Regulus sharply spat at his older brother, spinning on his heels to call after him in the muddled feelings of hopelessness and fury. "You're just going to run away?"

Sirius didn't turn back, though he did halt in his steps for just a second. Taking it as encouragement, Regulus added soon after. Purposely, he kept his tone level and lips tight more so in the hopes to not fall into the abyss of feelings that were wreaking havoc in his chest cavity.

"If you do this mother and father will never forgive you— you'll loose everything." He sucked in a deep breath to stop his voice from wavering as he listed off from memory, things that he knew Sirius couldn't give a single damn about.

"Your titles, your money, your name..." As expected Sirius rolled his eyes at the statement, and scoffed at his younger brother's words, at least until the youngest of the Black brother's asked his final question. The one question that Sirius didn't have an answer for, not now and most likely not ever. "...Do you really hate us so much?"

Like sand, Sirius' mouth went dry and his heart drummed an unfamiliar beat in his chest.

"Regulus—"

"You're running away!" Regulus spoke harshly out of turn, his words slicing in half what ever false sincerities his older brother had to offer. As terrified and upset he felt inside, Regulus bottled it up and let the only emotion he knew better than disappointment to leak from his masked facade.

Hidden behind silver tongues of daggers, and emotionless eyes, he chopped down everything his brother stood for and all that he had once admired. Regulus watched as the minuscule light in his brother's eyes left at his words and were replaced with burning hatred. The very same look he gave their mother and father on the daily. The look that Sirius had never turned onto Regulus no matter how much they fought, no matter how often they disagreed.

"Like a coward," Regulus spat coldly into his brother's pale face and watched his clear silver irises erupt into an array of storm clouds. "—and I thought Gryffindors were supposed to be brave."

Sirius didn't offer a single word in reply, all he did was pick up his trunk and stomp out the porch door. Regulus stood at the edge of the stairs, frozen in anticipation for a fight, but was only met with eerie silence following the slamming door. The youngest of the Black brother's knew right then that Grimmuald Place's front door had been slammed for the final time by Sirius Black.

He didn't know how long he stood there, his breathing quiet and getting louder and louder with every second. Regulus could feel his heart racing in his chest and his eyes burning with unshed tears, yet he did not cry. He couldn't, not yet. His mother would be home soon, and it would be easier to explain his brother's disappearance without red rimmed eyes. She wouldn't take kindly to his weakness.

Blacks don't cry, that was what he learned first as a child, shortly followed by their house words. It didn't matter that he was alone in the house now. It didn't matter that he felt smaller that even the dust particles hidden along the library shelves on the third floor. He was a Black, the only Black heir remaining at Grimmauld Place.

Sirius had finally left him once and for all.

Walburga Black returned an hour later to a mostly empty house and a cleaned living room. The remnants of glass had been swept away by Kreacher, and the blood stains hidden beneath a new throw rug. To anyone the house would look as it always had, nothing out of the ordinary at all, expect for the silence. Most Wizarding homes were filled with noises, but not Grimmauld Place. With Sirius gone, and the boy's mother no longer ignorant to such a change, it seemed only fitting that Regulus would be summoned from his room to watch his mother once again fly off the handle.

Orion, the Black brother's father, stood motionless in the drawing room off the main landing. The walls covered in the Black Family Tree, a tapestry that magically expanded to show every member in the Ancient and Noble House. It was beautiful in the way it was woven, literally threaded with magic in every green stitch, and animated portraits of every known and documented ancestor. Even their crest and family words were amongst them, written in perfect calligraphy and shimmering silver and black. The only thing taking away from the beauty of the tapestry were the few and far between blackened burns from a fire poker.

When Regulus stepped inside the eerie room, with his back straight and shoulders tight, he forced his hands still and motionless at his sides as he addressed his parents. Both of which met him with pointed stares and perfect poses in the ancestor-covered drawing room. He shakily exhaled before he spoke plainly in greeting.

"Mother...," He said firstly with a nod to the tall and wire thin woman before moving to his other parent, the one he feared the most of the pair. With hole-like eyes of silver, and a tall and imposing figure dressed entirely in black threads. Orion Black had always been intimidating with his wealth, and status as a highborn pureblood but he was most feared by his children rather than his opponents in politics. "—Father."

"Regulus," his mother clipped-ly addressed. The youngest brother half expected some degrading comment on how he was unfit to flounce around the house as he was. Hair mused and messy from his anxious pulling, and his eyes red from the burning of unshed tears for his brother's sudden departure. "You are to be the sole heir of the Black Family from this point forward."

Regulus schooled his features into the blank mask he adorned oh-so-often. Hiding away his plummeting stomach, the squeezing in his lungs and his racing heart. He wished more than anything that he could decline such a title— that it wasn't true and that his brother hadn't left him alone in this house. But he was a Black, and because of that he had no choice but to reply as he always did.

"Yes, mother."

"Do you understand what that means?" His mother snipped at him with an ice cold glare. Many assumed the woman's eyes to be black from how dark they were, seeming to have no pupil at all. In truth they were indeed very dark but not black, instead they were a shade of grey— the common eye colour of all Black Ancestors.

Before he could stammer out a reply to his mother's question, he was talked over by his father. Orion was much like his mother in looks. Pale skin, and dark hair that was silky smooth and styled with gel that hardened swiftly. It was a severe look to many people, especially with the man's sharp cheekbones, hooded grey eyes and forever pinched lips. Though anyone who was close to the family had deducted quickly whom was the most evil of the pair and it was frankly not Orion Black, despite his manipulations of others and overall imposing look.

"You will be learning the financials now that the..." he paused for just a second in clearing his throat, as if he hated the next words falling from his lips more than anyone in the room could imagine. But Regulus could, because despite his father's cold persona and absence in their lives, Regulus knew that his father cared for him and his brother, perhaps more so than their shared mother. Even if his caring was for political power and other Less savoury means— like pawns on a chessboard rather than children in his eyes.

"—the blood-traitor is gone, you will resume your calligraphy and etiquette lessons." Regulus internally frowned at his father's words. He loathed the etiquette lessons that had been ingrained and forced on him as a child. Though while the calligraphy lessons had been useful for school they had been nothing short of mind-numbingly boring. "Upon your return to Hogwarts you will be expected to make alliances with members of other noble houses."

Regulus nodded as his mother added on with narrowed eyes and cruel glimmer of a grin. "Pureblood houses, with proper raising. We expect nothing but the best from you. Our true heir and son."

He easily read between the lines of her statements. Houses with connections— power, wealth and pureblooded heirs. Namely those situated in the Sacred Twenty-eight that haven't yet fallen from grace in his mother's keen eyes.

Likewise was the subtle threat that as the spare heir, the second son, it was expected of him to clean up his brothers mess like he had since he was little, and if he didn't well... mother had ways of making him comply. Pain was an old friend and Misery his mistress waiting in the wings since the ripe age of five. It didn't matter the laws against the Unforgivable's or other dark arts— Regulus would be their true son and heir.

"And Sirius..?" Regulus couldn't help but ask. Quietly so, the words coming out closer to a mumble than actual words, but his mother was known for her keen ears at her tea times and parties with other acceptable pureblood wives. Hence, why it was of no surprise to him when Walburga all but snapped at him in disdain for his foolhardy question. It was obviously the wrong thing to ask at such a time.

"Sirius is nothing!" His mother seethed, leaving no room for arguments as she expanded on the topic in further detail. Each word dripping with acid that burned both his ears and chest with intangible pain. "—Your best to forget that he ever existed. He is no longer a Black! He is no longer our son and therefore he is no longer your brother!"

He felt cold, frozen even. Like a marble sculpture found in a museum, polished and clean but still ice-like to the touch—cold and cracked despite the repairs. He was numbed both internally and externally as his mother's words reverberated inside his skull like an echo. It seemed surreal in a sense, that Sirius was disowned, that he was never—no, that he could never come back home.

'He is no longer your brother.'

Those words stung worse more than the rest, like a thousand needles being embedded into his heart. An organ he knew to possess but wasn't entirely sure of it was still beating any longer. It didn't feel like it, as he mechanically heard his father utter yet another phrase that nearly knocked him over from the emotional turmoil that wreaked chaos inside himself.

"He is a blood-traitor and that is all."

They were waiting for him to speak. He knew it, with their stone-like eyes pinning him under scrutiny. They were testing his obedience, curious to how they needed to proceed and if he would be better than Sirius. If he would live up to the expectations that were never meant for him in the first place. He was nothing but the spare heir, yet now he was the sole heir. The lone heir of the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black. The title alone should have scared him more than it did.

On autopilot, his voice null of emotion and his thoughts much farther away from him than appropriate, Regulus replied stiffly. 

"Yes, father."

"You won't speak with him," His father stated, though he quickly listed off a series of short-hand demands in following. "... you won't write to him and if he comes to you for any reason, you ignore him."

As his father paused, his mother stepped in and finished off the demands with a pointed glare and a pinched expression. Regulus knew from the slight curl of her lips that if he was caught disobeying either of them, even minorly, the repercussions he would receive would be a tenth of what Siri—, the blood-traitor, would have experienced. They didn't have a spare for Regulus after all—he was their last chance.

"You won't sully our good name and noble blood by hanging around the likes him." She all but spat the phrase, before stepping closer to him, her pale hand cupping his chin and forcing him to meet her dark, cruel eyes.

Regulus scrambled to keep his thoughts clear and his face neutral when meeting her eyes. He wouldn't be surprised to find out she was taking a quick glance through his mind, seeing as she was an accomplished Legillimens. Though his focus was soon shifted to her words as she spoke almost proudly to him.

"He is nothing Regulus," she stated simply, before pulling away swiftly from him and taking a step back. "—while you are a Black."

Nausea pooled in his stomach in both nervous pride and curdling waves of guilt. He knew it was wrong to long for her words of praise, to feel the slightest bit relieved that his mother thought him worthwhile to anything in regards to their family name. Hence the nearly vomit inducing guilt that curled protectively around such feelings—suffocating it and stomping it out entirely in waves of guilt and nausea.

He was sick, twisted even—though that seemed typical to most heirs of the Black family. Regulus with his stomach curdling guilt, Bellatrix with her mania and psychotic tendencies. There used to be Sirius with his deadly pride and Andromeda with her honour. Narcissa was the last with her deeply imbedded insecurities. They were all messed up in some sense, all ill in one way or another.

Regulus couldn't ponder such thoughts or revel in such emotions long however, when he was handed a metal iron from his father. The same one that his uncle Cygnus had used years prior when burning Andromeda off the tapestry. Regulus knew it to be a test, likely neither the first nor the last to see how far blood really went in his personal views. This was the make it or break it point of his vows to be a perfect heir—he needed to be the one to wield it. The one to officially disown his brother.

The metal was ice cold to the touch, strange seeing as it had been laying in the freshly stoked fireplace on the far side of the room for their entire conversation. The circular end of cruelly welded spirals was an angry red colour from the flames that licked it. It was filthy as well, ashes and embers dirtying the end and part of the leather handle with it's crumbled dust. Regulus felt sick, more so than before as he carefully wrapped his left hand around the handle and let his knuckles clutch it tight.

He glanced to his father for the first time since taking it silently, begging the question he already knew the answer too. His father only inclined his head towards the tapestry as he uttered out the family words in both a blessing and a curse.

"Toujours Pur."

Regulus swallowed tightly as he held the iron to the magically embedded fabric. The smell of burning cloth filled his lungs and made the world seem smaller somehow. Colder, less welcoming as he stood there tall and with his back straight. It shouldn't have been happening, the burning of his brother on the tapestry, the removal of his brother's last name, the official way of disowning. It shouldn't have been like this.

Regulus knew it was to happen eventually but never in all his nightmares had he been the one to wield the metaphorical sword above his brother's extended neck, the one holding the poker against the burning fabric. Stomach bile was burning his throat as he swallowed the vomit that was slowly creeping up his esophagus over and over again at the smell of burning magic. It wasn't fair, but life never was, was it?

He let his arm drop with the metallic weight, as his father took hold of the metal from his hand. All Regulus could say to his parents before leaving the room was that same insufferable phrase that had been embedded in him since he was small. One that used to mean great and powerful to him but now seemed less than. More cold and deceptive, selfish and cruel. For the first time in his life, though likely not the last, Regulus wished more than anything to be anyone but a member of the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black.

"Toujours Pur," He said in excuse to his parents before darting out from the drawing room.

Regulus had barely made it to the second floor bathroom before emptying his stomach of all it's contents. The bloodied rag from his brother, left haphazardly on the basin of the once white sink, haunted him. A talisman that he foolishly had left out after the slamming door, when he had needed to get away for a moment to collect himself. Regulus had wanted to cry and scream at the sight, to throw it away and never set his eyes on it again. But instead he stared, he stared with wet eyes and a burning in his chest he wasn't sure would ever fade.

The white rag splattered with the droplets of his once-brother's blood, standing out like pin points on a map. Sirius' blood, the blood of a blood-traitor and his once best friend in childhood, red and dark against the fabric. He vomited thrice more at the thoughts, before lazily sitting with his back pressed against the locked door. The rag acted as a ghost in a grotesque reminder of Sirius to Regulus—, a foggy haze of Sirius Black ever existing inside Grimmauld Place.