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Chapter Text

Maybe it’s the first time he sees Snape, all lanky and greasy-haired and beetle-eyed. Something in the back of his head whispers potions master, useful and he shakes the boy’s hand, grinning at his Housemates’ looks of confusion and affront.

“Nice to meet you, Snape,” he pats the boy on the shoulder, ignoring the second year’s tension. “Maybe I’ll see you around.” He catches himself wondering why he’d do such a thing, especially within view of Bella and Cissy and Dromeda.

Maybe it’s the first time he sits down in Slughorn’s class and hears a whisper against the back of his neck, research project, sir...Horcruxes? He sits frozen still, traitorous heart beating like a rabbit’s in his chest, rapid and fluttering. Slughorn doesn’t notice beyond calling him out for being a Black and offering a seat at his Slug Club, one Regulus gracefully accepts. Doesn’t hurt to have connections, especially if he’s finally rounding out the family ranks and losing his mind.

Maybe it’s the first time he refuses to shake Bella’s hand. Maybe it’s the first time he stares her in the eyes and leans down to whisper in a mudblood’s ear about a project they’ve been assigned together rather than ignoring them entirely as he ought. Maybe it’s the first time he deflects one of the Gryffindors’ hexes into a wall rather than let it hit Snape, his new best friend.

Maybe it’s the first time he looks as Sirius and feels that same jagged he’s leaving me here alone he’s really doing it knew I couldn’t trust you everyone always lies fine go then (thought you loved me but you’re just like everyone else) . Maybe it’s the first time he slings his arm over Snape’s shoulders and ignores Sirius the way his brother ignored him after the Sorting Hat said that final shrill word, the nail in the coffin lid of their relationship. Isn’t it funny, something so small, so momentary, doing more damage than Walburga’s ever done? Sirius, brave, funny Sirius, ripped Regulus’ heart into more pieces than there are purebloods and yet, when Regulus ignores him in favor of his professed punching bag, Sirius actually looks betrayed? Regulus will remember the way he stopped in the corridor to watch Regulus walk away with Snape, ignoring his friends trying to move him along, for a long time.

Maybe it’s the first time he looks Lily Evans in the eyes and spits on her skirt. Maybe it’s the first time he hangs around after all the other pureblood boys have left and Potter’s friends aren’t restraining him anymore to tell her he didn’t spit on her because of her blood. He tells her, Snape standing not two feet away, heart in his eyes and mouth gaping, that he only spits on people who forget their real friends because their dorm mates tell them they’re so pretty, Lily and don’t you think Potter’s cute? You’d make such a handsome couple, don’t you know?

Maybe it’s the first time he lets Snape drag him away from a Slytherin fight, face flaming, words barely making it through the thorny wall of his teeth. Maybe it’s the first time he pins the gangly older boy against a cool stone wall to steal a kiss. Maybe it’s the first time Snape kisses him back and whispers I don’t need precious Heir Black defending me, brat and gets a fond laugh in response. Maybe it’s the first time he calls his favorite Potions enthusiast Severus from across the Slytherin common room, and flips Cissy off while loudly making out with his boyfriend when she finds them in the hallway.

Maybe it’s the first time Regulus waits outside the Gryffindor common room after dark, utterly still and silent, just to jinx Potter and Lupin’s legs together and push them down the stairs for messing with Severus. Maybe it’s the first time he meets Sirius’ eyes across the Great Hall at breakfast, surveys the empty spots at the bench for his big brother’s benefit, and winks. Maybe it’s the first time Walburga sends a dignified, cutting Howler and he sets it on fire before it even opens its hissing mouth.

Maybe it’s the first time he takes Severus out onto the lake with a picnic basket and the house elves’ word that they’ll talk the giant squid into giving Severus a few samples of its beak and skin. Maybe it’s the first time he has to pat a fire out on Severus’ sleeve from a potion mishap. Maybe it’s the first time he grins across the table at Evans and Potter at a Slug Club party and sneaks Sev a flask from under his robes.

(Maybe it’s the first time he screams himself hoarse under the Silencing Charm around his bed and wakes himself up with wet hands and drowning and dear god this is what being eaten alive feels like . Maybe it’s the first time someone grabs his shoulder too fast in front of a hall of people - grey they’re all grey don’t touch me I’ll burn the heart out of you if I could just reach my wand where have all my fingers gone? - and he responds with an over-enthusiastic Fireball Hex. Maybe it’s the first time he rants himself into voicelessness in the common room about what it’s like to feel helpless and at someone else’s mercy and if I EVER catch you with your hand down that boy’s trousers again without his permission I will turn your penis into a codfish Pleasant don’t try me .)

Maybe it’s the first time he goes home with Sev over the holidays instead of trying to navigate the turbulent sea that is Walburga’s temper and gleefully cracks Tobias over the head with a copy of the first-year Charms book and So Your Kid’s Not a Muggle! Maybe it’s the first time Evans came from down the street and across town to knock on Sev’s door and tell him she didn’t approve of his lifestyle choices and really, Sev? Sirius’s brother? You could do better, don’t you think, than a Slytherin? And Regulus sends her skidding back home with sparks falling from the seat of her pants and her hair snaking out of its ties. Maybe it’s the first time Sev cries in front of him and whispers but Lily, I’m a Slytherin.

(Maybe it’s the first time he tells that bitch McKinnon to keep her lying ass away from his brother if she knew what was good for her. Maybe it’s the first time she almost sits on Sirius’ lap in the Great Hall before flushing furiously and running from the room at the sight of Regulus’ darkly amused grin. So what if I ran, Eileen? He’s a Slytherin! Who knows what he’d do to me? )

Maybe it’s the first time Sirius looks at him and seems worried. Maybe it’s the first time Sirius corners him in a small section of hallway and wants to know who hurt you, Reggie? Who was it? I’ll rip them apart, you know I will, I heard what you did for that Hufflepuff boy, I’ll cut off their balls and he doesn’t have an answer that sounds sane so he mumbles something about being late of Astronomy and flinches out from under Sirius’ reaching hand. Maybe it’s the first time Sirius watches him walk away and something violent flickers in his eyes as he watches Sev receive his baby brother with a careful touch and a quiet, gentle voice.

Maybe it’s the first time Sirius tells Potter to stop, to leave Sev alone in a courtyard of their fellows all ready for a good laugh but there’s Regulus’s face again in Sirius’s mind, slack and hurt and held up only by Snape’s arm around his shoulders. There’s Reggie, twitching from any kind of touch but Snape’s and by god Sirius has discovered true hate and it’s not for Snape, it’s for whoever touched his little brother and left him ragged around the edges and strong to hide the internal screaming. Potter looks in Sirius’s eyes and recognizes a boundary and lowers Snape gently to the grassy courtyard floor and that night the Marauders help Sirius have a terrible, pitiful cry so that when they look at their friend’s baby brother and see how hurt he is they don’t have to hurt someone themselves.

Maybe it’s the first time Cissy, a seventh year queen of Slytherin, mentions Regulus’s disgraceful standards in front of Sirius, blood traitors and cattle, the lot of them, and I’ll have none of that in my House . Maybe it’s the first time he tugs her aside, allowed only because of the frantic look in his eyes, and tells her what he’s seen, what he’s deduced. Maybe it’s the first time she actually watches Regulus and his little halfblood pet together, how Regulus doesn’t relax around anyone else. Maybe it’s the first time she thinks back to Family Baby Regulus, happy to receive a hair-ruffling or wrestling match on the Manor’s grassy lawn. Maybe it’s the first time she writes Bella for details on the year Reggie spent without them, alone at home with absent Uncle Orion and toujours pur Aunt Walburga. Maybe it’s the first time she suspects something so despicable about her aunt and uncle that she can’t even think it in words.

(“Mother,” she says casually, demurely during her next meeting with her mother in Hogsmeade, “would you happen to know if Aunt Walburga or Uncle Orion received any particularly influential visitors during Sirius’s first year at Hogwarts? Only I saw him receiving a lot of letters from Regulus and thought perhaps something had happened…”

Deneb Black doesn’t respond, only watching her youngest daughter shrewdly for a moment.)

Maybe it’s the first time Sev’s dorm mates start coming back from holiday break with black tattoos winding like stains down their arms and Regulus can feel his hands shaking so hard he has to set his teacup down at breakfast. Maybe it’s the first time Cissy watches her baby cousin’s face pale dreadfully when that idiot Broadshaw mentioned the Dark Lord on their way up the stairs, or the way he clutched his arms around himself like a safety blanket. Maybe it’s the first time Regulus crawls into bed shuddering from dreams of join him, my son. Make us proud as your brother will not. Maybe it’s the first Sev doesn’t ask questions, just tugs Regulus closer and breathes against his hair softly.

(Maybe it’s the first time Deneb writes her sister-in-law and casually mentions didn’t you get a visit from that Bleakly wretch a few years ago? How dreadful. Anyone else? Perhaps more...interesting? And Walburga replies with an offhand comment, mistaking the time frame, damning herself with every word but deserving it, only our Lord, Deneb dear, and didn’t he seem appropriately interested in our family’s continuation! Very interested in our Regulus…

Maybe it’s the first time Deneb feels her throat close, remembering that handsome little boy the year Sirius first went away, so open and happy to see her one day and pale and cold the next. Maybe it’s the first time she thinks about the Dark Lord’s passion for blood purity, how highly he regards her own Bellatrix, so close and yet, so far away. When her husband finds her there, head in her hands, house elves fluttering nervously, she can only gasp. Dearest Walburga. What had she done ? )

Maybe it’s the first time Sev snipes at him, back in fifth year, about what the Gryffindor brats are doing out at all hours of the night and Regulus murmurs absently, “That Lupin’s a werewolf and the other three are animals,” and Sev stares at him like he’s been shocked out of words and Regulus turns the page in his book and tries not to hear the screaming god it’s awful make it stop they’re just children control your mongrel or I’ll be forced to make me Black you’re not tenth the man your brother is but it’s hard.

Maybe it’s the first time Sirius tries to tempt Sev into slipping under the Whomping Willow and following the tunnel and Sev looks deep into his eyes and sees some terrible fluttering panic that only rises when Regulus rounds the corner, storming eyes and thundering footsteps.

“I’m not like you, Black,” Sev growls, pushing past the boy he’s learned to avoid to catch the boy he’s learned to gravitate towards, whispering in his ear about that Transfig essay they still haven’t finished and steering them towards the library.

Maybe it’s the first time they’re home for the holidays together, the last one before Sirius runs, and Sirius is hissing about how he’ll never be the heir they want and he wishes they’d stop trying. How much he hates their parents. “Me too,” Regulus says, and when Sirius looks up, startled, Regulus is staring at a point of the wall, mind far away, nervous fingers tapping out staccato beats against his thigh. Sirius studies the minute tremor in them, the way Regulus’s eyes crease at the corners as though he’s in pain, and realizes something about that year he went away. ( How did this happen? He’d whispered hoarsely to the other three that night in Gryffindor tower, nerves strung out on the bedposts, heart bleeding out, and this moment, watching Regulus relive something from this house that haunts him, is what gives him the answer. He watches Regulus stiffen the moment Walburga enters the room, carelessly regal in her ignorance of the two of them, and how he slinks off to his own seat a calculated distance away, thinking to himself in that chillingly peaceful voice of the violently angry I’m going to kill them .)

Chapter Text

(“Regulus,” Sev murmurs one afternoon, as they sprawl in common room seats. The fire cries softly in the corner. Regulus blinks slowly, dazed by the dying light and cautious tone of Sev’s voice. “Why don’t you want to go home? Why always come home with me?” He pauses, adding, “Not that I mind! It’s only, it can’t possibly be what you’re used to?”

Regulus sighs dreamily, drowsing. It’s too bad, he thinks. He’d been dreaming, something rare and mysterious. “That’s exactly it, Sev,” he says.

Sev blinks.

“What,” he says, “It’s that it’s not what you’re used to?”

But Regulus is already asleep again, head lolling on his neck against Sev’s shoulder.)

Chapter Text

Maybe it’s the first time Deneb Black née Rosier ever really meets Walburga Black face to face and looks her in the eye. Maybe it’s the first time she thinks about throttling her. Her husband, Walburga’s younger brother, hasn’t said a word to her for a week after Deneb found out what she’d learned, what Walburga had freely told her. Walburga seemed to conceal what she’d done only out of circumstance and convenience, as though practically prostituting her youngest was cause for nothing more than a little gossip amongst the rabble!

Maybe it’s the first time Deneb confronts Walburga in her own home, their husbands looking on, Orion in mild uninterested confusion and Cygnus in quiet, solemn, devastating anger. His cousin’s marriage was allowed out of some small oversight but he has never understood it. Did the family imagine thin, contemplative Orion would curb Walburga’s more criminal tendencies? Did they imagine in their soft little heads that Walburga might bow more readily to a member of the blood?

He loses his temper only once, with a priceless antique vase shattered against a wall and a carefully sculpted silence as the other three watch him stand panting in the center of the room.

“Cygnus,” Walburga coaxes, and if she touches him with her dirty hands he’s going to do something he’ll really regret.

“Walburga,” he murmurs, cradling his hand to prevent the loss of more history. “Did you leave the Dark Lord alone with Regulus?” She looks puzzled.

She is thinking of all the moments she went to another room for a moment, leaving Regulus alone with the Dark Lord and his hero worship to refill her glass from the bottle without calling attention to it by summoning a house elf. She is thinking of the bathroom breaks, the moments taken to adjust tops to be more comfortable, the orders given to receive the Dark Lord whenever he might appear at the Black Manor. Orion, intrigued, is more awake than usual for this. In a rare flash of intuition he has seen the look in his cousin’s eyes, seen the danger, and guessed at the reason.

“Walburga?” He rasps, voice low in his throat.

“Well, of course,” Walburga giggles in her throat, looking around at them all. Her hand flutters to her neck almost anxiously. “Haven’t you all done the same? Regulus is so fond of our Lord, I simply couldn’t refuse!”

Deneb thinks she’s going to be sick. Cygnus’s face turns to porcelain, beautiful but so still or he’ll break. Orion seems to melt into his chair’s cushions, placid and drugged with grief.

And listening at the door, cheeks wet, eyes red and furious, Sirius shakes in place. I’m going to kill him.

Maybe it’s the first time Deneb Black arranges a tea party for all the noble women. Maybe it’s the first time her smile is made of sweet poison and vinegar as she spins a careful, hypothetical-of-course, cautionary tale about a young relative who trusted too much and was robbed of something precious. Maybe it’s the first time these young women, having received letters from Hogwarts about someone behaving oddly, stop to think of their own young male relatives.

Maybe it’s the first time Cissy pulls Lucius to the side at a Yule Ball and tells him that her aunt Walburga is being detained for child abuse and to stay out of her cousin Sirius’s way, as he’s been on the warpath since the decision was finalized. Maybe it's the first time she reminds him that to a Black, family comes before blood and he'd do well to remember it.

Maybe it’s the first time the rumor, spread thoroughly throughout the school now, reaches Sev’s ears and gives meaning to all those times Regulus crawled his way beneath Sev’s sheets for comfort and still woke them both up crying out and fighting his way out of bed with crazed eyes. Maybe it’s the first time he goes to sit by the lake just to meet up with Sirius and stare out into the water, overwhelmed and hurting for his love and unsure if anything he does will ever help with this.

“He can’t sleep without screaming,” he tells Sirius and Potter dully, watching the orange of the fading sun on the water and knowing Regulus will be looking for him soon. Sirius is laying back in the grass, one hand over his eyes. “He can’t stand the feeling of the sheets on his skin when he wakes, or feeling held down, or any of that. I just never realized why before.”

(“Mum practically sold him, James,” Sirius snarls into James’s shoulder the first night back like the wild animal he's becoming, fingers fisting in his best mate’s robes like he’s going to rip it apart. “You should have heard her, all confused and acting like it was normal. She just gave him away, and no one would have known. I never would have known .”)

Maybe it’s the first time Malfoy’s leftover cronies in seventh year can’t decide if they’re sorry for the younger Black or if they’re jealous. Maybe it’s the first time Regulus hexes someone’s fingers into a neat little bow in the showers for touching him after a friendly Quidditch game. Maybe it’s the first time Sirius finds out and McGonagall and Slughorn barely hold him back from murdering the sixth year who thought making someone a victim a second time would be easier than being creative and going for someone else. Maybe it’s the first time the sixth year ends up in the hospital wing anyway, puking up his guts with a permanent set of green polka dots, and Sev is winking across the Great Hall at Sirius and Potter and Lupin.

(Maybe it’s the first time Pettigrew isn’t looking, attention stuck on the way Eleanor Sylvester’s breasts have practically inflated since they left for winter holiday. Maybe it’s the first time Sirius notices.)

Maybe it’s the first time Regulus permits the Marauders to sit with him and Sev at the top of the astronomy tower under the moon. Maybe it’s the first time he falls asleep in Sev’s grasp, lulled by the heat of Sev’s body and the rocking of the breath escaping his boy’s lungs.

Maybe it’s the first time he terrifies them all by screaming awake until his throat is bloody, Sev grasping the sides of his face and murmuring to him near-silently, Sirius wanting to touch but knowing it’s not welcome. Maybe it’s the first time Potter pulls Sirius’s head into his neck and starts humming, trying to drown out Regulus’s coughing cries and Sev’s thin, stretched words.

Maybe it’s the first time Regulus graduates without having to see his mother calculating his worth from the Quidditch stands or his father staring in a stupor at the goalposts. Maybe it’s the first time he kisses Sev in front of everybody, all the pureblood lords and ladies and their scandalized children, cups the back of his boy’s neck in a few clever fingers and tugs on Sev’s robes until they are standing together with Sirius and Aunt Deneb and Uncle Cygnus, and Cissy is kissing Lucius imperially on the cheek and patting his bum. His face blooms majestically, that tinge of royal red as he checks that no one is watching and burns for her adoringly. Regulus gags to himself. He didn’t need to know how Cissy kept her pet husband whipped and bound in place.

Maybe it’s the first time Regulus decides to go home again for holiday and that home isn’t Sev’s. Maybe it’s the first time Sirius begs Reggie on the train, coaxing and soft and she’s not there anymore there’s no one it’s all gone come home I love you . He wonders when firebrand Sirius turned back to look at his small animal brother, when he tugged the latch off of that childhood cage to let the sunlight in for Regulus rather than himself.

(“Fine,” says Regulus, and watches that spark spin in Sirius’s eyes like stars exploding.)

Maybe it’s the first time Aunt Deneb sees him after finding out about all this, flicking eyelashes disguising the way she snatches glances at his thin arms, his thin legs, his baggy sleeves. Maybe it’s the first time Uncle Cygnus watches the minute tremors and the favoring of bruised ribs (Quidditch, but how easily it could be something more diabolical), the streaks of purple and fading yellow across his nephew’s knuckles from a stupid fourth year on the train.

“Welcome,” says Deneb, and Regulus’ black stray-cat eyes peer at her suspiciously.

“Yes,” he replies, angling himself closer to Sirius. He’s uncomfortable. The interior of the house may have changed, but it is far harder to change skins.

Maybe it’s the first time he sneaks out to run afoul of Diagon Alley and returns laden in secrets. Maybe it’s the first time he claims to have been in Diagon Alley but really went to a library to open a very specific book before holding his head in his hands. There was only one he lied he lied he said there was only one why would he lie why wouldn’t he lie I can’t go back there I won’t I’ll die.

Maybe it’s the first time he falls in love and realizes nothing is going to be the same at all. Maybe it’s the first time he sneaks into his love’s private potions-lab-slash-study to wrap thin arms around his waist and bury his face between his love’s shoulder blades like a prayer, like a request, like a need, and Sev stands there with his hands braced on the side of his desk and breathes deeply so he won’t cry or throw things or beg his boyfriend to let him into his head to cut the memory of that man out like a tumor.

Maybe it’s the first time he moves into a country manor with Sev, grass still green, windows all warded so hard they glitter in the daylight, Sev with a bit of soot smudged under his ear from a persnickety experiment, both of them grinning so hard their cheeks hurt. Maybe it’s the first time Sev rolls over in bed to lay framing his railroad body, long and stretched like taffy, to whisper his feelings into Regulus’s feathery hair like a blessing.

Maybe it’s the first time he presses a kiss into the side of Sev’s mouth at a family breakfast, acting like he isn’t affection is an affliction and it will get you killed kind of showing his hand there. Maybe it’s the first time he doesn’t need to say it.

Maybe it’s the first time he does. Sev sits in one of Regulus’s great-aunts’ favorite chairs, wing-backed and ridiculous, and stares into his eyes as he tells him about the soul pieces, how he knows of one but suspects more, how he has so many things trapped inside his head - don’t tell him about the memories, he’ll think you’re mad. We’re not mad. Shut your gob.

Maybe it’s the first time

Regulus

sees so much of his life pass

like fireflies

in the eyes of another, such small flashes of insurgence and brilliance, it’s dazzling , and

Severus

clutches his hands like he’s drowning, eyes so big in his head they seem like glass ornaments.

“My love,” says his love, “You know I need to tell your brother what you’ve told me, don’t you? He needs to know. They all need to know.” He doesn’t mind, isn’t that the whole reason he’d told Sev? The words needed to be said, but they were waiting for the right recipient, someone who’d go spread the word but then return; would understand why he couldn’t stand in a field somewhere across from something not human but grasping for whatever trailing threads it had left.

Maybe it’s the first time Sev tucks him into bed and must force himself to Charm Regulus to sleep (“ I won’t if you don’t, we both know it Sev, and I trust you more than I trust myself. ”) and climb into the fireplace calmly and come out the other end still and drawn, charcoal on parchment etching in the lines in his face, the soft sterile bloom of ink in his skin. Sirius, still hanging about the Potter house, is there to catch him and settle him into one of the armchairs they keep. Potter and Lily come puttering from one of the rooms, hurrying to his side.

“Regulus?” Sirius asks, eyes alert on Sev’s face. “Is he alright? There haven’t been any reported raids, and the clock’s hands haven’t moved…” Molly, good soul that she was, had been happy to put together a family clock for the Marauders. It included the Marauders, Lily, Regulus, Sev (by way of Regulus), and the Potter-Evans parents. Regulus’s hand hadn’t strayed from unwell since it was added, leading poor Molly to believe it was broken until Sirius had gently tugged her away and explained why his brother’s hand was correct.

“He’s,” Sev had to pause for air, to put his face in his hands. He couldn’t say this and look Sirius in the eye, knowing how badly it would hurt him. “The Dark Lord revealed something to him, sometime during their... acquaintance ,” Sirius’s face blanked before narrowing. His eyebrows drew together like thin thunderclouds; his mouth, so smart like Regulus’s, twisted into something aggressive. Sev finished desperately quickly. “Something that could destroy him forever.”

Lily frowned. “Why didn’t Reggie say anything earlier?”

“It seems he - blocked it. From his memory.”

“Oh.”

“He’s sleeping now, he couldn’t tell you himself and asked me not to leave him awake, but Lily, this could break the Dark Lord!”

“You’d better tell us, then.”

And he does.

Maybe it’s the first time Regulus watches a Horcrux destroy itself in a fiendfyre pyre and something in his heart steadies. His hand reaches for Sev’s and is quickly answered. Maybe it’s the first time Sirius sees his brother cry.

Maybe it’s the first time Sirius mentions Regulus engaging the Dark Lord in battle and watches his brother shudder himself to pieces in one of the Potters’ dark armchairs.

“I can’t,” he whispers, fingers pressing into his own skin, tearing at his forearm with savagery he hadn’t previously possessed, desperate to get rid of that tenacious blemish that haunted him even as he rejoiced in his own freedom from it. Sev is far in the kitchen, unaware of what Sirius has done, and he takes it upon himself to kneel in front of his little brother and pull his hands away from his skin gently. “I can’t, Sirius, I’ll freeze up, I’ll be useless, I can’t face him again it’s awful you don’t know what it’s like-” I’ll drown again I’ll be eaten he knows he knows he knows I dream about the ways he’ll kill me for what I’ve done don’t put me in his path again . They end up having to sedate him, Sev’s breath hot in his hair as he swallows the potion, and Sirius doesn’t mention it again.

Maybe it’s the first time Peter stops by as Regulus is sits in the foyer with Sev and his skin crawls. Maybe it’s the first time he watches his brother’s friend like a snake ought to watch a rat. Maybe it’s the first time Potter discusses a safe house, a Fidelius Charm, and when Peter attempts to volunteer for secret-keeper Regulus immediately vetoes it.

Maybe it’s the first time Lily finds out she’s pregnant and tells Regulus before she tells James or Sirius. Maybe it’s the first time he spends the night, his head resting on her belly, knees to the floor and hands braced in the spokes of her rocking chair, just listening to the life inside her. Maybe it’s the first time Lily suggests him as secret-keeper and he glances up from where he’s tracing runes into Sev’s palm, interested.

Maybe it’s the first time he trips Peter in the kitchen in front of everybody just to push his sleeve up with his wand only to let go of it quickly enough at the sight of that charcoal stain trailing up his arm like some infection. Sev flooes them back to their country manor before he can see more than Sirius’s rapidly darkening face.

(“How did you know?” Sev asks a sleepy Regulus later in bed, watching his love trace scars across his abdomen and track spectres on the walls. Regulus shrugs.

“He smelled like a rat,” he says, yawning, and doesn’t clarify because what else needs to be said?)

Maybe it’s the first time Dumbledore faces Voldemort in battle and doesn’t falter. Maybe it’s the first time someone burns Nagini and she screams with a man’s dying voice. Maybe it’s the first time someone attempts lopping Voldemort’s head off and he dies, because all his tethers to immortality have been severed and he is a wraith living on dying embers, fading and falling to pieces without anything to hold him together.

Maybe it’s the first time someone takes up the call that the war has ended, that the Dark Lord is dead. Sev apparates straight to Regulus’s side to tell him the news; Cissy kisses a returning Lucius on the cheek after he lays down his white mask and grey robes; Bella, torn between family loyalty and some demented affection for the Dark Lord, shivers in place with her husband’s finger bones cracking in hers; Cygnus reads it in the morning paper and kisses Deneb on the mouth with a laugh.

It only takes a few days before Sev’s kneeling down in front of their friends and family with a goblin-forged ring in hand and Regulus can’t breathe. Lily gives birth, and besides the happy new parents Regulus is the first to hold the little boy, to kiss his forehead and marvel at stubby little clutching fingers on his.

Maybe it’s the first time Regulus gets a happily-ever-after.

Chapter Text

It has been seven years since the end of the war. Potter and Lily are still married; Harry is turning seven this year and is horribly spoilt. Sirius is still overdramatic at any occasion he can manage and most he can’t, but has grown a quiet, introspective side in the years he’s spent by his brother’s side. Sev and Regulus have been married six years now, in the fall at a park so that Sev could gather ingredients at the end and Regulus could build sculptures in the leaves and leave messages in the mud. Regulus’s hands don’t shake. Sev has never taken the Dark Mark, and never will. Pettigrew took it; no one has seen him since the end of the war, seeing as he currently resides in Azkaban and they’ve all had their fill of his jealous shouting and whining. Lupin has finally fallen off the wagon and gotten engaged to a girl who can look like anything she likes and is a successful Auror, which is more than any of them have accomplished.

Sev is a potions master renowned the world over; Sirius helps out at Zonko’s sometimes and spends the rest of his time as teaching assistant to the new History of Magic professor, Professor James Potter, who discovered his passion after learning from anyone but Binns (“that old cog,” Sirius growled, “This stuff’s bloody fascinating and we’ve gone over the same wars about four times! Outrageous!”). They’re not allowed to kiss in front of the students but they do anyway, little chaste brushes of the mouth on cheeks and foreheads. Potter jokes that he’s discovered an excellent cheap way to shut Sirius up, much to Sirius’s grumbling.

Lily wards buildings and houses, lays protective charms in bedrooms, touches up centuries-old guardian spells. She’s good at it, and when she has to leave for work she puts Harry in the capable hands of his Uncle Regulus, a writer by hobby but mainly a kept man, living off Sev and his (quite hefty) half of the Black inheritance.

Cissy is still a social queen. Lucius had participated in only the bare minimum of the Dark Lord’s plans due to pressure from Cissy, who had been informed of the man’s imminent demise through Regulus, who seemed dimly aware of her husband’s activities but only blinked, doe-eyed, whenever she mentioned it offhand. Sirius betrayed wild fury at the idea that anyone might serve his brother’s tormentor out of their own free will and only the sight of Lucius’s weary, wounded form after a meeting bade the fury release him. Lucius, now, held the position of a barrister and was quite good at it.

--

Lily wakes up in a bed full of tangled limbs and pushes James into Sirius; they curl together, James’s arms wrapping Sirius’s bony chest, legs slipping between the other’s, James’s face nuzzling into Sirius’s wiry neck. She smiles at them as she dresses in something more appropriate than a slip before she pads down the stairs to the kitchen. She’s slept later than she thought: the sun peeks in through the windows like a nosy neighbor, Mifty is collecting used plates and silverware from the table with absent flicks of short green-grey fingers, and the lamps in the reading room have been lit. She nods to Mifty as she passes and smiles softly at the seen she spies in the reading room.

Regulus is curled up, knees bent, feet on the torrid upholstery James’s grandmother had adored but his mother detested: floral patterns with dull, muted colors like an ancient wallpaper. Regulus is hunched like some strange bird in the seat, coat puddling around him, a book in one hand while the other is tucked up against his belly. He is staring down at Harry, sitting cross-legged on the floor and clearly questioning something, she can’t hear clearly over Mifty’s clatter of dishes. Regulus’s head tilts as he considers the question deeply (as he considers everything, she thinks fondly) until he finally answers, black eyes as wide as those of an animal.

She turns back to the kitchen. Mifty has been joined by Lily’s husbands and is glaring at them from the corner of her eyes.

“Mifty,” Lily grins, stepping further into the kitchen. “Could we perhaps beg plates of breakfast off of you?” James is groaning, glasses askew from rubbing at his face, while Sirius simply puts his head down on the table and slumps into sleep again. Mifty sniffs.

“There would have been plenty for Mistress earlier, if she hadn’t been laying about with the Masters like hooligans and left poor Mister Regulus to watch the Young Master,” she says impetuously. James clutches his hands together.

“The layabouts are hungry, Mifty,” he beseeches. “Pray have mercy on a poor, tired beggar such as myself.” Lily laughs behind her hand; a plate has appeared in front of her and she doesn’t want to jinx herself. Sirius snorts awake and turns betrayed eyes on James, who pretends not to see it. Lily can see the smile fighting for expression in the sides of his mouth, valiantly kept in check as he gazes soulfully at Mifty. The old elf preens like a courted queen.

“Et tu, Potter?” He grumps, but consents to raising his own clasped hands to beg. Mifty takes pity on them, allowing plates of pancakes and sausage and toast to shudder into being at their settings.

--

Regulus feels as though the time has been escaping him and yet trickling by. Harry was only seven a moment ago, though that seemed to last forever (the boy had some strange affection for the concept of birds and asked so many questions at once Regulus had to spend entire afternoons at the Potter home, feet carefully off the grey rugs, peering down at him from library ladders and grandmother chairs feeling like a bird himself until Sev would come to rescue him). Now he’s eleven, and Regulus is watching him board a train and wave out a window. James is wiping Sirius’s face of tears (Sirius keeps pushing his hand away, whispering to himself, “these are manly tears, just ride them out,” until Lily, next to them both, has a stitch in her side from laughing) and Harry allowed Regulus one kiss on his forehead, like when he was a baby, before hugging him carefully and pulling away. Regulus will miss his boy, he thinks, even if they only had eleven years of childhood before Harry started to grow up.

“He’ll be alright, I think,” he said to Sev, arms linked together so that Regulus can’t wander off to examine the many different children at the station today or touch the plants in the center aisles to make sure they’re all real. Sev smiles at him, a momentary sunrise before it’s gone like it was never there, but Regulus knows Sev by now, knows the gift his smile is and how he doesn’t like people undeserving of it to see it. Regulus knows he is among the few Sev deigns to trust with his glass heart, and is glad of it.

Harry peers out the train’s window to call out to him, and wave excitedly at him, and he thinks if he really concentrates - if he really expands his imagination until it’s the bear trap it once was, with claws that catch and teeth that bite - he can maybe see the boy from his dreams, downtrodden and escaping something only to realize there’s no peace no matter where he runs. It’s hard, and he doesn’t like to do it (the dreams still make him cry at night and that makes Sev sad) but he can if he wants to. His Harry has very little in common with that boy, only that they are both going somewhere wonderful that will feel like home and contain so many fantastic adventures that they will never be bored. He can feel that in his heart and it soothes whatever wilderness is left inside of him.

He turns, birdlike and fluttering in the cage of Sev’s arms, and presses something too light to be a kiss to his husband’s cheek. Sev smiles again, just for a second, still watching Harry flail about on the train.

“I’d like pasta tonight,” he tells Sev, “perhaps with meat sauce, and lots of garlic.”

“Very well,” says Sev, letting Regulus tuck his head up close to Sev’s shoulder and breathe in the scent of smoke and vanilla, the closest thing to home he knows, and they stand together for a while until Regulus is ready to go home. Then, with a quiet, soft sound akin to a sigh (though it’s impossible to determine which of them could have made such a sound), there is a slight displacement of air as they disappear into the late afternoon’s dying light.

Chapter Text

Regulus sits up at the head table for the meals, quiet and self-contained, and occasionally points out students of interest to him (Severus makes mental notes on all of these students, determined to seek them out later and resolve whatever makes the similarities so relevant to Regulus). He is never a disruption, never seems too loudly interested in himself, never attempts to provoke others into conversation when they’re clearly not interested in anything but their meal, unlike some, but Severus has fielded many questions from the more specialized staff as to why he is allowed to sit at the “professor table.” Severus’s main retort is a solemn and direct glance in the direction of such prime exhibits of those three examples as Professor Gilderoy Lockhart. They usually blush and retreat at that point.

It has been two years since Severus (and by extension, Regulus) joined Hogwarts staff and by this point Trelawney’s presence is merely a formality; Regulus conducts informal divination lessons by the lake, promoting meditation and psychology as methods of understanding one’s self and one’s environment to better predict the world around you, and has taken to cornering students in empty hallways to invite them to discuss their problems with him, usually leading to a dazed student wandering away feeling a little bit broken but also a bit stronger for having their world view cracked like an eggshell. The complaints have mostly trickled away by now and it’s gotten to the point where Severus can pretty much glare them into submission if Regulus hasn’t already swooped in and charmed them by being himself up close.

Severus has been keeping a list of Regulus’s Fan Club members and is pleased that they seem to have a more solid devotional footing than Lockhart’s ridiculous pastel lavender farce does. So far it consists heavily of older Slytherins following his husband like protective armed ducklings, Longbottom (self-esteem heavily damaged by his grandmother’s degrading remarks/the careless disregard by his great-aunts and -uncles), Granger (a case of the Lonely Bookworm Syndrome), the Weasley twins (chronic troublemakers who seem delighted to have some attention that doesn’t stem from being Weasleys or being punished), and the Lovegood girl (well-meaning neglect, unfortunately).

Regulus pops in to observe the Potions classes sometimes, like a fluffy therapy animal. He likes to hide from Severus, under desks or behind wall hangings, as though Severus can’t see the tufts of escaping black hair or smudged black shoes, and he whispers loud enough to carry.

“You’re doing fine, Neville,” he’ll say, or “watch that valerian root, young man” to Crabbe, who scrambles to drop only the exact measurement into the cauldron. Once he whispers a brisk “do your own work” to a Ravenclaw, who flushes and turns away from the girl he’d been blabbing at instead of working. Severus has never once heard him say an unkind word to a student, excepting the time he told a Lockhart fanatic her crazy was showing, and even then the Slytherin girl got more ridicule from her own House for making Regulus sad. (For a week after that Regulus wore knitted sweaters featuring the words ‘i’m sorry,’ ‘you can do it,’ and a bizarre collage of cats hanging off of wires. Molly Weasley looked very proud of herself and thought the kittens were very cute.)

The year passed quickly. Severus didn’t mind as much as he thought he would; Regulus was there to slow things down again.

In the spring Regulus offered to sit in on Trelawney’s lessons after being beset by upset students. He managed an hour of staring into a dirty teacup before he snapped, offered Trelawney some of his best stolen whiskey, and mounted a lesson on visions and why some people have the gift and some (he glanced at the inebriated woman against the wall) attempted to induce such visions with incense, alcohol, and hallucinogens. The lesson lasted until someone (Severus) noticed none of them had made it to dinner and went looking. Regulus unofficially became the new Divinations professor with all the students one hundred percent convinced he saw the future, and Trelawney was none the wiser.

Near the end of the year Regulus flops onto the bed in their room like a child and informs Severus that he’s had a Gryffindor first-year tell him that Lockhart tried to touch her and that’s she’s afraid to tell her brothers. Severus, appropriately, sees red at the idea. It doesn’t matter that Regulus doesn’t seem particularly bothered by discussing this subject. Severus remembers the time that he was . Lockhart manages to vanish, tripped down the stairs into a secret house elf tunnel that somehow manages to never get cleaned. Ginny Weasley attaches herself to Severus’s shadow after watching him deliver a blistering condemnation of Gilderoy Lockhart’s books, hair, even his disgusting smile to a bewildered and teary fan. Her brothers look on, badly hiding their glee.

Chapter Text

Sirius volunteers in the hospital wing with Madam Pomfrey as he has since that final summer after Hogwarts. He cleans wounds, holds hands, mixes poultices. It gets worse whenever he sees that telltale pattern of bruises, hears that practiced mix of lies used to excuse a relative’s actions. Every year he tells Madam Pomfrey about a group of girls and a few boys, reports bruises in suspicious places, odd hurt pauses when rising or sitting, uncomfortable flinches away from the touch of other people. Sometimes he meets people like these who have already found someone to support them and his mind draws unhappy parallels between these children and his baby brother, still so thin after all these years.

He can catch Regulus’s wrist in his hand and still have finger to spare. He wonders if his brother was always going to be this shattered, if his eyes would always look like cracked glass, if he was always going to lose the ability to cry because he’d bury it beneath something else, something that let him function without breaking down the middle. He knows he’s not ever going to get an answer. He’s not ever going to be able to see his little brother without the Black Madness twisting what’s happened to him into something so internal he can’t even fully remember it.

That’s why, when he finds kids with fingerprint bruises on their hips and that shuttered look crossing their face whenever someone knocks shoulders with them, he looks for the person they’ve been using to pull themselves back up and back together. And when he finds them, he tells them what he wished someone had taken the time to tell him before it was too late: here’s what’s happening, and here’s how we’re going to stop it.

That’s what he tells Percy Weasley when Ginny Weasley has stopped in for bruise ointment and flinches away from him, when she asks if there’s any way to arrange a tutor for Defense Against the Dark Arts that isn’t Professor Lockhart. He pulls the boy aside, calls the twins out just after a lunch period, asks Ronald to stay for a moment after class. James gives him a gentle kiss on the forehead and shuts the door on the way out. He can see the roar of that familiar pain on each of their faces, the clenched fists, the way the twins have snagged each other’s sleeves and don’t seem to be aware of it. He tells them what he thinks has happened, what he’s observed. He tells them what he experienced, how awful it feels to think something like that might happen to someone you love. He knows their eyes catch on Reggie, sheltering beneath the great bloody bat’s wings, attention skipping from child to torch to Severus to Sirius, where he smiles and waves. He knows they see the way his brother hunches without Severus’s absent-minded touches, how his smile seems to stagger onto his face, unpracticed.

There are marks on his precious little brother’s body he will never be able to wipe away. He doesn’t want that for them. So he tells them what he and Madam Pomfrey have found, what they suspect, what they’re going to do. He tells them all that, and he turns to leave, but he always hesitates. Always pauses just before he’s gone, too guilty to leave them all the way. So he stops and says quietly, under his breath, the way he wished someone had done for him all those years ago, “it’s not your fault.”

Chapter Text

Lockhart arranges a duel with Regulus once, in his stupid dueling club. Severus had agreed because clearly leaving Lockhart in charge of anything important would be imbecilic and because Regulus had looked so excited at the idea of teaching children how to fight.

Lockhart gestures Regulus up onto the stage, his voice gentle and grating, as though he’s talking to an injured child or a misbehaving animal. He talks Regulus through the opening of a duel as though Severus has not seen Regulus devastate people with simple spells, as though Regulus doesn’t regularly hunt criminals for the fun of it. He grits his teeth to see the children laughing, though he’s not sure if they’re laughing at Regulus or the coiffed buffoon yet.

“Shall we begin?” Regulus finally asks pleasantly, interrupting Lockhart’s demonstration of how properly hold one’s wand. His fingers spasm around the hilt of his wand; his eyes have sharpened. His words drawl in a dangerous, Black sort of way and Severus relaxes. Lockhart has managed to irritate the singularly most dangerous person in the room, and judging by how he’s twirling his hand in the air and stretching out his neck to preen ridiculously, he hasn’t even noticed.

They begin; there is quiet for a moment, Lockhart clearly giving the poor mentally-disabled man a chance to practice some elementary spells before he flounces forwards himself. His wand waves dramatically; Regulus doesn’t even flinch, peering at Lockhart boredly. His hand twitches, slashing a line across the boards by Lockhart’s foot. Everyone freezes for a moment. Lockhart stares down at the mark, disbelieving and a little angry, as though he’s been tricked. Regulus takes the moment to twirl his wand in his hand.

“My apologies,” he says. “I thought a duel was between equals? Perhaps I was mistaken. Should we try again, this time for real?” The dueling club is utterly silent. Severus raises a hand to his mouth to poorly hide a smile. Lockhart’s jaw bobs up and down inelegantly and Regulus stalks forward, his movements sharp and angular. His wand comes up again, primed and dangerously beautiful, and Severus can tell the moment Lockhart sees it. His eyelashes flutter fearfully.

Lockhart takes the proper stance again. Severus calls out the beginning, and they both move.

Lockhart is clearly clumsy. He’s no master duelist, no distinguished name in anything but a women’s daydreaming magazine, no heir to a noble house of magic. He takes a nervous step forward and nearly stumbles off the edge of the boardwalk. Regulus, in comparison, is the picture of grace. He duels as though it’s a dance and his partner was too much of a failure to bother learning the steps. His wand is no mere stick, no simple tool; it is the end of Regulus’s arm, the longest finger of his hand; it weaves tapestries of light in the air between the two of them, lavender and gold and the thinnest strands of grey. Lockhart has never truly fought for his life, that is obvious, yet Regulus trained himself on battlefields full of his former classmates, set fires and spilled blood until it was a very natural way of life.

None of his weaknesses lower the intensity of his strength. Lockhart is a fool.

Regulus leaves the stage to a Lockhart strung up in glowing chains and stuffed into a tiny translucent box. Severus ignores the pitiful whimpering and sets about organizing the students into pairs. Some of them, the very beginners, he keeps with himself or Regulus to learn disarming, tackling, feinting, and defensive maneuvers. The rest of the day is very peaceful, with only a few minor injuries.

Lockhart doesn’t ask for another duel. Regulus’s fan club gets even bigger.

Chapter Text

“I want a baby,” Regulus tells him one night. He’s too tired to sit up in shock and alarm, the soft sheets too comfortable, Regulus’ body weighing him down, but he does the internal equivalent. Regulus purrs against his chest, too relaxed about this for melodramatics. 

Sev braces himself to ask, as his husband doesn’t seem to be ready to explain. “What...kind of baby?” He asks, mentally thunking himself over the head. Yes, Severus, what are the different kinds of babies? Loud? Small?

“Ours,” Reggie says quietly. “I want a baby that’s ours, that no one else could raise.” He considers for a moment, then adds, “It doesn’t even have to be a human baby.”

Sev breathes a sigh of abject relief. 

“Perhaps a puppy?” He suggests softly. Regulus’ breathing grows slower and foggier. “Or a kitten?”

“Yes,” Regulus mumbles, and then he is asleep.

(the kitten’s name is Ashbury Nimue Leviathan, because Regulus insisted “Ashbury was cute, Nimue is historical, and Leviathan is magic, Sev” and Sev doesn’t argue despite thinking it's ridiculously long and Pureblood. Watching the kitten stumble heavily after his husband’s delicate steps is more than enough entertainment, and makes something in Sev’s chest go far too soft.)