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Regulus Black dies at eighteen.
His coffin is empty; no one ever finds his body. They suspect a dark lump discarded in a muggle alleyway, scattered pieces of flesh and muscle and blood staining the earth after a clash between the Death Eaters and the Order of the Phoenix, a sharp-featured aristocratic face cursed beyond recognition, thrown into a ditch or buried by the muggles with a smooth, unmarked headstone. In reality, his body lies at the bottom of a lake, pale skin slashed and clawed by inferi, weighed down by water, the dark mark branded on his left forearm, and the knowledge of a secret the great Albus Dumbledore takes years to discover.
Regulus Black dies doing the bravest thing he has ever done. It is the kind of bravery most Gryffindors could never lay claim to, despite their loud ferocity and red-and-gold ties. He dies without no one ever knowing, apart from his house-elf and closest friend. He dies silent, alone, scared, small, and weak, but he dies a hero. He dies with bravery clutched close to his heart, a steady flame rather than an ephemeral inferno, because it is wrong to shove eleven-year-olds into premade roles and tell them to never step out of the boundaries of brave, loyal, wise, cunning, which have never meant hero, spare, nerd, evil but morphed into that anyway. Regulus Black wore green and silver because he was cunning and he had ambition, but he was also loyal enough to bind himself to a maniac to make his family proud and keep them safe, smart enough to seize the fragments of arrogance spouted by his master and piece together a story of soul-splitting and merciless murder, and brave enough to sacrifice his life for the barest glimmering hope that Voldemort could be stopped.
Regulus Black dies at eighteen, and eighteen is too young to die, but sixteen is too young to be marked as a servant of a madman, and seventeen is too young to cast the Cruciatus with shaking fingers and feel it cast on you in return, twitching limbs and a throat hoarse from screaming. Seventeen is too young to be cloaked in black and masked in silver, firing curses at someone you hope is not your brother, huddled in your room with only a house elf for company and wondering if the next battle will be your last, hoping the next battle will be your last. Eighteen is too young to die, but eighteen-year-olds die all the time in war, swept away by the force of hatred and misplaced superiority, which began festering long before they were anything but an idea but rises up to claim them anyway. Young adults, teenagers, baby-faced and knobby-kneed and fresh out of Hogwarts, are the ones who have chunks of them cut out by the war, premature wrinkles traced into their skin, the incantations of curses flying from their mouths rather than laughter and stories swapped over drinks and tabletops.
Regulus Black dies a year after he graduates, dark smudges under his eyes and thin silver lines marring his pale skin. He dies a torturer, a murderer, an accomplice.
He dies young without having ever been truly young.
He dies.
But he lived, too.
It was not a pleasant life. The world was not kind to Regulus Black. He cried, he suffered, he watched people walk away, he watched people descend into the clutches of madness, and he was forced to commit awful, horrendous deeds for the sake of staying alive.
Regulus Black's life was filled with strife and hardship. It was not good, and it was not easy. But it was a life.
It was lived, and it was lost.
Regulus Arcturus Black was born to be a spare. He was not intended for greatness or prominence. He was born to be a safety net, a potential replacement, a back-up heir. Regulus was brought into the world for duty instead of love.
Orion and Walburga Black are not kind parents. They expect the best, and anything short of that is abject failure. He grows up with their disappointment and expectations encircling his throat, strangling him, depriving him of air to breathe. The weight of generations of Blacks presses down on his shoulders and whispers in his ear, reminding him of his duties, his ancestry, his destiny. He is constantly reminded of the fact that he is more a vessel for the Black family dynasty and legacy rather than his own person. Sirius wears all of it like a battle scar, and his brother burns with blinding, blazing brightness, just like the star for which he was named, refusing to bow to the demands of his blood. He is the firstborn, the heir, but he shrugs the responsibility off without a care in the world. Sirius is brave, bold, and filled with flame.
Regulus is not Sirius. He sinks into the shadows, lets the darkness smother him in its embrace, and listens. Where Sirius is loud and fills the room with his presence, Regulus is quiet, lurking at the edges of the premises and watching with intense blue eyes, like two frozen winter lakes. He is quiet, he watches, he listens, and he learns. Regulus traverses the world with soft footfalls and uncalloused hands, carrying with him his family and the aching love he has for them, the duties he must fulfil to make them proud. Even as a child, he learns.
Sirius rebels with fervour, robes emblazoned with a roaring lion, tie coloured red and gold, befriending muggleborns and flaunting his appreciation of muggle culture. Regulus hears the barrage of insults thrown at him, the screaming fights over the dining table. He sees the consequences - bruises blooming on pale skin and indents of rings on high-boned cheeks. Sirius can take it, because he is Sirius and he is a Gryffindor at heart and he has friends who would take him in without question. Regulus only has the Blacks. He has no James Potter here to steal him away.
He wears green and silver because it makes his parents proud. The Hat mumbles about Ravenclaw, but his brother has already let them down, and he can't afford to do so as well. The reluctant cry rings out in the Great Hall and Regulus approaches his cousin Narcissa at the Slytherin table. In the corner of his vision, he thinks he sees a flash of disappointment in Sirius's steel-grey eyes, but he blinks and it's gone. He ignored it as he begins talking to Narcissa, who is yet to shirk her family heritage, because Sirius has chosen his fate and Regulus cannot follow.
His housemates hiss slurs at muggleborns, and at first he doesn't mind, because his parents used them all the time and instilled blood supremacy in his mind, but he sees. He sees Lily Evans in the year above, muggleborn and devastatingly intelligent, blazing past many a pureblood in the academic rankings. He sees Severus Snape, a half-blood, demonstrate prodigious skill in potions, the likes of which no pureblood could hope to achieve. He sees his acquaintances in the pureblood social circles preach superiority and elitism while failing to live up to their declarations, instead falling into mediocrity. His blood is pure, but there is a Gryffindor muggleborn in his year who can wipe the floor with him in a duel, and a Hufflepuff muggleborn with a work ethic he can only dream of possessing, and a Ravenclaw muggleborn who transfigures objects in Transfiguration before he can get the spell out. He bleeds red, and so do they.
Once he sees and listens, which he is best at, the tinted glasses fall off. The deep-rooted blood purism in his mind takes time to be removed, and the mask remains when around others, but Regulus finally sees blood status as what it is: an arbitrary divider between people, with no real indications able to be drawn from it. Muggleborns and half-bloods and purebloods are all the same in the end: humans, who live and love and laugh and die. It doesn't matter that his family has had magic longer than the Evanses, because it doesn't make him any stronger, and it certainly doesn't make Lily Evans any weaker. Blood status doesn't guarantee power, and it doesn't make someone inherently superior. It just....is.
But Orion and Walburga Black still cling to their prejudices, and they very much like the sound of the dark lord who is beginning to rise to prominence. Voldemort, he calls himself, with a pale flat face and eyes glaring red. Regulus collects word of his exploits with growing unease, cataloguing his power and popularity amongst the purists and power-hungry.
When he joins at sixteen, in the summer before sixth year, it's to please his family, as everything always comes down to in the end.
Sirius had run away the year before, to the surprise of no one; it was always going to happen, after all. He takes off to the Potters and Regulus is officially the heir, with all the additional expectations that came with the role, and the weight of his angry, distraught parents' wishes on his shoulders. They pass by each other in the corridors of Hogwarts and Regulus wants to ask him to come back, because he is selfish and suffocating and he misses his brother so badly it hurts. Sirius always took the heat off with his acting out and antics. Now that he is gone, the focus is all on him.
When Bellatrix, wild-haired and wild-eyed, comes with an offer to meet with the newest dark lord, he looks at his parents, his cousin, and can't say no.
Voldemort is even more terrifying in person, twirling his wand in his long fingers and staring with his starkly red eyes. He speaks in a cool, haunting voice, and all Regulus can do is nod and regurgitate the bigoted drivel he's been fed his whole life in a pretty, articulate package. If he doesn't, he will die, and so will his family. He is not willing to sacrifice his family to cling to the semblance of morality, or the so-called 'good side.' Dumbledore had stared down at him through half-moon glasses and said nothing. He has no place in the lions and light.
The black brand on his left forearm stings, and he watches with sickened fascination as the snake and skull form on his skin, a permanent link to Voldemort and a guarantee of life for the Blacks. He is only sixteen and the war is already on his doorstep, shoving a wand in his hand and curses on his tongue.
He casts his first Cruciatus on his seventeenth birthday. Bella is his tutor, because this curse is her speciality. His fingers tremble and shake as he points the wand at a chained and bound muggle, whose frantic eyes dart around the room and fill with the familiar sheen of tears. It takes five mumbled crucios for the red beam of light to emerge from his wand, and even then, the muggle brushes it off, unaffected. When ten times later he continues to fail, Bella sends a jet of red at the muggle and laughs as his muffled screams echo in the dungeon, limbs struggling against the bindings.
The next lesson, he succeeds. It's the same muggle, and bile crawls up his throat as they quiver and seize on the ground, raspy whines half-smothered by the gag. Bella pats him on the back, pride gleaming in her dark eyes, and it makes him sick. When he returns to Grimmauld Place, he scrubs his hands raw, but the stain of the Cruciatus and the pain he inflicted on the muggle seeps into his skin, his bones, his soul. It never gets easier after that.
When Voldemort turns his wand on him, he almost thinks he deserves it. Screams tear from the column of his throat and pain stabs at his muscles, scraping at his skin and carving damnation into his being. He imagines the muggle feeling the same thing, all the muggleborns and blood-traitors feeling what he feels in that drawn-out moment. This is what we give them, he thinks, just for being born. He bears the mark of a madman and tortures muggles in dungeons; this punishment is only what he has earned. They have done nothing but exist.
The Killing Curse takes less time to learn. Regulus suspects it's because it gives a peaceful death. The light fades from their eyes, their body stills, and it's done. Green light sinks into the chest of the muggle, and he almost feels a weight lifted off him as the man slumps to the side, lifeless. It was a quick, merciful demise. There was no pain in the death, only absolution.
“Well done, Regulus,” Bella murmurs, kicking the pitiful corpse in the side and sneering. “Our Lord will be pleased with your progress.”
”Thank you, cousin,” he replies, swallowing hard and blinking mist from his eyes. “I live to serve.” He pauses, staring at the body. “Where will you dump this piece of filth? I wouldn’t wish for pureblood property to be stained by its presence.”
Bella smiles, teeth bared. “How about you dispose of it, cousin darling? You’ve earned it.”
He smiles back, dampening the sharp steel edge of his disgust and masking it with blind worship. “It would be my pleasure.”
Regulus buries his first victim in a hastily dug hole below a weeping willow and leaves a bouquet of white roses on top. He never finds out his name.
Kreacher returns to him dripping wet and sobbing, visions of nightmarish scenarios and twisted fates playing out before his eyes, and Regulus understands this: it is not enough to quietly disagree. It is not enough to be a silent, scared opposition while continuing to serve the man who did this to his oldest friend and steadfast companion. It is not enough to dissent without action when there is so much he can do, things that a braver man would have jumped at the chance to do long ago.
Regulus is not that man, but he is trying to be.
It doesn't take long in the end for the truth to come out. Brags of immortality during Death Eater meetings, Kreacher's mumblings of a locket with an S made of emeralds, and the dark tombs lining the libraries of Grimmauld Place and other ancient pureblood residences, all coalescing into one word burned into the crevices of his mind. When it clicks, he locks himself in his room and pretends, for one glorious hour, that he is somewhere else. He is a child again, huddled with Sirius during a vicious storm and cowering at the flashes of lightning, letting his brother soothe him to sleep. He is eleven and lets the Hat send him to the Ravenclaw table, blue and silver wrapped around him and keeping him safe. He is fifteen and fleeing with his brother to the Potters, leaving behind the Blacks and their hateful ideology far behind him.
He is none of those people. They are versions of himself who accepted the opportunities given to them with open arms rather than continuing to hide in the shadows of the dark. They are Regulus Blacks with far more bravery and common sense than him. They are Regulus Blacks who might have a hope of surviving the war on the right side.
The Regulus Black in this reality, who never managed to escape, who had given up hope long ago, opens the door and asks Kreacher about the cave.
Red and gold whisper their approval in his ear, and burning resolve settles in his chest.
In his head, a lion roars.
The cave is dark, and a shaky Lumos illuminates the damp rock walls, the murkiness of the water. His palm still stings from the blood sacrifice needed to enter. Kreacher shivers, tiny, fragile limbs quivering as he leads the way, eying the water with uninhibited fear. He imagines what they look like, a dark-haired straight-backed wizard and a small house elf sailing across an inferi-infested lake in a rickety rowboat, and swallows a laugh.
In the basin is the potion that gave Kreacher such grief, and beneath that, the smudged, warped outline of the locket. Kreacher clutches the perfect duplicate in his hands. Regulus picks up the goblet, hands it to Kreacher, and gives him one final order.
"I need you to keep giving me this potion," he says, low and quiet, speaking over Kreacher's immediate protests. "Even if I plead with you, even if I cry or scream or beg, this order will override all others. You will continue giving me this potion until the basin is empty and you can pick up the locket. Then, substitute the horcrux for our fake and leave. Do not try to save me. Leave, and don't look back. This is an order."
He fights it. Pride and affection bloom warm in his heart as Kreacher grits his teeth, clenches his jaw, and digs his fingers into his palm, ears flapping with effort.
"Yes, Master," he finally grinds out, unable to say no. Regulus is not usually one to treat his house-elf like this, like a weapon, like someone who is not family, but this is something more than them.
The potion tastes like acid, burning his tongue and mouth and throat. He slumps over, bracing his palms on the sharp edge of the basin and gripping it until his knuckles turn white. Kreacher gives him another, eyes wide and watery, and he lets out a hiss, coughing as fire consumes him whole, searing his blood and ripping apart his bones until he is nothing more than shreds of a person, fragments floating in a flood of sludge and despair. His vision wavers, shadows dragging themselves across the ground and an eerie green colour humming in the air. Kreacher's blurry form pushes another gobletful down his throat, even when he pleads and cries and screams and begs.
Rocks scrape and tear at his black robes as he drops to his knees, taking a fistful of dark curls in his hands and pressing his elbows into his thighs. Heavy breaths emerge from the ragged column of his throat, and salty liquid drips down his face, the metallic taste of blood filling his mouth as his teeth dig into his tongue. His mind is fogged over and he can't fight through the thick cloud and smog, the mocking laughs and sneering faces swirling around him as he curls in a fetal position, choking on the lies that lodge themselves beneath his skin and muddy his veins.
Bellatrix bends over and digs her nails into his scalp, murmuring praise into his ear and pressing the tip of her wand into his back, writing out CRUCIO as he shivers and wails. Sirius stares at him with anger and disappointment, blood spilling from gashes on his body and the jagged edges of battle scars peeking out of his sleeves. Multiple versions of his brother crowd around him: Sirius as a child, still home, not yet lost to Hogwarts and Gryffindor and James Potter; Sirius as a scowling and laughing teenager, pulling pranks in the school corridors and hanging Slytherins from their ankles; Sirius slamming the door behind him as he leaves Grimmauld Place and Regulus forever, not hesitating, not asking, not saying anything but a snarled goodbye; Sirius fighting in battle, grey eyes dark and flashing with spells that cut through the air and drop Death Eaters like flies, just barely missing him; Sirius's horrified, accusatory face, staring at the tattoo etched into his skin, at his unmasked face. Sirius, Sirius, Sirius, always Sirius, and his parents with hands on his shoulders, leading him to Voldemort like a lamb to slaughter, always watching, always wanting him to be more than what he is.
When the potion stops writing stories of despair and tragedy into his bones, he looks up with bleary eyes to see Kreacher exchanging the horcrux with the fake, but his vision is quickly stolen away by the lake, the water creeping up the edges of the island and retreating. His mouth is a desert. He has never been this thirsty in his life.
"Water," he mutters, crawling on his hands and knees towards the lake.
"No, Master!" He hears Kreacher shriek, the tiny pitter-patter of footsteps dashing towards him, but Regulus is focused entirely on the beautiful water just within his reach. He extends his hands out and scoops up the long-awaited liquid in his shaking palms, bringing it to his lips and swallowing a mouthful.
Wet, slimy hands wrap around his arms and drag him beneath the surface of the lake before he can scream.
The impact snaps him out of his daze, and he chokes on the water that floods his lungs when he opens his mouth. Regulus flails and writhes, but his movements are slowed by the water, and the inferi swarm around him, fingers tearing at his skin and shredding his robes. He can feel himself sinking to the bottom, dragged along by his master's undead army. His eyes burn, but he comforts himself with the disappearance of Kreacher's blurry quivering finger, taking a piece of Voldemort's soul with him. It wasn't wasted, he thinks as he sinks. My life wasn't wasted. At last, I am worth something.
The urge to fight leaves him as Kreacher does, and his arms and legs still, his back hitting the sand and pebbles that line the lakebed. Water fills his chest, dragging chains around his chest, stealing precious air from his lungs. Inferi rip him apart with their ragged fingers. Blossoming clouds of red swirl in the water around him and dull blades of pain embed themselves in his body.
Regulus closes his eyes and lets the lake, the inferi, the world, swallow him whole.
Regulus Black dies at eighteen.
Eighteen years later, his best friend tells his story to three people who understand, and a sword shatters the locket he gave his life for.
His body lies at the bottom of a lake and his coffin remains empty, but Regulus Black can finally, finally, rest in peace.