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Harry now understands why Molly had nagged them so much about helping her cleaning out Grimmauld all those years ago.
Now as the sole proprietor, Harry has started casing the place, this time not just to make it safe, but to make it a home, like Sirius would have wanted for him, to include a deep clean and repainting and redecorating, but also sorting through all the Black family’s things, deciding what should be kept in Gringotts, or in the attic storage, what can stay where it is, and what needs to be absolutely obliterated with fire.
Needless to say, it's a massive undertaking, and if Harry had a small army of children required to do his bidding, he would be setting them chores around the house from dawn to dusk.
As it stands, Harry does not have such an army – probably for the best. Hermione, Ron, and Ginny do come over to help some, but Harry actually feels a bit bad, putting so much on them. And things have just been tense since…
Well, let’s just say, the war might be over, but life never is.
So Harry does most of it himself.
He doesn’t work, has no idea what he might even want to do, so ever since the end of the war, he’s been living off his many inheritances, spending his days in Grimmauld, trying to find some order, something to hang on to.
On tap for today is Sirius’s brother’s room.
Harry had been putting off doing the bedrooms.
Even if the owners hadn’t lived there for decades, even if they had all been occupied by various Order members over the past few years, it still felt like an invasion of privacy to start rifling through all the old memories.
But it has to be done at some point.
If Harry doesn’t do it now, it will be someone even less reverent somewhere down the line. Maybe most of the Black family are horrible blood supremacists that don’t merit any such respect, but at least some of them must have been good people.
Sirius, for example.
And with all available evidence, Regulus at least tried to do the right thing in the end, so Harry guesses he’s earned Harry’s respect as well.
Harry’s starting with Regulus because… Maybe he’ll get enough confidence to actually go into Sirius’s room. Their rooms are mirrors of each other, it can work as a sort of exposure therapy.
That might not make sense, but that’s how Harry’s mind has been working lately.
He tries not to think to hard about it.
Standing in the doorway to Regulus’s bedroom, Harry appraises the scene in front of him.
Like most of the rooms, aside from being rummaged through by Mungdungus Fletcher, it looked like it hadn’t been touched in decades. All of Regulus’s posters, tapestries, and newspaper cut-outs were untouched, same goes for the bookshelf and the desk which had papers still piled up in one corner. Looking at the tapestries curiously, Harry wonders if Regulus had used a permanent sticking charm like his brother.
Harry raises his wand to try and spell one of the tapestries, the Slytherin banner, down, and he smiles slightly when it stays firmly in place. That will make his task much harder, but it’s amusing to see a small family resemblance in the Black brothers.
Saving the walls for later – perhaps he can just paint over it? Or leave it? He’ll see – Harry decides to start with the easiest part: the desk and shelves. It should be pretty routine, he’ll sort through the books to make sure there’s nothing dangerous, and probably just leave them where they are, sort through the papers to see if it’s anything important that should be saved in the Black family archives, or if it’s just school notes that can be tossed. If there are any pictures…
Harry will cross that bridge when he gets to it.
Harry sets about methodically skimming the papers on the desk and sorting them into the appropriate piles, working his way right to left, up to down. He's there for over an hour – merlin, Regulus had a lot of notes, what a swot – before he finally makes it to the last desk drawer.
Harry goes to slide it open like all the ones above, but this one doesn’t budge. He tugs harder on the drawer handle, in case the drawer is just stuck, story of old metal and humid wood and all that, but it doesn’t so much as wobble.
Magicked shut then.
He gets out his wand and casts a halfhearted alohomora, wholly unsurprised when that doesn’t work.
Trying not to get frustrated, Harry starts casting spell after spell trying to get the blasted thing open, but to no avail.
Finally, after another flurry of spells, the drawer starts to glow. Harry doesn’t know which spell it was that finally got the damn thing to react, but a bit of magic seeps from the wood pores of the drawer, coalescing to form the floating word:
P A S S W O R D ?
“Dear lord,” Harry grumbles out loud, reaching up to take off his glasses and rub the bridge of his nose. He was getting a headache, and this was supposed to be the easy part. This Regulus bloke certainly had a flair for the dramatics.
A password?
Really?
What were they, kids?
Well, Regulus did die at 18, so Harry supposes that means he’s “forever young.”
Still.
That's not the point.
Harry slides his glasses back on, and is greeted with a popped-open drawer.
Wait, what?
The floating words are gone, and the drawer is open – how? He hadn’t done anything…
Well, no need to complain, and honestly at this point, Harry kind of just really wants to know what could be so important that Regulus would set up such protective measures.
Harry eases open the drawer carefully, not wanting to go to fast in case what’s inside is dangerous. When nothing pops out at him, he peers into the drawer and sees a simple wooden box, polished and engraved with the outline of two stags bowing to each other. Harry tentatively casts a diagnostic charm over the box, but nothing happens.
For all the effort Regulus has put into making sure no one got into the drawer – Harry still is baffled, did the password charm just fail at the last minute? He has no idea – the box appears to be just that. A box.
Harry lifts it out of the drawer and sets it on the desk.
There’s a little keyhole, but Harry is able to easily open it with a cast of alohomora, leaning the lid of the box back on its hinges.
Harry has no idea what he expected to be inside the box, but it certainly is not what greets him.
Inside, on one side, there is a row of papers – envelopes, by the looks of it – lined up vertically and packed in tight. There must be at least a hundred envelopes shoved in the box. On the other side are assorted trinkets, a shiny black rock, some pressed flowers, a pair of round glasses not unlike Harry’s own, a dark little wooden carving of a cat, and an assortment of silver rings, all with different designs carved into them, and only a few with gemstones – most of the gems on the rings are green, but there was also one ring with a deep red stone, and one with what looked to be black opal.
Harry picks up one of the rings, rolling it around between his fingers. There doesn’t seem to be anything special about it, just a ring.
Harry sets it back in the box and slides out a few of the envelopes.
Every single one is addressed in the same handwriting, big capital letters, a little slanted, a little rushed, with some variation of “R,” “Reg,” or “Reggie,” but seemingly never Regulus’s full name.
Harry flips through the letters, all already neatly opened at the top, weighing the morals of reading them. He highly doubts they’re dangerous. The letters and all the trinkets clearly have a strong sentimental value to Regulus, otherwise he wouldn’t have kept them, and clearly he didn’t want people going through them if the multiple layers of protection are anything to go by…
But at the same time, Regulus has been dead for decades. There is a high probability that the writer of all the letters is also dead… So, he wouldn’t really be disrespecting their privacy… Dead men tell no tales, as the saying goes.
Also, Harry did succeed in getting past Regulus’s spells, so that has to count for something. Never mind that he is dying of curiosity to know why a bunch of letters had to be hidden with such extreme measures.
“Sorry Regulus,” Harry says to the empty room, picking up one of the letters, pulling out a very creased parchment.
As he unfolds the parchment, something falls to the floor. Harry leans over to pick it up off the ground, but as soon as he sees what it is, he throws it back, in shock, as if he’d been burned.
It’s him.
Wait, there’s no scar.
Not him then.
It’s a picture of his dad.
Not that many of those exist, but Harry has seen enough pictures from Hagrid, Sirius, and Remus, that he can recognise the face staring back at him.
In the picture, James is holding the camera in his hand, smiling, and pointing at a black cat walking on a ledge behind him up at the person behind the camera. James’s thick black hair is an untameable mess, sticking up everywhere, and his smile is manically happy, like he’s moments away from bursting out laughing. Harry hasn’t seen many photos of his father like this. Most of the photos Harry has seen are posed family and wedding photos, not as light and carefree as this one.
It’s a very nice photo.
If this had been Sirius’s room, Harry would have no questions. Obviously, Sirius would keep photos of his best friend.
But this was the room, the special box, of Regulus Black, known Deatheater and estranged brother of Sirius why would he-
Harry scrambles to put the picture back on the desk and grab the parchment from where he had dropped it, unfolding it as fast as he can nearly ripping it in the process.
It reads:
11 Oct 1979
My dear Reg,
I know you said in your last letter not to send any more pictures, but I just had to share this one. I had been out taking photos on a clear day, and I saw this little guy, and he reminded me so much of you. I tried to pet him but he scratched at me, so that’s even more like you. Thought you would appreciate the evidence of your spirit animal.
I think I’m going crazy, Reg, ‘cause I see you everywhere. In the stars, in my morning coffee, in the books my dad tries to get me to read that I don’t care about but I know you would love.
I miss you, Regulus.
I wish I could see you, I wish I could hold you, I wish I could point out all these things to you because you’d be right next to me.
I wish this blasted war was over, and Voldemort dead and gone.
For many reasons, I wish for that last one, but I would be lying if I said that you weren’t at least one of those reasons.
I miss you, and I love you.
Please write when you can get away.
-J
Harry sits back, letter in hand.
What, for the love of Merlin, did he just read.
This letter.
This letter had been written by his father.
It was a love letter.
To Regulus Black.
And Regulus had kept it! Guarded it, like it was important to him!
Harry knew that Regulus had betrayed Voldemort, but Sirius didn’t. And if Sirius didn’t know, there was no way Harry’s dad could have known where Regulus’s loyalties actually lied, surely he would have said something. And this was ’79, Regulus was definitely known to be a Deatheater at that time, what was James doing? What about Harry’s mum, what about Lily? Harry has so many questions, ones he’s not sure he wants the answers to.
Despite himself, he grabs the next letter from the pile.
21 July 1979
My dear Reg,
I think one of these days, my love, you will have to accept that you are wrong. You are not evil. You are worth saving. You don’t deserve what they put you through. You think this is some kind of penance? Regulus, I’m worried. Your letters are shorter lately. Please, come stay with me. We can figure this out. Please.
Write soon.
I love you.
-J
p.s. I know you don’t want to hear it, but Sirius is with me on this. He may not know it, and I’ve respected your wishes and not spoken to him about you, but I can see it on his face whenever you do come up. I’m not saying it would be easy, but we can all work through this. Together.
Well, that answers some of Harry’s questions.
Now he just has a million more.
Harry pulls more letters out of their envelopes, rifling through them, eyes racing over the text, barely taking it in an surely not believing it.
The letters date all the way back to 1975. Four years of love letters, from Harry’s dad to Regulus Black.
The tone of the letters varies quite a bit. Some are short and sweet, with just a cheesy pickup line or two – those often have hearts on the envelopes. Some of them, especially the ones from times at Hogwarts, are light stories about James’s holidays or funny thoughts he’s had. Some are longer ponderations on things going on in James’ own life – he tells Regulus about Harry’s grandparents contracting dragon pox, tells him about the stress of joining the order straight out of Hogwarts, about the pressure he feels in his relationship with Lily – how he loves her, but he loves Regulus too, and isn’t there someway they can all be together, because he knows it’s wrong, but it doesn’t feel wrong.
Many letters are about Regulus himself. About the habits James find endearing. About the plans James has for the two of them.
Some have little poems, and others have feedback for poems that Regulus must have sent James.
Almost all of them have little photos included of James, or of things James thinks Regulus will like. There are a few photos of Regulus that come with letters dated to their Hogwarts years, mostly candids of him reading in a room that Harry doesn’t recognise, or laughing, with little captions that James has penned about how beautiful he is – and admonishments that he should let James take more pictures of him. There’s only one photo of the two of them, and Harry still can hardly believe his eyes. James is holding the camera backwards so he can take a picture of the two of them, his other arm around Regulus’ back, holding him close. James is smiling widely, and he keeps looking down at Regulus. Regulus is glowering at the camera, but his eyes are bright with amusement.
Harry sets down the photograph and sits back on his chair. He doesn’t cry, hasn’t since before the horcrux hunt, hasn’t let himself. But his eyes feel a bit wet now. He’s only ever heard about his dad second hand, only ever seen a few photographs.
And here, here is a treasure chest of photos of his dad, and ones that he took – no one had ever mentioned that James was an amateur photographer – and letters upon letters of his dad’s own words, in his dad’s own handwriting. James was funny, so funny, but he was also introspective, and impatient, and a bit messy sometimes. He felt emotions too much, like Harry, cared about people so deeply, like Harry wanted to. He made mistakes, and had regrets. Harry knew from others that his dad was brave, and a good friend, but this – no one had ever spoken of James like this.
Maybe, Harry thought belatedly, maybe James wasn’t like this with Remus and Sirius. Maybe Regulus got to see this side that others didn’t, or didn’t see as often.
Regulus…
Regulus obviously didn’t keep copies of his own letters, and Harry hadn’t found any journals, so he can’t know for sure how Regulus felt about James, but the fact that he kept all of this from James is probably a clear indication that he cared just as much about James.
James certainly showed no doubt about Regulus’ feelings for him in any case.
This is so bizarre.
James and Regulus seemed to have successfully kept their relationship a secret, and Harry can only imagine what might have happened, what the reactions might have been had they failed. Even if Regulus did defect from Voldemort at the end –
Harry stands up abruptly, gathering the bits of paper that have scattered and shoving them back in the box before leaving Regulus’ room and slamming the door behind him.
He goes down the stairs and out to the garden, grabbing the firebolt and a practice snitch from the broom cupboard on his way out.
Letting the snitch go, Harry takes to the skies – one thing he can’t reproach the Black family are their anti-muggle wards that mean he can fly in his garden in the middle of muggle London.
He’s still flying when Ron shows up hours later.
“Oi!” Ron shouts, voice all but lost in the wind rushing past Harry. “You lunatic, get down here!”
Harry rolls his eyes at this a bit, but starts his descent anyways. He didn’t remember Ron telling him he was stopping over, but it must be his turn on the rota.
“Olright?” Ron asks with a clap to Harry’s shoulder when he touches down. “You’re looking a bit –”
“Windswept?” Harry offers sarcastically.
“That too,” Ron concedes with a worried purse of his lips, reminding Harry vividly of one other person with bushy brown hair. Harry swears, ever since they started officially going out, Ron and Hermione have begun merging into the same person.
“It’s been,” Harry cuts himself off with an awkward cough, “it’s been a weird day.”
Ron quirks his eyebrow, intrigued. “You wanna go pub to tell me about it?”
Harry nods, resting his eyes with a sigh. He didn’t realise how much he wanted to talk to someone else about it until Ron offered.
“Best call Hermione too.” Harry says, a bit resigned. “She’ll probably want to hear this too.”
“So lemme get this straight,” Ron says, rubbing his temples, “Regulus Black?”
Harry hums in affirmation.
“And your dad?”
Another hum.
“Were together? Like romantically?”
“Yep, you got it.”
“Merlin, that is not what I was expecting to hear today. Or ever.” Ron takes a pointed sip of butterbeer.
“Well, it is… unexpected,” Hermione is hedging, Harry can tell, trying to judge how Harry feels before she makes any definitive judgement. “But I don’t think, I mean, you’re not upset by this are you, Harry?”
Harry takes a sip of his own drink before responding, but he keeps his eyes trained on the bottom of his glass.
“I’m not upset, no, or, er, I don’t think I am. I’m mostly confused. I don’t know hardly anything about my dad, and even less about Regulus, so it’s just –”
“Bit odd, innit?”
“Yeah, a bit odd,” Harry agrees. “Except –”
Harry cuts himself off again.
“Except?” Hermione prompts when he doesn’t speak for a few beats.
“Expect those letters, those photos, they’re the most human my dad has ever seemed to me,” Harry admits. “Like normally when people tell me about my dad, it’s all about how much of a war hero he was, and this, er, um, I don’t know, I’ve just never – my dad’s never felt real like this before.”
“Oh, Harry,” Hermione breathes, and she reaches out to rest her hand on his. Harry offers her a quirk of his lips in response.
“So,” Ron breaks the silence eventually. “What you gonna do, mate?”
And that, Harry really doesn’t have an answer to yet.
Harry decides to leave the box, and all its components – letters, photos, trinkets – at Regulus’ grave. There are no more Black family members that are set to be entombed in the family mausoleum, and the only people that have keys are Harry, passed down from Sirius, Andromeda, and Narcissa, so Harry feels like the box will be safe there, undisturbed.
Harry doesn’t even know if Regulus is actually buried there, if anyone ever even found his body, but to Harry it doesn’t matter much. For all intents and purposes, this should be Regulus’ final resting place. It’s much nicer than the cave at least.
And Harry likes to think, Regulus would want these precious possessions near him.
When it comes to James, Harry struggles with how to reconcile this new information for a while. Eventually, weeks after he first discovered the letters, and a few days after he laid the box in front of Regulus’ grave in the mausoleum, Harry takes a trip to Godric’s Hollow.
It’s unseasonably warm for February, especially for dreary Old Blighty, so Harry’s only wearing a quidditch sweater, the sleeves rolled up. Sunlight filters through the leaves of the trees that act as a canape over most of the cemetery.
Harry’s never really cared for cemeteries, never spent much time in the before the war, but has seen way too much of them in the past months.
Hermione has tried to explain to him that she finds them peaceful, that even though they are sombre, they are a good place for meditation, that they offer a connection to past loved ones that can be difficult to find in the bustling world of the living.
Harry, who has spent so much of his life wishing he could talk with the dead and succeeded more than once, thinks that the ephemeral connection to the dead in cemeteries is an exceedingly poor substitute for the tangible dialogues had when they were alive.
He doesn’t find peace in cemeteries, only mockery.
But as it is, he has a few things to say to his father, and lacking a resurrection stone, Hermione is right that his grave is probably the best chance he has of being heard.
Harry carefully makes his way through the gravestones to where his parents are laid to rest. He sets the flowers he picked up on the way down on the gravestone – lilies for his mother, sunflowers for his father – and sits down himself, not minding the damp grass, hugging his knees to his chest like he used to do when he was much smaller.
“Hi, Mum, Dad,” Harry says, a bit awkwardly. He doesn’t really know how to talk to them. “Mum, er, I’m not sure you’ll want to hear this, but if Dad hasn’t told you by now, it’s probably time you heard anyways.”
Harry takes another deep breath, letting it out with a sigh and running a hand through his hair.
“Dad, er, I, uh, I’m not sure how much you’ve been watching from up there, if at all, so maybe you can guess why I’m here already, I just, I just wanted you to know that I found your letters to Regulus.”
Harry lets that hang in the air, and he imagines his dad smiling ruefully at him and nodding at him to go on.
“I guess, I just,” Harry huffs in frustration, “I’m not even mad, I’m not ever really confused anymore. I think I’m just upset that I never got to know you. Everyone’s always spoken about you like you were some god, essentially, like you couldn’t ever fuck up, and – not that you fucked up, like, loving Regulus – or maybe you did, I don’t know – but you were so honest in those letters, so forward, and I just, I wish I had known, I wish I had gotten to see you as a person, like Regulus, and not, not the ideal of you everyone wanted me to know.”
Harry cuts off when he sees a white-haired old man hobbling down the line of graves just in front of Harry. He has a mass of roses, and he inclines his head at Harry as he passes, and Harry does the same, with that weird purse of his lips that all English people come out of the womb knowing how to do. Harry watches him go for a little bit before turning back to his dad.
“You never felt like a real person I could know, before this,” Harry admits with a hushed whisper. “I don’t even care what you did or didn’t do. You were real.”
Harry runs another hand through his hair and then scrubs at his face.
“You must know now, or if you don’t, I think you should, but Regulus died fighting against Voldemort and it’s all thanks to him that we know about the Horcruxes. Maybe you couldn’t tell during the first war, but we couldn’t have won the second war without him. I think you’d be proud of him for that.”
Harry sits for a beat before he pushes on his knees to stand up.
“Well, I guess that’s all I really wanted to say, just that, and, I, erm, I love you, I love you both, I wish –”
Harry doesn’t let himself finish that thought, turning on his heel and forcing himself to walk away before he says something he knows he shouldn’t.
Tears prick at his eyes, but he ignores them as he walks out of the cemetery.
The ache in his heart is still there, the ache for someone he’s never known, the ache of tragedy that has followed him and everyone he knows, the ache of young love and lives cut short, the ache of knowing he has no choice but to go on.
Harry thinks once again of Regulus and James.
James and Lily seemed to have bonded together for support, Harry doesn’t doubt that his dad did love his mum, he said as much in his letters, but their love worked for the war. They were married, sure, but they were also battle partners, and keys to Dumbledore’s plans – they made sense.
Regulus and James, they didn’t make sense. Their love went against literally everything that anyone else in their lives could have wanted, and wanted for them. And yet, James was writing love letters to Regulus up until the day Regulus died, and probably for a while after before the news of his death reached the public.
Harry thinks of war.
Of everything that war has taken from him and the people he loves.
Harry still doesn’t have closure.
He doesn’t think he ever will.
He apparates back for Grimmauld Place where Ron, Hermione, and Ginny are waiting on him for dinner.