Work Text:
September 1979
Euphemia Potter violently jerks awake when a shrill alarm, sounding like someone is tearing a Hippogriff’s guts out and doing a very bad job of it, blares through the house.
Beside her, Fleamont, always a heavy sleeper, awakes more slowly, but his eyes are sharp when he opens them. He checks his pocket watch, carefully deposited on his bedside table in the evening, and glares. He’s always appreciated sleep, her husband. “It’s nearly two in the morning,” he grumbles but reaches for his wand anyway. “Any Death Eater who’s attacking us now better have a damn good reason.”
“I really don’t think they care, dear,” Euphemia says with a pat on his back, reaching for her own wand. She climbs out of bed and wraps her dressing robe around herself, slipping her wand into its pocket, her fingers still closed around the handle.
“Still impolite,” Monty, who has always been rather set on politeness, says, white brows furrowed. Then, “Linsy,” and with a pop their loyal house-elf materialises in front of them, bowing deeply.
“What can Linsy do for you, Master?” she asks, big brown eyes blinking up at them.
“Please check if all our wards are still intact and prepare to notify St. Mungo’s if we are attacked,” Monty says, as breezily as he might order some breakfast. Then again, death really isn’t scary to them, not anymore. They both know they don’t have much time left, anyway.
Linsy’s eyes get even bigger, as impossible as it seems, but she bows and disapparates with a quick bow and a murmured, “Sir.”
“Come now, Effie,” Monty says as he walks out of their bedroom, wand held in front of his to light his way.
Euphemia follows after him, counting on the light of his wand and her familiarity with the house to get her to the front door without having to pull out her own wand.
The portraits along the walls, depicting various Potter ancestors, are unsettled but dignified as ever, quietly moving from one frame to another and murmuring amongst themselves rather than shrieking all over the place. Euphemia used to detest their reserved manner but with time (and with age) she’s learnt to appreciate their quiet presences, always ready to offer a kind word or a wise anecdote. Her son has yet to agree.
She skips the fifth step on the way down the stairs, the one that swallows your whole foot for three hours and sixteen minutes before abruptly letting you go—James made them time it, once—and stops at the end of the staircase when Monty opens the front door.
He raises his wand to eye level and says loudly, “Who’s there? Show yourself.”
There is no answer but for a horrible scraping sound as if someone is dragging something across their paved path.
“Show yourself,” Monty says again, voice harsher.
There is only that sound for another second, two. Then, “Help us,” says a voice, so startlingly young and so terribly familiar, and Euphemia, tying her robe securely around her waist, walks up to the front door just in time to see two silhouettes outline in the edges of Monty’s light, one leaning heavily on the other.
As they come forward, slowly, she barely holds in a gasp of horror.
It’s Death Eaters, all right, but that’s not what makes a strange clump of bile rise up in her throat.
They’re both tall and thin, one more so than the other, pale in the face of Monty’s harsh light, with dark hair wet and tangled. What she’s sure must have been beautiful robes are now soaked through and torn haphazardly, as if someone had not let go of them until they ripped.
“Please,” says Sirius. He’s in better shape than his younger brother, but that can only be said because he’s still conscious and the blood tainting his robes seems to not be his—well, mostly.
Regulus, on the other hand, is white as a sheet, head leant against his brother’s shoulder as he drags him forward, his eyelids fluttering. His hair is black as the night, drip-drip-dripping wet and there are several deep gouges along the line of his jaw and one longer one down the column of his neck, bright red streams running down from them. They look strangely like claw marks.
“Not another step forward,” Monty says, voice deep and firm, but Euphemia can hear the undertone that tells her he’s just as rattled as her. “Or I’ll hex you.”
Sirius stops, both arms wrapping around Regulus to keep him up. “Help him, please.”
Monty surveys them with hard eyes, just like James’s when he told them about Sirius’s betrayal. He clenches his jaw and says, “We can’t do that.” He points his wand at them, level and unwavering. “You should leave before I send for Aurors.”
Sirius’s grey eyes are wide, but not exactly from surprise. “He needs urgent help,” he says, nothing but pleading in his voice. “He’ll die otherwise.”
“Take him to St. Mungo’s.”
Euphemia’s heart constricts. Regulus is just a boy, just a year younger than James. She touches Fleamont’s shoulder blade. “Monty.”
“We can’t take them in, Effie,” he answers, softer than to Sirius. When he turns to look at her, she can see in the lines around his eyes, the tightness of his mouth that tell her he’s torn. “It might be a ruse.”
“It’s not,” Sirius says. They both turn back to look at him, finding him slowly sagging underneath his brother’s weight. “It’s not, I swear it on Regulus’s life. You’re the only one I know who can help him.” His voice takes on a raspier note, desperation evident in his whole posture. “You can take my wand, tie me up, I don’t care. I’ll do anything. Just, please, save him.” His eyes meet Euphemia’s and she sees not an adult, self-assured and brave, in front of her, but a little boy who shrunk away from her when he broke a glass the summer after his first year, fearing the consequences more than cutting his hand hurt. “Please, Effie.”
Something in her screams and heaves and then melts. She nudges Monty aside, ignoring his noise of protest, and holds out a hand to Sirius. “Come inside.”
Sirius sags, this time not only from Regulus’s weight, and Euphemia finds nothing but pure, unadulterated relief in his eyes when he rasps, “Thank you.” If he’s acting, he’s doing a brilliant job at it.
Euphemia turns on her heel and hurries to the kitchen to fetch the potions she’ll be needing, but not before she can hear Monty ordering firmly, “Give me your wands.”
She rummages around the cupboards, levitating potions onto a tray as she goes, and deposits a pair of muggle bandages she has found most useful when the wounds are cursed and won’t close up on it as well. She levitates the tray into the drawing room, where Monty and Sirius have already managed to manoeuvre Regulus onto the sofa.
Monty is standing by the fireplace now, wand not pointed at anyone but held firmly in his hand all the same, and is surveying Sirius with sharp eyes. Two wands lie next to his other hand, resting on the shelf.
Sirius is sat on one of the armchairs, though it can hardly be called sitting as he’s leant so far forward that he’s barely touching the edge of the cushion. He must have shirked off his cloak and is now in only a pair of light robes, blood soaking the material over his shoulder and Euphemia wonders if she was wrong in her initial assessment of him.
He looks up from Regulus’s ashen face upon her entrance and she can clearly see now how hollow his cheeks are, how dark the bags under his eyes. He draws himself up and there is no trace of that frightened boy in him now. “What can I do?” he asks, calm, collected.
Euphemia sits down next to Regulus, who’s moving and whining on the couch, his eyes jumping around underneath his eyelids. He is deathly pale and the blood from his wounds shows no sign of stopping. His cloak has been taken off too, and his robes opened up to reveal a pale heaving chest so thin she can count his ribs. When she touches him, his skin is cold as ice.
“You can tell me what happened to him,” she says to Sirius, already hearing herself slip into her Healer’s voice, even and soothing.
“Inferi,” Sirius says immediately. Euphemia doesn’t allow herself to flinch. Dark, dark creatures, Inferi. “They dragged him underwater and nearly drowned him.” He pauses, his swallow audible. “He stopped breathing for a couple minutes. I had to resuscitate him. And he—” Another pause, and she turns to see him rummaging around his robes’ pockets.
Monty moves away from the fireplace, wand slowly coming up, but Euphemia shakes his head at him and he stops, though he doesn’t lower his hand.
Sirius, oblivious to their exchange, pulls out a small vial, barely bigger than his thumb, filled with a glowing green potion. “He drank this,” he says, handing the vial to Euphemia.
She holds it up against the light. It’s a brilliant colour, like emeralds, but the sight of it reminds her of the Killing Curse and makes something in her stomach turn uncomfortably. “What is it?” she asks, looking back at Sirius, who shakes his head.
“Voldemort’s creation,” he says, eyes like steel even as he uses his master’s name as so many fear to do. “It guarded—something important to him and Reg had to drink it in order to obtain it. I think he had hallucinations. Actually—Kreacher.”
There’s a crack of apparition and the Black family elf, even more wrinkled and unkempt than the last time she saw him—she called on Walburga Black a long time ago, back when she still thought Sirius could be saved; she didn’t leave on her own accord—appears in their living room, wailing like Euphemia has never heard from anyone, and drops on his knees toward to the couch, next to Regulus.
His spindly fingers touch and grasp onto whatever they can reach of Regulus—his hair, his cheeks, his robes. “Master Regulus!” His voice is higher than the last time she heard it and intermittently interrupted by his hiccupping sobs. “Wake up, Master Regulus!”
“Kreacher!” Sirius snaps, eyebrows knitting together as he looks down at his servant. “Pull yourself together. I need you to answer some questions.”
Kreacher turns his eyes toward Sirius, his expression visibly darkening with it. It’s obvious which master the old house elf prefers. Nonetheless, he takes in a deep breath and his voice is back to his deeper tone when he croaks, “How can I be of service, Master Sirius?”
“The potion in the cave,” Sirius says, pointing to the vial in Euphemia’s hand. “Tell her what it does.”
Kreacher faces her and she can see the tear tracks down his cheeks. He seems to recognise, his ears laying down against his head, and for a moment, she thinks he might refuse. “The potion, blood traitor,” he starts and Sirius looks like he might hit him, already halfway out of his seat, his face a mask of fury, when he seems to catch himself.
He settles for growling out, “Don’t call her that.” He tilts his head, eyes glittering, as he settles back into the armchair. “She’s saving his life.”
Euphemia studies him, trying to find a hint of insincerity in his expression, but she finds none. His anger seems to be real and she can’t, for the life of her, figure out why. She is forced to avert her eyes when Regulus starts violently coughing.
He bolts up, heaving and gasping for breath at the same time, his skin as white as a paper.
Sirius is already pushing out of his seat but Monty points his wand at him and growls, “Don’t.”
Sirius glares, looking vaguely like something out of a nightmare with a halo of dark matted hair and blood on his hands, but sits back on the edge of the armchair, glancing at his brother before he looks at Euphemia and asks, “Can you help him?”
Euphemia looks at him, at the way his eyes trace the lines of Regulus’s face, gently, painfully, as if losing him might break him, at the way his fingers twitch forward: to reach out for him and never let go, or to brush his hair out of his eyes, she can only guess. She isn’t sure if she can heal him, but the love so obvious in Sirius, the devotion written in the lines of his face, is enough to make her want to try.
She turns to Kreacher, who stands silent beside Regulus, his large eyes full of tears. “Tell me what he drank.”
*********
Euphemia leans against the counter in the kitchen, sipping her much-needed tea and enjoying the way its warmth spreads through her body.
A soft crack of apparition alerts her to Linsy’s presence, finding her standing only a few paces away when she opens her eyes. The house-elf bows, even though she’s told her a million times it’s unnecessary. “Good morning, Mistress,” she says in her light, almost-squeaky voice, “the Black boys are sleeping, Master Monty is sitting with them now.”
“Thank you, Linsy,” she answers, noticing the way the elf seems to sway on her feet, “you may take the afternoon off.”
Linsy bows. “You are too kind, Mistress,” she squeaks and disappears with another crack.
Euphemia swallows down the last dregs of tea and makes herself another cup before she dares brave the way to the drawing-room. It had been a long time since she had to perform healing magic as she did the day before and it has drained her more than she expected. Without Linsy’s help, she’s sure she wouldn’t be standing now.
In the drawing-room, she finds the men in much the same positions as she did the night before – Regulus lying lifelessly on the sofa, Monty in an armchair by the fireplace, and Sirius in the armchair right next to Regulus.
Monty looks up as she enters, giving her a small smile, and she crosses the room to press a brief kiss to his lips.
“How are you feeling?” he asks, voice low.
“Tired,” she says, aware that it is well past noon. “I could sleep for another day.”
He gives her a soft look, fingers brushing against her outer thigh. “That’s normal. You had to use powerful magic yesterday.”
She looks at Regulus, swathed in no less than three blankets, his eyelids’ fluttering the only sign that he is even alive. “How is he?”
“No better than yesterday, but no worse either,” he answers, shrugging slightly. “Linsy redid his bandages before she left and she said he didn’t writhe so much after you healed him.”
Euphemia nods thoughtfully, then looks at Sirius, curled tightly into the armchair he’s occupying, a blanket pulled snug around him. Most of his face is covered by his hair, dry and tangled, but what little is visible seems even paler now in the daylight. He looks so impossibly small, so young, and she cannot reconcile the sight before her with the rumours of what he’s done. Twelve dead in a suspected Death Eater attack. Three more missing. The most charming of You-Know-Who’s followers revealed.
“He didn’t cause any trouble,” Monty says, answering her unspoken question. “He let me tie his hands and sent Kreacher away without one complaint. He only fell asleep a few hours ago.”
“He cares about Regulus more than anyone.”
“Indeed,” Monty agrees and Euphemia wonders if he’s thinking about the same thing as her; wasn’t James that person too? Weren’t Remus and Lily and Peter?
She sighs. Wondering will get them nowhere. She moves towards Regulus, reaching out to sweep aside his hair and check for fever.
A hand shoots out from the abundance of blankets and closes around her wrist, causing her to drop her mug of tea. It bounces off the floor, its contents spilling all over the fluffy rug. Regulus’s grey eyes are wide and panicked, but his grip is strong, almost painful. “Where am I?” he asks, voice like sandpaper. “What did you do to me?”
She feels more than hears Monty shoot to his feet and pull out his wand, but another pair of hands is there faster—a pair of hands still specked with dried blood and bound with a thin cord that take ahold of Regulus’s and draw it away from Euphemia’s with fragile tenderness.
“Reggie, hey, Reg,” Sirius says in a soft voice, then continues in a language that Euphemia needs a few seconds to recognise as French. She’s far from well-versed in it but what he says seems to calm Regulus down, for he sinks back into the sofa with a few murmured replies. Sirius holds onto his hand for a moment longer, then lets go reluctantly and steps away, back toward his armchair.
He reaches for his hair, but his bound hands seem to prevent him from brushing it back smoothly and he lets them drop back down in front of him. He’s in the same light robes as yesterday, the material now thoroughly soaked with dried blood, and Euphemia feels a stab of guilt when he winces at the movement.
She steps forward, reaching slowly for her wand. “Let me look at your shoulder.”
He looks her up and down, expression somewhere between unsure and pained. He reminds her a little of a cornered stray dog. “You’ve done so much already,” he says. He turns to pick up his coat, but Euphemia steps forward and touches his uninjured shoulder. He faces her again, his eyes wide. They are Walburga’s eyes, she notices, steel-grey and willow-harsh, but there has always, always been a softness to his that Euphemia would never dream of seeing in his mother’s. A warrior’s eyes. A survivor’s. She wonders if there was ever anything she could have done to help him. There might have not been then. But there is something now.
“Sirius,” she says. “Let me.”
He sighs, though it is more of a breath of surprised air. She has to ask herself when was the last time anyone’s offered to help him. “Alright,” he says. He shrugs off his right sleeve, revealing the long gash from his armpit to the line of his collarbone. It’s mostly scabbed over but there is a too-light tint to his blood and she can see any movement or touch to it pains him.
She doesn’t have to ask who caused it. It matches Regulus’s.
As she gets to work on it, tapping her wand and summoning bandages, Monty says, “You have a lot of explaining to do.”
Sirius winces, whether from a particularly strong poke to his wound or Monty’s words. “I know.” He looks at Monty, face open, earnest. “I had no choice. Voldemort would kill Regulus if he knew he was still alive. I couldn’t bring him to St Mungo’s and there are no other wizards I trust to keep him alive.”
Euphemia doesn’t need to look back at Monty to know his hazel eyes are dark, that his wrinkled forehead is creased in a frown. “Why are you two in his service in the first place?”
Sirius swallows, the line of his pale throat bobbing with it. “Regulus was a fool. He was desperate to please our parents and I joined to protect him.” He glances at Euphemia and she sees herself in his eyes, exhausted, messy-haired, but attentive. “To protect—James.”
Euphemia straightens, her bones snapping in place at the sound of her son’s name.
But it’s Monty that says, in a low, harsh voice, “How does your shooting Unforgivables at our son protect him?”
“My mother—” Sirius’s eyes dart towards Regulus, sleeping peacefully now. He’s wringing his hands, biting his lip. She’s certain he doesn’t even know he’s doing it. “My mother threatened me when I came come the summer after 5th year. She threatened his life and Regulus’s and Remus’s if I didn’t behave. If I didn’t follow her instructions.” He touches his Mark, through the sleeve of his robes, absently. As if reminding himself of the pain. “Regulus still believed then and I joined with him. To keep him safe. He only recently came to a realisation that Voldemort isn’t what he makes himself out to be. He tried to—” He cuts himself off, swallowing.
Euphemia stays quiet, putting away her wand in her pocket. So does Monty. She can feel his defences slipping, melting away for this boy that has only ever known fear and violence and taught himself to be brave in the face of it.
“You have to believe me,” Sirius says, voice hoarse. “I would never deliberately attack James. Whenever we met in the field I did my best to get him out of there alive.” He cracks his fingers, the sound sharp in the bated silence of the room. “But I cannot defect now, even if Regulus has. The Dark Lord trusts me and I am in a perfect position to pass on information.”
“To whom?” asks Monty.
“I cannot say. I will not endanger h—them.” A tense pause, considering. “But you know them. You trust them.”
Monty exhales, a long breath of air that seems impossible with his failing lungs. Euphemia looks over her shoulder, meets his hazel eyes. Her husband, her dearest companion through all of life’s hardships. They have taken their toll on him, as they have on her, and they are both tired of it. She knows his heart better than her own and they are both too old not to have faith in people anymore.
“Alright,” she says, softly, barely above a whisper.
Sirius smiles, as quick and bright as a flash of lightning, but it is gone just as quickly.
Somehow, Euphemia knows exactly what weighs on him. “James will not find out from us,” she says, bending her head toward him until their foreheads are almost touching. She can hear his sharp intake of breath.
“I cannot possibly ask of you—”
“You’re not asking,” Monty says, his voice firm. He rises and joins them, wrapping an arm around Euphemia’s waist; she leans into his warmth, the broad, solid form of him. She’s glad he’s here, that he’s always been here. “We’re trying to protect James, too. We trust you to do so the best you can.”
Sirius’s eyes crinkle, mouth curving up, and Euphemia can see a fraction of the boy that used to send her Mother’s Day cards in him, the one that only knew to live and laugh and love as if the world would never let him do otherwise. Oh, I missed you.
*********
The last dusk of September is just beginning when Euphemia Potter stands with Sirius Black on the porch of the Potter estate. The final dregs of sunshine catch in his hair, turning it near-brown, and paint long lines over the hollows of his face. It’s hard to believe he is only weeks away from his twentieth birthday.
“I cannot thank you enough,” he says, looking down at her with a strange sort of pain. He is in formal black robes, embroidered with threads of grey and green, as is customary for the Black scions to be dressed to funerals of one of their own, but his dapper appearance is disturbed by a new, just-healing slash across his right cheekbone. She offered to heal it and he refused.
“You know you don’t have to,” she answers, giving him a small, downturned smile.
“Still.” He reaches inside his coat pocket and pulls out a small silver locket, engraved with the Black insignia, and lined with the tiniest of emeralds. He holds it out to her, but she doesn’t take it. “It contains a sort of concoction that will aid you in escape if Death Eaters attack you. It will give you a few precious minutes if you open it.”
Euphemia’s heart feels heavier than her limbs, which is a feat in itself, these days. She reaches out but not to take the locket—instead, she closes his fingers over it. She smiles at him again, a sad, slow thing. “Monty and I—we will make do without it.” She pauses, considering, then adds anyway, “If it comes to that at all.”
He frowns but before he can reply, there is the sound of two pairs of footsteps from inside the house. Monty and Linsy emerge a second later, both tired-looking, the latter’s magic holding up the body of a sleeping Regulus Black. He looks better than he did a week ago, but then he did look like death then.
“He’s ready,” Monty says.
Sirius steps to him, touching the side of his relaxed face. He stopped crying out in sleep just a couple of nights ago. “It’s not every day that you get to take a dead man home just after you’ve buried him,” he says, looking down at his brother. The wound on his cheek gleams and Euphemia counts to herself the number of people who could have inflicted it on him.
“Not everyone is so lucky, no,” agrees Monty. His white hair is awash in the dying light, the creases of his face smoothed out. He looks—calm.
Sirius looks up from Regulus’s face and at them. His eyes are sharper now, fiercer, but no less kind. He crosses the space between himself and Monty and offers him a hand. Monty looks down on it as if Sirius has just caused him a great offence and uses it to pull him into a hug. Sirius goes rigid, then relaxes into her husband’s arms.
“Thank you,” he says, a note of surprise in his voice.
When they separate, he is immediately engulfed by Euphemia, her arms coming around him in a fierce hug, a kind she’s sure he’s never had too many of. His own are strong around her, fierce. They pull back and he looks down at her, eyes searching her face. He opens his mouth but no sound comes out. He only closes it and offers her the locket again, the question, the plea in his eyes clear. She shakes her head.
“Remember to give Regulus the potions I prepared for you,” is the only thing she says.
He doesn’t argue. Even though she knows he would like to, he doesn’t have the time. His absence, like the ones over the past week, could be questioned at any time and can be blamed on the distress upon his brother’s death only so many times.
Regulus dips a little when Sirius’s magic replaces Linsy’s with a swish of his wand. “Thank you,” he says again and walks down the paved path, Regulus’s sleeping form drifting after him, the same way they came on that night. He turns at the end, where the protective enchantments end and he is free to apparate. He takes Regulus’s limp hand in his and uses the one with the wand in it to wave a greeting.
The last one, if Euphemia’s bones tell her right.
The Black brothers disappear just as night settles, warm and comforting. Beckoning.