Chapter Text
Regulus doesn’t know how he got here.
One moment, he had been up in his bedroom, trying silencing charms of increasing strength in a futile attempt to drown out the voices coming from downstairs. His mother’s shrill shout, and Sirius shouting right back. Silencing charms never quite worked in Grimmauld Place— at best they might muffle a conversation at a normal volume; at worst they would make the house angry with you for the next couple of days. When Regulus was twelve, he tried to force a permanent silencing ward into the walls of his room. All he got for his efforts was a room the size of a broom cupboard for the next week.
Regulus never stopped trying.
One moment, he had been in his bedroom and the next he heard screaming. Not shouting, not yelling, not even crying. Screaming, blood-curdling and wretched and not the kind of sound a human should be capable of producing. But Regulus had known.
What he doesn’t know is how he got here. He doesn’t remember opening his bedroom and walking down the stairs. It’s terribly out of character for him— he never goes downstairs when his mother is angry, especially not when she’s angry with Sirius. Stay in your room, Sirius had told him when he was six, and Regulus had listened. He kept listening for the rest of his life.
And yet here he is. When he steps into the drawing room, the screaming has stopped and Sirius is crumpled on the ground, motionless. For the most horrifying second of Regulus’s entire horrifying life, he thinks he might be dead.
“Has Regulus come to join us?”
At the sickly-sweet crooning voice of Bellatrix, Regulus looks up and registers the others in the room watching him intently. His father is sitting in the plush armchair, looking faintly ill, more ill than he normally looks. His mother stands beside him, one hand resting on the back of the armchair, and the other fingering her wand contemplatively.
And finally, Cousin Bella, standing with her wand outstretched over Sirius’s form.
Realization rises to Regulus’s throat like bile.
“What’s going on?” he says, his mouth forming words of its own accord, his voice toneless. He holds his mother’s gaze and doesn’t spare one glance to Sirius, doesn’t want to even risk absorbing the knowledge that his brother still isn’t moving. Doesn’t want to risk anyone in the room seeing how that devastates him.
“Your brother,” His mother says mildly, even while she sharpens the edge of brother like an insult, like it is a stain on Regulus’s character to have a brother, “shows some reservations about doing his duty to this family. Reservations that need to be erased immediately.”
When Sirius does not immediately sit up to spit in his mother’s direction the moment she mentions his “duty to this family”, Regulus knows something is terribly wrong. A pit forms in his stomach as he registers his cousin’s maniacal grin.
“The Dark Lord has promised the Mark to Sirius, and he’s not even of age yet,” Bellatrix jumps in, “He doesn’t even understand what an honor that is. Recognition, Regulus. That is what this family gets you. Even when you don’t deserve it.”
“Of course he deserves it, Bella,” says his mother, scolding, “He’s a Black. He’s my son.”
“But, Aunt Walburga, he doesn’t want it.”
When his mother sighs, she sounds almost maternal, almost loving, “He doesn’t know what he wants.”
Regulus feels himself slipping. All the despair, the horror, the fear— everything he tries so hard to keep under control— wresting free of his grip and running away from him. Suddenly, he is a child again, five years old, wailing and wailing just because his mother shot a stinging hex at him for whining.
Stop it, Reg, stop it. You’re alright, you’re fine. Stop crying. I’m right here. Your brother’s here.
He’s not crying now. He almost wishes he could, wishes he could go back to being five years old when the height of cruelty was a stinging hex and his brother could fix everything just by being there.
Bellatrix’s eyes gleam, “What about you, Regulus? Do you know what you want?”
“Walburga—” his father says urgently, reaching up to grip his wife’s hand. She pats it once before dislodging it, not saying another word. When Regulus catches his gaze, it is filled with fear. He wonders if his own mirrors it.
“Regulus has always known, unlike Sirius. He has never shirked his responsibilities.”
“Perhaps some persuasion from him might prove more effective, then.”
“Walburga—”
For a moment, Regulus doesn’t understand. His mind blanks even as his eyes take in the smile spreading across Bella’s face, the expectant raise of an eyebrow from his mother. His father’s face, growing paler still.
When he doesn’t move, Bellatrix tuts.
“Come on, Reg,” a shiver runs through him at the nickname. Nobody calls him that aside from Sirius, and never in company, “You know how it’s done, don’t you? You’re what, fourteen? Surely you’re capable of this simple trick by now.”
He doesn’t understand, even while he does. A part of him knows that if he allows himself to comprehend what they’re asking of him, he won’t be able to take it. He’ll vomit, or cry, or run away, or do the completely wrong thing. Just like he always does.
He drops his gaze to Sirius, who has finally shifted on the floor. He’s curled in on himself, cringing away from the source of whatever is hurting him. Regulus remembers, as if pulling the memory out from the depths of a faraway lake, how it felt to watch his brother from above. As he stood at the top of the stairs, on the eve of his twelfth birthday, as his mother whipped her hand across Sirius’s face with such force that it turned to the side and his eyes fell on Regulus. There had been that instant of silent accusation, a flicker of something bitter passing over his face. And then it was gone, and then it was just Sirius watching him, waiting perhaps, for Regulus to do something.
Regulus had turned away and walked, slowly, back to his room.
That was the first crack. It was not the last.
Sirius draws his head up, somehow finding the strength, and looks at Regulus. His expression shifts, going from pain to surprise to something indescribable, something awful and pleading. His lips form around some silent word. A name.
Regulus knows then that this is the last crack. The final, fatal crack that will turn them from whatever they are now into what they will be for the rest of their lives. From here onward, for better or for worse, there will be nothing more they can do for, or to, each other. This is the last time he will ever hurt Sirius. It’s the last time Sirius will let him.
“Regulus.” His mother’s voice drops like a guillotine between them, “The Cruciatus Curse. You are capable of it.”
It’s not a question. Walburga has always known, above all else, what her sons are capable of.
Regulus does not think as he draws his wand. Even through the bone-deep fear, his body reacts perfectly to do as it’s told. And hasn’t that always been his best trait? Hasn’t that always been how he’s survived?
Stay in your room.
Stop crying.
Always, always, always, Regulus does as he’s told.
“Reg,” Sirius’s voice breaks on his name.
He doesn’t know how he got here. All he knows, looking down into his brother’s face that's already so prepared to be hurt by him, so prepared to be disappointed by him once again, is that this isn’t a choice he can make.
Then, his wand is pointed, ram-rod straight in front of him.
Right at Bellatrix.
“Regulus.” Two voices, one warning and the other daring. Both filled with shock.
Regulus is just as shocked as them. He’s so shocked, in fact, that he almost drops his wand. Almost throws himself at his mother’s feet when he sees the look on her face because— what will she do to him for this? What price will he pay for being the one to shock Walburga Black?
Regulus looks to his father. Orion Black, once such an imposing figure, is now so frail that the armchair cushions threaten to swallow him up. A memory comes to him, the image of his father sitting in that very spot as Regulus sat on the arm of the chair, feet dangling over the side as his father read to him. Regulus had learned the entire history of the British Isles that way, wizarding and muggle (though they kept the latter secret from Walburga). Years later, he can recall every detail— can recall it in the sure cadence of a voice that, in those rare moments, had made him feel safe. And although he knows well enough by now that there are things his father cannot give him, Regulus finds himself hoping against all hope for his father to protect him.
His father looks away.
Bellatrix breaks the silence with a sharp laugh, “Little Regulus wants to be a grownup, then? Well, pay attention. This is how adults handle their problems. Crucio.”
Regulus is familiar with pain. Nobody can grow up in Grimmauld Place and remain unfamiliar with it for very long. There are some types of pain, however, for which the word itself is inadequate. To call these types of pain pain feels too small, for pain is something familiar, manageable. Pain is tolerable.
This is not.
White-hot knives dig underneath Regulus’s skin, into his blood where they remain, searing through his veins until the very flow seems to burn him from within. He bypasses screaming and goes straight to sobbing, and every heaved breath that comes out of him tastes like vomit. At this point, spilling the contents of his stomach would be a relief— at least the process of vomiting would distract him from the feeling of his brain leaking out of his ears— but he can’t even make himself do that much. He can’t breathe. He can’t see.
Distantly, he registers the sound of someone yelling. At him? Whatever it’s about, he thinks he might deserve it. He must. It cannot be possible to suffer like this without deserving it.
“That’s enough,” says Regulus’s father, “Walburga, stop this.”
Maman, he tries to speak, but the only sound he can produce is a wet sob. Maman, please. I’ll be good. I’ll do anything. Please just stop hurting me.
“Protego!”
Just like that, it stops. Regulus feels tears slip down his cheeks, not of pain but gratitude. He blinks his eyes open and searches for his parents. The pain has reduced him to a child; all he wants is to be held and told that he’s still good, that he’s still their son, that they’ll never hurt him like that again.
But the only thing he can see is Sirius’s worried face looming in front of him, his hands clutching his shoulders, and the faint shimmer of a shield charm surrounding them.
“Sirius,” says Regulus, and then he begins to weep in earnest.
“Up, get up, get up,” Sirius says urgently. He loops Regulus’s arm around his shoulders and draws him to his feet. His knees buckle for a moment— under the curse, using his limbs felt like a faint memory. There’s a sound of breaking glass, and Regulus looks over his shoulder just in time to see something collide against the shield charm. Bellatrix raises her wand to summon another object.
Walburga screams unintelligible words and curses and complaints at what she could have done to deserve such ungrateful, disobedient sons. Regulus, in a somewhat detached state ever since the curse had stopped, feels almost awed by it. His mother never screams at him. Screaming and curses and violence had always been for Sirius. For Regulus, she had saved her silences, her cruel words and crueler wandwork.
Only later will Regulus identify the feeling coursing through him, alongside the terror, as wry satisfaction.
“Go, go, come on, Reg, you have to move,” Sirius practically yanks him out of the drawing room, but still he doesn’t stop. He continues across the living room and through the dining room and into the foyer, and then he’s pulling the door open, and this, this, is when he lets go of Regulus.
Regulus freezes in his tracks, staring at the open door which seems to him as impossible to walk through as a gateway to another world. Awareness comes to him in waves. He can’t help but balk at Sirius’s audacity. Of course Sirius would be the first person in history to consider just walking away from the House of Black, just opening the door and leaving. For Merlin’s sake, Regulus feels silly even just thinking it.
Even with his dawning awareness, Regulus can’t comprehend why Sirius is urging him out of the door. He digs his heels in, confused.
“Reg, there’s no time, you have to leave.”
“What?” Regulus says, trying to twist himself away from Sirius to no avail, “Sirius, stop. What are you talking about?”
“You can’t stay here,” Sirius speaks quickly, quietly, throwing glances over his shoulder, “Not now. You turned your wand on Mother, Reg, I don’t— I don’t know what she’ll do to you. But it’ll be worse than anything she’s ever done before.”
No.
No, no no no no.
“I— I was—”
I was pointing it at Bellatrix.
I wasn’t pointing it at anyone.
I was pointing it at everyone except you.
“Reg,” says Sirius, “I—” he swallows, “When you get to the end of the street, there’s a bench. Sit there and stick out your wand hand. The Knight Bus should arrive not too long after that. Tell them to take you to the Potter residence in Godric’s Hollow.”
“No, no, Sirius, don’t make me—”
“There’s no time to argue. Explain what happened to James’s parents, and they’ll take you in. Whatever you do, Regulus,” he brings his hands up to cradle his face, “don’t come back.”
Something is breaking inside him. It feels like his heart.
He reaches up to grab Sirius’s hands around his face. He holds onto them like he hasn’t in years, like he never wants to let go.
“Come with me.”
Sirius smiles (for fuck’s sake, Regulus wants to shout, what could there possibly be to smile about in this situation), “I can’t yet. I have to stay and make sure they don’t try to come after you.”
“But they’ll—“
He doesn’t know how to finish that sentence. They’ll hurt you? They’ll make you take the Mark? Regulus has long since accepted both of those things. This is their fate, their legacy. And at the end of every dream he has in which he is someone different, in which they are different, he wakes up.
They won’t come after me, Regulus thinks. I’m not you. They’ve never cared about me the way they care about you.
Sirius’s smile widens into a sort of a feral grin, “I can handle them.”
Regulus wonders if he imagines the unspoken reproval. A confirmation of what he’s always suspected Sirius believed but never said aloud: that Sirius can handle it, but Regulus cannot. That Regulus is weak. Soft. Afraid.
It’s what their mother has always told them, after all.
Before Regulus can say anything else, though, their mother’s screaming voice comes from behind Sirius. He looks back with a wary expression.
“Go. Run. Now, Regulus.”
He all but shoves Regulus outside. It’s all he needs to break into a run, bare feet carrying him past the iron gate and onto the street, on and on and on, never once slowing. The slap of his feet on concrete sounds more like fear than freedom, but Regulus keeps going. He pushes through the burn in his lungs and legs until the burn ceases and leaves behind a buzzing numbness, a disconnect between his body and its action. One foot in front of the other. He’s further away with every breath.
When he looks back, he can’t see his home.
When the Knight Bus pulls up in front of him, he isn’t thinking of leaving. In fact, he’s not thinking of anything except how to get more air in his lungs as his head hangs between his legs.
So, naturally, being as wound-up and simultaneously exhausted as he is, the resounding bang that sounds as the Knight Bus appears catches him unawares. He lurches forward, slipping clear off the bench and face-first into the grass.
“Welcome to the Knight Bus, emergency transport for the stranded witch or wiz— whatcha doing on the ground?”
Regulus gets to his feet and dusts himself off pointedly.
“I fell,” he says, with great dignity.
“Well, why’d ya do that?”
“Obviously I didn’t do it on purpose.”
The bus conductor seems to accept this. He's young man, not much older than Regulus himself, with dark curly hair peeking out under a flat cap.
“Can you take me to Godric’s Hollow?”
“Sure can, for seven Sickles.”
Regulus’s blood runs cold. He doesn’t have a Knut on him. He doesn’t even have shoes.
The conductor must sense something in his expression because his eyes narrow. Chagrined, Regulus makes a show of fishing through his pockets and nearly weeps with relief when his fingers brush against something round and metal in his trouser pocket. When he pulls it out, the gold coin that he must have left there from before the last wash shines like a godsend.
“I only have a Galleon.”
“Ta. Gimme a moment with your change—”
“Keep it,” he says wearily, holding out the coin. A distant part of Regulus’s brain warns against that. It is the part that was working tirelessly to process this situation, and it tells him that he no longer has the luxury of throwing away a Galleon. Panic floods him. Shit, how is he going to survive without that Galleon? How is he going to survive at all? The only time in his life that he actually carries money is when he goes to school. His family has a tab with every store in Diagon Alley— probably Knockturn Alley as well. Shopkeepers typically don’t even bat an eye when he walks in and walks out without so much as a how much is this?. He has no clue how much things ordinarily cost; why should he, when he could always afford them?
But he can’t afford them any longer.
Oddly, it is this, rather than the wrath of his mother or the fear for his brother, that makes him comprehend the gravity of his situation. His entire life had been upended in a moment. Worse, an accidental moment. He wonders if Sirius will be disappointed when he finally realizes that Regulus had not meant to protect him, had not meant to do anything really. If Bellatrix had not hit him with the Cruciatus Curse right then and there, a stern reprimand from his mother would have been enough to have him lowering his wand and leaving Sirius behind in that room. Regulus had just been, as always, scared.
As the bus careens down the road with such speed that Regulus white-knuckles the edge of his seat to remain upright, he knows with guilt-stricken clarity that it should be Sirius sitting here instead of him.
“You alright back there?” The conductor stands at the front of the bus, loosely holding on to the railing and looking perfectly at ease as they turn so sharply that Regulus swears he senses the left wheels leave the ground, “Ride can get a bit bumpy. I’m always tellin’ Clyde to drive a little slower for the young’uns, but I reckon he just forgets to lift his foot off the accelerator. Speaking of which, I think I forgot to introduce myself. The name’s Bonnie, and I’ll be your conductor this evening.”
Regulus blinks at him, “Um, nice to meet you.”
Bonnie grins, “This here’s the part where ya tell me your name.”
“Regulus,” he replies without thinking and then pauses to wonder whether he should have offered a fake name. Is he on the run? Will he be swarmed by hired Aurors looking to apprehend the runaway Black heir the moment he steps off the bus?
Does his mother even care that he’s gone?
All Bonnie says, though, is, “Fancy name. Say, Regulus, are ya sure you’re alright? You’re lookin’ peaky if I’m being honest.”
Can I have the change for my Galleon back? he considers asking. It’s just that I’m a soon-to-be disinherited scion of an obscenely wealthy family, and I’ve never had to count Sickles before, but I think I should probably start now.
I miss my brother, he does not consider saying because he has never quite been able to articulate what that feels like, even while he feels it all the time.
“Regulus?”
He swallows past the bitter taste in his mouth, “I’m fine.”
The bus screeches to a halt, and the doors open with a quiet hiss.
“Well, this’ll be you,” says Bonnie, “Godric’s Hollow.”
Regulus murmurs a thanks and makes a hasty exit. Just as he steps off the bus, though, he hears Bonnie call his name. He turns and finds him standing at the door.
“Good luck to ya,” he says.
The doors close in front of his grinning face, and he waves through the glass. Regulus watches the bus disappear into the distance.
The Potters live in a cottage, as it turns out. Of course they do— a cottage is the only abode that could fit the picture, painted by Sirius, of the perfectly wholesome, well-adjusted boy raised in its walls.
Well, maybe the picture wasn’t the sole courtesy of Sirius. Regulus might have filled in a few details. The “perfectly wholesome” part was creative license. The “well-adjusted” part was just deductive reasoning.
Before he can think better of it, he knocks on the door.
In the approximate ten seconds between the knock and the answer, he allows himself to think better of it.
What has he done? He has nowhere to go, nobody to rely on, he’s put himself entirely at their mercy and— why should they help him? They know who his parents are, and if they’re smart, they’ll send an owl immediately with Regulus’s whereabouts and a plea to come collect him.
He takes a step back, about to make a break for it, when he remembers that there’s nowhere for him to go. He has no options left to him.
Regulus is trapped. Whether in a house or outside of it, he remains trapped.
When Euphemia Potter answers the door, he is shaking from head to toe.
She blinks, mouth parting, “Regulus?”
“I’m—“
The open shock on her face slices him open. He feels like such a fool. He feels pathetic. Regulus cannot begin to guess what made Sirius so certain that these people— this family, whole and unbroken and absent of whatever mess he has brought to their doorstep— would make a place for him. Leave it to Sirius to assume, wrongly, that the love afforded to him belongs to Regulus as well.
“I’m sorry,” he finally says. He means to follow with I’m sorry for the imposition, but his voice breaks on the word and he can’t bring himself to continue.
Mrs. Potter visibly pulls herself together, “There’s absolutely nothing to apologize for,” she says, with such certainty that Regulus almost believes her, “Come in.”
“Mum? Who is it?” That voice coming from the other room makes Regulus stop in the foyer, spine snapping straight with apprehension.
Mrs. Potter, sensing it perhaps, places a hand on his shoulder.
“Regulus?” says James, padding into view, incredulous in his faded white t-shirt and pajama bottoms pooling over his feet.
He looks ridiculous.
Regulus’s throat closes.
“What are you doing here? Mum? What’s going on?”
“James, darling, why don’t you—“
“Has— has something happened to Sirius?”
At the sound of his name, an involuntary, choked sound escapes Regulus. Ever since Sirius pushed him through that door and told him to run, he has carefully tried to think of nothing but his brother’s instructions, of getting on the Knight Bus and arriving safely on the Potters’ doorstep. He separated memory from feeling, information from experience, as he always does in order to do what needs to be done. The only time he has ever failed in that was when he failed to hurt his brother.
Now that he’s here, though, in front of these people that love Sirius in a way that is uncomplicated and good (so unlike how he loves), Regulus feels himself failing once again. He remembers the sight of his brother on the floor, still as a corpse. He remembers pain like nothing he’s ever known. He remembers his mother’s yelling following him through the house. He remembers asking Sirius to come with him.
He remembers leaving Sirius behind.
James steps forward, face twisting with confusion and dread.
“Please, Regulus, I need to know. If something’s happened to Sirius, I need…” he breaks off with a wheeze. There is such a rawness to him that Regulus wonders if his skin would break open if he touched him, like pressing a scalpel ever so slowly in and watching the unmarred flesh part around it.
“James, give him some space. You’re scaring him.”
“I’m scaring him? I’m scaring him? Do you even have any idea how much he’s scaring me right now?”
“James. That’s enough,” she says. Her tone brooks no argument. James falls silent, but his gaze still presses Regulus.
James Potter has never looked at him like this.
James Potter has never looked at him at all, really.
Regulus always imagined that the moment he finally did would be more gratifying than this. He has pictured in his most private, pathetic moments what he might do with James’s attention. Sneer at him, perhaps. Scorn him. Make him believe he means nothing, as no one has ever made James Potter believe before. And in the more private, more pathetic moments still, he pictures… something along the lines of the opposite.
Met with the reality of James’s eyes on him, however, Regulus would do anything to not have to face him.
He knows he should give him an answer. James deserves an answer— he does not deserve having to stand there wondering if the worst has happened to his best friend, for it could only be the worst if Regulus has come to his home.
Something has happened to Sirius, though. Regulus searches helplessly for the words to tell him that.
All he can think of is his mother’s last scream before he turned and ran.
Have his lungs always been this small? Has getting air into them always proved this difficult? Suddenly the pain isn’t so much a memory but a real, persistent agony.
Blacks spots dance on the edge of his vision. No. No, he can’t. He needs to tell James. Needs to let him know that Sirius is alive, at least. That it should be Sirius here instead of him and in a different, fairer, better world, it would be.
“I’m sorry,” is all he manages before the world falls out from underneath him.