Chapter Text
12th November, 1980
James shuts the door. He doesn’t slam it, exactly, but it’s a very resolute sort of sound. The younger, smaller brother of a slam, perhaps.
“James,” says Lily, “I don’t want him here.”
Harry, bless him, hasn’t a clue. He’s sucking on his dummy with relish, entirely unaware they’ve got his godfather, Dumbledore, and a wanted murderer having a terse meeting in the next room over.
“I don’t know what else we can do,” says James. “He’s got no wand. He’s in pieces, just look at him.”
“Chuck him in Azkaban and be done with it,” Lily says.
“You don’t mean that.”
She glares at him. Of course she doesn’t bloody mean it.
Harry, meanwhile, looks between his mummy and his daddy with great self-satisfaction, as though he did well in choosing them, if he can say so himself. Lily thinks that’s rather rich, considering that, at least according to her various baby development books, her son currently still can’t see anything more substantial than vague shapes and blurry colours.
“They wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t a last resort. I don’t think they’ve got anywhere else that’s safe to put him,” James adds, gently.
“Don’t know why you bother with your glasses,” she remarks, smoothing down Harry’s unruly black tuft of hair (it flicks straight back up again), “when you wake up every morning and just throw on your Sirius goggles instead.”
James takes Harry from her. Jiggles him a little, until the baby laughs. “I think Sirius is probably on your side,” he says. “Well—maybe not the Azkaban bit. But he gave up on his brother a long time ago. Reckoned he had made his choices, so he ought to live with them.”
Lily takes a seat at the small, square kitchen table. She rubs circles into her temples. Thinks of Petunia. Not Petunia as she’d last seen her, sneering at James, arm-in-arm with that pugnacious husband of hers. No. She thinks of Petunia with her perfect blonde curls undone and straggly and wet, her face white as milk, her clothes sodden and clinging to her skin, pupils blown and eyes maddened, swaying like she half-expects the living room floor to capsize beneath her.
And Lily thinks of Sirius, still fuming in the other room. Face thunderous, words barbed. One hand, nevertheless, wrapped firmly around Regulus’s bony elbow. Basin at the ready in the other.
“No,” says Lily at last. “No, I don’t think that’s true.”
James perks up at once. He’s always known what she’s thinking before she’s even thought it. It’s the worst thing about him. “I’ll tell them, then?”
“Harry’s staying in the room with us,” she warns. “I won’t go so far as to lock the bastard into the spare room, but I will be putting a Caterwauling Charm on the door every evening. He tries anything, we know about it immediately.”
Harry chooses that moment to coo and pull at James's hair with his tiny fist.
“Oi, you,” says James, and tickles Harry.
At once, Lily bursts into tears.
“Oh, sweetheart,” says James, and then Harry is squashed between them as he wraps his spare arm around her shoulders.
“When,” she sobs, “is this—going—to end?”
And for once, her pig-headed, big-hearted, smart-arsed husband has no answer. Instead, he hands her back her son and he says, gently, “I’ll make up the spare room.”
*
Sirius puts his brother to bed at the exact same time that Lily puts down Harry. There is something of a stand-off between the four of them on the landing. This all feels slightly ludicrous, owing to the fact that Harry is a three-month-old infant and Regulus Black is dead on his feet—but perhaps Lily is just hysterical.
Regulus’s eyes—lightless black holes in his skull of a face—stare blankly at the two of them like he’s never seen either of them before; Lily supposes that he hadn’t exactly been compos mentis when he’d been carried into their living room three hours earlier. At least he’s no longer dripping gore onto the carpet.
“That’s my godson,” Sirius tells him, “and if you so much as look at him the wrong way, I’ll hang you by the ankle from a broomstick and send you packing straight back to your beloved Dark Lord, d’you hear me?”
As Sirius remains the only thing that’s holding Regulus upright, the threat deflates like a popped balloon.
Regulus blinks. “Godson?”
Lily glares. Sirius says, “Yes. Godson.”
“Well,” says Regulus, “I always knew Potter had terrible judgement.”
Sirius smacks him (rather weakly) on the shoulder; Regulus seems hardly to notice.
“I’m putting a Caterwauling Charm on the door,” says Lily. “And the window. Any funny business, and I’ll kill you myself. Chop you up and feed you to the cat.”
Harry giggles, and grabs a fistful of her hair.
Regulus’s dead stare is unamused. “Cats. Broomsticks. Whatever shall I do.”
“Oh, if you want to be smart, I’ll tell you where you can shove that broomstick, you smarmy little prat,“ Sirius growls. “Up your skinny little—“
“Charming, Sirius,” interrupts Regulus, too tired for further protest as he lets his brother, still muttering darkly, march him into the spare bedroom.
14th November, 1980
One day passes. Then another. Yet Sirius remains resolute. He will continue skulking around the house until urgent Order business drags him away, and even then, James suspects he’ll leave his brother’s general vicinity only in case of emergency. Meanwhile, Regulus Black does not improve, but neither does he die. James has cheerfully taken this as a victory. Lily, currently prostrate on the couch, is less sure.
She lifts her face from where she’d buried it in the cushions. “What do you think, Harry, hm?”
In response, Harry attempts to shove his entire fist into his mouth. Then he farts.
“Couldn’t have put it better myself,” says James, tickling his son’s belly; Harry’s little giggles are fresh as a xylophone scale, his tiny legs flailing. “Marvellous!”
“Don’t look so smug. You’re changing that nappy,” Lily tells him wearily.
James gives Harry’s bum a cursory sniff. Considers his options. Then he says: “Maybe it’s time to rope Sirius into his godfather duties. Have you seen him?”
“That’s evil, Jim,” his lovely wife declares. She’s sinking further and further into the couch, as though the gap between the cushions is eating her. “Heinous. Despicable.”
“I’m getting him,” says James.
“I can’t believe it. I’ve married a monster.”
He cranes his head over and pecks her on the cheek before getting to his feet.
Sirius is not in the kitchen, nor the living room, nor the now-defunct nursery (Harry has slept in the bedroom with them ever since the murderer moved in). James even pokes his head out the window; there’s a little robin redbreast cheering up the garden wall, but no large black dog or disgruntled best friend. Which leaves:
Knock on the door. No answer. He pushes it open with a creak, and warily peers in.
Sirius is snoring. He’s dragged a kitchen chair up the stairs, and in a remarkable feat of exhaustion, has managed to fall asleep on it. His feet are propped up on the foot of the bed, and his head is tilted back, limp as an unstrung puppet. His mouth is wide open and practically begging for James to shove a dirty sock or a spoonful of Marmite into it. He is going to wake with a frightful crick in his neck.
“How long has he been there?” James whispers.
Regulus shrugs. He’s holding a basin, still looking very green. Someone—Sirius—has draped a blanket over his shoulders. “Since this morning,” he croaks.
“Not asleep, surely?”
Regulus’s bloodshot gaze darts upward to settle on James. He does not move an inch from his position on the corner of the bed, hunched over as though he’s afraid that the nausea will come rushing straight back the minute he allows himself to relax.
“He was up rather late.” The with me goes unsaid. James had glimpsed it as he passed the bathroom, door open just a crack: Regulus slumped on the tiles, head pillowed on the toilet seat, acquainting himself with the plumbing, while Sirius had lounged in the empty bathtub and pretended not to care. Sometime after eleven, Lily had put a Muffling Charm on the hall door; they must have been in there all night.
James strides over and opens the window in an attempt to waft away the stale, clammy smell of sickness that lingers in the room. Sirius snuffles a bit, but doesn’t wake. Now that he is within shoving distance, James reconsiders: Sirius’s dark circles are almost as bad as his brother’s.
“That’s it. I’m calling Remus,” he decides.
Regulus somehow goes greener. “You can’t tell anyone I’m here—“
“Calm down, I know. Dumbledore gave us all the rundown. As far as anyone else is concerned, you’re still missing-slash-dead. S’long as you keep your bony arse safely parked on that bed, Remus won’t be any the wiser as to your continued survival.”
Regulus scowls; James winks at him. Then he closes the door, walks down the stairs, waves his wand, and watches as a silver stag soars out through the living-room window and gallops across the garden.
Lily—who has finally extracted herself from the couch to sit next to a giggling Harry—raises a single eyebrow. “What happened to Sirius’s godfatherly duties?”
James sighs, and opens his arms. “Give me my stinky son.”
*
Once the biohazard in Harry’s nappy is dealt with, Lily and James stage an intervention for Sirius in the spare room. It is not their first intervention, and will likely not be the last. This time, however, Harry and Regulus have both been cast as spectators—one distinctly less willing than the other.
“Come on, Pads,” says James. “Go with Remus. Do something mildly reckless. Full moon’s coming up, anyway. He’ll need you then.”
“But—“
“You’re going to go mad hovering over him. You’ve barely left his side in two whole days, mate,” says James. “It’s making you miserable.”
“It’s making me miserable,” says Regulus.
“Reg,” says Sirius, “do you know what duct-tape is? Because it’s going on your mouth in a minute.” To James, he says, “What if something happens? What if he tries something?”
“I’ll stop him,” says James.
“I’ll stop him,” says Lily from the door, baby on her hip.
“I’m not going to try anything,” says Regulus.
“Oh yeah?” Sirius rounds on his brother. “How do we know? He could be faking it, James. This could all be one big elaborate trick.”
Regulus—still locked in a loving embrace with the vomit-basin—raises a single brow at his brother. “Oh yes,” he says, acidly, “you caught me. That’s why I drank straight poison. That’s why I took a little dip in a lake full of Inferi. Just to trick you.”
Sirius’s returning scowl is brief and perfunctory. He turns back to James and Lily. “What if he gets sick again?”
“I’ll get sick on your face in a minute,” Regulus mutters from the bed.
“He’s a big boy,” says Lily, “I’m sure he’ll manage.”
“Stay, go, I couldn’t care less.” Regulus is a vision of abject misery as he presses his forehead against the rim of the basin, a thin sheen of sweat on the nape of his neck. Poetic justice, Lily thinks. “Just stop arguing or get the fuck out.”
Sirius whirls around. “Don’t fucking swear in front of my fucking godson!”
*
A blissfully ignorant Remus, unsuccessfully concealing his bemusement, leads a glowering Sirius Black from the cottage forty five minutes later.
14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th November, 1980
Regulus Black continues to not die. In fact, five days after his sudden and dramatic arrival, he keeps his breakfast and half his dinner down. The day after that, he comes downstairs and fumes at them from the couch; Sirius, who has been persuaded into limiting his mother-henning to a very reasonable hour a day, does not even have to help him. The day after that, he even showers—something that they’re all rather relieved about—though he had point-blank refused to go near the bath, and hadn’t actually braved the shower until he had consumed enough vials of Calming Draught to knock out a hippogriff. Although, from the various bits and pieces she’s gleaned from Sirius regarding a lake and what sounds like zombies, Lily is inclined to forgive him for that.
It is odd, having a stranger in their home. It’s only been the three of them since Harry was born. Since a grim-faced Dumbledore had knocked at the door. Since the Fidelius was cast. But it’s not quite as odd as it might have been. Regulus is not particularly threatening, not even when he tries to be. And despite herself, despite her knowledge of who he is, and what he’s done, Lily finds herself glad that their ‘guest’ is on the mend.
For Sirius’s sake.
28th November, 1980
Let it be known that, while Lily Potter is emphatically not a morning person, she is a fair one: it’s her turn. So here she is, at five o’clock in the morning in the freezing depths of November, standing on a hot water bottle in the darkened kitchen and rocking her terrible infant son back to sleep. Colic must have been invented by God to punish mothers, she thinks, and then she feels awful, because Harry’s probably suffering much worse than she is, the poor thing, and her heart aches for him, it really does—but she still wishes he had had the good manners to limit his fussing to regular business hours.
Then the second poor thing of the month appears at the doorway, looking nearly as wretched as the first. Regulus no longer appears at risk of sudden death, but his delicate pureblood constitution remains wobbly; he’d thrown up so violently earlier that evening that Lily was shocked that the noise hadn’t broken the sound barrier. (Or the Fidelius). She was only glad Sirius wasn’t around to witness it this time, or he would have certainly have set up permanent camp in the bathtub, or thrown up himself with worry; Lily, who does not like or trust their resident ex-Death Eater, had felt a bit nauseous herself at the sound of it. But, since Regulus Black had staggered out of the bathroom with his guts still in their correct places, and evidently did not collapse and expire on his way down the stairs, and used to be a member of a terrorist organisation out to kill her and people like her, Lily is trying not to let it get to her.
“I hope Harry didn’t keep you up,” she lies.
Regulus doesn’t deign to honour her with an answer; the purpling bags under his eyes have bypassed concerning and veered headfirst into comical. Though, to be fair, they cannot be attributed solely to sharing the same roof as a colicky baby. He’s so exhausted he has even conceded to wearing Muggle clothing without complaint, and his skin has taken on a pallor heretofore never seen on anyone still possessing a pulse. His jumper (Sirius’s originally, she presumes) hangs frightfully loose on him; the pyjama bottoms are definitely Sirius’s, considering they’re a bright vermillion and patterned with golden stars.
She resettles the sniffly Harry in her arms. Her wand is within reach on the kitchen table, and his has been confiscated by the Order, but he’s still a Death Eater, defection or not. She doesn’t know where to begin trusting him. She doesn’t know if she has it in her.
Then, in his posh rasp, Regulus says: “Would you like help?”
Lily stares at him. “What.”
“You heard me.”
“Yeah,” she says, “refill the hot water bottle.”
“Pardon?”
“You heard me,” she says.
He follows her gaze down to the hot water bottle that she is currently still standing upon. She steps off. The lukewarm water inside sloshes about; the icy kitchen tiles hurt her freezing feet even through three pairs of socks. She dreams, briefly and achingly, of a bubble-bath. Harry lets out another miserable hiccough, lower lip jutting into a wet pout, tears clumping his black eyelashes into spider’s legs.
Regulus looks at the hot water bottle. Then he looks at Lily. He opens his mouth to speak, but she waggles one of her few spare fingers at him. “If this is going to be some nonsense about Warming Charms, I don’t want to hear it. It just isn’t the same.”
He closes his mouth, expression mutinous.
“Boil the bloody kettle, Black,” Lily says.
Regulus picks the water bottle up off the kitchen tiles. Then he looks with real trepidation at the electric kettle. Lily offers no further instructions, and he clearly senses none will be forthcoming, because he sets the hot water bottle gingerly on the counter before leaning forward to examine the cheap plastic kettle with all the intensity of a man faced with a blackboard of complex equations. To add insult to injury, he bends at the waist, shoulders straight and posture perfect. She would laugh at him, but she’s so tired she can’t remember how. Where do laughs usually begin, anyway? In the throat or in the belly?
“There’s a second one in the cupboard under the sink.” It comes out before she can stop it. “James’s. He never uses it since he already runs hotter than a bloody furnace. It’s there if you want it.”
Regulus Black frowns at her, one hand on the handle of the kettle. The question is unspoken; she hears it loud and clear.
“You look like a man who has bad circulation,” she informs him primly, and carries the (finally! finally!) dozy Harry into the sitting room, seating herself gently on the couch and turning the telly on mute. Slowly, and with several little sniffles, Harry nods off on her chest. She briefly thinks about attempting to carry him to his cot upstairs, but finds herself too tired to move.
Ten minutes later, Regulus appears at the door. He’s wrapped the hot water bottle in a tea towel so it won’t burn her. Lily is—resentfully—touched.
Then, without having to be asked, and moving very slowly, he slides the wrapped hot water bottle under her feet. When he straightens up, one side of his mouth has hooked up into a sort-of-smile. The shape of it Lily recognises—it’s Sirius’s smile—but it looks like something new on Regulus’s sharper, skinnier face.
Harry sighs, a puff of warmth against her throat.
Lily realises she left her wand in the kitchen. And she’d never heard the Caterwauling Charm go off.
Regulus Black is quick on the uptake. He takes a step back. Long-fingered hands where she can see them, palms open and empty. “You forgot,” he tells her, more gently than expected, “and I suspected it wasn’t the best time to remind you.”
“I forgot,” she repeats, faintly. The TV keeps flickering. She’s not half as frightened as she thinks she should be. “Christ. Well. Do remind me next time, won’t you?”
“Gladly,” says Regulus dryly. He sinks down on the armchair, heavy eyelids already at half-mast, so that only a half-moon of grey iris is visible. “Do you mind? Because, frankly, I don’t think I’ll manage the stairs again without at least an hour-long nap.”
“Remind me, who is the baby here?” she asks.
“James, of course,” he says at once.
She throws a cushion at him. He smiles again. Tiredly. Crookedly.
*
James comes down the stairs as the sun rises. He opens the door to the sitting room to find the three of them asleep and snoring in chorus.
The seemingly interminable November of 1980
The most horrible thing about Lily and James Potter, Regulus discovers very soon into his involuntary sojourn in Godric’s Hollow, is that they’re just not very good at hating him. Oh, they can be prickly, certainly, and he’s prickly right back—but, despite being wandless, weak, and entirely at their mercy, they never actually threaten him. In fact, he finds himself settling into an oddly comfortable sort of rhythm:
He wakes up, attempts the stairs, and once he’s managed that, is functionally trapped on the ground floor until he works up the energy to ascend them again. He tries not to nap, but he’s rarely successful. The toilet bowl is his sworn enemy. He generally feels like throwing up for about twenty-to-thirty minutes after eating anything, but, through sheer spite, keeps most meals down.
He might pick up a book, Muggle or Magical. He tries to read it, but just ends up falling asleep again. He wakes up. He wonders if this will be his life forever. Weak as a kitten and threatened by the stairs. Meanwhile, Lily and James fawn over their progeny’s latest incomprehensible babble or toothless smile in the other room.
They’re so in love it’s hideous, verging on emotionally obscene, and they’re spoiling baby Harry rotten. They don’t even shout at him.
Around midday, James will usually deliver Regulus some lunch. Though he and Lily assure Regulus that he has free rein of the kitchen during the day, he is too proud to admit he has never made himself his own food in nineteen years of life, and would, frankly, have no idea where to start. Anyway, the Potters’ kitchen uses elec-tricks. He’d rather starve than attempt any of that Muggle nonsense.
(This does not include the kettle. He uses the kettle. He will not admit that he thinks the elec-trick kettle is a fantastic invention. Not even on his deathbed.)
This is around the time of the day he designates to wallowing. He longs for Kreacher, for his mates, for the comforts of Grimmauld Place, where there are more rooms than anyone knows what to do with, and nobody gazes at him with thinly-disguised pity or open distrust when they think he’s not looking. But he gets over it. Mostly.
(He hadn’t really had very many mates, at least not ones he actually trusted. And Kreacher was safer believing Regulus to be dead. And Grimmauld Place—)
(Well. He’d rather not dwell on Grimmauld Place.)
Then: dinner. Some days, Sirius comes. His moods vary. That’s nothing new; so do Regulus’s. It might be a Black thing, but he’s still feeling a little too wobbly to devote himself to any serious introspection over it. That can come after he’s conquered the stairs. After dinner, he helps clean up, because it’s polite, even though James or Lily or Sirius, being in possession of their wands, usually end up doing most of it.
Then, Lily or James puts the baby to bed. They might watch the television. Regulus wants to show nothing but disdain for the television, but it’s too hard a front to maintain, especially when the whole thing ends up being both interesting and absurd.
It’s like the wireless, but with pictures. They even have little plays in there!
Lily is a fan of The Doctor Who; she explains the plot to him on the first Saturday evening he spends in Godric’s Hollow. His confusion must be evident on his face, because James laughs at him. Two Saturdays and two episodes later, he remains none the wiser.
“So… it’s magic, but it’s not actual magic,” he says.
“It’s science-fiction.”
She may as well be speaking Greek to him, so he quickly moves on. “And the blue telling-phone box… is a time-turner?”
“Er—sort of. A time-turner, and a Portkey. So it travels through both time and space.”
Regulus is alarmed. “But, it’s not real? Muggles can’t travel like that?” He had only just gotten to grips with air-o-planes and hell-to-coppers.
“Of course not,” says Lily cheerfully.
“So, why…?”
“Because,” she tells him patiently, “it makes for a good story.”
“Right,” he says, narrowing his eyes at the television, “but they’ve still got everything wrong about vampires. Though I do quite like the rheumatic dog.”
“Robotic dog. Not rheumatic.” Lily’s mouth twitches. He has no idea why.
“Yes, that’s what I said.”
“I wish Sirius could shoot lasers out of his nose,” says James.
“I don’t,” says Regulus.
He tries not to fall asleep on the armchair. He usually fails. Lily and James usually rouse him by being needlessly loud, which is thoughtful of them. Steeling himself, he tackles the stairs. Lily and James are smart enough not to offer help. Should he be present, Sirius is not. Regulus soothes himself by remembering, in vivid detail, that time he dared Sirius to lick a toad they’d found in the gardens in Kent only for Sirius to break out in a violently purple, full-body rash as a result. It doesn’t help. But Regulus makes it to his bed, and, if he’s lucky, doesn’t dream.
He’s rarely lucky.
He doesn’t know if James and Lily hear him. Surely not, if he doesn’t wake Harry; he assumes they’ve soundproofed the baby’s cot, at the very least. Regulus usually paces around the darkened bedroom until his legs give out or the shakes cease, whichever comes first. Perhaps he scratches the Potters’ ugly ginger cat between the ears and underneath the chin. It has, inexplicably, taken a liking to him, and curls up at his feet at night. Regulus resents this less than expected. Eventually, morning comes. He resents that less than expected, too.
In fact, there are a lot of things he resents less than expected.
Lily does not put any more Caterwauling Charms on the door.