Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Regulus liked the mornings because they were usually quiet.

Now, usually, is the appropriate word, given the bustling around he could hear from behind the closed curtains.
It looked like today he would have to go without the silence.
Maybe he had woken up later than usual or maybe he had forgotten some special event. Because it was earlier than he’d liked, yet the dorm buzzed like it was midday.

Straining to hear he could make out Barty talking in circles about something rather passionately, could smell the smoke that suggested that Evan had already lit his first cigarette.

But that was not all, he could overhear Pandora humming some melody she probably made up and Dorcas making little noises of enjoyment.

If he had to bet he’d say that the only one who was missing was Severus, probably already brooding alone over some potion.

They were quite an unusual bunch, stitched together by misfit threads that somehow tied them tighter than any others.
It wasn’t friendship born out of circumstances, a light bond that would dissolve with the passing of time.
No, they had found each other and wondered how they ever lived without this, this nexus of outsiders that no one had ever cared about.

Barty was the one who brought motion. Always tapping, always pacing.
Words falling out of his mouth like spilled ink—beautiful, brilliant, impossible to clean up.
He talked in circles about everything and nothing and managed to convince anyone that he was right, whether it was his charming smile or his captivating prose.

Regulus found him exhausting.

Regulus found him dazzling.

Evan followed Barty like a shadow with teeth.
He was silent, and Regulus often thought that he was so quiet because he preferred to listen to Barty’s voice then his own.
His first friend, his first confidant, and one he’ll never leave.

Dorcas was difficult to describe, in that she didn’t really fit with them, too bright, too friendly, too good.

Except she felt like the puzzle piece that Regulus was missing.
Like every thought that he had somehow she could read, every emotion was hers as well.
She was too virtuous for him. She stayed anyway.

Pandora was strange in ways Regulus could never describe, in distinct contradiction with her twin.
She talked about the stars like they were speaking back.
She sneaked into the Slitherin dorm unnoticed, and he had a quiet suspicion that every sentient thing liked her, that she could make Hogworts kneel to her if she wanted.

Her magic was soft—but strange enough to unsettle people anyway.
She saw things. Regulus sometimes thought she saw him, and it terrified him.

And then there was Severus.
Older. Quieter. A bruise that never faded.

No one asked how he came, and he never asked if he could.
He simply appeared, like fog.

Or maybe like guilt.

He sat with them. Listened.

And in return they listened too, and found that every word, every pause, was a broken edge catching the light.
And in those fractured pieces—sharp and glinting—they saw themselves.
Not whole, not healed, but reflected back: the parts they tried to hide, the pain they thought was theirs alone, the lonely, the bitter, the boundlessly loyal.

Outside this room, none of them fit.
Inside, they didn’t have to.
There was a quiet understanding that they were all suffering and that it was inevitable, and all they could do was bear it together.

Over time, their dorm had become somewhat of a gathering place — neutral ground, theirs alone.
So it wasn’t unusual for all of them to be reunited here.

What left him perplexed -and no, not worried, he doesn’t get worried, he’s perfectly capable of keeping his composure- was the time they had decided to meet up.

Something was wrong, and Regulus had better snap out of his daydream and find out.

Opening his curtains slowly, as though not to show the feeling of dread slowly growing in his gut, he faces his friends, who look at him apologetically.

“Good morning sunshine”, exclaimed Barty with his usual mirth, though his eyes were telling a different story, “about time the little prince awakened”.

“I told you not to call me that”, murmured Regulus, standing up.

“Archie come on, do you have to ruin all the fun?”, that was Dorcas, with the stupid nickname she decided on upon meeting him in first year.
It was fourth year and he still hadn’t managed to convince them to drop the monikers.

Making a beeline for the bathroom, Regulus ignored the laughter that followed, he could deal with their teasing after a cold shower.

✰ ✰ ✰

Feeling refreshed and suddenly more capable of keeping up with their shit, Regulus came back to the dorm and sat on his bed, now also occupied by the sprawling figure of Dorcas.

“So” he said lightly, threading his hands through Dorcas’s braids, “is it someone’s birthday I forgot about? Or did you just miss us so terribly you couldn’t wait until breakfast?”

He saw the glances that Evan and Pandora were exchanging but he didn’t try to decipher them, he knew now that it was pointless.
It’s like they always knew what the other was thinking, some twin ability to always be on the same wavelengths.

Sirius and him used to do that too, though they weren’t twins, probably as a consequence of the time they spent silenced, unable to utter word under Imperio.
When they started these silent conversations, it could go on for hours, like they forgot that the others couldn’t understand.

“Pandora saw something”, Evan croaked out, no doubt the first words he spoke that day.

Oh.

That never ended well, usually she kept her visions to herself, something about respecting the balance of the future.
So If she felt the need to tell them, it meant something was going to happen, or worse, something had happened.

“Someone hurt Severus”, Pandora spoke gently, her eyes wide and unseeing, “I saw him running to the castle.”
Her voice wavered, and Evan reached for her hand, “I think he was running from something”.

“I already asked Avery and Mulciber, they said he didn’t come to the dorm last night”, Barty added, his voice uncharacteristically quiet.

Alright.
He tried calming himself before speaking.

“So Severus didn’t come to bed last night, that’s not unusual, he probably fell asleep in the Potions lab studying for the OWLS”, he tried convincing himself.

“I think something happened, Archie”, Dorcas said, lifting herself from where her head rested on his lap, “I know Pandora usually doesn’t have visions of the present, but don’t you think it’s a strange coincidence?- I mean, he barely talked to us yesterday at dinner and now he’s nowhere to be found?”

As much as he hated to admit it, she was right.
He had been quiet the night before, even more than he usually was, deep in thoughts.

“Let’s just try to wait until breakfast. If he doesn’t show up in the Great Hall”, he paused, worry now clear in his voice. “Then we can start to get worried.”

✰ ✰ ✰

Suffice to say, waiting isn’t really their forte.
The minutes left before breakfast are spent pacing and in an eerie silence- and the moment they can, they sprint from the dungeons to the Great Hall.

It’s not the first time Severus has disappeared for a short bit, but this time they can feel that something is wrong.
It’s as if the bond that ties them together is humming- no, hissing like a wounded dog.

And surely, Severus is nowhere to be found, not sat at the Slithering table, nor sat near the red headed Gryffindor he adores.

It’s in times like this that Regulus curses Hogwarts magnitude, the very same thing that always makes him feel so safe.
If only there was a way to know exactly where everyone was at all times on Hogwarts grounds.

“Alright, we’ve waited long enough”, said Barty, starting to look more and more worried by the second, “Let’s split and check out the places he might be at. I’ll get to the Lake and see if he’s there, Evan’s with me”.
The latter nodded in silent agreement.

Dorcas followed, “I’ll check out the potion lab, maybe he was helping Slughorn and fell asleep?” she intoned hopefully.

“Me and Regulus will go to Lily and ask if she’s seen him”, Pandora added airily.

For a second he was taken aback. He wanted to argue -why did he have to go there and risk seeing his idiot brother?- but something in Pandora’s eyes stopped him.

No one questioned how’d they get in the Gryffondor common room, they knew better than to doubt Pandora, and so they split and started their search.

✰ ✰ ✰

While on their way to the Gryffondor tower, Regulus’s mind replayed the last conversation he had with Severus, rehashed every moment to try and make sense of what was happening, why this time Severus’s absence felt heavier.

His fingers grazed Pandora’s and she intertwined their pinkies.
Like she could hear what he was thinking, or feel the dread curling in his bones.

(Sometimes he thought that she really could.
That she could go past the carefully built Occlumency shield and read him like her favourite fairytales.)

Their walk was cut short when they passed near the Hospital Wing.
Someone was whispering something right outside, trembling with what looked like fear.

Regulus slowed down and tried to overhear their conversation.

“What was he doing there?!”, the voice hissed, “he could have died.”
“He would’ve if you hadn’t saved him”, another voice whispered, “Prongs, if you came a second later, he would be dog chow now”.
Ah, so that was Potter and his minion. What had they done?

“Don’t, don’t talk like that” he heard Potter mutter, “he’s okay, he’s going to be alright, they both are”.
He sounded frantic.
“I’m just saying”, Pettigrew shrugged, looking chastised, “you saved his life, you saved Snivellus, I mean who’d have thought”.

Regulus stopped hastily, and his heart sank.
What had they done?
He always knew that someday they’d go too far with a prank and Sev would end up seriously injured.

He had asked him to let them help numerous times.
Severus always shrugged them off, “That’d make them think I fear them, I don’t. Fear is how cowards borrow power. I refuse the transaction”, he had said once cooly.

And now, now he was hurt and he was sure that they had a hand in it.

Letting himself feel all the rage and anger, Regulus released Pandora’s hand and took measured steps toward Potter, whose eyes widened the moment they met his.
Unlike Sirius, whose shorter frame often drew remarks, Regulus stood nearly eye to eye with James—no more than a few inches below him—which made it easy to press his forearm against the Chaser’s throat and shove him back into the wall.

His usually composed expression fractured, the cold mask slipping as his mismatched eyes—one storm-grey, the other a pale blue—flashed with something volatile.

“What have you done to him, Potter” he said coldly, with a voice he could barely recognise.

“It wasn’t supposed to go that far,” James said, voice low but still stiff with stubbornness. “He wasn’t even meant to be there. I didn’t—” he swallowed, jaw tightening. “I got there in time. I pulled him out. Sirius didn’t think he’d actually do it.”

Regulus didn’t move.

James met his gaze, and for the first time, he could see the regret lining them. “He didn’t mean it, alright? It was a joke. He didn’t want—”
. He faltered, voice trailing. “He didn’t want him to die.”

It sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

Die?

Regulus stepped back, or rather his knees nearly out and he was forced to take a step back to balance.

He turned to Pandora, who looked like she was piecing together the pieces of a rather complicated puzzle.
She stepped forward and without a word the doors of the hospital wing opened, and she walked in solemnly.

Regulus followed her quickly, though moving his feet was no easy task.

Looking back he saw the doors had closed without letting the self proclaimed Marauders in.

Inside, he could see two beds were occupied, their curtains shut tightly around them.

Two students had been injured. Rather severely if Madam Pomfrey’s muttering was to be trusted.

When she saw them all she did was nod her head tiredly and point to the bed on the right side of the room, her eyes spoke of years that weighed more than they used to.

The two friends walked towards the bed and hesitantly pulled the curtains away.
There he was, Severus, here, alive.
Yet looking like someone that had seen a Dementor—and hadn’t looked away in time.

Chapter Text

Severus was alive.

He was alive.

Alive. Alive. Alive.

Regulus kept repeating the same mantra over and over again.

It should’ve helped the gnarly feeling squeezing his heart.

It didn’t.

In the years they had known each other, even before they became best friends, Severus had always seemed unshakable. Like no amount of pressure could break him.

No matter how much people tried, and they tried, he would always smirk his way out of situations that would have shattered even the best people.

Regulus had always admired that.

Mostly because he always felt a wrong move away from collapsing.

That must be why seeing his best friend, his brother, laying in bed, barely breathing and covered by fast healing bruises hits him so hard.

Pandora has had this same look, seething, calculating, since they saw Severus, and Regulus almost feels bad for the people who did this to him. He knows she will make them rue the day they decided to mess with their own.

Almost.

“We should go”, Pandora whispered, like she was scared she might wake Severus if she raised her voice. Only he wouldn’t wake up.

Madam Pomfrey has got him in a magical coma, Godric knows when he’ll wake up.

“We have to tell the others, they’ll be worried sick by now”, she continued.

Regulus hesitates, letting go of his hold on Severus’s hand almost feels impossible.

But he can’t leave Pandora alone to deliver the news, so he does.

One curious look at the other bed later they are out of the Hospital Wing and racing through the corridors to reach the common room.

By now, hours have passed and the others have reunited in the dungeons, defeat painted clearly in their expressions.

When they cross the threshold, three heads snap up to look at them.

“Where have you been?”, Barty seizes up from his slumped position, “We’ve been looking for you, do you think it’s the time for you to disappear too?”, he snarls.

“We found him”, Regulus assures, “he was in the hospital wing”

Chaos ensues.

“Where?!”, Dorcas screeches.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“We have to go, now”

“What’s wrong with you, why didn’t you tell us sooner”

“Shut up, all of you, just-”, Evan explodes, “Regulus, Pan, please, what happened?”, softer, tired.

“We don’t know, we were going to find Evans, but when we passed the Hospital Wing  Potter was talking about this accident, they said his name and-”, he chokes up.

“We saw him, he’s gonna be okay, Pomfrey has him under for some time to deal with the worst wounds”, Pandora continues, “someone else was injured, we don’t know who it is but they’re in bad shape according to Pomfrey”.

“I swear to Godric I will kill them, every last one of them, how dare they, bunch of nitwits”, Barty murmurs under his breath, as he stands up and goes to pick up his robes and leave the room.

He stops in his tracks, a hand reaching and intertwining with his.

“Barty”, Evan whispers, a plead maybe, a convincing one.

“They can’t keep getting away with this”, Barty’s voice sounds near to breaking.

“You know that whatever you intend to do will only make Severus angry, he doesn’t need us to fight his battles”, Dorcas intervenes.

“He’s strong, stronger than any of them, smarter too, how’d they manage to hurt him so bad?”, she continues.

“From what Potter was saying, it doesn’t look all that intentional”, Pandora says, “and the wounds, they’re unlike any we ever saw from their fights”

“You think it’s dark magic?”

“I don’t know Ev, I couldn’t tell, but they were-”, she shakes her head, “strange”.

“I- We need to see him”, Barty lets go of Evans’s hand like he’d forgotten it was there, “what if he wakes up and he’s alone?”.

Regulus nods and helps Dorcas sit up. They don’t mention that he probably can’t wake up, that would be too cruel.

✰ ✰ ✰

The walk to the hospital wing is silent, solemn, nobody bothers them, no prefect blabbering about curfew or schoolwork.

If they could see themselves they would know why.

They walk the corridors like a well oiled machine, each part knows what to do, every move harmonious and carefully thought out.

They look deadly.

That’d explain the cowering first years.

The doors are closed but no amount of ward magic could stop them from going in that room and so nobody questions their opening, they don’t know which one of them did it, but they get in.

Severus is still there, scarily unmoving, but there.

Alive. Alive. Alive.

The other hospital bed is covered by the curtains that are being tightly shut behind an angry looking Madame Pomphrey.

“What are you lot doing here?”, she hisses, “You know the visiting hours are there for a reason”.

“What happened to him?”, Barty interjects hastily.

The healer looks at him knowingly, “Sweetheart, that’s confidential, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for Mr Snape to wake up.”

“And when will that be?”

“Mrs Meadows, I would believe that my training isn’t going to waste, and that you know that if he doesn’t wake up on his own  there is no certain answer to that question, we have to-”

“-wait and watch his vitals to assess the right time, I know”, Dorcas finishes.

The older woman smiles sadly, “I can let you stay here for a few hours, but after that you will go and get some rest, am I understood?”

“Yes ma’am”, they reply simultaneously.

No amount of silent rebellion could shake the pureblood manners out of them.

✰ ✰ ✰

The hours they were permitted flew by too quickly, and before they even realized Madame Pomfrey was hustling them away just in time for the feast.

The Slytherin table wasn’t usually known for it’s liveliness, but tonight it felt even heavier. Food was left in the plates and shoved this way or that.

Eventually, one by one all of them got tired of pretending everything was fine and retired to their dorms.

Laying in his bed, Regulus felt like he was floating, like time was flowing and he couldn’t quite catch up.

Sirius, his actual biological brother, who had called him heartless, cruel and selfish for not leaving with him.

Sirius almost killed Severus. The first person who made him feel understood again, cared for.

When they were little Regulus was always reasonable, he did whatever his big brother told him to, whenever he was told to.

But he was a kid, a scared one.

And that was something that was strictly prohibited in their house.

Sirius was never scared, he never wavered, it came easy to him.

Regulus tried to be like him, but- sometimes he faltered, stumbled.

Once, when he was 5 and still naive, he begged Kreacher to conjure him a ball to play with.

And Kreacher, the old elf who loved Regulus a bit too much, did.

Of course playing with it in a house that is filled to the brim with relics was never a smart idea.

It wasn’t all that surprising when he got too excited and hit Aunt Cassiopeia’s portrait.

It didn’t even break- it didn’t, just some glass he could ask Kreacher to clean up before anyone noticed, maybe he could get away with it.

See? Naive.

Of course, nothing could get past his father, mostly because of the stupid portraits that never stopped screaming whenever they did something wrong.

“By Merlin’s mangled beard! Have you no respect, you bumbling barrel of troll spit?! That’s mahogany!”, the damned Great Aunt yelled.

Regulus, at 5, was intimately familiar with the dread steadily growing in his stomach, he felt as if his heart had stopped beating, like every muscle in his body was tensed with anticipation.

But everything calmed down when he saw his brother in the doorway, everything was better with him there, things weren’t so scary because he would be there to hold him after.

So it was okay.

He just had to get through it, like he always did, maybe he could be like Sirius and try not to cry, maybe that would make him proud.

That train of thought was interrupted by the sudden arrival of his father, like a flash of lightning he was there, imposing, hatred painted in his eyes.

He remembered the room going cold. Not chilly — empty.

The warmth drained out like blood from a body.

He was alone at least, Regulus hated it more when he made Maman watch.

Before he could even utter an apology, Sirius took a step forward.

Small, but sure.

“He didn’t mean to—” Sirius began, voice higher than usual, too fast, too loud.
Orion turned.

A mistake.
The kind Sirius made more often now.

“You think your word will spare him?” Orion’s voice was like any of his spell, cruel and tantalising. “Or do you want your share in it?”

“Very well”, the smile on his face was something Regulus still had nightmares about, “Hands.”

Regulus hesitated, but Sirius did not, he never did.
He stepped forward, just enough to shield Regulus. But it was too late for that.

Orion turned his head slowly, enough to let both sons feel the weight of what they weren’t — not strong enough, not obedient enough, not Black enough.

“Both of you.”

Regulus barely remembered the rest of the punishment.
All he could make out were bare hands on shattered glass.
He remembered every shard, every splinter of varnished wood, being gathered by fingers that were too small and too soft.
Both shaking, only one not from fear, but fury.

When it was done, and the blood was drying in their palms, and their father finally turned to go, only then did Sirius reach over, wordlessly, and took Regulus’ hands in his.

He held them gently, even as they stung, even as his own bled.
He didn’t say it, but Regulus knew: he would’ve done it all for him if he could have.

But that’s not how it worked in their house.
Pain was inherited.  
And love, if it existed, was smuggled in through cracked doors and quiet touches- before the cold came back.

That night, they were both locked in their rooms, something that was starting to happen more often than not. Their father had started to grow tired of their little acts of unity and tried to keep them away from each other.

What he didn’t know was that Kreacher had a particular soft spot for him.

Sirius was born when their mother was still strong enough to take care of him.

Regulus, on the other hand, was left at the mercy of the elf, fed, bathed and took care of by this creature who was more a father to him than any other.

And so at night he would come check on him and accidentally leave his door ajar.

And Regulus never wasted a second before hurrying with his small feet to his brothers room.

Sirius was laying in bed, cuddled close to his pillow that was stained red.

“Reggie”, he exclaimed smiling and hiding his small hand behind his back, “come here, baby”.

“‘M’not a baby Siri”, Regulus grumbled while trying to climb the bed that was too high, “I’m sorry for today. I didn’t mean to.”

“What are you sorry for? Don’t ever worry about that”, he ushered him close, “come here, I’ll tell you a story”, Sirius tried to hide the grimace on his face when he hugged him close.

Conjuring up a small star, a trick he had learned precociously, he started to tell its story, “Cassiopeia was a really strange woman, you know?”, he started, like he always did when he was trying to get his mind off of the punishment.

“She was the wife of King Cepheus of Aethiopia and mother to Princess Andromeda. She was her prideful, so much so that she boasted that she and her daughter were more beautiful than the sea nymphs, the Nereids.This angered the sea god Poseidon, who sent a sea monster, Cetus, to ravage her kingdom, and then-”

By the time he was finished Regulus was asleep hugging his brother tightly.

The only thing that saved him those nights was Sirius.

And when their father found out about their little escapade, he started to Imperio them into staying in their room.

Laying in those beds, under the Unforgivable, unable to do anything other than breathe, still fuels his nightmares, more than anything else his father ever did.

And now Sirius was to blame for his best friend being alone all night, hurt Godric knows how, with no support in case he wakes up or needs anything.

Suddenly the sheets feel too suffocating, the curtains surrounding his bed started resembling shut doors and forced isolation, and he couldn’t- breathe anymore.

Regulus scrambled up from his bed and put his robe on.

When he felt like this he never managed to sleep a wink anyway. Wouldn’t hurt to see if someone was in the Hospital Wing.

He knew the halls like the palm of his hand, and years in that house thought him to recognise even the fainter footsteps, so walking after curfew was an easy feat.

In no time he was standing in front of the doors and cursing himself for being so stupid.

Now you’re here and what are you going to do, seeing that the doors are closed?

Stupid, stupid, stupid

It must have been a fluke, some strange coincidence, maybe a freak accident, but the third time he walked in front of the doors he heard a click.

Inspecting the lock he could see that it was open, someone had to have opened it.

Now all he had to do is hope that it wouldn’t squeak and alert the healer.

“C’mon, c’mon”, he whispered as he slowly opened the door and walked in.

Inside there was no sign of a waking soul. Madame Pomfrey must have retired in her chamber, and the students were- well still in a coma as it seems.

Curiosity sparked inside him, if he could just open the curtains a bit and check who was laying in the other hospital bed he would have a better chance of finding out what truly happened.

And there was no sound, so they were probably unconscious too.

Alright, no harm no foul.

Walking discreetly towards the bed, Regulus cursed himself and his rash decision making, before slightly peeking through the closed curtains.

Lying there was none other that Marauder Remus Lupin.

What?

He hates Severus so much he risked hurting his precious lapdog?

The gasp that comes out is certainly not very mannerly or particularly Black, but he can be excused, he just found out that his brother hurt not only Severus but the boy he’s been drooling after for years.

And besides, no one’s there to hear him anyway.

Or, well.

That’s what he thought.

“Who’s there?”, Lupin growls, sitting up slightly, though difficultly, “I know someone is behind those curtains, come out now before I call Poppy.”

Of course he’s on first name basis with the school healer. Talk about preferential treatment. Ugh.

“Sirius, is that you?”, he was whispering now, like the answer was both unwanted and necessary to him, “Please, Padfoot-”

He turns abruptly around.

He can’t deal with his brother’s minions right now.

Severus is here, he can’t be alone.

Crossing the room as silently as he can, he thanks the Gods that the noise didn’t wake Pomfrey up.

Severus is there, still as that morning and

alive, alive, alive.

He puts his hand on his wrist, to prove to his mind that he’s really still there, to calm his beating heart, and he closes his eyes.

He’s not gonna fall asleep, he’s just resting his-

He’s just resting his-

Eyes.

Chapter Text

Madame Pomfrey sings when she gets ready for the day.
Now, Regulus should in no way or form be aware of this.
But he becomes creepily acquainted with the fact when he is abruptly woken up by a tune he was sure he had heard during one of their family’s balls.

Ha, funny, he would never have taken Pomfrey as a classical type of woman.

It takes a few seconds for Regulus to understand that if she was humming, she was awake. And if she was awake, that meant it was morning.

Crap. He had fallen asleep.

If Madame Pomfrey caught him now, he was dead. He needed to go right now if he wanted to ever be allowed to visit Severus again.

Oh, Severus.

He looks so peaceful.
If not for the bruises hidden beneath the thin blankets, you'd think he was just sleeping.  
His hair is getting longer, reaching his neck and curving slightly at the ends.
Having been in the Hospital Wing and away from the potion fumes, his hair looks better.
Not, as the students never seem to forget to mention, greasy.
It looks soft.

The wrinkle between his eyebrows he always gets—whether it be because someone is being especially stupid, or because he is thinking hard about something—is now smoothed.
It makes him look kind.

Regulus wonders if the people who did this, if Sirius could see him like this—would he feel bad? Would he see beyond the differences? Would he realise that Severus is a person?

Or would he continue to think him a scapegoat? A face to put to the values he thinks their house unquestionably follows. Someone to punish for the sins that people who look like him have made, no question, no sympathy, no empathy.

Would it change the way Sirius behaves? Regulus thinks he already knows the answer and it makes him so unimaginably angry.

Hesitating at the foot of the bed, Regulus takes one last look at Severus before quietly and quickly moving toward the door, pulling it open just enough to slip out.

Merlin. That was a close call. If he was going to continue to do this (he was, let’s not kid ourselves), he could not fall asleep.
He would be in serious trouble if he was found.

Returning to the dorm, Regulus prepares himself for the nagging he was going to be subjected to once Barty sees him, only to be met with a quiet dorm.

It must be sooner than he had thought.

Good, maybe the Fates are not always against him.

“Is he okay?” a voice startles him. It is Evan.

Why is he always speaking too soon? Fuck.

Evan is sitting on the windowsill, looking at him with his striking green eyes.
Regulus swears he can feel them looking into his soul.

There is something about the Rosier twins that makes it always feel like they can read every thought you have, every emotion, even carefully tucked under Occlumency shield.

Maybe it is the eyes, they both have green, beautiful eyes.

But Pandora’s are a deep emerald green, almost like a forest.
Evan’s, on the other hand, are such a light green that sometimes he is mistaken for blind.
They are staggering.

And they are looking at him now with a force that makes him want to take a few steps back. But that is not very Black, nor is it very Regulus, to be fair.

So he stands his ground, looks at him back with his equally distinctive eyes—one storm-gray and one pale blue—and answers.

“He is still sleeping. Looking better though,” he whispers softly.

“You did good, he says he likes to be alone, but he would not want to wake up alone. You are a good friend,” Evan answers.

A small smile is painted on his face, his rich black skin illuminated only by the few rays of sun that escape the grip of the emerald curtains.

Regulus looks at him meaningfully.

Evan has always been really quiet. Most people would admit to never having heard his voice even. He felt pity for the people who would never have the possibility to speak with the green-eyed boy. But then, most people would be uncomfortable with his silence, Regulus finds it powerful.

He knows what it is like to be overlooked because of his quietness, but he recognises it is his—their—biggest strength.
To accommodate the silence and thrive in it.

Plus, they have Barty to fill them.

Barty, who has never kept a thought to himself, who always insists that everyone should be subjected to the imbecility that comes out of his mouth at times.

Speaking of the devil— “Good morning gentlemen,” Barty yawns from his bed, having opened the curtains that surround it.

“Rosy, Archie,” he nods to each of them, “are you done gazing lovingly at each other? Because if not I’d love to watch, it’s making me kind of horny actually.”

“Must you always be so crass,” Regulus puts a finger to his mouth to fake-vomit, “you’re disgusting.”

“Stop flirting with me, you’re making me hard.”

“I’m leaving,” he responds, heading toward the bathroom, “it’s too early for this.”

The cackles that follow do not make him smile—they do not.
But the corners of his mouth do twitch, traitorous as always.
He shuts the bathroom door before they can see it.

✰ ✰ ✰

Regulus never enjoyed the lessons at Hogwarts. I mean, he did at first. Then he became friends with Severus and Dorcas and started to study with them. Now he is a year ahead in almost every class. And bored. Always bored.

Severus understands that, he came to Hogwarts with the knowledge of a third year, he understands never being challenged.

That is why they started to research together, from the silliest thing to bigger, more important things.

Right now they are working on some modifications on potions.

Or they would be if he were awake. Godric, he cannot think of anything else these days.

Not only is he worried about Severus, he is also so bored.

If Slughorn keeps explaining the same concept again and again, he will put his own head through the wooden desk. He is not joking.

“Mister Black?” the old idiot calls, “Are we boring you?”

Yes. Yes, so much, Merlin.

“Of course not, sir, I apologise.”

“Perhaps then you could explain to us what you should do if your Antidote to Common Poisons turns black and begins to smoke? Since you do not seem so interested in the lesson.”

Seriously? He had learned that in first year.

“Stop stirring, cast Glacius to cool it, then add one drop of unicorn horn solution. If smoke continues, discard safely—it’s unstable and toxic,” he answers apathetically.

Though he had found a stabilisation method in his third year with Severus—adding crushed dandelion root before the unicorn horn solution—it neutralised the excess and restored the potion without needing full disposal.
Not that Slughorn would understand any of that.

“Right, right, em—” the professor continues, “Anyway, the valerian root in this instance is—” Regulus tunes him out. Again.

He is going to kill Severus when he wakes up, for leaving him with this.

✰ ✰ ✰

The rest of the day passes smoothly. Regulus zones out, visibly. The professors call on him to answer what they think are ‘impossible’ questions, and he answers. Every time.

So yes, smoothly.

By the time he sits at dinner, he is starving, tired and so done with everything. Evan and Barty sit in front of him. Pandora sits beside Evan with her head propped on her brother’s shoulder and arms intertwined with him.

Besides Severus, who usually sits at his right, the only one missing is Dorcas, who enjoys spending time with her house mates, unlike the Rosier girl.

Mostly because they do not make fun of her, they do not hide her shoes or rip her drawings or anything that the Ravenclaws do to the blonde girl.

So yes, safe to say that however many times Dumbledore has prohibited extra house seating, Pandora is sitting with them. Always.
He is lucky they still have not managed to convince her to sleeping with Dorcas.  
There is no doubt that if she wanted, Pandora could, amazingly gifted and all that.

“Any of you managed to see Severus today?” Barty says, or at least that is what Regulus thinks he says. If he could just stop shovelling food in his mouth maybe he would be coherent.
“I did not have time to eat lunch, stop judging me.”
“No one has said anything, B.”

“I could feel them judging me, Pandy,” he replies.  
“I had 8 courses and I have that Astronomy essay to work on for tonight, I could not see him.”
“Well maybe if you did not pick all 12 courses, you would have time to eat lunch.”  
“Well then how would I give my dad an ulcer, little prince?” Barty smiles that devilish smile that still makes the first-year girls swoon, “and do not skip my question, has anyone seen him?”

“I had lunch in the Hospital Wing with Poppy today, also I asked Dorcas and she went after lectures,” Pandora answers. 
“I did not have time today, I am going after dinner,” Regulus adds.  
“We will come too, right Ev?” A nod from her twin.
“I will come too!” Barty agrees.

Alright, there goes the quiet night he was hoping for.

“Let’s go then, I will go call Cassy,” leaning to kiss her twin on the forehead, Pandora heads to the Gryffindor table.

✰ ✰ ✰

“Wait—do we know who is in the other bed?” Barty asks while munching on what is left of a chocolate frog, sprawled at the feet of Severus’s bed.

“It is Remus Lupin,” Pandora responds confidently.

How does she even know?

“You are scary, you know?” Dorcas says what they had all been thinking, “Poppy would not even tell me, how would you know?”
“None of your business, Cassy,” Pandora smiles, “And anyway, is it not strange that we have never seen any of his little crusade visit him?”

“I mean what do you expect from those scumbags, they probably forgot he is here,” Barty interjects.
“Oh come on, they do not even breathe without consulting each other,” Dorcas replies.
“No see, that is where you are wrong, they do not breathe without consulting Potter or Black, the rest of them do not matter at all,” he disagrees.

“Well, maybe it is Lupin that does not want to see them,” Evan adds quietly.  
“Yes, who knows what they did to him anyway,” her twin agrees.

Regulus has an uncomfortable reminder of Lupin pleading for Sirius the night before.
No, it is not Lupin that does not want to see them. They probably are not allowed to.
That is somehow worse than the alternative.
To think they did something so awful they are not permitted to see their friend.

He needs Severus to wake up now, because he cannot continue to live in this uncertainty and stress for a minute longer.

“Well whatever the case is, it is sad isn’t it? Who knows if he is awake and all alone right now,” Dorcas says.
“You know him, do you not? Why do you not go and visit him?”
“Are you crazy? Maybe it is him that hurt Sev, I do not want to do anything until I know all the facts.”
“Fair, and anyway he is probably in a coma too, so who cares.”

He is not. He probably is hearing everything we say, he wants to argue.

Before he can even think about all the reasons why that is a bad idea, he is interrupted by Madame Pomfrey barging in, hand on her hips and all.  
“It is time to—Mr Crouch!” she shrieks, “what have I told you about eating here?!”
“Not to, sorry Poppy.”
“And what have I told you about calling me that?”
“Dorcas calls you that.”
“Hey, leave me out of this.”
“Stop these shenanigans, and return to your dorms, it is late and you need rest.”

“Severus is getting better, is he not?” Dorcas, the healer trainee, questions.
“He is, his internal injuries have healed, he could wake up any day now,” Pomfrey is smiling, the old witch always has a soft spot for Sev, “I have lifted the charm, so there is nothing stopping him from waking up, we just need to give his body some time to heal.”

That calms the teenagers that usher quickly out of the Hospital Wing, and go back to their Houses.

✰ ✰ ✰

Every minute he spends waiting for the two boys to fall asleep is torture.
Only when he hears the telltale sound of snoring from Barty and deep sighing from Evan, does he slip out of his bed and leaves the room.

He crosses paths with Mrs Norris in the corridor. But she only purrs and slides herself on his leg. He stops to scratch behind her ears, but quickly gets up to leave.
Wherever Mrs Norris is, Filch is right behind.
And no matter how much he loves that cat, he cannot risk being caught.

Turns out, whatever happened the night before was not an accident, it could not be.
Because when he arrives at the Hospital Wing he hears the same sound he heard the night before, and the door opens without hesitation.
If he did not know better, he would say that Pandora was behind him, using her strange connection to the school to break the wards.

Only when he enters, the Hospital Wing is not silent, like the night before.
He can make out quiet whimpering sounds.
Someone crying.
Mumbling something that does not sound like English quietly under their breath.

Only it cannot be Severus, the voice is much deeper, there is a slight accent to it so unlike the Midlands accent he is used to.
It is Lupin.

He knows those sounds, they are the reason he has to have a silence spell on his bed.
He is having a nightmare.
Maybe he will wake up, maybe Regulus should just wait and let him wake up on his own.

Only— “Sorry, I am sorry, I did not mean to, Mom I did not mean to I swear,” the voice is saying.

And Regulus is going to get in trouble.
He is going to get caught, because no matter how much he hates those people, he cannot leave him crying like this.
He has to wake him up.
He has to.

Putting one foot in front of the other, he pulls the curtains and the figure of a sweaty, crying, desperate Lupin takes him back.
He tries to call his name, to no avail.
So he puts his hand on Lupin’s shoulder and shakes.
Hard.

Lupin’s whole body goes stiff, he jerks back as if he was going to be hit, and his eyes flash wide open.
Only, his movement makes the thin cheap-looking blanket fall from his body, revealing his naked torso.

Regulus does not have time to marvel at his chiselled chest, at his lean frame and strong looking arms.
He wishes that was what surprised him.
Because Merlin, of course that is a good chest.

Instead, his gaze falls to his side.
More specifically to the giant bite mark imbedded in it.

Now. Regulus, as previously stated, is very clever. A genius, even.
But even a first year would correctly identify that bite.
It is a werewolf bite. No doubt.
A healed werewolf bite, even better.

Flashes of the past flicker behind his eyes. The times he was not in class. The ones he was ‘sick’ in the hospital.

Remus Lupin is a werewolf.
Remus Lupin is a werewolf.

Oh, please Godric no.

“Did you bite him?” he asks, his anxiety, his dread, drained out of his face, to leave an emotionless mask.
“Did I—What are you talking about? Get out, now!” the werewolf answers.
“Don’t you dare, I know what you are,” he is so close to hitting him, “Did. You. Bite. Him?”
“I did not, I promise,” he is frantic now, one hand picking up the discarded sheet to cover his torso, he can tell how serious Regulus is “Please, don’t tell anyone, they will kill me. I did not bite anyone.”

But his wounds are likely from him. A werewolf. During the full moon.
Are they deep enough to poison him?
Did he just ruin Severus’s life?
Is Severus going to be forced to live his whole life with his brother’s cruelty?

“I did not even know he was there,” the Welsh werewolf continues, “I did not mean to hurt him, I swear.”

Regulus cannot-
He cannot look at him.
He cannot hear him speak anymore.
He is afraid he is going to do something stupid.
So he has to leave. Before he does something he knows he will not even regret.

Suddenly he hears a gasp.
It is not from the boy in front of him, who’s too busy still spilling out apologies.

He turns to leave, to the other bed as quickly as possible.
It is Severus, he is gasping and looking around frantically.

He is awake.

Chapter Text

Severus can’t breathe. 

At least that’s what Regulus thinks is the problem. 

The point is, he keeps gasping and his eyes are completely unfocused.

And Regulus should be able to ascertain the problem. Check his airway or call his name louder. Maybe shake him. 

But he had a hard night, and you can’t expect him to think clearly right now.

He just learned his best-friend might be turning into a furry animal one time a month. Cut him some slack, alright? 

So, he doesn’t think twice before running to Madame Pomfrey’s bedroom, directly connected to the Hospital Wing. 

He’s preparing himself for the yelling. The probable meeting with the headmaster. Maybe even the punishment from his father when he finds out. 

Oh, Merlin. The things he does for the people he loves. If people knew, the whole cold-hearted facade would fall. 

When he knocks on the door, he’s aware it’s a Hail Mary. It’ll get him in trouble. 

But he can’t be bothered, his best friend is struggling to breathe and unresponsive. 

To his surprise, when she opens the door, she doesn’t yell like she did earlier that day. 

She just looks at him with soft eyes twinkling with something unknown, and pinches his chin—like an Italian nonna deciding he hasn’t eaten enough or apologised properly. 

“It seems you Blacks have a knack for breaking in the hospital wing”, she says. 

He wants to argue, he hates being compared to his brother. 

And it’s not really considered breaking in if the doors open every time he passes by, as if to invite him in, as if somebody needs him inside. 

He doesn’t say anything though, he doesn’t feel like arguing is the appropriate thing to do at the moment.

When he explains that Severus has woken up and is suffering from some kind of medical emergency, she quickly runs to his bed. 

When she sees him hyperventilating, she just takes a hand and caresses his face. 

“It’s alright, honey. You’re in the hospital wing, everything’s okay.”, she murmurs, “I’m going to give you some Calming Draught, alright?” 

She takes the vial from one of the many pockets in her apron and gently lifts it up his mouth. 

“You’ve given all of us a scare, Mr Snape. I think a good night rest ought to do it.”, she then adds. “And Mr Black, you should go to your dorm. You can visit him tomorrow as soon as you wake up.” 

He’ll take it. 

He wishes he could have stayed the night. But at this point he’s lucky enough he’s even allowed to come back, so best not to say anything. 

Before leaving the room, he looks at Severus, who is now calmer, looking at him with his eyes soft. 

“You’re okay?”, Regulus asks. 

“I’m okay.”, his voice sounds groggy.

“I’ll come tomorrow morning, alright? You just rest.”

A nod. 

He can ask tomorrow. 

It’s probably not what he thinks. It’s not. 

Because Pomfrey would have looked more scared, and Severus would be more angry. 

Right?

All he can do is go back to his dorm and try to sleep. 

Something he’d forgone for a few days now. 

If he could even manage. 

✰ ✰ ✰

The next morning, when they enter the Hospital Wing, they’re shaking with excitement. 

He hadn’t told them how he found out Severus was awake, and they hadn’t needed anything beyond that, anyway. 

Severus is sitting up on his bed, hair tightly pulled away from his tired face. 

His eyes are trained on them and, unlike the night before, they’re focused, calculating. 

“Sevvy, you scared the daylight out of me”, Barty says while jumping on bed next to him. 

“Don’t call me that, Bartemious”, Severus groaned, “And you’re sitting on my arm, get off” 

“Oh, you missed me so much”, Barty made kissy faces at the other boy, who had the shadow of a smile printed on his mouth. 

“Sev, are you alright?”, Pandora asked meaningfully. 

“I am, do not exaggerate the situation, I miscalculated and fell into a trap, I’m alright now”, he answers in that uptight, annoying voice. (Merlin, he kind of missed it.)

But Regulus doubts that. 

Even if he wasn’t bitten, he had to face that creature alone.

He looks at the scar that peek out of the cream bedsheets, they are deep but they look like they are not infected. 

He had spent the night trying to remember everything he knew about dark creatures, and if the literature was right there were next to zero possibility of being turned by a scratch. 

So, he’s okay. 

He’ll be okay. 

“Don’t you dare scare us like that again, Mister”, Dorcas adds with a hand cocked up her hips. 

She has a way of making you feel small, even if you were the same age. 

“Yes, my lady, I will try not to be attacked again”, with a roll of his eyes, Severus replies. 

The room goes quiet. 

Like suddenly they remembered why he was there in the first place. 

“Did Lupin do it?”, Evan asks, the first thing he has said since they entered the room. 

 Severus hesitates, like both his compassion and anger are fighting for the front seat. 

“No, no it was not him”, Severus responds after a beat, “He- he tried helping me”

Oh you selfless, kind, little bastard.

“Oh, well that explains why his supposed friends have ditched him”, Barty marvels, “I mean it’s been three days and they are nowhere to be found” 

“That just won’t do”, Dorcas interrupts, “I’m going to go and talk to him” 

“She was waiting to see if she needed to curse him or tha- Ow, Meadows?!” he responds when she slaps his head, “That hair is worth millions of galleons, you can’t just hit it”

He steps closer to the curly haired girl, “And besides I prefer pulling of the hair, gets the job done if you know what I me-”, he grunts when she punches his stomach, “Alright, you have to stop doing that, we already have one of us in the Hospital Wing”

“Not funny, and you’re coming with me”

“I’ll come too”, Evan adds quietly, unsurprisingly going wherever Barty is. 

“I’ll follow, you don’t mind Sev?”, Pandora asks. 

“No, finally I can have some quiet”, Severus responds.

“I’ll stay with him”, Regulus says, “you go and be good Samaritans”

“Samar- what? You read too much, I have no idea what you’re saying half the time”, Barty responds, “I’m coming, I’m coming calm down”

Only when everyone has gone, does he turn around and look at Severus, casting a quick Muffliato. 

They have a lot to talk about. 

Regulus looks at Severus, at his light frame, his sharp face, all angles like the softness of baby years was long gone. 

He looks in his eyes, strong, sure, no fear reflects in them, if it did it’d probably be Regulus’s own reflected back. 

“You know, don’t you?”, Severus speaks up.

“I’m going to need you to elaborate”

“You know what I’m talking about, do not play stupid, it does not suit you”

“Yes, yes I know”, Regulus responds, “the problem is why do you know, what happened Sev?”

“He didn’t bite me”, Severus whispers “if that’s what you’re worried about, I don’t think he even knew I was there.”

“Where is there”, and it’s getting harder to contain all the fear he’d felt the last days, “No scratch that, why were you near him?”

Severus doesn’t look at him, refusing to answer. 

“Please, I just-”, he feels like a kid again, he hates that he’s given Sev the power to make him feel like this, “I need to know what happened.”

Severus stares at the ceiling for a long moment before speaking, his voice hoarse.

“Someone told me there was something happening in the Shrieking Shack. Said it was something I couldn’t miss.”

Regulus doesn’t speak. He knows where this is going.

“I knew,” Severus goes on, “I knew it was probably a trap. One of their stupid pranks. But I still went.” He laughs, bitter and quiet.

“Because some part of me thought… it couldn’t be that bad, they wouldn’t go too far.”

His hands clench slightly on the blanket.

“I just- I didn’t think he’d go that far. Didn’t think he hated me that much.”

Silence settles between them again, heavier now.

“I suppose it’s my fault,” Severus murmurs, barely above a whisper, a tinge of irony in his voice. “For being so stupid. For thinking he might not want me to die.”

Regulus freezes

“Who’s he?”, and he knows, he knows the answer. 

And some part of him still wishes he got it wrong. It’s the same childish part that looks for Sirius wherever he enters a room.
He despises it.

Severus hesitates. 

“It was your wicked brother”, he bursts out, “my fault for thinking I could outsmart him once again” He laughs a little, “I mean I usually can, that guy has three functional thoughts in his head, and one of them is how to bed his werewolf best friend”.

Regulus doesn’t find that remotely funny. 

Alright, maybe a little bit. 

It is ironic though, Sirius had always told him he was just like their mother, spineless in his tomb of silence, maybe he was right.

But he was much worse, he had turned out to be just like their father. 

“The others can’t know”, Severus explains, “It’s not our secret to tell, and I know what it’s like to have a secret that could change your entire life. I know you do too.”

They do. 

And if the whole school found out, it would mean death. 

Literally. 

Severus was very close to having his secret revealed. 

The end of last year had been a nightmare. 

Severus had explained to him what had happened before Regulus even arrived. 

It still haunted Regulus, what could have happened.

It was a sunny Tuesday in the month of May. Not different from any other. 

Severus was rechecking his paper, sitting near a bush, when the so-called ‘Marauders’ started bothering him.

“This’ll liven you up, Padfoot,” Potter had said quietly. “Look who it is…”

Sirius’s head turned. He had become very still, like a dog that has scented a rabbit.

“Excellent,” he had said softly. “Snivellus.”

As Severus left the shadows of the bushes and set off across the grass, Sirius and Potter had stood up.

“All right, Snivellus?” Potter had said loudly.

Severus reacted so fast—he always expected an attack when he was near them—dropping his bag, he plunged his hand inside his robes and his wand was halfway into the air when Potter shouted, “Expelliarmus!”

Severus’s wand flew twelve feet into the air and fell with a little thud in the grass behind him. Sirius let out a bark of laughter.

“Impedimenta!” he said, pointing his wand at Snape, who was knocked off his feet halfway through a dive towards his own fallen wand.

Students all around had turned to watch. Some of them had gotten to their feet and were edging nearer. Some looked apprehensive, others entertained.

Severus had been lying, panting, on the ground when Potter and Sirius advanced on him, wands raised.

“How’d the exam go, Snivelly?”said Potter.

“I was watching him, his nose was touching the parchment,” said Sirius viciously.

Several people watching laughed.

Snape tried to get up, but the jinx was still operating on him; he was struggling, as though bound by invisible ropes.

“One thing is sure,” he panted, staring up at James with an expression of purest loathing, “I did better than you.”

“Wash out your mouth,” said James coldly. “Scourgify!”

Pink soap bubbles streamed from Snape’s mouth at once; the froth was covering his lips, making him gag, choking him.

But he had learned the counter-curse years ago, wandlessly, after about the fiftieth time they’d used it. 

Besides, the Impedimenta Jinx was wearing off. 

He was beginning to inch towards his fallen wand. 

When he reached it, he directed his wand straight at James; there was a flash of light and a gash appeared on the side of James’s face, spattering his robes with blood.

“And you’re next, Black,” Severus spat out.

James whirled about: a second flash of light later, Severus was hanging upside-down in the air, his robes falling over his head to reveal skinny, pallid legs and a pair of graying underpants.

“Who wants to see me take off Snivelly’s pants?”

The fight left Severus’s body.
He knew how to stop that curse—had basically invented it himself and used it on Potter so many times—but the threat made him lose his wit.

That’s when Regulus arrived.

“If you want to see under his pants so bad, Potter, you could have asked,” he said, smirking and quickly casting a silent Expelliarmus, making Potter’s wand fly out of reach. And simultaneously casting a spell to cushion Severus’s fall.

“I didn’t think you were that desperate,” he continued, strolling to where Severus was on the ground, with a confidence that made the others stop completely. “I understand now why Evans wouldn’t touch you with a seven-foot pole.”

He extended a hand to Severus and helped him stand up.

“Reggie, I see you’re still friends with the wrong sort. You’re just like our mother,” Sirius spat out.

“Yes. Yes I am,” Regulus replied coolly, in contrast to what he was truly feeling. “And you are just like our father.”

That stopped the older Black in his tracks. He looked taken aback, as if that were the ultimate betrayal. 

(That summer, Sirius left home. 

He never spoke to him again.)

Potter had been too busy trying to calm down his best mate to stop them, and the other Marauders looked very unimpressed with the whole thing.

Maybe this rivalry was getting annoying for them, too.

Severus was still shaking when they left the scene of the incident.

“What happened?” Regulus asked carefully, looking at his eyes. “Why did you freeze like that?”

“I… he said that…,” Severus was having trouble forming a sentence, “he said that he’d take my pants off.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t think that would worry you so much. I would never have let them,” Regulus assured.

“No, it’s not that.”

“It’s not? Sev, I want to help you. I need to understand what happened. You never freeze like that…”

“I… I don’t look like you do,” Severus tried to explain, “under my robes, I mean.”

“Well, I know,” Regulus replied, “you’re like 1.90 cm.”

“No,” he interrupted, “I mean, I don’t… I’m trans. Transgender.”

Regulus is silent.

“I transitioned when I was very young. But the Wizarding laws surrounding full transition are really strict, and the Muggle methods are hands-down barbaric,” he continued. “I’m not ashamed. I just don’t want people like them to know something so private about me.”

Oh.

“Thank you,” Regulus bursts out when he thought his silence might be mistaken, “thank you for telling me that. I’m so sorry they did that.”

Regulus almost said something too- almost let the words fall out of his mouth. But he just gave a small nod instead.

“Your secret’s safe with me,” he said.

Maybe one day he’d share his own.
But not yet.

He plants a hand on Severus’s shoulder.

“I’m gonna tell Barty my brother pissed me off. We’ll think of something as revenge.”

Severus laughed. 

And everything was alright. 

Because Sev was his brother, and he loved him so much.

(They did retaliate. The ‘Marauders’ couldn’t say the word ‘Snivellous’ without vomiting slugs for a few months after that. One of Pandora’s best inventions.
And Regulus told him not too long after. Severus told him he didn’t even know it was a secret, he was that obvious.)

So, Severus understands what it means to have that kind of secret. 

And Regulus does too, because if his parents found out he liked men… well he doesn’t thing about the possibilities because it will never happen. 

And so, they won’t tell anyone. 

They’ll keep Lupin’s secret like they keep each others’s. 

“Well, he’s not so talkative”, Barty interrupts their moment by bursting in the room. 

“If by not talkative you mean barely saying 2 words, than yes, very not talkative”, Dorcas added, plopping herself on Severus’s bed. 

“Well Regulus has not tried to crack him yet,”, Severus says, “maybe he’ll be able to get him to speak”

What? 

“Oh no, I don’t want to, thank you”, he replies. 

“You have to, if I did it, you will too”, Evan adds.

Alright. Can’t argue with that. 

“Oh come on, do it for Severus, pretty pretty please”, Pandora implored.

“Ugh, I’m going”, Regulus rolled his eyes, “Don’t get your robes in a twist”

It’s going to be a long day.

Chapter Text

Remus Lupin has an unfairly attractive face. 

It’s honestly honourable that Regulus is looking at him and hasn’t mentioned it once. 

Regulus is cool like that. 

“You’re staring,” Remus says, breaking the silent stare off.
Regulus doesn’t respond.

His gaze lingers on the long, pale scar slicing through Remus’s eye and leaving it clouded, unseeing. 

Remus huffs, bitter amusement curving his lips.

“This one’s my favourite,” he says, tapping it lightly. “Really sells the whole rumour I’m in a gang.” 

“I wasn’t—” Regulus looks away. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to stare.”

“Oh you apologise? How un-pureblood-like”, he said flatly, “judging by the disgusted look, I’d guess Snape told you what happened,. 

“No. He didn’t. I’m not stupid—I can recognise a werewolf wound when I see one, it wasn’t hard to put the pieces together.” 

Remus flinches almost imperceptibly, eyes flicking to the hallway, voice dropping to a hiss. “Keep your voice down, you absolute twat.” 

A smile threatens to pull at Regulus’s mouth. 

Not everyone has the guts to speak like that to Heir Black. 

“You know Dorcas is worried about you, the others are too”, Regulus changed the subject, “you could have spared a few words”

“Then I would have to drop my mysterious aura, and it’s really working for me right now”, Remus deadpans. 

The werewolf is funny too, interesting.

“I came to tell you I won’t say anything,” he says instead, because any compliment to Lupin is unthinkable, “So you can spare me the dramatics.” 

Remus arches a brow. “You’re awfully noble for someone who walks around like he’s owned everything.” 

“And you’re awfully mouthy for someone who could rip my throat out once a month”, he responds cheekily. 

There’s a long silence. Lupin looks torn between being offended and amused.

He tilts his head, considering him. 

Regulus is already tired of those calculating eyes, he has to leave now.

“Severus forced me to come talk to you”, Regulus says, “Do you think enough time has passed to satisfy his majesty?” 

The smirk on Lupin’s face doesn’t make him more attractive. 

It doesn’t. It would be ridiculous if he could get more beautiful.

“Oh, I think they’re going to put up Missing People posters if you don’t go back right now”, the sand-haired boy answers. 

“Right”, Regulus responds, “I would say it was great talking to you, but I’m trying to get better at not lying”,he says as he turns around to leave. 

The cackles that follow him are going to get him in trouble.

Who knows what the others will think when they hear it. 

Or, if they heard it. 

Which is unlikely, given the fact that they are screaming, interrupting each other mid-sentencing.

“You have to tell us, they have to suffer the cons-”

“Was it Potter again, that dim witted cretin better not have-”

“Sev, this is different, let us help you, pleas-”

“You can continue yelling, I will not tell you anyth-”

“You will tell us, Severus Tobias Snape Prince, if I have to Veritaserum it out of you-”

“Stop!”, Regulus burst, “What in Merlin’s name are you doing, he just woke up”

“They ambushed me, waited until you were gone and all”, Severus smirked, “I would be impressed if I wasn’t so angry”, he looks down at Evan.

Evan is sitting on the floor between Pandora’s legs. He’s pale and Pandora has her hands cupping his ears, probably with a spell to muffle the sound.

They know Evan hates loud noises, they never yell. 

And that probably infuriates Severus more than the nagging. 

Barty looks confused until his eyes fall on Evan, and his whole body deflates, his shoulders drop. He kneels next to him and gently lifts Pandora’s hand off. 

“I’m sorry, Rose”, he says, “I didn’t mean to yell”. 

“Yes, I’m sorry Ev, I’m just so tired of Severus not letting us help him”, Dorcas adds. 

“Severus is right here”, he drawls, “and I’m not telling you because it doesn’t concern you, Black pulled a prank on me, that’s enough.”

His voice is flat. Final. But there’s something brittle beneath it, a frayed edge he can’t quite hide.

Pandora looks at Regulus. She doesn’t say anything, but her gaze is sharp, knowing. She knows he’s seen more. That he knows more. That he’s carrying something heavier than he lets on. She doesn’t push. She just shifts closer to Severus and takes his hand. 

“Enough”, Pandora adds, “Stop fighting, we’ll be here when Sev’s ready to talk about it, if he ever is” 

Evan is still eerily pale, but he’s stopped shaking and he’s now standing as closely as he can to Barty without falling into him. 

“We’ll be here to help you, always”, he adds quietly. 

“Did you manage to get Remus to talk?”, Severus asks then. 

“Something like that”, Regulus responds. 

✰ ✰ ✰

Madame Pomfrey had told them that tomorrow Severus would go back to regular routine. 

She had said that every injury had healed well, the only reminder that would be there were the scars, which she apologetically said were probably not going to fade completely. 

Severus had just shook his head and commented that he didn’t care anymore about scars, with a maturity no seventeen year-old boy should possess. 

She had then shooed them away and insisted they go to the Feast, Severus had her as company. 

Walking to the Great Hall is uneventful up until they arrive at the entrance.

There, Potter, Pettigrew and Sirius stand. 

They’re fighting. Or specifically, Potter is yelling at Sirius, shouting so loud he looks like he’s gonna pop a vessel. 

A part of Regulus wants to step in, the same part that still has an old photograph of them carefully tucked under his pillow. 

Because how dare he speak to his Sirius like that. 

Except, it’s not his Sirius anymore, is he?

Maybe he never was. 

So he ignores every instinct, feigning satisfaction at seeing Sirius’s unseeing eyes filled with tears. 

Yes, cry, you deserve it. He wants to think. 

But he can’t. 

Because his own eyes have looked like that more times than he can remember, because of Sirius, because of his brother and his words. 

And Potter has always been more of a brother to Sirius than Regulus, so it makes sense he has the cruel power to make him look like that. 

“I need you to talk, Sirius”, Potter is saying, “tell me why you did it, tell me you’re not as cruel as everybody thinks”. 

He’s begging now, whispering, “tell me it was a mistake, tell me you didn’t want to kill two people, please.”

Silence. 

Sirius is still staring the floor.

“Prongs, maybe let’s just go eat and we’ll talk about it in the dorm”, Pettigrew tries to reason. 

“No”, Potter takes what looks like a bit of spare parchment from Pettigrew’s hand, “I’m not eating next to him, and don’t expect me tonight. Don’t come looking for me.” 

He storms out. 

Sirius looks stricken. He turns around and leaves Pettigrew alone in the middle of the corridor. 

“Trouble in paradise”, Barty snickers, “Look at Pettigrew he looks like he’s having a stoke!”

“He looks constipated”, Dorcas adds, “poor guy he doesn’t know who to follow”.

They are walking right in front of the lost boy when Pandora quips, “It’s like watching a Kneazle pick a lap”, she says sarcastically. 

Pettigrew grows redder, if that was even possible, and runs off in a completely different direction. 

“Turns out loyalty’s overrated, he’s chosen the scenic route”, Barty adds laughing. 

“Alright, you’ve had your fun”, Regulus says, “let’s go eat” 

“Kids”, Evan adds rolling his eyes. 

Regulus can’t help but wonder where Sirius is, how he is. 

So he focuses his gaze on the pumpkin juice ahead of him, and listens to his friends making the same two jokes one hundred times. 

And he laughs, because three years ago seeing Sirius like that would have broken him. 

Now he has his own friends, turns out chosen family isn’t restricted to morally superior individuals. 

How lucky he is to have people to laugh with when all he wants to do is cry. 

Pandora’s foot finds his under the table, she intertwines their ankle.

How lucky.

✰ ✰ ✰

That night he dreams of a werewolf. A bite. And a hurt best friend. 

He wakes up sweating, and can’t fall asleep again. 

He decides he’s going to go to the Hospital Wing. 

Just to prove to his brain that Severus is alright. 

When he arrives the door is ajar, he doesn’t think twice about it before entering. 

Severus is sleeping soundly, on his side, one hand cradling a pillow to his chest as if it was a person, and legs bent at the knees. 

He looks like a little kid. 

And he’s okay. 

He turns to leave. 

But, maybe before he should go see if Lupin is alright. 

Not because he cares, never. 

Just to see if he’s causing trouble again, obviously. 

When he opens the curtain slightly, he sees him sleeping on his bed. Body sprawled like a starfish and snoring so loud he’s sure the floor must be shaking. 

The difference between the two boys is staggering. 

Before he leaves he spots a pair of glasses on the nightstand. 

Lupin doesn’t wear glasses.

Huh. 

In the dark he can’t quite make out the details, but they look eerily similar to Potter’s. 

Did the idiot boy come here and forgot to get his glasses back? 

That must be it, because the chairs are empty and the only living souls in the room are those of the two hurt boys. 

Just when he thought he couldn’t get more stupid, Potter surprises him.

He can’t wait to see what Pomfrey will say when she sees them. 

He closes the door on his way out, and not too much later he’s climbing in his own bed. 

Hoping that his brain had quieted down enough to get a few hours sleep before Monday courses started. 

If only his brain was that obedient. 

Chapter Text

Everything is back to normal.
Or, they pretend it is.

The next morning Severus goes back to classes, with the promise to come back every week to recheck that his wounds are healing nicely. 

Regulus sees the change, though slight. 

Severus is quiet, he always was, but now he’s wary. Like the final blow might surprise him when he rounds the corner. 

The group has taken the habit of accompanying one another to classes, lest someone be alone in the corridors.

That’s why Regulus sees it the moment it happens.

They are walking to the Potion classroom, talking about the project they’re working on, when the students spill out of the class to make room for the new ones. 

They’re Gryffondors, of course, you can tell by the pompous and showy air around them. 

It shouldn’t be surprising when Remus Lupin runs out of the class, in a frenzy, books and parchment almost falling out of his hands, and bumps into them. 

The reaction is immediate.

Severus snaps upright. Not with fear, never with fear. 

Like he’s preparing himself for something. Bracing himself for impact. 

The werewolf apologises before even looking at who he hit. 

When he does, when he sees the look on Severus’s face, the way his body is strung so tightly to prepare for something, his shoulders drop. 

His eye falls to the ground. 

He looks desperate. 

For someone so tall, Lupin manages to make himself smaller and smaller. 

Apologising profusely and then running away from the pair. 

Regulus looks at Severus then. 

He’s looking at the spot where the Gryffondor boy had been moments before.

He looks confused, like he doesn’t quite understand what had just happened. 

Like the words ‘sorry, I’m sorry’, coming from the mouth of the boy who had almost killed him sounds unfamiliar, dissonant. 

“I have to go”, Severus murmurs, “I’ll see you at lunch”

Yes. See you at lunch.

✰ ✰ ✰

“Alright, so theoretically it would be possible?”, Barty says with a fork full of meat on the way to his mouth.

“Why are we even talking about this?”, Dorcas pounds her head on Pandora’s shoulder next to her. 

She’d joined their table mostly because if she kept glaring at Sirius at the Gryffondor table, she might actually make him wet himself.

“It’s a hypothetical, calm down Cassy”, he continues waiving the fork around and sending food flying in their faces. 

“What’s the hypothetical?”, Severus says while he slides into the booth next to Regulus. 

“Barty’s hypothetical”, Regulus says exhaustedly.

“That if you replaced all your bones with metal ones, you could jump off the Astronomy Tower and survive. Like, theoretically.”, Barty explains.

Regulus groans into his hands. Dorcas mutters something about locking him in the library. 

Pandora just looks at him and says, “That’s not how bones work.”

“How would you know, we should try it”, Barty’s eyes glimmer, “on Black” 

“Alright, let’s not get too excited”, Severus rolls his eyes, “there’s no books in Azkaban, Crouch” 

That’s the only way to convince him not to kill anyone. 

Well, that and-

“There’s no Evan either!”, Pandora exclaims. 

“Argh, you got me there”, Barty feigns being annoyed, “what would my Rose do without me”

“Piss off, Crouch”, Evan shoves Barty’s head off his shoulder.

“And anyway, Black looks chastised enough, doesn’t he?”, Pandora adds, “he looks like someone stole his puppy.”

She’s not wrong.

Sirius is sitting alone in the Gryffindor booth. He had chosen to sit at the very edge of the table. Putting at least a meter from him and the other house-mates. 

Potter and Pettigrew sit at the opposite side of the table. And Lupin was nowhere to be found.

His plate is completely empty.

Regulus had grown used to watching what Sirius ate—or didn’t eat. 

Back home, food had been one of the few things Sirius could control, the only weapon he had to rebel in a house where everything else was dictated for him.
Refusing to eat had been his quiet form of protest, a silent battle waged at the dinner table.

And sometimes he fell into the same habit at Hogwarts. 

It’s been years since he actually kept up with what was going on in his brother’s life. 

But, when something‘s wrong, this is how Regulus knew. 

And something was definitely wrong.

His hair is dirty, not shiny as it usually is, and is tightly pulled away from his face.

His uniform is wrinkled, like he had slept in it for a few days. Like he’d collapsed before even having time to change. Or hadn’t had anything to change into.

And his eyes, oh his beautiful grey eyes, were lined red. And circled by dark blue bags.

Somehow, Regulus feels his heart break.

Even if the same lips, that are now broken and downturned, once spit out venom at him so painful he still had the scars.

Even if next to him sits Severus, his true brother, who was hurt so badly by him. 

Even if he had left him in that house, that without his presence echoes Orion’s words even louder.

His heart still breaks. 

His heart still tells him to run to him, to embrace him, to help him.

He won’t. 

Of course he won’t.

Because Sirius had chosen, years ago, who his family was, who his true brother was.

And that brother was now sat at the opposite side of the table, with a matching grimace, and eyes that looked at Sirius with such sadness they looked like they came out of a painting. 

Choices. 

✰ ✰ ✰

Regulus’s favourite thing at Hogwarts is the library.

A room where people are forced to be quiet and just study, of course he loves it.

Right now, he’s with Barty, Evan and Pandora. 

The library is packed to the brim and every mumble is promptly shut up by the librarian. 

Perfect. 

The astronomy essay he’s writing was coming along perfectly and if he played it right he’d have the time to look at his and  Severus’s research too before dinner. 

The calm is shuttered when Lupin entered the library. 

The werewolf looks around frantically and seems to catch on to the fact that the entire room is fulled to the brim. 

The only place that was empty was the one at the very edge of their table. 

Hesitantly he steps forward and sits at the corner of the table, as far as he could from them and occupying as little space as possible.

Regulus and Evan look at each other.

Regulus isn’t a monster, okay? 

He’s not going to yell at him to go away, especially not when he looks so alone. 

Especially not when Potter is looking at him from the other side of the room with a look of pure sadness.

Besides, Regulus is pretty sure what happened in the Hospital Wing was some kind of truce between them, and he wasn’t just going to forfeit it.

Except.

Well, except nothing can ever go well for Regulus.

Stubbornly unlucky and all that.

That’s why in the very second Remus sits, Severus enters the library.  

His hands are full with books and notes, hair as messy as always and a pair of glasses hanging carefully from his robes.

When he sees Lupin, his whole body stops.

Like a marionette who’s strings where pulled against his will.

Or more like prey seeing predator.

Some species go through what’s called thanatosis when they see their predator.

They stay very still to avoid detection.

This motionless behavior causes the predator to lose interest or become careless, creating an opportunity for escape.

That’s what it seems Severus is doing.

But he was never good at being a prey, or at staying still for that matter. 

So after a few beats he turn around quickly, uncaring of the few pages that fly away, and leaves the Library all together.

Regulus’s first instinct is to get up, to follow him.

Because his bleeding heart was made to patch up those of his friends.

But Evan stops him, and shakes his head. 

He gets up instead and when he passes Remus’s chair he mumbles something that sounds too much like ‘freak’.

Regulus knows that it’s Evan’s right to say that. 

Given he doesn’t know the whole story, he knows just what Sev’s told him and what he can catch from the reactions like this.

But Remus looks distraught when he hears it.

Which is stupid because they’d said worst things in the past to each other.

Regulus doesn’t know if it’s because it’s Evan, who very rarely speaks ill of people, or speaks at all. 

Or maybe it’s just the choice word that hits him. Of course it would. 

Whatever it is, he doesn’t seem able to handle it. 

The fair skinned boy gets up, leaving all his books behind, and storms out of the room. 

From where he is sitting, Regulus can see the moment Potter is struggling not to run to him. 

His knuckles are white where they wrap around the table.

Sirius is sitting near him, he looks slightly less uncomfortable than that morning. 

Judging by the way he’s sitting nearer and looking less nauseated, Regulus would bet that he had talked with James and made up. 

Good for them. 

That would explain why the werewolf was nowhere to be seen in meals and decided to seat next to them today. 

Of course, Potter and Sirius had chosen each other. Again. 

Only this time it wasn’t Regulus suffering. 

Only, this time the casualty was Lupin.

Chapter Text

The thing is.
Regulus doesn’t exactly know what Evan told Severus. Or vice versa. 

He only knows that when Evan shows to dinner, he’s alone.

And no matter how much Regulus questions him, he won’t say anything. 

That night they go to bed angry, but as always they wake up forgetting all about it. 

There’s something so hard in holding a grudge against the people you wish to just hold. 

Severus is still acting like nothing happened, behaving like his usual self, snapping at them and huffing and muttering under his breath. 

That evening they find themselves ironically in the library again. 

Barty is sprawled half on Evan and half on Pandora, sharing candy with them in exchange for the comfortable seat rests he’s made them. 

They barely see him studying, and even so he still receives consistently high grades. He did beg the hat to put him in Slytherin instead of Ravenclaw, just to spite his father, though he will never admit that’s why he was a hat stall. 

‘I was not begging, I was just seeing how long it would take before the Hat begged me to shut up. Not that long, in the end.’ He’d say. They all knew he was lying. 

Regulus is scribbling furiously on his paper, fixing mistakes he finds on his book and correcting it. He would not have that much time before Quidditch practice, and this stupid book was making everything harder. 

Dorcas was beside him, her head laying on his shoulder, reading a book.

The easiness with which she’s reading might make you think the book a magazine and not a healing manual way too complicated for her age. 

Severus is quietly copying notes, laser focused. 

Regulus doesn’t need to check what he’s studying. 

Based on the fact that for the first time since the incident the wrinkle of worry between his eyebrows is smoothed, he’s studying DADA. 

Even if he’s naturally prone to Potions, nothing would entice his interest as much as Defence. 

Now, the library is always stuffed these time of year. It’s almost exam time and the students were scrambling to put every ounce of knowledge they can in their tiny brains before them.

So, because of this, and because of Regulus’s usual Bad Luck, Remus fucking Lupin enters the library for the second time in 48 hours. 

And for the second time the only place left, that isn’t next to his old friends, is next to them. 

None of them notice him. 

Until he stops himself harshly and his shoes emit a squeak against the wooden ground that Regulus would make fun of so hard if it wasn’t for the look of terror that Lupin gives them. Like a little chick afraid of crossing a car-filled street. 

All of them snap their heads up, and freeze. 

Yesterday didn’t go too well so no one is feeling as welcoming, naturally. 

The ball is in Severus’s favour, or however that saying goes. 

And Severus seems to know that. 

Severus’s quill pauses mid-scratch, his hand tightening on the feather just enough to split the tip.

In the very moment Remus’s shoulders slump and he starts to turn, Severus makes up his mind. 

He picks up the bag of books that he had carelessly thrown in front of him, and puts it next to him. So as to make space for another person next to Barty. 

Hesitantly Lupin puts his books down, and with the upmost care slides into the booth next to them, as if the littlest disruption might cause them to change their minds. 

For a second there’s a tense moment of silence, but Barty never cares much for silence, and so he nudges him with his foot, candy-full hand stretching out.

“Want some?”, he asks.

“Um, no, thank you”, Lupin looks down, until he feels another hand tapping his shoulder. 

“What about this?”, Pandora asks than, waving a bar of chocolate around.

Lupin’s eye shines like a kid, before he extends the hand toward the sweet. 

“Thank you, Lovegood”, he sounds sincere. 

“Pandora, call me Pandora, or Dora if you like”

“Alright, thank you- Pandora”, he smiles shyly. 

Oh Salazar, the baby chick is adorable.

Regulus hates that thought the moment it appears. It feels dangerous, indulgent, to notice the way Lupin’s smile softens his whole face. 

He forces his quill back to the page, scribbling furiously as if ink could drown the tenderness rising uninvited in his chest.

Regulus looks at Severus then. He’s pretending to read, uncaring, but he’s been looking at the same word all this time. He doesn’t look angry, or tense.

Regulus swears he sees the shadow of a smile.

✰ ✰ ✰

There’s an idiot on the loose. 

And by idiot he means that bastard, Potter. 

And by on the loose, he means he’s taken to cornering his friends to ask about Lupin of all things. 

The fucking nerve!

It isn’t going well for the guy. 

Evan just stayed silent until Potter got too creeped out and left. He did last a lot than the normal guy, to be fair. 

Pandora started speaking Gobbledygook, the few cursing words she knew anyway, until Potter got scared she’d had an aneurysm and left. 

Dorcas just went the easy road and jinxed him. 

Now, the problem with this is, Regulus isn’t having the nicest of days. 

Sleeping is becoming harder and harder since he gave up the potions, and he’s still ages away from working out a non addictive one with Severus. 

So he’s functioning on 5 hours of sleep in the last three days, and it’s always harder to Occlude and actually keep himself sane when he’s like this. 

Regulus blames all this for his reaction. 

Because the moment he hears Potter calling out for him, he starts walking faster. 

His tongue is much less sharp when he can’t tell the last time he’s slept. 

Only, Potter doesn’t seem to like that, and his natural response is to run up and grab him by the arm.

It’s only one second. One second where the nails pressing into his arm feel like his father’s- sharp, demanding, suffocating. His chest tightens, breath caught. 

One second where he swears he can feel the Black ring piercing his skin. 

Just one second, but it feels like a lifetime before he realizes whose hand is really on him.

He snaps out of it too late and Potter, too self absorbed to notice any reaction from him, is already talking. 

“I just want to know how he is”, he’s saying angrily, “What’s wrong with you lot”

And that’s that, the trance is broken, and he pulls his arm sharply back. 

“Try putting a finger on me again, and I’ll make you wish you were never born”, he seethes. 

“C’mon lad, just tell me if he’s okay, and I’ll be out of your hair”, Potter looks tired. 

“How would I know how your little friend is?”, Regulus hisses. 

“Do you think I’m stupid?”, James asks, “No, actually don’t answer that. I saw you talking.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about”, Regulus feigns innocence, “Besides, you have no right to know how he is, not when you abandoned him.”

Potter stares at him, and there’s something there, a flash of shame. 

And Regulus rejoices, yes be ashamed of yourself, you worthless jerk.

Only that shame turns quickly into rage, like it always does with people incapable of admitting to their faults.

“I didn’t- I’ve been trying to speak to him all week, I don’t know what you think you’re saying”, he spits out. 

Regulus smirks, it’s always so easy to anger these guys. 

“I knew you were a bit slow, but you’re really just dumb, huh”, Regulus takes a step forward and points his long aristocratic finger into Potter’s chest. “You chose your side, blatantly. Do you think he can forget that?”

“Sides?”, Potter murmurs, “What are you talking about? I didn’t choose anybody’s side, I couldn’t just abandon Sirius!”.

Ironic. 

“Don’t you worry your stupid little head about it”, Regulus hisses, “He does enough abandoning for the both of you.”

Regulus feels a hand touching his back, and he doesn’t have to look to know it’s Dorcas coming to rescue him, he can tell by the earthy and sweet scent. 

“We’re done here”, Dorcas tells the cowering Gryffondor boy, who’s probably afraid to get jinxed again. 

When they’re walking away, Regulus turns around. 

Potter has not moved, he’s looking at him with a strange look in his eyes. 

Merlin damned Gryffondors.

✰ ✰ ✰

No matter how much Regulus pretends it’s not real, Remus quickly becomes part of the group.

Nobody says anything about it, the change is so subtle that they can’t remember when they started caring for him. 

The only thing they know is that they do. 

Remus doesn’t come to the Great Hall for meals. Hasn’t since the accident. 

So, naturally, Barty makes a game out of it. 

Who gets to pack the food and find Remus to get it to him. 

Sometimes they’d fight for it even, confusing every other table. Slytherins, and especially their group, never fought publicly. 

‘You brought it to him yesterday, it’s my turn’, Pandora would yell

‘No, that’s not how this works, plus there’s Shepard’s pie, that’s one of his favourites’, Barty would counter.  

By the time they finished fighting, Evan, tired of their bullshit, would already be on his way to Lupin with a bundle of food carefully wrapped under a preservation charm.

Regulus doesn’t like it, no he doesn’t. 

And he certainly doesn’t like him. 

Everyone knows Regulus Arcturus Black hates everyone, especially Gryffindors.

Except. 

Well, except apparently not Remus Lupin.  

Because life is hilarious like that. 

Merlin help him. 

Chapter Text

Regulus is 5 when the nightmares start. 
At that age, he used to wake up scared and uncomfortable in a wet bed.

‘Kreacher’, he would whisper. The house elf was always sweet to him and didn’t yell like Father did. 

‘Young master Regulus, it’s late, mistress will be mad if she finds out you’re not asleep’, Kreacher would often scold, only to see the predicament he was in, ‘Come here, master Regulus’, he’d take his little hand and quickly dry and clean his clothes with a snap of the wrist.  

After doing the same to the bed, the House Elf would wait for the boy to return to sleep. Only than he would quietly, always quietly because who knew what Orion would have done had he found out, disappear. 

Regulus is 16 now, and even if he’s long past wetting his bed, he still puts a silencing charm on his bed at the start of every year. 
So it’s safe to say that Regulus knows a thing or two about night terrors. The few nights he actually managed to sleep were full of them. 

The real problem for him now are not the nightmares, no. 

The problems were the nights he dreamt of good memories- when he dreamt of the few nights his father was away on business and they all slept together in his mother’s bed.

Those nights she would wrap her arms around them, stroke their raven hair and tell them stories, about a naive princess and a cruel Beast. 

They always had happy endings, of course, Sirius insisted. 

Somehow those memories hurt the most. 
Regulus could handle the curses and the pain, he was used to them, welcomed them like old friends on his abused flesh.

It were the memories of his mother’s laughter, her stories and the mirth in her voice when she was away from the Beast, as he and and Sirius caught themselves calling their father when they were children, that hurt him the most. 
Because its absence now left a gaping hole in his heart. 

Those nights he’d wake up in a puddle of sweat and dried tears.
Longing for grey eyes and long hair, of his mother’s sparkling eyes and her beautiful smile. 

Tonight, he’d had the pleasure of experiencing this torture.

He’d dreamt of the night his father was gone and Sirius had somehow convinced Mother of letting him try on her dress and shoes.

Both were comically big on him, but- his face, his smile when he’d looked at himself.

Oh, Regulus would never forget that. 
He’d started twirling around and giggling, taking Regulus- who was sporting an interestingly weird tie- by the hand and started dancing. 

They must have looked so happy, they were giggling so much it was so hard to keep their eyes open.

That’s why they found themselves on a puddle on the floor.

That’s why they didn’t notice their mother quietly crying, watching them with a sad little smile.

Before they could ask her what was wrong she’d shaken herself out of it, and had ushered them closer before quietly asking, “Who wants to help me put on some makeup, mes anges?”

At the end even that turned into Sirius insisting they needed some lipstick too, naturally.

Everything went back the next day, when Orion returned.

But during dinner, at the table, everyone stoically silence as always, Regulus risked a peek at him mom.

She looked back and flashed him a smirk, quickly looking at Orion’s distracted form, she brought her fingers to her lips and pretended to zip her lips and throw away the key.

It’s always been one of Regulus’s favourite memories. 
His mother had been so young and he had been still so little.

Any hope of getting back to that was childish and naive and he was too grown for any of it.

During those nights he would often abandon his bed and go to the astronomy tower.

The students were long asleep and he was too good at not being heard, even the portraits were confused sometimes.

Swinging his legs from the window of the tower, sitting at the edge of nothingness, always helped him.

From where he was sitting he could look at the entirety of Hogwarts, lit up by the crescent moon. 

He looked at the stars.

He sometimes wishes he could be one.

It would be worth it to burn for thousands of years, if he could only be as pretty, as noteworthy as a star. 

The Astronomy tower was his space.

It had been a difficult place for him for some time, for some time he had not been allowed to go alone, after Severus has learned what he often thought of doing there when things got too tough.

But now he was disillusioned by the idea, he would not be taking the easy way out, he would be doing that to his mother.

Godric knows what Orion would do to her if he lost both his heirs. 

The Astronomy tower was his place. 
So he shouldn’t be hearing any sounds. 
Certainly not a pained moan coming from a man. 
Certainly not an ‘Ouch’ from someone who had apparently just hit his head on the wall of the stairs. 
Who’s this fucking genius. 

No.

Of course it’s the last person he wants to see. 
James, whatever his middle name is, Potter should not be standing in front of him. 
It has to be a vision. 
It can’t be, because it must be 3 am and no normal person should be awake and here. 

“Oh, hi Reggie, what a great surprise seeing you here”, said the idiot while a hand was still rubbing the sore spot he’d hit.

“What are you doing here?”, Regulus was too stunned to even be as mean as he should be.
Wait- Reggie?

“And don’t you dare call me that, you worthless scoundrel”, he adds for good measure.

“Not too much love now, darling”, the Gryffondor responds, “you wouldn’t want to flatter me too much”

“You already have an abnormally large head, Potter, I wouldn’t want you to float away.”, Regulus had stood up now and was slithering closer to him, “Now, answer my question.”

“Oh nothing, I was just strolling around and happened to walk here, great minds think alike”, the idiot winked. Winked? 

What in Merlin’s name was happening. 
Salazar help him survive without murdering any unsuspecting Gryffondor.

“I am lenient, so I will give you a minute to either explain yourself or walk away”, Regulus says in the chilly voice that made people run,“After that, I will curse you until you can’t even walk back into your little lion den”, he deadpanned.

James visibly gulped, but he didn’t look as scared as Regulus had hoped. 
He looked more… curious.

“It’s dangerous you know?”, Potter started, “to seat there at the edge. You could fall.”

“I’m not an idiot, Potter”, he replied, “not to mention that the only thing that would have made me fall was your presence. Maybe actually announce yourself next time, and don’t just appear out of nowhere.”

Potter looked stricken, “Yeah, I probably didn’t think that through, huh?”

“No you didn’t, I doubt you think anything through.”

“I just- Remus isn’t coming to sleep in the dorm anymore, and I can’t see him on the Ma- uhm I mean is he with you?”, Potter stutters. 
What?

“No, he is not”, Regulus worries.

“Oh, just keep an eye out for him, and maybe tell him- tell him to sleep in the common room at least. Godric knows wherever he’s sleeping isn’t doing wonders for his hip”, he mutters.

“You tell him, Potter”

“I wish I could, he just doesn’t want to talk to me, and I don’t want to push him”, he’s turning around and going for the staircase before Regulus stops him. 

“He is devastated”, he says.

“Did he say anything?”, James turns around hopefully.

“He didn’t need to, I know what it looks like to be betrayed by Sirius”, he spits the name like it burns him. (It does)
He curses himself for bringing him up.

“I don’t know what to do, I tried putting some space for Remus, but Sirius wasn’t functioning, it was like he forgot how to live, I couldn’t just leave him. He was breaking”,

James pushes a hand into his hair and grabs it by the root, like he could rip it out.

“Let him”, Regulus replies distastefully. Untruthfully. 
There’s a break before Potter sits down next to Regulus. 

“What he did was awful”, James looks like he’s thinking out loud, “I asked him why he did it and he said that he wanted Snivell-Snape to be afraid for once”

Regulus doesn’t know how to respond. 
He knows why Sirius did it. Understand the thought process too well. Cruelty is in their blood, after all.

“The same person that held him ever time, betrayed him so blatantly”, Potter whispers. 
Ha, sounds familiar.

That was enough Sirius talk for Regulus for a night, for a year even.

“If you think I’ll listen you rant about him like a lovesick pup, you’re sorely mistaken” he starts standing up.

“No wait, don’t leave, just-”, Potter goes to grab his arm but stops himself before he can. 
Had he noticed his reaction the day before, after all?

“Is he eating at least?”, Potter asks.
Who knew he was such a mother hen.

“Yes, we bring him food”, Regulus gives in, “you mustn’t worry, we’re taking care of your little friend”

Regulus gets up then, and tells Potter he should go back to his own house too. 
If he stays a bit longer there he’s gonna vomit the few things he ate through the day onto Potter. 

Maybe it’s the dizziness or the nausea that overcomes him that makes him loose his balance.

But Potter is there to catch him. 
And this time the touch doesn’t resemble those of his father, not at all.

It’s still foreign, but not unwelcome, not frightening like before. 

When Regulus arrives at his dorm, he flies to the bathroom and he throws everything he ate up. 
The memory, Sirius, Potter. Everything was too much. 
Yes. He’s gonna have to try harder for that non addictive Dreamless Sleep. 

✰ ✰ ✰

The next morning it’s slower, calmer, no classes as it is Sunday.

He’s not thinking about Potter, he’s not, that’d be stupid.

And he may be a lot of things, but stupid is not one of that. 
So he’s not thinking about him, at all. 

He’s talking to Severus about the potion they were working together that would, if they got it right, have the same effect of the dreamless sleep without the addictive quality. 
So he has more interesting things to talk about. 

It’s just that-
Well, he didn’t sleep at all the night before.
So, it’s difficult to focus.  

And Severus’s voice sounds so safe, it’s not his fault when he starts to lose focus.

He starts looking around and is startled to find Remus being stopped by Potter.

It looks like Potter finally found him, and is now wearing the expression you’d see on a nun on her knees begging for forgiveness from god.

And he doesn’t find that attractive, he doesn’t, okay?

It’s not in the least attractive that this man is apologizing, looking at Remus, like he just saved his family from a death curse.

It’s not hot.
It’s not hot the way he’s grovelling like a sinner at confession. 

He turns back to the essay at hand, and tries to think about how to include the Valerian root without it interacting negates with the wormwood. 

But it’s difficult to think about it when he can feel eyes burning into his skull.

It’s not James. 
It’s Severus, who looks at him with knowing eyes, and a grim turn of his lips.

Expect he can’t really react because someone clears his throat, oh no.

What is it with Regulus and Bad Luck? 

It’s Potter standing there looking grim. 
If this imbecile tries to speak to him in public, he’ll kill him, he will.
“Hi lads, good to see you Regulus”, he says smilingly.

“Potter”, he responds.

“As much as I’d love to stop to talk, I’m-”, he stops like he can’t believe he’s saying what he is, “I’m here to speak to Snape”

Silence

“Please”, he adds.

Regulus swears everything stops moving.
Lily Evans is sitting in the Gryffondor table. She is looking at the scene with an expression that is between curios and hopeful.

He doesn’t need to check to see that Severus sees her too, sees the smile on her lips.

Regulus would guess that’s why he doesn’t immediately say no.

“What do you want, Potter, help with your potion essay?”, Sev sneers coldly.

“No- um I just- Can we speak? I understand if you wanna do it here, but I’d rather have some privacy”, Potter looks like it’s killing him to stand there.

“No”, Severus responds sharply.

Good, don’t give him the satisfaction to apologise.

James looks like a kicked puppy.

“No, I don’t want a scene”, Severus starts standing up, “Let’s speak outside”.

If Potter was a dog, his tail would be wagging. 
Wait- what?

Ugh. Stupid Severus and his stupid need to make Evans happy.

“I’ll come with” says Regulus, and the words escape his mouth before he could think of the implications.

“No”, Severus replies softly, and his hand comes down to squeeze Regulus’s own, “Stay here”.

“But-”

The look on Severus’s face stops him. 

It’s another 15 minutes before Severus comes back.

Regulus is ready to question him, to request the memory actually.

But Severus only nods at him, picks his school bag and says: “We’ll talk later”.
James is nowhere to be seen. 

Well, so much for calm day.

Chapter Text

Regulus doesn’t understand James Potter. 

He never really wanted to. 

At 10 he knew him as the boy his brother couldn’t stop talking about. 

At 12 as the obnoxious boy from Gryffondor.

At 15 as the boy who had stolen his brother’s attention from him.

He always thought he had him down: annoying, haughty and arrogant.

Regulus doesn’t like to be surprised.

Doesn’t like to not be right. 

So he’s not at all amused by Potter’s new behaviour. 

Severus had told him that Potter apologised to him. 

Apologised. 

The same person who hung him upside out in front of all the school and threatened to put his pants down. That person had, according to Severus, said something along the line of: ‘I’m deeply sorry for my behaviour in the last years and I’m so very grateful that you were not irreversibly hurt by Sirius’s actions’

Salazar.

He sort of expected Potter to apologise to Remus. But Severus. Oh, for all his intellect he never thought it possible. 

Yet, here they stand, lying in the long grass besides the lake. 

Embracing the silence that inevitably follows the shocking truth. 

“What did you tell him?”, Regulus asks a bit later. 

“Nothing”, Severus gets up on his elbows and looks at him, “What was I supposed to say, ‘I’m sorry too’?” 

Regulus doesn’t know how to answer that. It’s unusual for Regulus to be so unaware of the motives of people. Because why would Potter just apologise to him after years of constant banter?

Some small part of him wonders if Severus had accepted the apology. 

He was disgusted by how much he actually wanted him to. 

✰ ✰ ✰

The nights in the Astronomy tower were beginning to be more and more.

The hours Regulus actually slept were less and less. 

Some nights, as much as Regulus hates it, Potter finds him.

Tonight he didn’t bother with any words, just sat opposite to him on the floor.

After some time, Regulus breaks the silence, “You can’t do that” he whispers.

James looks at him with confusion clear in his eyes. 

“If my father hears that I’m associating with the boy that stole his heir, he’ll kill me”, he continues. And he sounds serious, talking matter-of-factly. 

(He is, his mother is still young, they could always try for another heir.)

“I-I didn’t think about that”, Potter mutters.

“We’ve established you don’t think much, Potter. Don’t make me repeat myself”, Regulus says, prissy.

“Alright, I’ll stop, but we can still talk in private right?”, Potter asks. 

“We don’t talk Potter, certainly not privately “, he disagrees. 

“And what are we doing now then Regulus?”, James looks at him pointedly.

“Simply an act of kindness by me. And you’ll get your updates on your little wolf don’t worry”, he concurs. “He ate mashed potatoes and went to the restroom three times today, if that’s what you want to know”.

Potter laughs, and his whole body moves with him, shoulder shaking, hands slapping thighs. What an expressive being. 

“Regulus, I apologised to Remus, we’re talking, I don’t need your updates”, he finally says.

Oh. 

“Well I guess there’s no need for this charade. I’d say it was fun while it lasted, but it truly wasn’t”, he says. And he means it, of course.

Potter is looking at him funnily.

“I come here because I want to talk to you, idiot”, he says

Regulus stops and frames Potter with a blank stare.

What? 

“Why? Did my brother put you up to this?”, he spits out.

“No, what? He doesn’t even talk much these days.”, Potter looks incredulous,“You’re good company, Regulus”

Ha. That was funny. 

“I find that hard to believe given I spend most of my time insulting you, rightfully. What do you want Potter?”

“You don’t have to believe me, I’ll just keep showing up, I’m annoying like that”

That you are. 

“What you did with Severus”, Regulus changes subject to avoid facing the strange felling in his guts. Was he gonna be sick again?

“Yes?”, Potter replies.

“Did you do that for Evans?”

“Lily? What does this have to do with her?”

“Oh, don’t be stupid, she’s been trying to make you stop the taunting since first year”, Regulus scoffs.

Potter has the guts to look offended. 

“Of course not”, he says, and then again, softly “of course not”

Regulus doesn’t know how to respond to that, doesn’t know why he believes him.

“You know, my ma was a slytherin”, Potter eventually said.

“What? That’s impossible, no Potter was ever a slytherin”, Regulus argues.

“Well she wasn’t a Potter yet, smart mouth”, he has the nerve to laugh “She used to tell me not to believe what they told me about the House rivalry. Oh gods, she’d be so ashamed of me if she knew,”

“Why did you?”, Regulus asked, “Believe it, I mean”

“I don’t know, for a long time I thought it was a game”, he scoffs, “He always gave as good as he got.

I thought he was some evil boy, beyond saving. But lately I’ve been thinking that maybe he was just so alone at the time. I mean before he met you guys, it was us versus him.”, he shakes his head.

“You do know he’s not evil, dark magic doesn’t make him evil”, Regulus says, “Magic is amoral. It doesn’t make you a bad person, whatever that means.”

“I know, I know, i should've known”, he mutters under his breath. “He deserved that apology, even if he always retaliated. We saw him alone and we targeted that, awful pricks we are.”, he lets out a airy laugh.

What does it say about Regulus, that he’s even listening to James. Listening to the boy who tormented his best friend for years, and is now looking for, what? Absolution?

“He’s not alone”, he ends up saying, because what else can he add?

“He’s not, not anymore”, James looks at the stars like they have all the answers. 

Regulus doesn’t recommend it, stars rarely do.

✰ ✰ ✰

This year it seems like the group spends more time in the library than anywhere else. 

They were once again there, this time Regulus and Evan were trying and failing to explain a difficult arithmacy principle to Pandora. 

She was getting frustrated quickly, never the one for this kind of things. 

Her parents forced them to choose this class every year. Evan managed, as always. 

Pandora was different. She was brilliant, she was. 

More intuitive and astute than all of them combined. 

But the numbers, the structure, the lack of space for any creativity and inventive… it messed with her head. She hated the lot. 

Not to mention the comments her family made. Women being less intelligent, incompetent. All that garbage.

“It’s useless, I’ve already told you”, she said, closing the book with a frustrated sigh.

“The ‘mancy’ part I’ve got down… it’s the arithmetics I’ll never get the hang of”

Barty leaned back in his chair, smirking faintly.

“That’s because you’re thinking of it like maths,” he said, reaching across to pull the book back toward them. “It’s not about sums and columns. It’s about patterns. Stories told in numbers.”

Pandora raised an eyebrow. “Stories?” She liked those.

“Yes,” he said, tapping his quill against the margin where Evan’s cramped notes filled the page. “Take your name, for example. Every letter reduces to a number. Those numbers aren’t random, they connect, repeat, form shapes if you look closely enough. It’s like… music. Notes on a page.”

Regulus, who had given up attempting to make her see sense half an hour ago, gave a small snort. “That’s a very romantic way to put it.”

“Shut it. It’s the right way,” Barty shot back. His voice sharpened with that strange intensity he always carried when something truly fascinated him. “If you stare at the digits long enough, they’ll blur into nonsense. But if you let them speak, if you listen to the rhythm—you’ll start to hear what they mean.”

Pandora tilted her head, watching him with cautious curiosity. “So you’re saying I should… stop adding?”

“Exactly,” Barty said, and for once there was no mocking in his grin. “Stop adding. Start seeing.”

“Oh”, Pandora hummed, “Alrighty then”, she opens her book.

“What!? Are you telling me I’ve been explaining this shite for two hours. And he spits out some bull and somehow you understand it?”, Evan laments, though he’s smiling and bringing a hand to noogie Pandora in the head. 

“It’s just my immeasurable charm and intellectual capacity”, Barty said, crossing his legs on the table in front of him.

They’re interrupted by someone clearing their throat. 

The lot turn their head to find Remus and none other than Lily Evans standing there. 

“Um, hi! Can we sit here?”, Remus asks nervously.

Barty moves his legs down, “Of course mate, we don’t own the table.”

Remus sits there, giving a tight smile to Regulus.

Pandora makes a weird noise and turns a strange shade of pink, “Lily, hi, I’m Pandora! Come, come. I’m tired of these boys.”

“Oh, sure! What were you working on?”, Lily sits down next to Pandora. In the sit now vacant, thanks to Pandora pushing Evan out of the way. 

“Oh, just this Arithmacy homework”, Pandora sounds shy. 

“Oh, I love Arithmacy! I mean what is it if not storytelling using formulas and calculations rather than vague interpretation”, she’s talking animatedly.

“Oh, well. Can you help me? I don’t quite understand this part”

“But-we just”, Barty start, before Evan puts a hand on his mouth to stop him.

Oh, who’d have guessed.

Regulus had never seen Pandora act so- strange? No, that wasn’t the world, more like caught off-guard. 

Standing there, getting closer to Evans more and more under the pretence of looking at the paper, Pandora had never seemed less interested in Arithmacy, instead she was rapidly becoming entranced by Lily Evans. 

For someone who always looked like she was two steps ahead of everyone, Pandora sure looked like she had lost her footing. 

Chapter Text

The air smelled of straw and feathers, damp and sharp with owl droppings.

It was already time for his monthly letter to assure his father he was behaving like a true Black heir. Regulus folds his letter neatly, fingers stiff from the words he’d forced himself to write. Father, I remain diligent.

A laugh startles him—someone climbing the stairs. 

It’s Potter, of course; he never managed to escape him these days. 

Clumsy as ever, Potter had dropped his parchment on the floor. Regulus pretends he isn’t curious about the kind of things Potter writes when no one’s around.

Potter curses under his breath, scrambling after the parchment as it slids across the straw. His owl hoots indignantly and flaps to a higher perch.

“Graceful,” Regulus mutters, tightening the twine around his own letter.

“Jealous, Black?” Potter grins, brushing straw off his robes. “Some of us are born entertainers.”

Regulus rolls his eyes, but when he moves to let his owl take flight his gaze snags on the parchment still dangling from James’s hand. The script is untidy, sprawling across the page in hurried lines. Mama, Dad told me you’re feeling better, it begins.

James notices the glance; his grin faltering for a moment. “What? You think you’re the only one with parents worth writing to?”

Regulus stiffens, offended at the implication, though not for the reasons James assumes. “Worth,” he echoes, voice cool. “That depends on the parents.”

James frowns, shifting the letter to his other hand as though to shield it. Regulus turns away to avoid the confused look on his face.

“Oi, what’s this then?” James’s voice was far too close.

Regulus spins to see his own letter dangling from James’s hand, held high and out of reach like some schoolyard prize.

“Potter.” His tone is icy, dangerous. “Give that back.”

James smirks, already unfolding the parchment. “‘Father, I abstain from inquiring about your health, as I am positive it’s optimal—’” He breaks off with a laugh. “Merlin, Black, you sound like you swallowed a dictionary.”

Regulus’s chest feels hot and tight, fury mixing with something far more treacherous. He lunges for the paper, but James darted back, teasing. There was something humiliating about ‘Perfect Life Potter’ intruding in the mess that was his family.

“-‘I remain diligent,’” James read louder, his grin widening. “Do you sign off with ‘your obedient son’ too, or just a blood-stained thumbprint?”

“That is private.” Regulus’s voice cuts like a blade. His wand is in his hand before he’d even decided to draw it, tip pointed at James’s chest.

For once, Potter’s grin falters. He looks at the wand, then back at Regulus with an unreadable expression. Slowly he folds the letter and holds it out.

“Alright,” James says, softer now. “I was joking.”

Regulus snatches it back, smoothing the creased edge with trembling fingers. 

He hates that James had seen even that much. Hated it more that James’s eyes lingered not with triumph, but with something else. Pity, surely.

James shifts his weight, rubbing the back of his neck. “I write my mum every week. Dad too, when he remembers to check his post. They’d—well, they’d worry if I didn’t.”

Regulus clutches his letter tighter; the words on it felt suddenly heavier. “Good for you,” he muttered.

He wishes he could write to his mother.

James only smiles, small and strange. “It’s not— I just worry for them. Dad is quite old, and Mum’s not feeling well.”

Regulus freezes. “I’m sorry. I wish her well.”

James smiles lightly. “Thanks. I’ll tell her.”

“You won’t,” Regulus threatens, because politeness was a language he understood better than gratitude. “You’ll keep the sentiment to yourself or I’ll hex your tongue to the roof of your mouth.”

“Yeah, yeah, alright, beast boy,” James laughs, feeding his owl a treat. He hands the folded letter to her and pats her neck. “I’ll see you around, Regulus.”

“Let’s hope you don’t,” Regulus replies.

James’s shoulders shake with silent laughter. “Bye, Reggie.”

“Bye, Potter,” Regulus says, staring at the blank space left from his departure.

✰ ✰ ✰

Regulus had a problem. 

A rather big one.

He had made the decision to actually try to like people his first year of school. 

Consequently he now found himself arguing with aforementioned friends about a party, of all things. 

A party.   

“Oh, please Reggie”, Dorcas had to have broken some kind of talking-without-breathing record by now, “It’s the last week, we have to celebrate”

“You won’t have to put up with our bullshit for two months, this is the last thing”, Barty was inching closer and closer to where Regulus was sitting cross armed. 

And the thing was- they were right. 

Next week Regulus will be locked in his mansion, no chance of any chance of peace. 

And parties weren’t really Regulus’s thing, or at least he thought they weren’t, he’d never actually gone to one. 

“Please, Archie, you have to meet Marlene”

He was only going to be a teenager once in his life, right? 

Once Hogwarts finished he’d be forced to marry off to some witch and carry on the family business. 

And what could possibly go wrong? It was only a Slytherin party, after all. 

“Come on, Regulus, if I have to go so do you”

“Don’t be a coward, Reginald”

“Archie, do it for me, please” 

“Alright, alright”, Regulus finally exploded, “I’ll come, for an hour and then I’m leaving”. Two pairs of arms were suddenly thrown around his neck, he instinctively tensed, but he’d long learned to accept their physical touch so, soon, he melted in Dorcas and Pandora’s arms. 

“Alright, you numpties, that’s enough”, Barty said, pushing the girls away from, him before checking he was alright. 

“Now go to class, you’ll be late”, Regulus said grumpily. 

“You know you’ll regret that, right?”, Severus said from his spot in the shadows. 

“Maybe I’ll surprise you”, Regulus said, before starting to walk next to the older boy, “how come they never bother you anyway?”

“They’re scared I’ll curse their bollocks off”, Severus whispered. 

Regulus let out a laugh that sounded a bit too much like a bark. 

✰ ✰ ✰

That night he spent a bit too much time in front of the mirror, he was starting to look like Evan, who took 2 hours every morning to make sure that his hair was perfectly put. 

When he arrived, he immediately started contemplating every life decision he’d ever made. 

Apparently, the Gryffondors had somehow broken in, no doubt thanks to the Marauders. 

And the party was too loud, too warm, and too full of people pretending they liked each other more than they did. 

Regulus lingered at the edges, but he didn’t leave, because he didn’t want to see the smug look on Severus’s face. His cloak remained fastened as though it might shield him from the chaos. 

The enchanted gramophone rattled in the corner, Gryffindors shouted over the music, and bottles of firewhisky passed from hand to careless hand.

Someone, he was pretty sure a Ravenclay (which okay, you’re here too?) offered him a drink.

He refused with a tight shake of his head. 

Another (this one he recognised, that gentle smile could only be found on Longbottom’s face, which had no business being that hot, by the way) pushed a butterbeer toward him, grinning as if his refusal were a joke. 

Regulus ignored them both. 

Letting go, even a little, was not an option, not for him. 

He clung to control like it was oxygen. He could not risk any slip in his impenetrable mask.

Still—he surprised himself. 

There was something almost bearable about watching from a distance. Not the noise, not the mess, but the easy way others seemed to belong to each other. 

He hated it. He envied it. He could not look away.

He could not look away from Pandora who’s white hair was falling in rivulets her back, a contrast so stark with her skin and little black dress, it was almost unearthly. 

Couldn’t look away from the way she was moving to the music, enthralled by the red haired woman in front of her. 

Couldn’t look away as Barty obscenely danced around Evan, a show meant only for private eyes. 

Couldn’t look away from Dorcas spinning a blonde girl around and around, again and again, until they were both on the floor dizzy and drunk on happiness. 

A lazy grin was starting to grow on his face, and he embraced it, feeling the happiness vicariously through their movements.

And then he sees Potter, looking at him with a smile on his face, raising his arm to wave at him. He hadn’t seen him since the owlery incident.

And then he sees Sirius.

His laughter is too loud, eyes too bright, already stumbling with drink. 

His arm is slung across Potter’s shoulders like it had always belonged there. Regulus’s stomach turns cold and hot all at once.

Perfect Sirius. Beloved Sirius. Free Sirius.

Regulus’s feels the fury pressing sharp against his ribs. 

He should leave. He knows he should leave.

But his brother’s hand slides from James to Remus Lupin, fingers curling at his sleeve, and for whatever reason his feet are glued to the ground. 

Sirius is speaking now, quickly, sloppily, some drunken attempt at seriousness. 

He could see Remus’s expression tighten, slipping away from Sirius’s reach, from his clutches. 

Regulus almost doesn’t  notice where Remus went until he was standing right in front of him, too focused on the shattered expression on Sirius’s face.

“Sorry,” Remus mutters, as if intruding on Regulus’s corner were some great offence. His eyes dart back toward Sirius. “I just needed… out.”

Regulus stars, too startled to answer. He should sneer. He should send him away. He should yell, tell him how he was always the second choice, when Sirius wasn’t available or wasn’t wanted. 

Instead, he doesn’t say anything, and Remus continues: “I don’t want to speak to him when he’s like this.”

Regulus huffs something halfway to a laugh, but it sounds more bitter than he’d like. “When is he not like this?”

For a moment, they stand in silence, the noise of the party crashing around them. 

And in that moment, Regulus thinks, absurdly, dangerously, that Remus might understand. What it was to want Sirius and despise him at the same time. 

To miss him even as you wished him gone.

The familiar nausea resurfaced quickly, and he turned away quickly, muttering a quick Sorry before walking past dancing groups and crying girls to the nearest bathroom. 

His lunch and dinner were never big, but both were now emptied out in the common room bathroom. 

His hands found the small of his stomach, traced the evident bones protruding there. 

At Hogwarts he had the chance to gain some weight usually, before going back to the house that often meant meals denied and too much stress to keep the food down. 

But this year had proven to be just as stressful for him, so he was still suffering continuously from hunger pains. 

He laid down on the floor of the bathroom, wandlessly casting the door shut. 

He was too dizzy to stand up now. He’d just close his eyes for a bit, and wait for it all to pass. 

Severus finds him soon after. He had opened the door to find him there, still out of it. 

He took him by the hand and led him to his dormitory.

It was particularly annoying when Severus was right, because he wouldn’t tell you ‘ I told you so’.  Never.  He would just look at you with those knowing eyes that made Regulus want to hide behind his mothers skirt like he was 5 again.

But he was there, at least. He would endure the embarrassment, to have him near. 

✰ ✰ ✰

The dungeons reeked of old drink. 

Severus moved through them with his usual scowl, arms full of glass vials clinking together.

The morning had come, unfortunately for the drunk grumbling Slytherins.

Severus made quite the funny picture, going around his friends and forcing them to gulp the foul tasting potion, without making a fuss.

He handed one to Remus Lupin, once they made it to the corridors of the Great Hall. He downs it gratefully, before murmuring, voice rough “Thanks,”.

He hesitates, thumb rolling the empty vial. “He apologized.”

Severus raises a brow. “Black?”

Remus nodds. “I don’t know if he meant it. I don’t know what to make of it.”

It was a conversation between people who had been hurt gravely by Sirius’s action, but only one got an apology, probably ever will. 

Regulus, half-hidden in the archway, closes his eyes. 

His brother’s apologies were worthless—except, apparently, when they weren’t. 

Except when someone else got them. Then, he wanted nothing more. 

The laughter from last night still echoed in his head, too loud to ignore, too warm to belong to him.

✰ ✰ ✰

The end of the school year, came faster then he’d liked. 

The last day the castle buzzed with chatter. Students shrieked and laughed about going home for the holidays. Excitement hung in the air like static. Teary goodbyes were exchanged, promises to see each other. 

For Regulus and the others it was a much more somber moment.

Regulus had a chance with the others to meet with Remus before going, who had promised to write to them to organise something. 

Before leaving for the train, Regulus made sure to pull Severus aside. 

“Here, I brewed this, it’s concealed so it will look like normal water to him”, he says, handing Severus the numerous dittany vials. “Put them in this bag, there’s a new cloak and some muggle clothing”

“I don’t need this, I still have what you gave me last year”, Severus mutters, the embarrassment had vanished the forth or fifth time Regulus had done this. 

“Humour me, and I beg you, remember what we always say”, Regulus brings their heads together, so that their foreheads are pressed against each other’s. “If you call, I’ll come”

Severus only nods, voice low: “Always.”

The journey on the train was far too quick, passed organising ways to see each other. 

“We have that ball next week, so we’ll see each other”, Evan says

“Yes, and I’ll be at the gathering next month with my father”, Barty mentions. 

“We’ll have to see when our parents will leave this year, let’s hope they coincide so we can get together”

“Sev, sends us a letter when it’s safe to come, alright?” 

“I’ll visit as soon as I get back from my mother’s house”

Plans made, tears shed (mainly by Pandora), the journey came to an end at the station. 

One by one they embraced each other. There was some kind of urgency, of desperation in the way they clung to each other.

Severus was the last Regulus hugged, his face white and eyes wide with anticipation Before letting go, he takes the muggle money he’d procured and puts it into Severus’s cloak, before turning his head and whispering in his ear, a promise: Always. 

Stepping off the train he could see the students running to their families, rejoiced, happy. In the corner of his eyes, he was sure he could see Potter sniffing in the arms of a beautiful woman, who looked as young as his mother. He was sure he would see Sirius hugging Potter Sr, if he looked hard enough. He didn’t dare. 

One last smile to his friends, and he was off looking for his ride. 

There he was, standing rather impatiently, Kreacher had come to collect him. 

“Master Regulus!”, he yells

“Hello, Kreacher, I’ve missed you”, he kneels down to hug the House elf, before standing up and taking his arm. 

“Master didn’t, Master was with his friends, he didn’t think about old Kreacher”, he grumbled 

“You know that’s lie, Kreacher, you were my first friend”, he smiled gently. 

The House Elf continued to grunt about little Masted and his lying habits, before apparating him to the Manor. 

Grimmauld Place, as they used to call it, was as grim as ever. 

Severus had once told him that even in the darkest place, a promise could be a light. Regulus held that close as the door shut behind him, whispering to himself: 

“Always.”

Chapter Text

Regulus stands alone in the foyer, trunk in hand, and realises he’d been holding his breath since the door closed behind him.

From upstairs comes his father’s voice, sharp, measured, a blade drawn from a sheath.
“Regulus. My son. Come here.”

He straightens at once. The posture returns like muscle memory (spine rigid, chin lowered, breath shallow). 

He had been gone for months, but the house still knew how to mold him back into shape.

He was home.
And already, he wanted to leave.

His father appears at the top of the stairs, tall and formal, every inch of him an inheritance Regulus never asked for. 

His mother follows beside him, one trembling hand gripping the rail as though it were the only thing keeping her upright. She looks like she might crumble if she let go.

Regulus steps forward and bows his head in greeting.
“Father.”

“I trust you’ve been keeping up with your duties at Hogwarts,” his father says, a smile carved cruelly across his face.

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well. We shall speak more over dinner.”

A cold hand descends on his neck — not his shoulder, never his shoulder — a touch meant to remind him who owned him.

The moment the man steps out of the room, Regulus crosses to his mother.
“Mamà,” he whispers.

She falls into his arms as if she had been waiting for permission to collapse. All her weight, all her silence, pressed against him. The mask she wore in his father’s presence slid away, leaving behind only the ghost of the woman she’d once been.

“I’m here,” he murmurs. “It’s going to be alright.”

She doesn’t answer.
She hadn’t, not for a long time.

Some heartbreaks hollow the body as they break the soul. 

Sirius’s departure had done both. 

The wails of that night still haunted Regulus- because they had been unbearable, and because they had been the last sound she ever made.

“Everything is going to be okay”, he mumbled, carrying her weight to the kitchen. 

“Kreacher please make us some camomile”

Sitting there, his mother clinging onto him like a child, he resents Sirius more than he’d ever had. 

Sirius was probably laughing with his new family, unpacking luggage and gifts. 

He would not see the way their mother trembled, how her already thin figure had started to look sickly, the way her eyes were always moist with tears she couldn’t seem to shed. 

Sirius was supposed to take care of them.

Instead he was there, and Regulus was left here, piecing up the pieces he’d left in his wake. 

✰ ✰ ✰

“Regulus, tell me, what are they teaching you at Hogwarts these days about our world? About our kind?”, Orion asks while cutting into his steak.

“Mostly history, Father. Spells, potions. Professor Slughorn says I’ve a talent for brewing.”, he doesn’t mention how the other professors also praised him. His father wouldn’t be proud his Divination teacher thought him ‘gifted’. 

“History. Hmph. I wonder what sort of history they feed you there.”, the cruel smirk returned to his face, his teeth stained red with the wine he was drinking, it made him look lethal, “Do they still bother to mention that it was our blood that built the Ministry? That it’s our families who’ve kept the old magic alive?”

Regulus’s heart skips a beat. He could sense where the conversation was heading, he had somehow convinced himself his father wouldn’t participate in this musings, he was wrong. Never underestimate the pride of a Black. 

“No, they don’t talk about that much, no. Most professors teach that everyone’s the same, that blood doesn’t matter.”, he feigns innocence.

Orion’s responding laugh is cold, “Everyone’s the same? And tell me, does a Mudblood girl have the same power as a son of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black?”

“No, Father. Of course not.”, he agrees. 

They have more, if Dorcas Meadowes is anyone to go by, he wanted to argue.

“Good. I was beginning to think that school had softened you, like your brother”, he spits out the word, “There are wizards who remember what power truly means, Regulus. Wizards who see what’s coming, a reckoning.”

His mother had stopped eating, her cutlery hitting the plate with a sharp sound. 

Orion ignores her. 

So does Regulus, even if his heart cries out.

“What kind of reckoning, sir?”, he couldn’t believe he was having this conversation.

“The kind that restores order.”, Orion leans forward, a spark in his eye, “There is a man, boy, a very powerful man, who speaks of purity, of strength. He believes the world has forgotten what magic was meant to be.”

“Have I met him? What’s his name?”, his hands tightened around the fork.

“Not a name for careless tongues.”, he sneers, “But he gathers followers. Men of our stature, men of power, worthy of magic.” 

“Do you think he’s right, Father?”, he whispers, looking in Orion’s eyes.

Orion brings his fist down, making the table tremble, wine spilling out of the overfilled glasses. He leans in Regulus’s direction, “He’s the only one who is, you stupid boy. And soon enough you’ll meet him. A privilege you will surely not undermine”

He snaps his fingers and stood up. Kreacher appears, already bowing and cleaning everything that had been spilled. 

Before leaving the room his father looks at him, coldly. 

“Do not bring shame to our family, Regulus. You won’t live to see the consequence”

Regulus doesn’t move. Everything stays still, the air feels too stuffy to even breathe. 

“Kreacher, help your Mistress to her rooms”, he says before running off to the bathroom. 

He heaves into the sink until his stomach emptied. 

This time he welcomes the burn- anything to focus on besides his father’s words.

Of course he’d heard of the man terrorising Europe. Some called him the second coming of Grindelwald. The man who’d finally succeed in Gellert Grimdelwald’s task. A man even Dumbledore couldn’t stop. For a few years now rumours of his existence, of his acts had been fuel for muggleborn wizard’s nightmares

For fear of being the next victim to the men who called himself Voldemort. 

His father had instilled in him the pureblood supremacist ideas, but he’d never gone as far as to name him, or even meet him. 

Regulus had heard that he branded his followers with a symbol only his true disciples could earn. He’d heard his followers set fire to entire muggle villages, killing hundreds without any remorse. 

Death-eaters they were called. 

And they were becoming more and more. 

Hogwarts had been a neutral zone. 

It was easier there to imagine the world as distant, something learned from textbooks. Now, back home, it hit him like a cold shower: this was not just a band of monsters.

It was a belief spreading like wildfire. 

If he was not careful, he would be burned.

✰ ✰ ✰

That night he writes to his friends for some comfort. 

The first thing he does is write a short note to Severus, one he can easily hide. 

“Severus, I am thinking of you. I shall visit you once the time is right (not too long from now). I miss you dearly.” 

He knew Severus wouldn’t respond. Couldn’t. 

Tobias had forbidden every demonstration of magic in the house, but Severus would receive the letter when he went to the Evans Residence, and it would offer him some solace. That had to be enough for now. 

The next letter he writes is less sentimental.

“Dear Evan,” he writes 

“I trust you’ve been keeping well. 

The air feels different of late, doesn’t it? There are whispers everywhere, half-truths and shadows that refuse to settle. I wondered whether you’d caught wind of the same change.

It’s difficult to tell what’s real anymore, but I thought of you when I heard. You always had a way of knowing what lies beneath the silence.

Do write back soon. I find myself uneasy these days, and a familiar hand would be a comfort.

Sincerely,

Regulus” 

He sends the owl in the middle of the night and it comes back the morning after, he drinks his tea and deciphers Evan’s letter. 

“Dearest Regulus, 

Pandora and I are well, as I hope you are too.

Yes, I’ve heard. It seems the news travels faster than reason, some are already losing their heads over it. 

Panic has a way of peeling the veneer off even the most composed faces.

It feels unwise to trust ink with certain matters, so I’ll leave you with this. 

I look forward to your presence at the Rosier Ball next week, we shall have more opportunities to talk there.

Yours, 

Evan and Pandora”

It feels unwise to trust ink with certain matters?

Evan knows something, and he knows owls were not safe anymore to share the information. 

He’ll have to wait. 

✰ ✰ ✰

Orion is behaving more and more strangely.

He never fails to mention the importance of blood status during family meals.

He reiterates time and time again how important it is for Regulus to meet with the people that would ‘open the doors to the possibility of greatness, power”. 

It takes him a few days to understand he is talking about Death Eaters. 

He was going to invite them in their house.

Let them slither into his family and destroy what bit of sanity Regulus had left. 

Soon, it’s not an eventuality anymore. A date is set, where the men would be invited to a dinner at the Black House. 

The date comes sooner then he’d liked, and he finds himself stepping into his most elegant robes, slicking his hair back, but leaving some strands to cover his left eye. 

‘Cover that eye. Nobody wants to see your deformity at the table.’ his father had said. 

He straightened his cuffs, the silk whispering against his skin. 

Somewhere below, the fire snaps, hungry, waiting. 

He wonders if it knows what kind of men it would soon warm.

Chapter Text

Regulus thought it quite poetic that that night, it rains. 

The rain is not the angry loud kind, it is silent, eerie. 

The guest were starting to arrive, decorating the living room with their extravagant clothes. 

The first one to come is Bellatrix. She’s early, too early. 

As if to catch them off guard, still trying to push the skeletons into their closets. 

They greet her kindly, but Orion’s expression betrays his true feelings.

“Ah, Bellatrix,” Orion says, taking her hand as though she were royalty. 
“Lord Black,” she replies, lips curving like the edge of a blade, the usually egregious expression feels void of any semblance of respect. “It’s been too long since the House of Black held such company.”
“You’ll forgive the absence,” Orion says. “It takes time to gather only the worthy.”
Her eyes flash toward Regulus. “My dear cousin, you’ve grown into your name. Do you remember me?”
“Of course,” Regulus murmurs. “You used to set the drapes on fire to make Sirius laugh.”
Bellatrix laughs, delighted. “And he still doesn’t appreciate good art.”

“Rodolphus, come here”, she continued, “This is my husband, I’m sure you know”

“A pleasure.”, his voice is barely above a whisper, like he’s scared to say more.

Regulus doesn’t blame him, being married to that woman must be traumatising.

After that it’s Lord Nott. The whole room seems to freeze when he walks in. He’s sporting several markings on his arms and what’s visible of his neck. 

The Notts are descended from Viking stock and it shows.

Orion greets him like an old friend, but with a reverence Bellatrix hadn’t gotten. He’s a Lord after all, and much older then him. 

“Lord Nott, what a pleasure having you here”

“It is mine, dear friend”, the man looks like he doesn’t even know what the word means, it rolls in his mouth like venom, he spits it out maliciously. 

These people don’t like his father for some reason, he hopes he will find out tonight, that might be the only useful thing to come out of it. 

Mulciber Sr spots him first, looks at him with distrusting eyes that speak of all the things his son, in Regulus’s year, might have told him about Regulus. 

“What a luxurious place to be invited to, Lord Black, it is my pleasure”

The last to come, fashionably late, as if to show them he had better things to do, greater places to be, is Lucius Malfoy. He’s no Lord. He’s a few years older them him, he remembered him in his first years at Hogwarts. 

Yet age does not equate to maturity, as it is. 

He stands taller then any of the other man, his white long hair tied tightly with a green ribbon.

His wife, like all the others, stands beside him. 

Though she’s different. 

In her veins runs the Black blood, and as such she doesn’t lower her head, her hands aren’t clasped in front of her beautiful gown. 

No. 

She stands as tall as him, her arms draped over his, a mess of limbs. She only leaves his side to gently curtsy at his father and to come and greet Regulus. 

“Hello, cousin, it’s been so long”, she whispers and smiles gently. 

Her skin glows brighter than the other wives, her hair is down and free, while theirs is hidden is intricate hairstyles. 

People used to say that the only thing that Lucius Malfoy loved as much as money was his wife, Narcissa. 

He was beginning to think that maybe he loved her even more then them. 

“Lord Black, we’re gracious you invited us to your abode”, Lucius says, formal as always. 

“The pleasure is mine, young man”, Orion responds, “Now, if you’ll follow me to the dining room”

✰ ✰ ✰

The table is set perfectly, filled with plates of every food imaginable and every drink you might desire, lit by candlelight and the rays of the moon. 

Orion is sat at the head of the table, next to him Regulus and his wife. 

The other couples sit quietly, the only noise the dragging of the chair on the wooden floor by Bellatrix. 

“Oops”, she says, her eyes wide with insolence. 

“You’d think you were raised in a pigsty, not by our mother, dear sister”, Narcissa says. 

Bellatrix barks out a laugh, before pulling her husband to sit and taking her place. Ironically, in the other head of the table. 

At the start of the meal Orion raises his glass, it is a costume for the host to open the feats. 

But the others do not follow. 

They sip when they please, not when he commands.

For the first time in his life, Regulus sees his father look small.

From then, the conversation flows with dangerous ease- politics, “recent disturbances,” the Ministry’s “weakness.” 

His mother barely eats.

She never utters a word. 

“I hear,” says Nott, swirling his glass, “that the Ministry is considering protections for Muggle-borns. Imagine that, protection for impostors.”

Lucius Malfoy’s lips curve. “Protection from what, I wonder. Truth?”

Mulciber adds softly, “Or from people who finally remember what they are.”

Orion beams at that. Like a dog eager to get out. “Well said. The world forgets, but we do not. Purity is duty, blood remembers.”

Regulus’s fork pauses midair. He feels the weight of a dozen gazes, waiting to see if he’ll echo the sentiment.

The silence rings louder then any noise, until he sees his father look at him and then to his mother, as if to challenge him.

“Of course, Father,” he says finally. Because no pride will ever be worth his mother’s safety.

Bellatrix’s grin widens. “Then you’ll fit right in.”

No. No he won’t. 

As dessert is cleared, Orion rises for a toast. This time, he’s respected.

“To the preservation of what was given to us by right. To the old ways returning.”

Wine glows like blood. 

Bellatrix and Rodolphus exchange knowing looks. 

Then, Mulciber speaks, softly, reverently.

“He will be pleased, Orion. You raise your son well.”

The room stills.

Regulus blinks. He. 

Every eye turns toward him. Bellatrix’s smile sharpens.

“You’ll know soon enough,” she says. “You’ll see him, if you’re worthy. You’ll kneel before him, if you’re strong.”

Lucius adds, in his cool drawl, “And if you’re not—well. The world doesn’t remember the names of the unworthy.”

A low, amused murmur passes around the table. 

Regulus feels cold all over. 

He realizes this isn’t talk of ideology. 

This is a recruitment. A test. 

His father is offering him.

Like prey. 

Like a sacrifice.

His mother excuses himself, bowing low before hurrying out of the room. 

He takes his chance and follows her, “You’ll have to excuse me,” he says with a polite half-smile. “Ladies tire of these discussions…you understand. I will go see that she’s all right”.

He doesn’t make it to the bathroom this time. 

The nausea is too strong, he ends up vomiting everything in the hallway. 

He doesn’t realise he’s crying until a hand cradles his cheek. 

It’s Kreacher. He’s cleaned everything with a snap of his wrist.

“Kreacher will call Mistress. She’ll make it alright, Master Regulus”. 

He quickly disapparates and returns, he can hear his mother running to him. 

She doesn’t like to disapparate, it reminds her of scary things. He had never had the courage to ask what. 

When she reaches him, she takes him in his arm, just like she did when he was a kid. 

“I don’t want to Mama”, he’s whispering, not lucid anymore, “S’il te plaît, ne le laisse pas faire. Je ne veux pas, je t’en supplie. Je partirai, je te le jure”. 

His mother shushes him. Cradling him against her soft chest. 

And then she does something that makes him stop breathing. 

She starts humming a tune. 

Her beautiful voice. He’d missed it. 

The song is familiar, she used to sing it to them when they were kids.

The melody is older than any of them, the kind that sounds like home even when you don’t know the words.

He never knew what the lyrics meant, never knew why his mother knew that language. 

But she sings it with such passion, he melts into her arms.

They stay huddled together for a while, until the tears dry and the noise from the guests disappears. 

Only then does he leave her side and go to his room. 

He lays in bed and tries to remember what it felt like when his mother sang to him. 

Kahin door sitaaron pe

Chanda ke ishaaron pe

Palne ko tere jo

Pariyon ne jhulaaya re

Nindiya re

Somewhere far in the stars

On the moon's directions

To cradle you

Fairies have swung you

Sleep, my dear

✰ ✰ ✰

Sleep doesn’t come easy, he ends up waking in the middle of the night, and thinking of everything that had happened. 

He sits at his desk, ink trembling on the page. He can still hear the laughter echoing from last night, down the hall. 

He tries to write to Evan, then stops.
Instead, he dips his quill and writes a single line.

The fire has begun, and I think it means to eat us all.

He watches the ink spread like smoke through the paper, then burns the paper before it can dry.

He should speak to his friends, write to them and tell them what what happened. 

Instead, he thinks.

He remembers once, when they were little and still had the courage to ask their mother for stories before bed, long after their father had retired to his quarters, she’d told them that there was this spell so pure that few people actually managed to conjure it.

It was called the Patronus, and it worked only if you used the happiest memory you could think of. “And happiness is hard to come by around here,” she’d said.

“Could you show us, Mom?” Regulus asked, keeping his voice down—his father didn’t like it when he called her that.

“It’s a very difficult spell, my darling, I’m afraid I can’t,” and though her voice carried nothing but reason, he remembered her eyes starting to water. She hadn’t cried, not really, but something had shifted in her face.

Later, he would recall her saying, almost to herself, that she used to be able to conjure one when she was very young. “It was a lamb,” she had whispered. “It was small and foolish and brave, like you my little stars.”

Their father, on the rare occasions he ever spoke of such things, had once admitted—more as a warning than a confidence—that his Patronus had been a wolf. 

Regulus hadn’t understood it at the time, but as he got older, it began to make an unsettling kind of sense. 

A creature that hunted in silence, that demanded order and dominance. Fierce, proud, and solitary even in a pack—just like him.

And the lamb? The lamb didn’t stand a chance.

It would be years later, long after the stories had stopped and silence had settled into the corners of the house like dust, that Regulus began to understand what she hadn’t said.

That, maybe, the lamb had never been only a Patronus at all, but something else entirely—a fragment of who she used to be, before the wolf had found her.

Because the wolf always found the lamb.

And maybe that was why her voice trembled when she spoke of it, why her gaze drifted somewhere far away. 

Not because she’d lost the ability to produce it—but because, in the end, the wolf had devoured it.

Now, after all these years, Regulus was certain that if his father could still conjure a Patronus, if the darkness hadn’t long since overtook him, it would be a snake. 

Because, over time, the brutal force with which his father had ruled their household had twisted into something far weaker: slimy, serpentine manipulation. 

In his prime, his father had been a wolf—fierce, proud, and solitary—but that wolf had bowed to a man like no wolf ever would. 

No wolf would lower its head to a serpent like Voldemort. 

But his father had, willingly and without question, and in doing so, he had given up his strength. 

After Sirius left, what remained of his father’s authority was no longer a sharp, brutal force, but something insidious, something that slithered through every word, every command, every glance. 

He no longer ruled with the raw power of the wolf; he ruled with the subtlety of a snake—manipulative, poisonous, and dangerous in a far quieter way. 

And while a snake might still be a predator, there was something inherently weaker about it now. 

Unlike the wolf, which could hunt with physical might, the snake depended on its venom, its ability to crawl unnoticed and strike when least expected. 

There is a way to defeat a snake. 

A way that Regulus himself had used times and times again in his studies: lamb’s blood—something pure and vulnerable enough to neutralize its poison. 

And in this twisted metaphor, Regulus could see it clearly: the lamb was no longer his mother, but him, her damned son. 

The lamb’s blood had long since been spilled, and his father, once a proud and powerful predator, was now a venomous creature, weakened by the very thing that had once sustained him.

In his room, lit only by the crescent moon, Regulus plans. 

Chapter Text

The first lie he tells his father is small enough to go unnoticed.

He makes sure it’s well timed. Between a sigh and another, just after an exasperated suspire. 

“You don’t need to attend the Rosier ball, Father,” he says lightly over their breakfast, eyes fixed on the teapot instead of Orion’s face. “They’ll understand. You’ve hosted enough this season. I’ll tell them you had another event to attend.”

It sounds like deference, like a son protecting his father’s dignity, and Orion, preening under the illusion of importance, merely nods.

Regulus stirs his tea once, twice. He knows Evan will mention it later, in passing, make it sound like his father’s own idea.

By the time anyone notices, the lie will have grown roots.

✰ ✰ ✰

The Rosier estate glows like something alive.
Lanterns float above the grounds, their light bending through the fog and rain, turning the mist gold. The drive is lined with peacocks of silver flame, the air heavy with perfume and pride.

Regulus arrives alone, cloak pressed, expression unreadable. 

He hears the whispers as soon as he arrives. Voices wondering where Orion was, if his absence meant a stepping down was sooner than they’d thought.

He spots Evan before he’s meant to, leaning against a column, wine in hand, watching the crowd the way one watches a battlefield. Pandora is next to him, dressed in something she would never have worn, her beautiful hair tied neatly and tightly. 

She’s lost in thought, eyes low and head bowed.

“You’re late,” Evan murmurs when Regulus joins him.
“I had to convince my father he needn’t come,” Regulus replies, voice low.
Evan smiles, sharp, knowing. “Then I suppose we should find a quiet place to talk.”

Around them, the orchestra swells. The waltz begins. 

And the game, the one none of them name aloud, starts all over again.

And Regulus was becoming better and better at playing.

They slip away between dances, unnoticed. It isn’t difficult; the Rosiers’ home is a maze of mirrors and half-lit corridors, built for people who prefer to watch themselves rather than be seen. Much like the Black Manor.

Evan leads them to a smaller hall where a door opens with a whisper from Pandora, revealing a conservatory overrun by moonlight and dust. 

“They’re talking about him more openly now,”, Pandora says, now having dropped the ‘docile daughter’ act.

Regulus doesn’t ask who. He doesn’t need to.

“Malfoy’s son joined last month,” Pandora continues. “There was a ceremony, Father says. Bellatrix was there. Your cousin spoke of you.”

Regulus looks up sharply. “What did she say?”
“That you’d come around soon enough. That you were promised.”, Evan whispered. He’s slouched in the chair, the weight of feigning sociability clear in the hard line of his shoulder. 

For a moment, the silence hums louder than the orchestra outside.

“It’s my father’s doing,” Regulus says finally, voice barely more than a breath.

“Of course,” Pandora answers. “Fathers always mistake sons with sacrificial lambs.”

Evan flinches. 

A single raindrop strikes the glass overhead, then another. The rhythm of it reminds Regulus of his mother’s lullaby. 

“Do you believe in him?” Regulus asks. “The Dark Lord.”

Evan’s mouth curves downwards. “I believe in survival.”

Outside, the music swells again, and for a moment Regulus almost laughs.
Because that, he thinks, is the truest faith any of them have left.

“What are you going to do?”, Pandora asks. “Father would never make me join, lest I take his sons’s righteous place”, she rolls her eyes. 

“Evan can’t join. He can’t, it would be too high a risk with his-”, she’s halted by Evan. 

“Pandora. Don’t”

“We have to tell them now, there’s more at play now then your shame”, she replies. 

“Just- Let’s just do it at school, please. Father said I’ll have to join next summer. We have time.”

His what? 

Salazar help him and Evan’s mysterious act. 

“Alright, I’ll just forget you said anything”, Regulus mutters when he sees Evan becoming frantic, “Just, tell us when your ready…”

“Thank you, Reggie”, Evan has misty eyes, “We have to talk with the others, we have to find a way out of this mess.” 

Regulus doesn’t mention that he believes the only way out is through. That would be cruel. 

“I plan to visit Severus this weekend, I’ll mention this and see if he can find the way to meet us.”, he says instead. 

“I have to visit Barty too, tomorrow, I’ll tell him we have to talk”

“I’ll tell Dorcas, we’re having a girl’s night Friday!”, Pandora says. 

“Tell me, Panda, will a certain red-haired witch be there?”, Evan says smiling. 

“Oh, I’m sure she will be, have you seen her smile when she mentioned it?”, Regulus plays along. 

“Stop it, you two! There’s nothing wrong about making a friend”, Pandora blushes. 

“Oh, a friend? Is that what we call it now?”, Regulus jokes. 

Laughter fills the room. 

The sour mood evaporates. In its place, playful laughter.

They’ll have to go back soon, wear their masks diligently, play the parts they were born to fulfil. 

But, for now, they laugh.

And for a few moments they’re not teenagers at the edge of a war, they’re just kids laughing before the storm finds them. 

Convincing themselves the war hadn’t already chosen them.

✰ ✰ ✰

Spinner’s end gets quieter with the years, Regulus notices. As if the weight of the horrors it houses are too heavy for sound.

Regulus meets Severus under a Willow tree, right by the river. 

He’s wearing a shirt that’s too big for his thin frame, and is disintegrating at the seams. 

His jeans are too tight, and by the look of them, they must have belonged to his mother. 

His eyes are surrounded by greying bags. 

He doesn’t waste any time before embracing him.

“Reg”, Severus whispers, like he’s convincing himself of his presence. 

“Sev”, he answers, because any other word seems meaningless in the moment. 

They remain intertwined for a few minutes, or maybe hours.

When they part, Regulus doesn’t ask trivialities, he just looks at him disapprovingly. 

“I gave you better clothes than this, why aren’t you wearing them?”, he says 

playfully from where they lay in the grass. 

“Oh, they were awful. Thought I’d wear Mum’s old ones instead,” Severus replies sarcastically.

“Oh I didn’t miss that”, Regulus lies. 

“He hates when I wear new clothes, Reg. He makes me throw them away. I just gave them to Mum, she can wear them.”, he says after a bit of silence.

Merlin help Tobias Snape, because when Regulus gets the go ahead from Severus he will suffer for all he’s done. 

“Do you need more Dittany?”, he says instead. 

“No, he’s too busy this summer, he’s settled for insults for the most part. Lucky me”

“Are you eating well?”, Regulus continues with the set of questions he always asks when he goes to visit Severus during breaks. 

“Yes, Mr and Mrs Evans make the best food. They always bring some to us when they see his car missing.”, he smiles fondly when talking about the elderly couple. 

“That’s good, Sev.”, Regulus replies, wanting to thank that family profusely. 

“Listen, I met Evan the other day. We have a problem. Is there any way you can meet with us?”, Regulus continues. 

“What kind of problem, Regulus?”, Severus asks, raising an eyebrow. 

“Just answer, please” 

“I suppose , he will be at a work event this weekend, I could find a way to get to you”

Perfect. 

“Alright, I’ll owl Evans with the plan once I talk with the others”, Regulus says. 

“Now let’s not waste any more time on this, tell me: is there any new gossip?”

“Let’s see… Do you remember how last summer Mr. Crockovich was said to have cheated on his wife? Well, guess what- he did. With a man. From the pub choir, apparently.”, he begins, “Half the neighbourhood pretends they don’t know, but Mrs. Crockovich’s begonias have been mysteriously dying ever since. I think she kills them herself.”

“Oh no, not the begonias”, Regulus feigns horrified. 

“Oh yes, and The Evanses threw a garden party last month, proper muggle nonsense, all fairy lights and lemonade. But everyone went. Even Mrs. Dunn, who says she hates people. They have that effect, some type of kindness that makes everyone else look cruel. Mrs Crockovich got so drunk she confessed he always knew her husband was gay”

Regulus gasps, “Plot twist” 

“What’s funny is that there was no alcohol, Lily said, so she must had a flaks hidden somewhere”, he laughs, “Spinner’s End hasn’t changed a bit, the Dunns have yet to fight the rumour they’re vampires, Crockovich’s affair has gone operatic, and the Evanses keep trying to feed everyone within a five-house radius. It’s like a soap opera written by Brönte.”

Regulus lets out a belly laugh. 

“What about the Rosier ball? Any new pureblood indecency?”, Severus asks.

“Predictably yes, Pandora was forced to wear this awfully dreadful dress, she looked so uncomfortable, the poor thing.”, he starts, recounting the moments of the night. 

“Bellatrix was present, naturally, preening as though the entire estate belonged to her. She barely spared a glance for anyone but her reflection. Her husband didn’t speak a word the entire evening, I heard someone start the rumour he’s gone mute”

“Not that far from the truth, isn’t it?”, Severus chimes in. 

“No, I suppose not. Someone spilled red wine on a pureblood heiress’s dress. She spent fifteen minutes wailing, which inspired another heiress to faint dramatically. I kid you not, I heard her husband start to cast an Unforgivable on the poor servant who made the mistake”

Severus listens intently, and for the rest of the day, they recount every absurdity, savouring the details, treasuring moments destined to become memory.

✰ ✰ ✰

His father boasts, the next days, how everyone in the pureblood circle praised how good of a son he had raised. How fit for the title he was. 

The poor man, boasting about his own demise. 

His father was never a really smart, anyway. 

That night he gets a letter from the twins during dinner.

He excuses himself, and his father, ever so high on praise, lets him.

“Dear Regulus,

Barty is available this Sunday evening. 

Apparate to our house at your earliest convenience. 

See you then, Archie.

Love, 

Pandora and Evan” 

Outside, rain begins to fall again, steady as a heartbeat.

Regulus is tired of living by someone else’s design.

The war may have already claimed him, but he’ll decide how to play his part.

Somewhere between one breath and the next, the second lie takes root.