Chapter Text
His parent’s tempers were like violin strings–thin, fragile–something his older brother plucked with abandon, to no melodic end.
Regulus could always keep still through the worst of their fights. He was calm and careful. Diffusing the situation between his brother and his parents became a skill he flexed almost every week. But there were limits to how much a fourteen year old could fix.
Two years ago, the strings between Sirius and his parents were yanked so far apart they snapped.
That night, Regulus wasn’t still. He was shaking.
“Regulus,”
He winced at his name. His mother’s voice, hoarse from all the screaming, still cut like a knife across the room. Walburga Black stood next to the fireplace, towering over its heat. Her normally pale skin was red and blotchy, shiny with tears, and she was breathing hard and fast, clutching her side like she was expecting a recoil from her words.
“Regulus, you are never to speak to him again.”
“Mother—wait—” He was pleading by then.
“Your brother has betrayed us! Our family . This is the last time.”
“Mother, please—”
“I never imagined having such a son. He chose filth over his own blood.” Her mouth twisted in desperation. “Haven’t I been a good mother?”
His mother repeated herself, pacing and waving her arms around like she was pleading with a higher power. “Haven’t I been a good mother? We gave you boys everything, every opportunity—”
“We raised you to be good children, to be proud of the Black name—” she continued.
“We are—” Regulus started.
“I tried to be a good mother.”
“If I could just talk to him—”
“Don’t you know?” She wailed. “What it’s like?” Walburga strode closer to him. “Motherhood…it’s like tearing off a limb. Children take something from you.”
Her eyes were hollow as she said spat that last line out.
Regulus shivered. It would be months before he stopped seeing that expression on his mother’s face. Until he stopped hearing that line echo in his mind every time his mother looked at him.
He wanted to disappear. He wanted to run up to his room and escape into a book, a record–anything that would help him drown the shouting out, like it was just another fight that he could ignore. But this was different. Sirius was gone now and he had left Regulus by himself.
“I have always been willing to give a part of myself. For the family. For you boys.”
She continued. “I’m nothing like my mother—she was cruel. Deprivation…that was how she mothered. There was always something to be taken. But your father and I…we gave you everything. Anything you ever wanted; you boys got.”
“If I could just talk to him, then—”
“LISTEN TO ME!” His mother knelt to grasp his wrist, forcing him to meet her eyes. “Your brother will live a hard life.” The pressure around his wrists grew. “He will be alone. His friends will abandon him. He will stumble through life in misery. He will come to regret all that he has done.”
Regulus felt like his wrists could snap. Walburga held on. “The only people you can truly count on is your family. You, me, and your father. No one else .”
“He will come to you, Regulus. He will reach out. He will tell you pretty things about his life. They will all be lies. You must never forget what he has done. You must never forget this day.”
Regulus shook his head, desperate.
“Today is day he left you. He left his little brother.”
“But—”
“He left you.”
“Please—” He was choking over his words. “Just turn the floo network back on and we can talk—” Walburga dropped his wrists and stood in disgust, mouth upturned, ready to retort.
“No.” The voice that spoke this time was his father’s. Orion Black had been sitting in the corner, half in shadow, while his wife stormed back and forth across the room. “He made his choice tonight.”
Walburga sniffed. “It is done.”
“How could you just give him an ultimatum like that?”
He felt desperate. His family was fracturing in front of him.
“This is the end of the discussion. You will listen to us—” Orion Black bellowed before being cut off by a deep coughing fit.
Regulus flinched and Walburga rushed to his father’s side.
It had been mostly good days, lately, for his father. Days with clearer lungs and uninterrupted sentences.
Today had started as one—a good day.
Regulus looked at his father. Shoulders sagging into his chair, Orion Black’s face had already started to close off and when he spoke again, it was for the final time that night.
“He is no son of mine, nor brother of yours.”
It was ending like a nightmare.
“He has dragged our name through enough mud. Let him drown in it.”
***
“Don’t you think there’s something wrong with our family?” Sirius had remarked to him when he returned from his first term at Hogwarts. It was Christmas break, and though Grimmauld Place had been filled with ivy and ornaments since November, it had felt empty with the absence of his older brother.
Regulus had felt relief when he saw older brother emerge from King’s Cross station, which soon turned into anxiety. Sirius coming home meant an interruption of the precarious ecosystem that he had built with his parents since his older brother left for school. Sirius brought a disturbance. He brought friction.
“I mean it, Reg, we’re not normal.” They were in Sirius’s room, unpacking his trunk.
“No.”
Regulus leaned against the window ledge and stared down at the street. “We’re disgustingly rich.”
“You mean our parents are.” Sirius balled up a sweater and launched it into his closet. Regulus could tell his brother was unhappy to be home for the Christmas break. “ We aren’t anything. Anyways, I think there’s something wrong with our family. Don’t you agree?”
“Are you asking this because you’re planning on starting another fight with our parents today? Because if you do, don’t drag me into it. And can you do it after dinner tonight? Screaming ruins my appetite.”
Sirius scoffed. “Anything for my baby brother,” he said and chucked a dirty sock at his head.
Regulus ducked and scowled. “I hate when you call me that.” He never felt like the child when they were all together. He felt like he was the only one holding it together.
“Then take my question seriously.” His brother stopped rummaging around his trunk to look at him. “Reg, our family is not normal. I met other kids at Hogwarts, ones outside of our family and our cousins—” he scoffed. “Did you know they can have conversations with their parents? Ones that don’t end in screaming. And they don’t tiptoe around their houses or sit in their bedrooms, afraid to breathe in any other part of the house.”
At the time, Regulus was ten years old, nine months from his first year away at Hogwarts. He had lived an isolated life within the confines of Grimmauld Place and his only brother and friend had just been absent for the longest period of his life.
“I think we are like any other pureblood family.”
Sirius shook his head. “We’re nothing like the Weasleys.”
“No.”
“They actually seem to like each other.”
“Mother says they're blood traitors.”
“And what do you think?”
Regulus watched his brother ball up another sweater to throw into his closet “I don’t know.”
Sirius slammed his suitcase shut.
“One day, Reg, you’re going to have to.”
***
The next time he saw Sirius was on the Hogwarts Express platform at the end of the winter holiday. His brother stood with a group of Gryffindors, arms flung over the shoulders of two of them, grinning at the rest.
Regulus felt his chest tighten. He had spent the rest of the holiday holed up in his bedroom, conscious that any single movement could break the fragile state of the household. He couldn’t stop hearing his mother’s cries and his father’s deep coughs through the walls.
Regulus watched his brother laugh at something his friend said and felt his shoulders stiffen.
Sirius was always going to be fine.
Regulus turned his back to the group and made his way onto the train. His brother was never coming back. There was never going to be any room for Regulus in his life.
“Hey! Reg, wait—”
The door shut behind him.