Chapter Text
Year 1: Codependence
Beta: TheDisreputableDog
June
“A Gryffindor,” Walburga Black whispered, her hands shaking with rage as she clutched a crumpled letter to her chest. “A Gryffindor!”
Regulus Black kept his eyes trained on his plate as his brother, Sirius, held very still next to him. They were sequestered in the dining room of their ancestral family home a scant breath after retrieving Sirius from the train station after his successful completion of his first year at Hogwarts.
Well… successful was apparently not the word their mother was thinking of when she had hissed at Sirius to hurry up at Platform 9¾, Regulus at her skirts trying to catch a glimpse of his older brother.
Sirius had carefully avoided coming home for the Yule holiday, citing a bad potion-resistant flu, but there was no escaping their mother now.
“You didn’t even have the nerve to say so yourself!” she sneered, slamming the parchment on the table. “I had to hear it from Bellatrix!”
“Bellatrix is a bootlicker,” Sirius muttered with all the bravado of a twelve year old. If the situation had been any different, Regulus would have laughed.
The familiar crack of a Stinging Hex made both brothers jump.
Sirius hissed in pain.
“Your cousin is going places!” their mother snarled. “She’s a proper Slytherin. Your aunt has informed me that they are in talks with the Lestranges for a betrothal contract. And what have you done this year, Sirius? Shamed us all! You have made a spectacle of yourself at every turn. As if it wasn’t enough to be sorted into Gryffindor–you’ve been consorting with mudbloods and filth–!”
Regulus didn’t know what made him say it; didn’t even realize he was going to say it. But suddenly, he opened his mouth and the words came out:
“I think he’s wonderful.”
Dead silence settled like dust. Even their father, Orion Black, who was watching the exchange with a disinterested sort of irritation, looked surprised.
Surprising their parents was a dangerous thing to do.
The sudden grip of Sirius’s hand in his under the table nearly made it worth it.
For a second, it almost was.
“What did you say, Regulus?” their mother asked darkly, standing slowly. Her gray eyes narrowed and there was an unhinged quality to her gaze.
Sirius’s nails dug into the back of his hand.
Regulus just shook his head, refusing to speak.
“Say it again, boy!”
He couldn’t.
He wouldn’t.
A long silence stretched out before them.
His heart pounded and his breath quickened.
Regulus had no idea how long it had truly been when their mother finally spoke again, but it felt like an eternity. The eleven year old boy stared hard at his plate, willing their mother to drop it; to dismiss him.
“If you won’t speak when spoken to, then you will not speak at all.”
When their mother raised her wand to curse him, Regulus was prepared for anything from a Stinging Hex to a Silencing Charm. What he was not prepared for was the searing pain in his mouth or the choking well of warm blood.
Agony.
Ripping, tearing pain.
He tried to scream, but he was drowning; drowning in hot blood running down the back of his throat and into his stomach and lungs. Regulus lurched forward, both hands on the table in front of him, and tried desperately to expel mouthfuls of bright red blood from his lips to avoid choking on it.
Beside him, Sirius launched to his feet, his chair tipping back with a bang. “Reggie!”
Even their father looked unwell. “Walburga…”
Regulus felt Sirius grip him tightly from behind, holding him close.
Something in his mouth was coming away. Regulus could feel it writhing like a worm, frantically trying to escape. With a watery gag, he coughed and spat in Sirius’s arms until a lump of meat came spilling onto the tabletop.
It was his tongue.
“YOU’RE CRAZY!” Sirius shouted, wide-eyed and flushed with all the impotent fury of a child. He clutched Regulus’s trembling body more tightly to him. “You’re out of your fucking mind!”
“Don’t you dare speak to me like that!” their mother hissed.
Meanwhile, Regulus was truly drowning. He’d had nightmares before about what it might be like—
dark cold water—
—but the reality of gasping for air and receiving only fluid was viscerally terrifying.
He was dying.
Around him, people were yelling.
“YOU’RE KILLING HIM!”
“KREACHER!”
“OPEN YOUR MOUTH, BOY!”
Distantly, Regulus could feel someone trying to cast a healing spell. The amputated remains where his tongue had been attached tingled briefly, but the flow of blood didn’t stop.
“LET GO OF HIM, SIRIUS!”
“NO! REGGIE, WAKE UP!”
A faint rattle emanated from his throat.
Regulus fell unconscious.
Sirius would later tell the tale with the hush of a horror story:
As head of the Black family, their grandfather had found out what had happened almost instantly. In every magical lineage document featuring the Black line all over the world, the name Regulus Arcturus Black had his year of birth–1961–scrawled elegantly under it. At the start of that awful dinner, the year of death remained blank. As he began to drown in his own blood, however, the faint outline of the current year began to trace itself into that space.
1972.
Regulus had already fallen unconscious in a pile of blood-stained dove-gray robes when their grandfather arrived through the fireplace. Sirius and their mother were still screaming at each other, the noise of it echoing off the walls. In the chaos of the moment, none of them noticed him, but Lord Arcturus Black hardly needed an introduction.
“SILENCE!”
Even their mother slammed her jaw shut.
Their grandfather was as steel-eyed as his niece and fine-boned as his son–an unnerving reminder that their parents were also second cousins. Taking in the scene around him, Lord Black pointed at Kreacher of all people.
Kreacher, who had been summoned to deliver healing potions, froze under his gaze.
“You. Explain.”
The ancient house-elf blinked his bulging blue eyes and twitched his large hairy ears. Unable to tell a lie to the head of house even if he wanted to, Kreacher immediately answered: “Mistress Black has cut out Young Master Regulus’s tongue.”
Their grandfather’s gaze shifted to Sirius, collapsed on the floor with his brother’s upper body clutched to his chest.
There was blood everywhere.
Regulus’s skin was colorless; lifeless.
Breathless.
Pulseless.
“Put him on his back.”
Scrambling to obey, Sirius did just that. He watched their grandfather raise his blackthorn wand and wordlessly flick it, transfiguring a wine glass into a large circular blob of rubber, which leapt onto Regulus’s chest to pulsate just over his heart. A second spell afterward didn’t have visible effects, but it made Regulus much cooler to the touch.
Raising his wand again, their grandfather flicked it towards Regulus’s unnervingly still form, then drew it back towards himself as though reeling in a fish. With each successive inch, Regulus’s mouth slowly opened. More blood drizzled onto Sirius’s already ruined robes where he held his head close.
In one flash of bad judgment, Sirius looked down past his brother’s red-stained teeth.
Merlin, he wished he hadn’t.
A bloody lump of meat sat shapelessly at the back of Regulus’s mouth. It drooled bubbly, wine-red fluid and occasionally quivered and twitched like the living thing it was.
Sirius turned his head to the side and vomited violently all over the floor.
Arcturus Black began his attempt to staunch the flow of blood. It wasn’t a quick process; the clock chimed seven times to announce the hour and then eight times an hour after that. Sirius clenched his fists tightly, smelling charred flesh as their grandfather finally decided on burning the wound closed. When it stopped gushing, another spell drew out what felt like buckets of partially-clotted blood that had filled Regulus’s lungs, which had stopped him from taking in air.
Still, he wasn’t breathing.
None of them dared to speak as Lord Black narrowed his eyes at his grandson. Raising his blackthorn wand again, he pointed it at Regulus.
“Crucio.”
Sirius jumped, preparing to intercept the unexpectedly cruel action. His intervention turned out to be unnecessary, however, because the dark curse touched Regulus for only three seconds before the boy’s eyes flew open with a weak cry and Arcturus immediately stopped.
“Reggie!” Sirius yanked his brother around to face him.
“Crucio!”
For one wild moment, Sirius thought his grandfather was going to curse Regulus again–but instead, screams erupted from the other side of the room.
Grandfather was cursing their mother.
“You really are the worst of our madness,” he told Walburga contemptuously, ignoring both her convulsions and the stiffening presence of his son. “A shrew and a harpy. The stupidity of it all. And what would you have done if I hadn’t come? I doubt you would have gone to St. Mungo’s.”
“Father…” Orion murmured, no doubt aware of the inordinate length of time his wife had been under the curse already.
“And you.” Arcturus sized him up with scorn, not letting up his wand. “Feeble. Mindless. Too spineless to stop your wife and too incompetent to fix her mistakes. Truly, what use do I have for you, Orion?” Finally he abandoned Walburga in order to fling a nasty Choking Hex at his son. On contact, their father’s eyes widened and he clutched his throat in panic as he tried to inhale with agonal rattles. “I will have order in this household, or I will gut this household like a fish. Do we understand each other?”
Their father nodded repeatedly, gasping abruptly as their grandfather suspended the hex.
For a moment, that was all there was:
Orion Black leaning heavily on the back of a chair, attempting to catch his breath.
Walburga Black huddled on the floor with her back against the wall, trembling finely.
Sirius Black sitting cross-legged with his little brother’s head in his lap, staring up at his grandfather.
And Regulus Black, slowly coming-to, covered in his own congealing blood, and keeping his lips tightly shut.
July
“Do you want the orange one?” Sirius asked, holding up robes done in a shocking tangerine.
Wrinkling his nose, Regulus shook his head.
Sirius laughed at him. “Well, how about the red?”
Regulus rolled his eyes and pointed at Sirius.
“For me?” His brother held up the maroon dress robes in front of his mirror, looking thoughtful. “Maybe,” he allowed. “Though I think anything that reminds mother of Gryffindor is a bit risky.”
Regulus’s hand reflexively went to his throat, swallowing.
It had been nearly a month since Walburga Black had cut off her son’s tongue and their grandfather had ordered her to fix it. In the time since, Regulus had refused to leave Sirius’s side. Mostly, he clutched a handful of Sirius’s robes and followed him around Grimmauld Place. Occasionally he would stray as far as the opposite side of a room to retrieve something, but quickly returned to the safety of his brother’s side.
This seemed to suit Sirius just fine. His older brother watched his movements with a hawklike focus when he was out of reach, drawing him nearer whenever they were in the threatening presence of their parents.
Even Walburga seemed startled at how close to death Regulus had been pushed. The Black family madness was closing in on her, that much was obvious, but even she recognized the severity of killing her own son.
Still, it hardly meant she was any nicer to either of them.
Their parents carried on as usual, deciding to pretend that nothing had ever happened. Refusing to acknowledge her actions, their mother still forced the brothers to attend meals at the same dining table where she’d carved her son’s tongue from his head. There was one glaring challenge in her campaign to ignore that horrible evening, however.
Regulus could no longer swallow.
Without his tongue, he sputtered and coughed on absolutely everything. In a terrible cycle, Walburga would demand that Regulus eat what was served, he would resist, she would hit him with Stinging Hexes until he did, and then he would choke on his food.
“Disgusting, sloven boor!” she would shriek as particles sprayed over the pressed linen tablecloth.
He had caught pneumonia twice already from foreign substances sliding into his lungs rather than his stomach and had lost fifteen pounds from illness and lack of nutrition. Kreacher had tearfully reported that he had been forbidden from bringing Regulus anything to eat outside the dining room, but with some negotiation on Sirius’s part, he and the elf had reasoned that nutrition potions weren’t eaten, but rather drunk, and therefore did not count.
“Did you take your milkshake?” Sirius asked, putting the maroon robes back on his closet rack.
Grimacing, Regulus shrugged.
“You need to do it before dinner, kid,” Sirius reprimanded. He pulled out a set of silver-white robes. “These would look good on you.”
Regulus shrugged again, reaching up into a cupboard charmed to be ever-cold. From it, he withdrew a chocolate nutrition potion from the supply Kreacher had secreted away for him. He poked a very long straw into the glass bottle, stuck the opposite end as far back into his mouth as he could, and began to take slow sips of the thick liquid.
A small pop announced Kreacher’s arrival to Sirius’s room.
“Mistress is informing Kreacher that Young Masters are to arrive in the dining room in five minutes,” the elf croaked.
Sirius scowled at him, shoving a plain dark gray robe over his head. “Bully for you. Bet you’re having the time of your life watching that harpy descend into madness. Fuck this family and fuck you.”
Regulus thought that was a bit unfair of him. Kreacher would no doubt face severe consequences if their parents found him sneaking nutrition potions to Regulus, but he did it anyway. Despite the consequences, despite Sirius’s blatant antagonism, he kept the supplement shakes stocked religiously.
If anyone other than Sirius loved him, it was Kreacher.
“Kreacher is proud to serve the House of Black,” came the rejoinder. “You is a nasty little boy!”
With a soundless sigh, Regulus put his potion down and gestured for them to stop arguing. His brother just pulled a face, picked up the silver robes from before, and began wrestling them onto Regulus. He was still small for his age but had gained back a few pounds of weight with the aid of Kreacher’s supplements. Regulus was a head shorter than Sirius, who was beginning to hit his growth spurt, with shocking silver eyes and hair made up of neat sets of loose black curls that brushed his jaw.
“There! Perfect!” Sirius proclaimed, ruffling his soft locks with a grin. “Let’s go.”
Taking his customary handful of Sirius’s robes, Regulus allowed himself to be led to the dining room. When they arrived, something made Sirius pause in the doorway, blocking his view.
“Ah, Sirius, Regulus. Come sit down.”
His brother didn’t move.
Confused, Regulus tugged slightly on Sirius. When that didn’t work, he leaned around his brother’s body to judge the situation for himself.
To his surprise, he found three unknown people already seated with their parents. The two adults–a blond man and a blonder woman–both resembled the young girl sitting between them. She couldn’t have been much older than the two brothers, but she was dressed as finely as any adult in glittering jewelry with clear stones that hung around her neck and from her ears. She had uncommonly bright sky eyes that trained on Sirius.
Anxious at the sight of strangers, Regulus dropped his grip on Sirius self-consciously but remained standing behind him. He hadn’t seen anyone outside the family since before… that night. What were their parents playing at? He couldn’t speak! He couldn’t even eat without humiliating himself!
Finally, Sirius moved forward.
“May I introduce my sons, Sirius and Regulus Black,” their father drawled from his seat at the head of the table. “And in turn, may they know Lord and Lady Fawley, and their daughter, Isadora.”
Unwilling to leave his brother’s side, Regulus had no choice but to follow Sirius to their usual seats near the center of the table, opposite Lady Fawley and her daughter. There was an odd look on Sirius’s face, like he was trying to work out what was going on too.
“Sirius Black,” Lord Fawley mused, accepting the glass of wine Kreacher produced. “You really do look like one. I’ve seen those eyes on half your cousins!” His scrutiny shifted to observe Regulus, who resisted the urge to turn away. “Hm. But I’ve never seen a shade of silver quite like that. It’s really very lovely.”
Startled, Regulus felt a slight flush creep up his cheeks at the sudden attention. Beside him, Sirius began to look agitated.
“What is this about, exactly?”
“Sirius,” their mother warned, “the Fawleys have been looking forward to meeting you for some time now. You will behave.”
Scowling slightly, Sirius brushed a strand of hair back behind his ear. Regulus saw the girl, Isadora, follow the movement with a strange blush.
“It is fortuitous that the two of you should be in the same year,” Lord Fawley said, blatantly ignoring the tension. “Have you met? Childhood friendships can make betrothals very pleasant.”
Betrothal.
Sirius stiffened beside him. It wasn’t surprising; not really. Sirius was the heir of their line and their parents were obsessed with continuing their pureblood legacy–preferably with another member of the Sacred 28. In the old families, it was never too early to start working on that.
“No,” Isadora answered when Sirius didn’t speak. “We haven’t met before, father.”
“Gryffindors and Slytherins don’t spend much time together,” Walburga said with a bite. She was clearly unhappy with the reminder that her son had failed to be placed in an acceptable house.
A tense silence fell.
“That’s an interesting fish you have there, Lady Black,” Lady Fawley said delicately, sensing the uncomfortable atmosphere. She carefully redirected the conversation by openly observing the center of the table.
“Yes, it is a… recent acquisition.”
Regulus hadn’t bothered looking closely, but now that she brought it up, he couldn’t help but glance down.
“Isadora is also quite the aquarist, aren’t you darling? Why don’t you tell us how your seahorse hatchlings are doing…?”
Amid a brand new beautiful centerpiece of summer flowers was a decorative jar filled with lightly glowing water. Swimming inside it was indeed the ugliest fish Regulus had ever seen. The haze of the potion and curve of the glass distorted it enough that it was difficult to truly view it all at once, but in glimpses, Regulus could see that it was purplish-pink, small but fleshy with no discernible fins or—
“Oh Merlin,” Sirius breathed.
He found that his brother was staring at the jar too. He looked suddenly ill; horrified.
Regulus jerked his eyes back to the jar just in time for the thing inside it to float by.
It was his tongue.
“Is something wrong?”
Regulus’s eyes rose a few inches to refocus on the girl opposite him.
Isadora frowned slightly. “You’re not very chatty, are you?”
Next to him, his brother was staring intensely at their mother, who met his eye unwaveringly. The message was very obvious.
Play nicely or else.
The dinner continued with that invisible ax hanging over them. The conversation turned to academics. Isadora boasted about her high transfiguration scores while Sirius, thoroughly shaken, began to grapple with the art of redirecting questions away from Regulus through sheer charm.
Sirius had a good head start. The straight fall of his dark hair seemed to captivate the preteen girl when he ran his fingers carelessly through it. He was witty to Lord Fawley and thoughtful to his wife. Regulus watched him practice variations of smiles, diligently searching for one that might keep anyone from seeking his brother out for conversation. His hand under the tablecloth gripping Regulus’s was the only indication that his interest in Isadora was false. Despite his flirtations, Regulus could sense the agitation lurking under his skin.
Sirius wanted to leave.
Now.
Ten minutes ago, even.
But what either of them wanted hardly mattered, so the betrothal dinner–the first of what was sure to be many–dragged on.
A few glasses of wine in, Lord Fawley turned his attention to Regulus once more. “When will you be betrothing your second son? Fawleys are known for their fascinating eye color, and as I said, those eyes of his are stunning. Very rare. I have a second daughter, three years younger than this one. I would be pleased to have such a feature run in my bloodline.”
As one, the entire table turned to observe Regulus.
He froze in horror.
“Is he shy?” Isadora asked when Regulus failed to speak.
“Just around beautiful girls,” Sirius said smoothly, siphoning attention off his brother yet again.
Isadora blushed pink, abandoning her question with a laugh. Sirius smiled at her with perfect teeth and a playful flash of his iron gray eyes.
“The Blacks typically betroth our heir before our spare,” their mother commented bluntly, surveying her second son with calculating eyes.
Out of sight, Regulus’s hand twisted more tightly with Sirius’s.
“Understood, understood,” Lady Fawley nodded. “He’s very pretty about the face. I hope he doesn’t grow out of that.”
Walburga only hummed in agreement.
“Does he have any Seer talent to him?” Lady Fawley asked, leaning forward. “I know the Blacks brought in some Ollivander blood back before that line went a bit funny. Their Seers had this same lovely eye color but I’ll be damned if every last one of them didn’t go blind by age twenty.”
Regulus felt the breath hitch in his lungs. He didn’t know or care one whit about divination, but he didn’t want to go blind.
Next to him, Sirius spoke after a carefully judged pause. “Would the adults like to talk in private? I’d like to show you around the gardens, Isadora.”
Lady Fawley looked only too pleased to hear this. “Twenty minutes only, Sirius. And stay just out there where we can see you.” She gestured to the series of massive glass windows lining the walls, providing a complete view of the flowering summer gardens outside.
“Regulus?” Sirius prompted, standing up. “C’mon.”
Out of habit, he glanced over at their mother, checking for an unstable reaction.
This time, it didn’t come. “Do what your brother says, Regulus.”
Relieved, he stood along with the other two children, feeling his brother’s hand slide away. Their parents were so pleased by Sirius’s unexpected cooperation that no one commented when Sirius and the girl went left towards the doors outside while Regulus went right towards the staircase.
Sirius had bought him a chance to escape and Regulus didn’t need to be told twice to take it.
Instead of following the path to his own room, he scurried into Sirius’s bed to await his return. Now that the panic of the moment had passed, the guilt of abandoning his brother made his stomach churn.
The minutes passed.
For want of anything else to do, Regulus began to fidget with the knick-knacks on his brother’s desk. A framed photo of the two of them together in the Black Castle library sat centerfold, both pre-Hogwarts age and looking on with interest at Regulus’s explorations. The photo version of Sirius lay sprawled on the carpeted floor while his brother sat primly on one end of the sofa they had both been posing on.
There were other photos nearby now, all of them depicting Sirius with his new Gryffindor classmates. In particular, the same three boys were a constant presence. They were smiling and laughing in the perpetuity of their photograph and Sirius looked so much… happier.
The thought swept fear through his stomach and Regulus immediately averted his eyes to look at something else.
Slightly hidden behind a frame containing the four Gryffindor boys linking arms and grinning at the camera was a small card-like box filled with paper tubes that smelled strange. He picked one up to look more closely at it, curious.
“Put it back, kid.”
Regulus jumped.
Sirius had returned. He yanked at his tie as he entered the room, kicking the door shut behind him and grinning at his brother.
Regulus pointed at the sticks with a questioning expression.
“Cigarettes,” Sirius answered easily, tossing himself on his bed.
Unsure what to do with the word, Regulus tilted his head.
“They’re like those pipes father smokes,” Sirius clarified. “The Muggles make them.”
Muggles? When did Sirius have time to speak to Muggles?
Sirius rolled his eyes at Regulus’s furrowed brow. “There are muggleborns at Hogwarts, Reggie. You knew that. Some of them are my friends. They aren’t actually different from normal witches and wizards at all.” He brightened up at that, jumping off his bed to walk to Regulus’s elbow to point out one of the people in the photos. “James and I actually found this section in the Hogwarts library that…”
Regulus listened with half an ear as Sirius began to regale him with the merits of James Bloody Potter. Potter had become a favorite topic of Sirius’s whenever the subject of Hogwarts came up. Even when Regulus wanted to discuss classes or quidditch, Sirius inevitably found a way to work a story about Potter in.
Each story made a well of dread rise in his throat.
“…and that’s why they keep the front gates locked at night now!” His brother smirked at him, chest puffed with pride.
Regulus had no idea what he was talking about. Still, he nodded supportively, perched on the side of his brother’s desk while Sirius yanked his dress robes over his head and dumped them unceremoniously on the floor.
Hesitantly, Regulus waved for Sirius’s attention before gesturing to his own eyes.
“You won’t go blind,” Sirius reassured him immediately. “You haven’t ever done anything remotely Seer-like. You couldn’t even guess where I hid your stuffed owl last year, and I even gave you a hint.”
Regulus worried at his bottom lip.
He pointed to his mouth.
“That old harpy has to fix it soon. She has to. Grandfather’s a mean bastard but he told her to fix it or else. She has to. I bet she does it before our trip to Diagon Alley.”
Their journey to Diagon Alley would refresh Sirius’s school supplies and allow Regulus to fill the list that had arrived on July 1st. Their parents had looked satisfied by its delivery but it had been Sirius alone who had congratulated him.
A small pop announced Kreacher’s arrival with tidings of bedtime.
Regulus went quietly.