Chapter Text
Sometime when he is sixteen, on a Saturday afternoon after lunch, shortly after a bad moon, Sirius encounters a Slytherin called Regulus Black.
(There have been many bad moons lately, which Madam Pomfrey and Aberforth tell him is normal; that puberty is a violent thing in its own right, that this will pass, that someday he won’t feel such a slave to the cycle, though Sirius isn’t so sure. This is the only life he has known, or will ever know. Who is there to say that it will ever change?)
At any rate, Madam Pomfrey has mended up his knees as best she can, but they’re still so bloody stiff and achey — it’s the cold, he’s sure, it’s almost December — and there’re so many bloody stairs to climb to get to the Gryffindor Tower, and anyway, James had sworn blind he knew there was a shortcut here somewhere — it’s mapmaking, that’s all this is, his knees have got nothing to do with it — except Sirius cannot bloody find it, and his knees hurt, and if he sits down he won’t get up again, but he sits down regardless, and does so with all the drama he can muster, which isn’t that much, considering there isn’t anyone around to see him do it.
A portly man in a portrait on the wall opposite looks at him appraisingly through the shiny round lens of his monocle. “Do you need help, boy?”
The portraits know him, of course. He snuck around the castle often enough as a kid when Aberforth could find nobody but Albus to mind him.
“I don’t need any help, Monsieur Millaume. I’m just — resting.”
Millaume huffs with self-importance. His chest grows impossibly big, like a songbird before it sings. Then — footsteps.
“Regardless,” says Millaume, chest deflating, “help comes.”
Sirius recognises the boy from Quidditch matches. He’s in the year below; quiet, Pureblood, sort of a snooty face, and apparently good enough on a broom to have made the team, but with a name that, in this moment, escapes Sirius. He stops when he sees Sirius sitting, defeated, on the flagstones, his brow furrowing.
“Why are you sitting on the floor?”
“For the view,” says Sirius.
The Slytherin boy’s brow furrows further as he glances around the draughty hall. This part of the castle does not see much traffic. Cobwebs gather in the eaves. “Of course. Quite fascinating.”
“Told you so,” says Sirius. “Surprised more people don’t come up here and do it, actually.”
“You don’t look well,” says the boy.
“What’s it to you?” Sirius snaps.
“It’s nothing to me. Just an observation, I suppose. Shall you be staying here long?”
“I’ll stay here for as long as I please,” says Sirius, “and not a moment longer.”
“Bit cold for that, is it not?”
Sirius sighs, and glares at the boy. “Yes, it is; so, what are you doing here?”
The boy’s cool, impassive expression has slid from his face. He looks startled, as though he’s taken Sirius’s sharp glare personally. This momentary pause gives Sirius a chance to properly study the boy’s face in the weak winter sunlight made weaker by the thick medieval window-panes. He has quite a pale complexion, though that should be unsurprising for this time of year, and a shock of thick, dark, wavy hair. His eyes are grey, and sort of inherently reproachful, gazing out at the world as though they all have something to feel guilty about, himself included.
“Taking a walk,” says the boy.
“What?”
“You asked what I was doing here.”
“Oh.” Sirius looks away. “I did.”
“I’m Regulus Black,” says the boy.
“Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Regulus Black,” Sirius says, imitating the very posh way Black said his own name. It comes out easier than expected, somehow, though it’s a different kind of posh to James, and Sirius has never had cause to imitate it before. As though it’s natural to him.
Black says nothing, though it seems more expectant than offended. So Sirius gives in, and says:
“I’m Sirius, if you must know. Sirius Roch. Hilarious name, yes, I’m aware.”
“Is it?”
“Serious Rock? Yeah, it is. Though I suppose you’re called Regulus, so. Glass houses and all that.” Sirius decides he has had quite enough of sitting down, but the thought of Black witnessing his surely ungainly and potentially unsuccessful attempt to stand up is simply too humiliating, so he stays where he is. Black won’t stick around forever.
“It’s a family name,” says Black. “Regulus, I mean. After the — after my great uncle.”
“It’s a silly name,” says Sirius.
Black tilts his head. “You’re the one who mentioned the glass house, no?”
Sirius shrugs. Black looks at him a moment longer, before extending a hand. He’s got long, narrow fingers, like a pianist, though the nails are bitten to the quick.
“Bad habit, that,” Sirius remarks, instead of accepting the offer of help. “Biting your nails.”
“You sound just like my mother,” says Black. His hand stays where it is.
Sirius wants to get angry at this strange, snooty Slytherin boy, a year younger, presuming that Sirius, effortlessly smart, nephew of the Headmaster, best friends with the Gryffindor Quidditch captain, and with very good hair, would ever need a helping hand from the likes of Regulus Black.
Sirius doesn’t need help. He has never needed help. (Things are getting worse, and he doesn’t know if they’ll get better.) Regulus Black must pity him. (Regulus Black has no idea about anything.) But Sirius isn’t getting angry, even though he should be. This is a humiliating situation to be in. (For some reason, he doesn’t think Regulus Black is going to tell.)
“I don’t need it,” says Sirius. “I can get up on my own.”
“I know,” says Black.
“Just so we’re clear,” Sirius says.
“Clear as day,” says Black.
Sirius lets Black clasp his wrist and pull him to his feet. He notes with some satisfaction that he stands about half a head taller than Black, though perhaps that is to be expected, since there is at least a year between them. As soon as Sirius is upright, Black lets go of his scarred hand.
“What are you doing here, really?” Sirius asks.
“I like to pace,” says Black. “What are you doing here, really?”
“It’s a shortcut to Gryffindor Tower.”
“Which way?”
“Left,” says Sirius.
Black turns left, then slows. “Aren’t you coming?”
“I don’t need to be walked home,” says Sirius hotly.
“I know,” says Black. “That isn’t what I’m doing. Are you coming or not?”
Sirius huffs. His knees are killing him. He totters forward, but there isn’t any pity in Regulus Black’s gaze. Just a sort of quiet contemplation. It’s refreshing, in fact. There aren’t many people who don’t look at Sirius — whose various aches and pains are well-known to the year group even if they remain ignorant of the cause — with pity.
“You’re friends with Potter, aren't you?” Black says conversationally as Sirius catches up.
“Yeah.” Sirius is guarded at once.
“Don’t think he’d let slip what brand of broom polish he uses?”
“Not in a million years, mate. You’re in Slytherin.”
“My word,” says Black, “am I?”
Sirius smirks; a smile tugs at Black’s mouth. It transforms his face.
Sirius ignores the strange, nagging feeling that there might be something familiar about it.
—
Sometime when he is nineteen, on the shores of the Black Lake, under a darkening sky, Sirius encounters a Death Eater named Regulus Black.
“Black. What are you doing here?” Sirius asks, lowering his wand.
Black says very little. He does not look well. He’s lost weight, Sirius thinks, though admittedly he’d never had much to begin with. His cheeks are hollow, and his eyes have lost their wounded, reproachful look. Now, they are simply dark, flat, like stones.
“I have something to tell you,” says Black.
“Is it that you’re a Death Eater? Well, this might come as a shock, but we already—“
“Not that,” says Black. “My father is dead.”
Sirius remembers how Black was always quieter after the holidays, that brief blip of time when they had been friends, before everything fell apart. He does not feel saddened by the loss of Orion Black. “So?”
“I inherit.”
“So?”
It will rain soon. The wind whips the ends of Black’s cloak around his boots; he’s rakishly thin, thinner even than Sirius. If Sirius cared, he would worry. But he does not care about Regulus Black.
“It’s yours. All of it. I put you back in the book.”
There is a house in London. Sirius had been there once, when he was seventeen, trying to save a friend from himself. It was not a house that welcomed him, not before he knew who once lived in it, nor afterwards.
“What?” Sirius stares at Black, though he feels he isn’t truly seeing him. There is some meaning below Black’s words, like a kelpie lurking under the water’s surface. The lights of Hogsmeade begin to flicker behind them.
“Better a werewolf inherit than no one at all,” says Black.
“What on Earth do you mean?”
Black shakes his head. His eyes are not so flat now, and his nails are bitten to the quick. “Thank you, Sirius.”
“What for?”
“For trying.”
Some dark foreboding stirs at the back of Sirius’s mind. “Regulus,” he says, then stops, sensing how words, in this instance, may not suffice. Perhaps words have never worked for them, in a friendship where so much needed to go unsaid, for fear of unearthing demons neither of them had the guts to face. So much for bravery, in the end.
So Sirius does not say anything. Instead, he extends a hand.
“I don’t need it,” says Regulus. It’s the same thing he insisted upon from the start. From the start, Sirius had sat back and watched his friend dig his own grave. From the start, Sirius had wondered was there any way to stop it.
(Sirius is so angry with him. But bigger than anger is fear. And Sirius is so afraid for him.)
“I know you do,” says Sirius. “So let me give it. Please.”
Regulus shakes his head, and smiles — not a madman’s smile, but something else, something Sirius doesn’t know the word for. “I don’t need it,” he repeats. “It’s done.”
“What’s done? Regulus, what’s done?”
Regulus’s smile fades. “Thank you,” he says, and clasps Sirius’s hand in his own. He turns to look out at the lake, his hair cut short, much shorter than Sirius’s own, always the opposite of Sirius, as if he had done his best to disguise the resemblance between them from the start. “Thank you. It’s nice here, isn't it?”
The lake darkens with the sky. It’s not beautiful today — it’s something bigger than beauty, something more like awe.
“Yeah,” says Sirius, almost bemused.
“I’m glad,” his brother says. “I’m glad for it, Sirius.”
Regulus looks back, looks at Sirius, the moment short and fraught with something unsaid, and lets go of Sirius’s hand. A pop, disguised by a sudden roll of thunder, and with that, he’s gone. The lake darkens with the sky.