Chapter Text
Regulus and Harry exit the library and step into the comfortable summer evening. Regulus sets pace, walking briskly along the pavement. After all, it wouldn’t do him very much good at all for the Ministry to investigate the case of missing Harry and to discover the boy in present company.
It is, however, only a bit up the road when Regulus first realises something isn’t right. He turns his head as soon as he thinks he spots it, but the black shape that darted from a bush to another disappears into the next as soon as he spots it.
Somewhat unsettled, he picks up the pace a bit.
If Regulus were on his own, he’d likely investigate the shape that’s been rather steadily tailing the two of them. However, because Harry is with him, he refrains from acknowledging it at all. Best not to provoke the figure, especially given it seems content to watch for now.
Luckily, the walk back is quick, and the two soon arrive at his flat, the bushes occasional rustling the only indication the figure continues to follow.
“All right, Harry,” he says in a low voice, unlocking the door, “go on in and get settled. I’ve something to handle out here, then I’ll be in right behind you.”
He subtly palms his wand and steps back onto the pavement once Harry’s inside.
While it’s obviously not ideal he had to lead the figure to his flat, Regulus figures he can always use Obliviate… Or, even better yet, perhaps it’s some hungry stray he’s been entirely too paranoid about. He looks around to ensure there’s nobody around before speaking.
“You can come out now,” he informs a nearby bush.
A dog steps out of it. Regulus frowns, taking a cautious step back. It’s a rather bearish, unfamiliar black dog with lights that almost glow under the streetlight and, while he doesn’t know his dogs well, he suspects it to be a Newfoundland.
It’s between blinks that the dog is replaced by a man. A very familiar man, whose face had been on muggle broadcasts earlier in the week and who was once an impossibly distant teen he’d lived in the shadow of.
In tattered Azkaban robes and in need of a good shave, Sirius Black stares down his younger brother for the first time in over a decade. The two look at each other rather awkwardly. Or, at least it feels awkward to Regulus.
Sirius speaks first, voice somewhat hoarse. “Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be in Azkaban?” Regulus immediately counters.
Then, on a moment of reflection, he realises Sirius recognised him… And here he’d been beginning to think his disguise foolproof.
(Even so, Sirius is no fool. He’s foolhardy and reckless, yes, but though he may not always put it to good use, there is a sharp intellect rattling around in his head somewhere.)
“It’s a long story,” Sirius deflects. “I haven’t the time to—“
“In that case, it’d better be a good one, then,” Regulus says.
He won’t deny he’s been curious about when and how Sirius’d landed himself in Azkaban. Although Sirius’d never been the best at telling stories… Hopefully he’s worked on that in Azkaban.
“I really should be going— I only wanted a look,” Sirius protests.
“Nope. You’re not getting out of this,” Regulus says. “Only, not here,” he adds, thinking of Harry just inside.
Though he thinks it highly unlikely Sirius’ll turn out to have become some manner of bloodthirsty maniac, Regulus would hardly be able to forgive himself if something happens to Harry because he didn’t take the proper precautions. And, he’s sure the boy can take care of himself for the time it takes for the two to have a little chat.
“I don’t think—“
Regulus sighs. It’s not as if he’s particularly enthusiastic about this either, but he at least understands when to admit something needs being done.
Banking on the idea Sirius’d rushed from Azkaban without retrieving his wand (or any wand), Regulus points his wand at his older brother in what he hopes come across as a vaguely threatening manner. Inclining his head, he gestures down the road in the direction of the neighbourhood park. Sirius sourly eyes the wand and reluctantly complies.
The park, although small, is bisected by a road and has a rather pitiful play arena surrounded by neatly trimmed grass. It is as empty as the surrounding streets, and the park gate is locked, though it is hardly any trouble to step over it. Sirius sits on a swing. Regulus sends up the handy little muffling spell Severus taught him in fifth year.
“Well?”
Sirius sighs petulantly. “Reckon I’m being held hostage here until I squeal?”
“I wouldn’t word it that way, but I think we need to talk, yes.”
“Why should I trust you?” Sirius counters.
“I defected from— well, you know. And the Tapestry’d said I’d died after what I did, I took the opportunity to leave.”
“You left the family?”
Regulus nods. “The Family and the wizarding world.”
“So,” Sirius says slowly, “you expect me to believe you finally realised how fucked that family is, double-crossed Voldemort somehow, picked up the world’s worst disguise, and have been living among the muggles?”
“When you put it that way, it sounds highly unrealistic.”
“Only because it is highly unrealistic,” Sirius says. “Can’t you prove it?”
“How?” Regulus asks. “Isn’t my being here in clearly mugglish clothes enough for you?”
“Not really.”
“What, do you want to see my non-existent Dark Mark or something?”
“Your what?”
“Dark Mark?”
Did the Order not know about the Dark Mark? He’d’ve thought they would have noticed the conspicuously identical marks on captured or killed Death Eaters’ forearms.
“Th’fuck’s that?”
“The world’s most regrettable tattoo,” he says solemnly. “It has an inbuilt Protean charm connecting the bearer to the Dar— Voldemort. It’s how he kept tabs on everyone. Fascinating charm-work, but a clear liability once I’d defected.”
“All right?”
“Do you want an in-depth explanation of the double threefold runic matrices I used to throttle the connection?” Regulus perks up.
“Merlin, no,” Sirius says. “We’re wasting time. Suppose I’ll trust you… for now.”
“Thank you,” Regulus says, relieved. “Your trust is not misplaced.”
Sirius sends him a very doubtful look. “You first,” he says.
“I beg your pardon?”
“‘I beg your’— Merlin,” Sirius repeats, shaking his head. “No, but seriously, you’re going first.”
“What exactly do you want to hear?”
“You know, how you ended up here, looking like a posh specky git.”
“Suppose it was all part of my plan—“
“Your plan was to take a leaf from Clark Kent’s book? Get a pair of spectacles and fuck off?”
“If you keep interrupting, we’ll hardly get anywhere,” Regulus points out, crossing his arms. “But, if you really must know, it was your influence that inspired that part of my plan. You surely haven’t forgot Spring Term of ’75.”
Now that was truly unbearable. Someone—James or Andy or whoever—provided Sirius with muggle comic books, and he’d spent months talking the ears off of anyone in earshot.
“I can’t believe that works,” Sirius says despairingly.
“It’s amusing.”
“It’s… a little amusing,” Sirius says, sounding a bit begrudging. “Go on then.”
“Well, I guess the story starts after you’d left. You see, mother wasn’t about to let me get out of doing my duties to the Family. Voldemort wanted a Black, and he didn’t seem to care which one. I, of course, was happy to oblige. Eager to please, loyal, a coward, what have you…
“So, of course, Trixie was ‘in’ at this point, as was Cissa’s husband, Lucius. They’d send me letters at Hogwarts telling me our parents would be proud of me for once. After a bit of this, I’d quite happily agreed to meet with this ‘Dark Lord’. He was impressed with my marks and interest in darker magic, not to mention the Family vaults.
“After getting his Mark, it was all right for a while. I’d learnt all sorts of arcane magics, and extrajudicial activities were kept on the down-low. But, eventually, I wasn’t doing enough for them. They wanted more. Trixie would say ‘Reggie, dear, Crucio this muggle filth’, and Evan would corner me after Charms and say ‘Hey Regulus, wanna burn down these blood traitors’ home this weekend?’.
“It just kept getting worse, but I was stuck at that point. So, I half-heartedly followed along, only ever doing the bare minimum to keep Voldemort’s ire off of me. But, I kept searching for a way out, that moment when I could escape and maybe flee to one of our summer homes on the continent…”
Sirius gives him a very unimpressed look.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Sirius, we can’t all be beastly like you. No matter, that way out finally came in ’79. February. I… should be vague about the details here, but he— he hurt Kreacher. Discarded Kreacher like old rubbish. I know you don’t care for him, Sirius, but it was awful.
“Because of this, I figured out his secret. He’s immortal because of a nasty bit of magic. Terribly dark magic, even by the Family’s standards. And, for once, I decided to be brave; strike some sort of blow against him.
“I needed my singular act of rebellion to mean something, even if I was destined to die in the process… Because, well, someone had to do something about it, and only Voldemort and I knew his secret.
“I nearly died,” (understatement of the year), “but somehow—I still don’t know how—I didn’t. So, I got my wits about me, evaluated my options, and decided the best approach was the hiding-in-plain-sight technique.”
Sirius makes a guffawing noise of disbelief.
“It’s clever,” he insists, “nobody’d suspect it of me. But, yes, I’ve rented a flat, got a job, all that tosh. Been hiding out here ever since.”
He’s purposefully vague on the details toward the end. He isn’t sure he wants to tell Sirius about Harry yet— no small part of that being because Regulus can’t imagine how humorous he’ll find it. And though he did see the two of them walking together, hopefully the dim evening made it hard for Sirius to recognise Harry.
Sirius looks contemplative. “Damn,” he says at last. “Maybe I shouldn’t have spent all those years going around telling everyone that you tried backing out but got yourself killed by Voldemort’s minions because you were a numpty coward who got in over his head.”
“You’ve WHAT?” Regulus squeaks.
“Never mind that,” Sirius says hurriedly.
“Actually, I think we should circle back to th—“
“Nope,” Sirius says, “we’ll actually never mention that again.”
“Sure,” Regulus says, like a liar. “We can move on. Your turn.”
Sirius appears instantly glummer. “Right.”
“What brings you here?”
As far as Regulus knows, Sirius hasn’t any particular ties to Little Whinging except for him. And he’d hardly consider himself to be anywhere near the top of Sirius’s mental list of ‘people to visit after escaping Azkaban’.
“I wanted to just… catch a glimpse of Harry—which I noticed you’ve neglected to mention knowing—before heading up north to… to.” His face darkens, and he rises from the swing he’d been sitting rather idly on. “I need to kill that— that fucking traitor! Merlin, how’d I forget myself!”
“Whoa there, you’re not going anywhere. Sit back down,” Regulus urges, grabbing Sirius by the sleeve of his tattered prisoner’s garb and sitting him back down. “What traitor?”
“Peter,” he says with a scowl. “He’s at Hogwarts.”
“Pettigrew?” Regulus frowns, not entirely following. “He left at the same time as you.”
“He’s a rat.”
“I think we’ve established he’s some sort of traitor.”
“No, he’s an actual rat,” Sirius sighs, running a hand through his greasy hair. “He’s the reason I was in Azkaban, why Lily and James are… dead.”
“An Animagus?” He tries to connect the dots but fails. “I’ll admit you’ve lost me entirely.”
“An Animagus, and their Secret Keeper. I pretended it was me, and the only people who knew were Lily, James, Peter, and me. I persuaded them to use Peter as Secret Keeper instead of me at the last moment. And then they… they died. I’m to blame for it.”
“So, the Potters went into hiding for whatever reason,” Regulus tries. “They needed protection under the Fidelius charm. You claimed to be the Secret Keeper, but it was actually Peter, likely on Polyjuice potion.”
“Thought it’d be bloody clever,” he says, gritting out the last word. “Bit of mischief like the old days.”
“But it backfired.”
Sirius laughs drily. “He sold them to Voldemort as soon as he could. Their home in Godric’s Hollow was destroyed, and they were killed… And I realised what I’d done.”
“I don’t think it’s your fault. He was one of your oldest—“
“No, I should’ve known. He loved following people around… us around… And he was so impossibly cruel…”
“And you were arrested at the home?” Regulus prompts, trying to steer the conversation back on track.
Sirius shakes his head. “I had to go after him. I needed to kill him for what he did to— to Lily and James. He’d gone, but I tracked him down to Leeds…
“I confronted him on the street… It was the middle of the day. There were so many muggles around. He— he caused some manner of explosion. Blew the street up. Killed about a dozen of them… And escaped into the sewers like the cowardly little rat he is.
“Ministry showed up and tossed me into Azkaban, incompetent bastards… no trial or anything.”
“Why escape now?”
Sirius reaches into his robes and retrieves a crumpled piece of newspaper. A family of beaming redheads—the Weasleys—stand in front of the Great Pyramids. He points at one of the younger boys, a gangling boy Regulus recognises as Ron from their brief interaction. There, on his shoulder, is a rat.
“That’s Peter?” Regulus says somewhat incredulously.
“I’d recognise him anywhere.”
Regulus nods, willing to accept that. “So what were you planning on doing about it?”
“He’ll be at Hogwarts this autumn… I intend to meet him there.”
“You want to catch him at Hogwarts?” Regulus says slowly. “Do you even have a wand?”
He’s fairly certain he knows the answer to this one.
“No…”
“Pray-tell how you are planning on taking him in, exactly?”
Sirius looks suddenly rather sheepish. “Er, well… I was going to murder him, actually.”
“In Hogwarts? What good would that do?”
“I’d be avenging Lily and James’s deaths.”
“What about proving your innocence? Committing murder will hardly help clear your name.”
“I don’t care about clearing my name,” Sirius says snappishly. “The Ministry’s so incompetent they’ll still have me Kissed on sight— even if I hand-delivered the traitor with a bow on his head.”
“I still don’t think that’s the way to go about it. Why don’t you come to my flat and get cleaned up? Then, we can discuss what we’re doing about Pettigrew.”
“We? Since when was this a we thing? Who said I’m going anywhere with you?”
“I did, isn’t that enough?”
“Not really.”
“Look, you said you wanted to see Harry, right? Before heading up north?”
“Yes, he’s my godson… But, what does this have to do with—“
“Harry’s back at my flat.” Regulus says, strategically turning away from Sirius and starting toward his flat. “You’d really leave him alone with big bad Death Eater me and head on your merry way without checking he’s safe?”
“You said you defected!” Sirius says, though he’s looking a bit worried now.
“I could be lying,” Regulus calls over his shoulder.
“This is manipulation, and I’m only coming to make sure Harry’s all right,” Sirius complains, though he rises from the swing and hurriedly follows. “Oi! Wait up a bit, won’t you!”
“How about you hurry!”
“No, seriously, wait.”
Something in his voice makes Regulus stop and turn around. Sirius has his arms outstretched, almost as if he wants a… hug. Regulus tucks his wand up his sleeve, raises his own arms, and Sirius closes the distance between them.
And then—
“Ow!” he yelps, raising his hand to his cheek, where Sirius punched him. “Really mature—“
He’s swiftly cut off by a real hug.
“Oh,” Regulus says, bringing up his own arms to reciprocate the gesture.
Sirius smells like wet dog and garbage, and his arms are little more than skin and bone, but the hug is comforting… He’s never been hugged by Sirius before—mostly because such gestures were never taught at Grimmauld—and he knows Sirius learnt from James and his fellow Gryffindors. They were good teachers, he concludes.
“I’ve… missed you,” Sirius mutters.
“Harry’s just fine,” Regulus admits.
“I know that.” Sirius lets go. “I’d still like to see for myself. Godfatherly duties and all.”
“Right.” Regulus nods. “‘Godfatherly duties’.”
Sirius hops the park gate with great enthusiasm. “Lead the way, then!”
Regulus rubs his smarting cheek with a small smile. A bruise is sure to form there: he can almost see the splotchy purple patch of angry skin on tomorrow’s reflection.
All in all, however, he thinks that went rather well.