Chapter Text
June, 1973 - Summer After Year 1: Grimmauld Place
By the time the sun sets on their first day back from Hogwarts, Regulus has two cracked ribs and a sprained wrist.
Sirius doesn’t get off as easily.
“I can’t stop the fucking bleeding,” Regulus whispers, heart catching in his throat. It’s dark in Sirius’s room; they can’t turn on the light without risking getting caught. He can hardly feel the pain of his own injuries underneath the panic.
“It’s alright,” Sirius whispers back. “Go back to your room, Reggie, I’ll be fine.”
“Fuck off,” Regulus replies. Then, “I wish I had my wand.”
“Mm. Me too. Would’ve loved to see the look on her face if I cursed her.”
Regulus keeps the bundle of cloth in his hand pressed against the sluggishly bleeding wound on Sirius’s abdomen. His hands are covered in red. He’ll have to figure out how to wash it off without being found out. God, it hurts to breathe.
“Reg. Go. If she catches you here—“
“I know. But if I leave, you bleed out.”
“Better me than both of us.”
“Shut up,” Regulus hisses.
For a terrifying minute, Sirius does, and Regulus wonders if he’s about to see his brother die.
(Twelve years old, watching someone’s life leave their body. This is what it is to be a Black.)
Then Sirius asks, “Is it still bleeding?”
Regulus checks; it is not. He deflates in relief and tries not to think about how one day they might not be so lucky.
September, 1972 - Year 1: The Great Hall
Regulus sits underneath the Sorting Hat, bracing himself for the whisper of wind that always precedes a foreign presence in his head. He’s no stranger to the feeling, but he isn’t yet immune—it sends a shudder down his spine.
Regulus Black, croons the Sorting Hat. What to do with you, hm?
Regulus stays silent, years of practice reminding him to be unimposing, even inside his own skull. It’s muscle memory: spine straight, head tilted up, jaw set.
Even so, a stray thought escapes, silvery like fraying thread. Keep me safe.
Safe, huh? Interesting. Safe from who?
He doesn’t understand the question.
Ah, the Sorting Hat says. I see. But that still leaves so many options. You would do well in Ravenclaw, if you so choose.
Somewhere, in the deep recesses of his mind, he starts building a wall.
Get out of my head.
Well, that would be no fun, the Sorting Hat tells him. No, Ravenclaw’s too tame for the likes of you. You’re a Black. What about—
Regulus throws up the wall. He envisions a drawbridge closing, protecting his mind, his thoughts, forcing out any foreign presences.
The hat splutters, and then resurfaces. Hmph. Well. You’re quite like your brother, aren’t you? With a reaction like that, I know just what to do with you.
And before Regulus can speak or think or do much of anything, really, the Sorting Hat shouts, GRYFFINDOR!
Oh, Regulus thinks.
The Great Hall is absolutely, completely silent for one dreadful moment. But then, like the sound of a ship’s hull cracking against rocks, the clapping starts. Regulus rises from the seat, just as regal as before, and walks over to Sirius, who scoots over wordlessly to make room on the bench.
“Reg,” he says, eyes wide, when Regulus is seated next to him. “Did you—“
“I didn’t,” Regulus tells him. It doesn’t matter how Sirius was going to finish the sentence, the answer would be the same; he didn’t ask the Sorting Hat to put him here, he didn’t mean for this to happen, he didn’t know how this day would go. He hasn’t done anything.
He is not brave.
July, 1975 - Summer After Year 3: Grimmauld Place
It’s almost funny, how they’ve switched places.
“You should go,” Regulus tells Sirius.
“I’m not fucking leaving you,” Sirius says. One of his eyes is swollen and bruised and he’s got a split lip and his hands are covered in blood. Most of it isn’t his own.
Regulus sighs. “Fine. You have to press harder, then. You won’t be able to stop the bleeding that gently.”
Sirius complies. “It’s slippery.”
“Yeah,” Regulus says.
“Why did you do that?” Sirius asks. “Why’d you fucking talk back, you know what she does to me when I talk back, why would you—“
“Sirius,” says Regulus. “Breathe.”
Sirius sucks in a ragged breath, more of a gasp for air than anything else.
“I dunno why I did it,” Regulus answers, once Sirius seems calmer. “Must be the Gryffindor in me.”
That was meant to be a joke, but it falls flat, and neither of them laugh. Even lions can be felled by snakes, given enough venom.
“Why do you talk back to her?” Regulus asks.
“I hate her,” Sirius replies immediately.
“That’s not an answer. You can hate silently.”
Sirius doesn’t respond.
“I don’t,” Regulus starts, “I don’t need your protection all the time.”
Sirius huffs and looks away.
“I know I did before,” Regulus tells him. “But I’m not nine years old anymore.”
“No, you’re fourteen and dying,” Sirius snaps.
Regulus nearly laughs. “You’re so overdramatic.” He lifts his head off the pillow, ignoring the sharp pain that movement sends through him. “Under my bed, there’s a loose floorboard. There’s a bag in there. Can you get it?”
Sirius frowns and makes no move to get up. “What’s in it?”
“Just some rubbish that’ll keep me from dying.” Regulus raises his eyebrows pointedly, and it jars Sirius into action.
After a couple minutes, Sirius emerges with the first aid kit, and Regulus rummages through it for what he needs.
“Reggie, I saw knives under that floorboard,” says Sirius.
“Don’t call me that. What about them?”
“Did you steal them from downstairs?”
Regulus shrugs.
“Why?”
“Less sharp objects for Mum to kill you with, I suppose.” He pulls out the small brown bottle he was looking for and opens the stopper.
“What’s that?” Sirius asks.
“Essence of dittany,” Regulus says, and then curses; his hands are shaking too badly. He passes the bottle to Sirius. “Pour three drops, would you?”
Sirius complies, and they watch as green smoke billows from the wound. “Where’d you get this?” he asks, gesturing to the bottle.
“Pomfrey,” Regulus replies.
“She gave it to you?”
“What do you think?”
Sirius flattens his eyebrows, unimpressed. “Stealing knives and now potions? You little klepto.”
Regulus doesn’t respond, preoccupied with smearing the blood off his abdomen to check on the wound. It’s closed, new skin grown over what had been gaping flesh. He flops his head back onto the pillow, exhausted. “There’s a blood replenishing potion in that bag, too. Can you get it?”
Sirius digs around until he emerges with the potion in hand, and he helps Regulus sit up to drink it. When he’s settled back on the bed, Sirius finally speaks. “When did you steal this stuff?”
“It’s—I didn’t steal it, not really. Pomfrey’s been teaching me healing.”
“Since when?”
“Since second year. After that summer.”
“Oh,” Sirius says.
“I think she knows I took this stuff, anyway. She keeps stock, y’know, and I’m the only one who would’ve had access.”
“And she didn’t say anything?”
“She asked if everything was alright. I said yes.”
Sirius frowns. “How did I not notice you getting healing lessons?”
“I didn’t want you to know,” Regulus says. “How many more questions are you going to ask?”
“Are you going to be okay?”
Regulus looks at him. “Yes,” he says. “I just need a nap. It won’t even scar.”
“Huh,” says Sirius. “That would’ve been nice two years ago.” He lifts up the corner of his shirt, where a thin silvery stripe marks the spot Mum had nailed him with the Cutting Curse. It’s faded, far less visceral than it had been the last time Regulus had seen it. But likely permanent.
“I’m sorry,” Regulus says, and means it.
“Don’t be,” Sirius tells him. “Moony’s got a matching one about right there, anyway. It’s like a friendship tattoo.”
“Well, now I feel left out,” Regulus drawls, fighting to keep his eyes open.
Sirius notices; his face softens. “Go to sleep, Reggie. I’ll keep watch.”
“Don’t call me that,” Regulus murmurs half-heartedly, and then he lets himself drift off.
May, 1976 - Year 4: Gryffindor Tower
“Reggie.“ A poke of his temple. “Reggie, c’mon, wake up.” Another nudge to the side of his head. “Reggie,” an incessant voice draws out in the most irritating tone known to man, “don’t make me tickle you.”
“Try it and I’ll hex your hand off faster than you can scream,” Regulus says into his pillow. “And don’t call me that.”
“Oh, good, you’re awake,” Sirius says. “Now get up.”
Regulus lifts his head up to look at Sirius. “What do you want?”
Sirius’s face lights up, a terrifyingly familiar grin on his face. It’s his up-to-no-good-and-nobody-can-stop-me expression. “We’re going to plant glitter bombs all over the castle,” he tells Regulus gleefully. “Wanna come with?”
Regulus would like nothing more than to wrap the pillow over his head and suffocate. “What time is it, Sirius?”
“Er,” Sirius says. “Late. Or early, depending on how you wanna look at it.”
“Go away.”
“Reggie,” Sirius says again. “Just picture the look on Snivellus’s face. It’d be like giving him the shower he desperately needs, but with glitter.”
Regulus reluctantly pries his eyes open again to see that Sirius has another look on his face now—the self-destructive kind. “I take it Remus has forgiven you?”
Sirius’s expression flickers. “We talked. Thank you for that, by the way.”
“Didn’t do it for you. I’m friends with him, too.”
Sirius lets out a heinous cooing noise. “Aw, my brother and my boyfriend, best friends.”
“Fuck off,” Regulus tells him. “If you pull another stunt like what you did with Snape, I’m disowning you.”
“Yes, yes, understood,” Sirius says. “Now, are you coming?”
“Is Remus?”
As expected, Sirius shakes his head. “Didn’t wanna wake him.”
Regulus sighs. “And do you really think he’d be okay with this?”
“I think,” says Sirius, “that this castle—and all its inhabitants—needs a little bit of cheer. A little sparkle, if you will.”
Regulus groans. “I hate you.”
“Does that mean you’re coming with?”
If only because James and Peter are chronic enablers, and without Remus, someone needs to keep Sirius in check.
Plus, well. It does sound a bit like fun.
“Alright,” he concedes. “I’m getting up.”
Sirius cheers in victory.
July, 1976 - Summer After Year 4: Grimmauld Place
The screaming wakes him up.
Later, Regulus won’t remember how they got out of the house. Later, the memories will blur together in his mind, faded in the haze of panic.
This is how they leave: their mother, collapsed on the ground in the foyer of 12 Grimmauld Place, having been too focused on torturing her eldest son to notice Regulus sneaking up behind her with a Stupefy on the tip of his tongue.
This is how they leave: Regulus, stumbling with his and Sirius’s combined weight, a dagger from underneath his bed clutched in one hand, two wands up the sleeve of his robes.
Later, he’ll realize he didn’t even use the damn knife. Later, he’ll regret this.
What Regulus will remember is sitting on the curb, waiting for the Knight Bus to arrive. What he’ll remember is the glazed-over, vacant look in Sirius’s eyes.
——
There’s blood all over his hands. Regulus traces it back to the source, takes a deep breath and holds it in his lungs until it starts to burn, and then a bit longer. This is what he has been preparing for, those hours of studying in the library, asking Pomfrey questions about memory loss while she looked at him with that expression, piles of parchment with scrawled notes on blood replenishing techniques and cartilage regrowth, all the while picturing Sirius’s bloodied face, mangled bones, gashes on his back.
Now, Sirius flinches under his palms as he mutters spells to mend the skin back together. It’s the first sign that he hasn’t retreated into craggy depths of insanity, and Regulus ignores the blurriness of his vision because now isn’t the time to be weak, this is what he has been preparing for and he will be brave. He will be. He has to.
——
The conductor asks where they’d like to go.
Regulus hesitates, because he hadn’t prepared for this, hadn’t really thought they’d get this far. He can’t stop thinking about how they’d just left out the front door. Can’t stop wondering how long Sirius had been screaming before Regulus heard.
“Prongs,” Sirius croaks from beside him, and it’s barely even intelligible, but it snaps Regulus back into the present.
Of course. “Potter Manor,” Regulus tells the conductor.
——
The wards recognize Sirius and let them get close enough to knock on the door. He hasn’t the faintest clue what time it is but the sky is pitch black and he prays that someone will hear.
He knocks harder.
The door swings open, and Fleamont Potter stares at them in shock from where he stands just past the threshold. “Regulus? Sirius? What are you—“
“We ran away,” Regulus explains as quickly as possible. “Please, Mr. Potter, there’s something wrong with Sirius, I dunno how to help him, I dunno what to do—“
Euphemia appears behind Fleamont and ushers them inside instantly. She sits them down by the fireplace and turns to her husband. “The wards, dear. We’ll need to strengthen them.”
He nods. “I’ll go see to it.”
“Mum?” comes a voice from the top of the stairs, and Regulus’s head snaps toward the noise. “What’s going on?”
“James,” Regulus calls. “It’s us.”
Footsteps thunder down the stairs instantly, and then James is there, in front of him, eyes flicking back and forth between him and Sirius. “What happened?”
Regulus looks at Sirius, who has curled in on himself in the armchair. How lucid is he? How long was he screaming?
“Reg,” James says impatiently.
Euphemia elbows her son in the side and conjures a tray of biscuits, placing it in front of Regulus. “James, would you mind putting on some tea?”
“But—“
“James.”
James huffs and leaves for the kitchen.
Euphemia turns to them. “You’re safe here, both of you. Monty is reinforcing our wards, and your family would have to go through both of us before they reached you.”
Don’t underestimate them, Regulus wants to warn her. Even he doesn’t know what they’re capable of.
Euphemia looks at Sirius, and then back at Regulus. “What happened tonight?” she asks gently.
“She,” Regulus starts, and then stops. “Our mother—she used the Cruciatus on him.” And some cutting curses, likely, but those weren’t new. Was the Cruciatus? How long—
The sound of a teacup shattering breaks the silence. James is pale, standing at the edge of the room. “Sorry,” he mutters shakily, bending down to start picking up the shards with his bare hands like the absolute idiot he is.
Euphemia quickly fixes the mess with a Reparo. Then she takes a deep breath. “You’re not going back there,” she tells Regulus.
He nods. The punishment for running away would be…severe. He doesn’t want to think about it.
James has walked closer again, and now stares at Sirius with fear written all over his face. “Is he—“
“I don’t know,” Regulus says, and he feels his words cleaving down the middle. “He‘s barely said a word.”
James looks at him. “How did you get out of there?”
Regulus swallows. “The screaming woke me up,” he says, staring at the patterned carpet below his feet as he sinks into the armchair beside Sirius. “I stole our wands from the drawer she keeps them in, and then stunned her. The Knight Bus brought us here. I don’t,” he pauses, swallows, “I don’t even know where Father was.”
Did he hear the screaming too? Did he care?
When he looks up from the floor, Euphemia looks positively murderous, and he instinctively shrinks back, even knowing her ire isn’t directed at him. But when she reaches over to pull him into a hug, he lets her. “Are you injured at all?” she asks.
He shakes his head. The only thing wrong with him is that if he shuts his eyes, he’s not sure he’ll be able to open them again.
Beside him, James kneels in front of Sirius. “Padfoot,” he says quietly.
Sirius inhales sharply, just once. “James,” he says, and Regulus feels his heart start beating again.
“You’re okay,” James soothes. “You’re not going back there, you’re safe.”
“Reggie,” Sirius says suddenly, jerking a bit. “Where—Where’s—?”
“I’m here,” Regulus says, reaching for Sirius’s hand. “Right here.”
Sirius settles back into the chair. His eyes still look terrifyingly distant, but it’s a vast improvement from before. James tends to have that effect on him.
Euphemia lays a hand on Regulus’s shoulder, and he jumps; he had forgotten she was there for a moment. “Come, dear,” she says. “We’ll get you two settled upstairs.”
He nods, and he and James help Sirius up, each of them slinging one of his arms around their shoulders. Euphemia holds open the door of a spare bedroom and they deposit Sirius on the bed.
“His arm is twitching,” James says suddenly, looking at his mum and Regulus in alarm.
“It’s normal,” Regulus says, crawling into the bed next to Sirius. “Spasms. The curse targets nerve endings. They’ll fade.”
James hardly looks reassured, but he nods sharply, shakily, and then drags over a chair from the corner of the room to plop down into.
“James—“
“I’m not leaving him, mum.”
Euphemia sighs and runs a hand over James’s hair; he leans into the touch, and Regulus tries to push down the wave of jealousy. “I know, sweetheart. I was going to ask if you wanted a blanket.”
“Oh,” says James. “Yes, please.”
Euphemia smiles slightly, and then walks over to the bed. She sweeps Sirius’s hair off his forehead and then leans over and does the same to Regulus. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she tells them.
When she returns with an armful of extra blankets, Fleamont is with her. “The wards are secure,” he tells them. “They won’t find you.”
Regulus tries to convince himself not to let his guard down, but he’s so goddamn tired these days, down to his bones. He wants to believe they’re safe so badly.
“Thank you,” Sirius whispers.
“Of course. You’re family,” Fleamont says. He looks at Regulus. “Both of you.”
Regulus purses his lips and pretends he doesn’t notice Sirius’s eyes watering.
“Would either of you like some Dreamless Sleep?” Euphemia asks. “I’d reckon today’s events warrant it.”
Sirius shakes his head. “We’ll be okay, thank you.”
“Alright,” Euphemia says. She hesitates, and then walks over to press yet another kiss to Sirius’s forehead. “Shout if you need anything. We’re just down the hall.”
Regulus nods and counts to five after they leave before transforming into his Animagus form. He curls up next to Sirius’s arm and presses his face into his ribs, inhales the scent of leather and icy fear. Regulus always did have a better sense of smell as a cat.
Sirius buries a hand in his fur.
“I would transform, too,” James says, “but I think I might break the bed.”
“Oh, you rascal,” Sirius says fondly. He seems far more aware now.
“How do you feel?” James asks him. “Really.”
“Like my body is still on fire,” Sirius says. Regulus pushes his head further into Sirius’s stomach.
“Do you want to transform into Padfoot?” James asks.
“Don’t think I can, right now. Too tired. Twitchy. Wanna sleep.”
“Okay,” James says. “Okay. Sleep. I’ll keep watch.”
Sirius does. Regulus follows.