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Chapter Text

Regulus wasn't entirely sure what was hallucination and what was real, but Kreacher kept presenting him with a chalice of glowing green potion, and Regulus remembered enough to accept it, to keep drinking. The pain flared with every reluctant gulp, and the overwhelming aura of death and futility seemed to press in harder on him, but Regulus persevered.

And then finally, finally, the bowl was empty. Regulus exchanged one golden locket for another. As soon as the replacement touched the basin, potion flowed out of nowhere, like a refilling charm, and became as impenetrable as it had been at the beginning.

He handed the horcrux to Kreacher. "Take that home. Don't let anyone in the family know about it. Destroy it," he rasped, somewhat disjointedly.

Regulus glanced away for a moment, trusting Kreacher to obey. He fumbled for his wand. Once he had a proper grasp of it, he tried to conjure water. It evaporated before he could even attempt to drink it.

Something about the failure made the agony in his gut burn even fiercer.

He scrambled for the chalice sitting innocuously in the potion. Surely that would hold water.

The water drained away as fast as it was coming from his wand.

He couldn't...

There was water all around him. He could stick his face in and drink like an animal. Humiliating, but it would be better than nothing.

Regulus holstered his wand and scrambled for the shore, for the precious water that might make him less thirsty and miserable and...

He hit an invisible barrier, six inches from the shore.

"Master Regulus will not be drinking from the infested waters," Kreacher insisted.

"Kreacher?" Regulus asked. Hadn't he told his loyal elf to leave? It was too awful here for them both to stay.

"Kreacher, allow me to get some water." Regulus commanded. Some tiny corner of his mind recognized it was a bad idea, but that corner of his mind was being outyelled by the parts of him still suffering from the potion. Water was a good intermediate step when dealing with a bad potion that you didn't yet have an antidote for.

There was no way the dark lord was torturing his family right in front of him, promising to kill them slowly. Not right now. Not even Sirius, who had openly opposed him. That part had to be hallucination. Because if the dark lord was here, he would just murder Regulus for what he was meddling in and...

That train of thought was hard to keep a hold of.

"Kreacher will allow master Regulus to drink safe water," the elf insisted. Regulus didn't know what to say. He didn't think Kreacher had ever talked his way around an order like that before.

Or had Regulus just forgotten?

Kreacher's tiny hand grabbed Regulus' robes firmly, with a surprising strength, when Regulus' focus gave out and he tried to stumble forward again. He needed water, he knew he did.

"Kreacher!" Regulus protested. He was struggling to come up with the rest of the protest.

"Master Regulus will be coming this way," Kreacher insisted, dragging him back to the boat with a strength Regulus didn't expect from anyone so small.

Regulus could only stumble along after him. He kept begging for water and Kreacher kept refusing and that didn't make sense. He hardly noticed that they were crossing the water, or stumbling back around the outer banks of the lake. He barely even noticed when they broke out into non-stagnant air.

And then Kreacher redoubled his already-firm grip on Regulus and for the second time that night, apparated them both... away. Except this time, Regulus didn't know where they were going.

Regulus still didn't know where they had gone, but he appeared to be in someone's sitting room. He was still clearly hallucinating because his brother was helping him. Sirius was here helping him and not fighting with Kreacher and there was someone else who looked like their father but not...

Whoever was really here bundled Regulus onto a couch and pressed a glass of precious, cool water into his hands. He drank it greedily, spilling nearly as much as he drank. He thought he was being scolded, but he also distinctly heard the word "idiot" in that exact fond tone Sirius used to use for him when he was covering up his own worry... at least before he went to Hogwarts and found a brother he liked better.

So Regulus was still hallucinating and he had no idea where he was or who was helping him, but the water helped enough to take the edge off the horror he'd been feeling. Then the glass was taken away and another potion was pressed into his grasping hands.

His helper still looked like Sirius, so he probably shouldn't trust that this looked and smelled like Dreamless Sleep, but the rational part of Regulus' brain was still being shouted over by the part desperate for relief. So he took the potion and downed it quickly. Dreamless Sleep should help with his current waking nightmares, right?

The potion kicked in quickly, and Regulus didn't fight the hands that grabbed him to help him lay down without collapsing, especially when his helper shoved a pillow under his head.

Chapter Text

Regulus woke up with his mind much clearer, which was unfortunate because now he was feeling the full effects of the potion. Every muscle in his body seemed painfully tight and every joint ached or throbbed. Even the muscles and joints he hadn't known he had. Even his toes hurt. Even his tongue. Without the miasma of despair as a distraction, the pain seemed even worse than the night before. It wasn't cruciatus levels of pain, but it was incessant. It didn't fade with his tormentor's attention span.

Regulus tried to will himself back to sleep, but the discomfort forced him further awake. He stubbornly refused to open his eyes, as though opening his eyes would be admitting defeat, accepting being awake.

Laying still with his eyes closed wasn't convincing his body to fall back asleep. Instead he became extremely aware of everything he couldn't see. His mouth was dry and he thought he tasted blood faintly in with the bitter herbal aftertaste of potions. The couch he was laying on was soft enough that in other circumstances it would certainly be comfortable, but not so soft he felt like he would disappear into it and be smothered. There was a quiet rustling sound across from him, and he didn't think he was imagining the distant conversation. It didn't sound like raised voices so he wasn't home at Grimmauld...

Right. He wasn't home because he'd gone after the locket and then Kreacher had brought him somewhere, almost certainly saving his life, but he didn't know where he was, nor who was helping him. That alarming thought sent him bolt upright... or at least he tried to sit up suddenly along with his eyes snapping open. Momentum failed him, three quarters of the way upright, but Sirius' steady hand caught his shoulder and helped stabilize him.

"You alright there, Reg?" his brother asked, not taking his hand back and Regulus had to wonder if he was still hallucinating. Or, he reluctantly admitted, that maybe he hadn't been last night. His vision lacked the blurry distortion he remembered around the more obvious hallucinations. Sirius, if this really was Sirius, had lunged forward out of the armchair he had apparently been sitting in and was now crouched awkwardly in front of Regulus, holding him upright.

Why did Sirius suddenly care?

"I..." Regulus rasped. He hadn't realized how dry his throat was. Again.

He wanted to say he was fine, he didn't need Sirius' help. He still had a measure of pride after all.

But in the moment that he was physically incapable of saying so, Sirius finally released him and quietly conjured a goblet, then filled it with clean, cool water from his wand. He passed it to Regulus, hesitating a moment when Regulus' hand wrapped around the stem, before letting go.

Sirius paced a bit before settling back into his chair. "Lily's still working on that antidote," he said gently, as Regulus sipped at the water with far more decorum than when he'd first arrived. “I don't know what in Merlin's beautiful country you were thinking, sending your only backup away when..." Sirius visibly restrained himself and forced his raising voice back to a level, if strained, tone. "Well, we can talk about that later."

"Lily?" Regulus asked, grateful that Sirius wasn't shouting at him, and eager to redirect the conversation away from the topic, even if Sirius was dropping it. His head already hurt, and Sirius and their mother's shouting matches ought to be legendary. Both had entirely too much stamina for vicious ranting.

"Yeah, Lily Potter. You would've known her as Evans. She was in my year. She's the best at potions of any of us."

Regulus tensed again. "Who is 'us?'" he asked warily. Had he dared to cross the Dark Lord only to land captive to Dumbledore's murderous vigilantes?

"She's the best of anyone I would trust with your safety right now," Sirius assured him, seeming to guess where his mind had gone. He looked like he wanted to say more, but he held himself back.

Regulus frowned. “And why are you worried for my safety right now?”

“Ignoring that you barely survived your self-assigned suicide mission?” Sirius asked. It was a rhetorical question. “Acting against You-Know-Who is dangerous! I should know.”

How could he possibly know that? Regulus had told Kreacher not to mention their excursion to anyone in the family. Mother would throw a fit if she knew... And while Regulus wasn't ready to test his occlumency against the Dark Lord, Sirius wouldn't have been able to pull that from his mind, not even while he was sleeping and vulnerable. But if Sirius was bluffing, asking how he knew that would just reveal information Regulus had sincerely intended to keep hidden.

“Why do you care?” Regulus asked more bluntly.

Sirius' eyes went wide. “I... You're my brother, Reg. Why wouldn't I care?”

Regulus glared at him. “I thought Potter was your brother,” he spat. “You've spent the past five yearsignoring me when you can't outright avoid me. Forgive me if I find it hard to believe that you suddenly care just because we share parents.”

Sirius looked stricken. “I wouldn't even call James my brother if I didn't know just how strong a brotherly bond could be,” he whispered. “Just because I didn't trust you not to tattle to our parents, or spy on me for your master, doesn't mean I ever quit caring.”

Regulus was thrown into an emotional whirlwind so abruptly he wasn't sure which part of that statement to react to. Was he outraged at Sirius' lack of trust in him? Angry because as a spiteful teenager, he likely would have tattled to their parents, and hateful toward Sirius for telling the truth? Joyful that his arse of a brother that he's tried so hard not to care about (and failed in his attempts) turns out to care for him after all?

His eyes pricked with tears and he didn't even know which emotion they came from. He blamed the potion for making him weak enough to cry. To cover that weakness, he glared.

Sirius glanced away, ashamed. Good.

An awkward silence descended upon them, and Regulus couldn't quite hold on to his righteous indignation that his brother had ignored and avoided him for so long. He was here now, wasn't he? Though it wasn't exactly Regulus' choice to be here... Where were they anyway?

Regulus turned to his brother to ask precisely that, and his eyes landed on Sirius just in time to see his gaze lift from staring, unfocused, through the floor, to focus properly on something else.

Regulus turned to see what he was looking at.

Who Sirius was looking at must be the man Regulus had thought looked, 'like their father but not,' last night. He was still clearly a Black, now that Regulus' head was clear. The high cheekbones and storm-gray eyes were a giveaway. If it weren't for the tension around the man's eyes, and his salt and pepper hair, Regulus might have thought it was another Sirius standing in the doorway. He looked even more like Sirius than like their father, it was just the apparent age that had confused him.

“I see you're awake,” the man greeted Regulus, with an oddly soft smile for a stranger. Regulus bristled at the expression which could only be expressing pity. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” Regulus insisted. Family or not, he didn't owe this stranger anything.

The stranger's mouth twitched, resisting a broader smile.“Of course you are,” he said, and Regulus could hear the repressed laugh in his voice. Regulus couldn't figure out why such a rude response was worthy of amusement.

The man stepped further into the room, approaching slowly, and angled more towards the armchairs like the one Sirius was sitting in, across from him, than towards Regulus himself.

Altogether, the man was doing a remarkable job of soothing the corner of Regulus' brain that insisted that a stranger must be a threat, given what he was mixed up in.

The man sat down in a chair next to Sirius and leaned forward to address Regulus, putting his elbows on his knees in exactly the same way as Sirius himself. “You don't recognize me, do you?” he asked, and Regulus didn't think he was imagining the mischievous sparkle in his eye.

“You look like you're trying to impersonate Father, only you've only ever met Sirius and overestimated the resemblance,” Regulus informed him, glaring as much as he could without making his headache worse. He was definitely the target of this stranger's humor and he didn't appreciate it.

Sirius and the man beside him barked out identical sharp laughs. Regulus glared even harder, even though frowning so intensely was definitely making his headache deepen.

“That's a more reasonable guess than the truth,” the stranger said, almost apologetically. He remained unfazed by Regulus' unwelcoming reactions. The git probably knew where they were, and felt safe here. Regulus didn't. “Did you know the Department of Mysteries contains much more interesting ways to travel through time than just time turners?” he asked, conversationally, as though Regulus wasn't trying to glare a hole straight through him.

The words caught up after a moment. Regulus might be just the spare, always second best to his brilliant heir of a brother, even in school, in different years and different houses which should mean they were never compared at all... but he could read between the lines just fine. “You're claiming to actually be Sirius?” he interpreted, injecting every possible ounce of skepticism into his voice.

“Got it in one,” the younger Sirius said, wearing an equally mischievous grin. That explained so much, like why the man had immediatelystarted teasing Regulus and treating him as though they were mutually familiar. “The Old Man thought you'd insist he was distant family a little longer.”

“Junior almost didn't believe me even with our matching animagus forms,” the elder retorted. “And I know myself better than anyone else, why would Reg be more accepting?”

“When do you claim to come from then?” Regulus demanded, reminding them he was still right here. The two Sirius sounded ready to bicker with... each other? Themselves?

“1997,” he answered easily.

Regulus' eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You look older than you should.” They were wizards; sure muggles and squibs might get gray hairs younger, but as Blacks, they weren't likely to go gray until almost fifty. Seventeen years in the future, Sirius would only be in his thirties.

“Azkaban takes a toll,” the older Sirius said, far too lightly, in the same dismissive tone he had when he had reassured Regulus he'd “had worse” after suffering their mother's cruciatus for ten whole minutes, two days before he'd run away in favor of Potter.

Beside him, the younger Sirius glanced away, looking troubled but not surprised. He must've heard the story already.

“Don't worry: I've already ensured that's a future Junior won't have to face,” the elder said. His tone was meant to be reassuring, but the reassurance didn't touch Regulus. Why would his brother go to Azkaban? Or why would his innocent brother accept an imposter criminal so easily?

“And why did you come back?” Regulus demanded, trying to sound skeptical, and not show that his brother's obvious acceptance of the man's story did a majority of the work of convincing him to believe it too. Plus, he had that dimple in his left eyebrow that ought to have been a scar, from that incident with doxies in Cissy's dollhouse...

The elder Sirius immediately looked haunted, just considering the question, and it made something cold settle in Regulus' gut. The younger just glanced at his older self, his face trying to mask sorrow or pity, but Regulus was certain they could both see it... Well they both had the ability to see it and they both would if the elder would quit staring into the middle distance. “I... was originally going to go back a very short amount of time, to... fix... only one thing. But the time turners were all destroyed, and by the time I realized what I'd grabbed... 'Prevention is worth more than potions', right?” he paraphrased the old adage. “I figured out it was stable enough for longer term time travel and actually changing things, and I came back to before the first irreversible thing went wrong.” His voice dropped to much quieter, but Regulus still clearly heard the mumbled, “Before your death,” tacked on the end.

Both of his brother immediately looked horrified that he'd actually said that last bit aloud, but the scolding the younger launched into just sounded like buzzing as Regulus was left to grapple with that horrifying tidbit. Had he... Would he have died last night? He'd known it would be dangerous but... Kreacher had drunk that potion and survived without any sort of antidote. He should've gotten out just fine... right?

Regulus found another potion shoved under his nose, and realized abruptly that the others' bickering had stopped. He took the potion and investigated it. A calming draught. That was... that was fair, actually. He threw the potion back and promptly chased it with the rest of his water. Calming draughts weren't the most disgusting tasting potions, but they still weren't pleasant.

He couldn't think of any particularly pleasant potions, and the one protecting the locket certainly didn't count, even if he couldn't remember how it tasted under the rest of the awful memory.

And then the calming draught had kicked in enough for him to process that Sirius had come back to before Regulus' death. Deliberately. They'd been distancing themselves from each other, slowly, after Sirius had first been sorted into Gryffindor, and then more abruptly after that last row, but for all that he acted like he didn't care, Sirius clearly did. Or his future self did, which was almost as good.

And his Sirius, the one only a year older than him, hadn't left his side since shoving that last potion in his face. Instead, he had settled himself on the armrest of the couch, lounging, apparently carefree, in a seat that ought to have been precarious.

Regulus studiously ignored any warm feelings the gesture brought him, even when Sirius settled his arm across the couch behind Regulus' back. He was close enough to offer his very Gryffindorish physical affection, but Regulus didn't – couldn't – ask for it. “That's why Kreacher wouldn't let me near the water when I instructed him to let me get a drink,” he realized aloud.

“About the only thing that could convince that elf to disobey you – or, Merlin, even listen to me – would be knowing it would endanger your life, and finding or being told about a loophole,” the elder Sirius agreed knowingly.

Regulus considered that. He didn't think he'd been coherent enough to instruct Kreacher to let him drink the water, specifically from that particular lake and also specifically immediately. He could instantly think of plenty of ways around the orders he must have given, and he remembered Kreacher's insistence that he would allow Regulus to drinksafewater. Sneaky little bastard,he thought fondly. It absolutely wasn't the same fondness with which he called his brother so Gryffindor.

Kreacher had saved his life, on Sirius' orders. If he weren't under the influence of a potion, he might have laughed hysterically at the scrambling of their usual dynamic: Regulus arguing for Kreacher's life against Sirius' (hopefully) empty threats.

“And you said my death was only the first thing you wanted to prevent?” Regulus asked. He was still comfortably detached from the emotions that thought should inspire, but that just meant he had more attention for pulling apart the rest of the conversation.

A warm hand settled hesitantly onto his shoulder. Regulus tensed at the unexpected contact, but forced himself to relax. Just because he would never ask for it didn't mean the contact wasn't... nice. The hand settled a little more firmly when he didn't bother to shrug it off. Across from them, Sirius smiled bitterly. “Oh yes. You-Know-Who would've been temporarily bodiless after...” he hesitated, and the hand on Regulus' shoulder tightened minutely, “...the events of next year, but Kreacher doesn't know how to destroy the locket, and it wasn't even the only one.”

“You still haven't told me what these objects are, Old Man,” Sirius grumbled.

Meanwhile Regulus was glad he'd already taken the calming draught because of coursethe Dark Lord was so obsessed with immortality that he had made more than one horcrux. The thought should – would, probably, once the draught wore off – be properly horrifying. “He made two?” Regulus asked, wide-eyed.

“He made seven,” Sirius corrected him, then corrected himself. “Well, only five so far.”

Regulus found himself worried despite the calming draught. “Seven?”

“One was accidental. We think he only planned six,” Sirius said, shrugging like this was old news, like it wasn't the stuff of nightmares. People were known to lose important parts of themselves after making a single horcrux. How the Dark Lord hadn't wiped himself right out of existence making... even two horcruces was unheard of, let alone five. “Even if I can't get to the others before his spells got all mixed up, I really want to prevent that one,” Sirius continued blithely, ignoring Regulus' newfound crisis... or, more likely, repressing his own. His tone was too light. Again. Regulus should've noticed earlier, specifically at the beginning of this topic, but in his defense, he was distracted by news of horcruces.

Sirius paused, seeming to hesitate over what he wanted to say next, and Regulus frowned questioningly at his dark scowl. The last time he'd looked like that was after Andromeda's last chaperoned outing with Rodolphus Lestrange. She had said something to Sirius before running away, and Sirius had looked like this for a week, and any time Lestrange was mentioned for months. Then Andromeda had eloped with some noname, and Bella had taken over her marriage contract, and Sirius had run away too, and Regulus hadn't thought of that expression again. Until now, when the sight of it brought that whole tangle of memories crashing back.

The younger just grumbled under his breath, since his previous protest had been ignored. Did he not understand what a horcrux was? They'd grown up in the same household; how could he not?

“It attached itself to a person,” Sirius finally explained, the dark look barely fading from his face. “We're pretty sure that one was accidental and he was aiming for seven pieces total, because after he failed to kill that person, he kept trying for the rest of his life.”

Regulus rather distantly felt horror. Horcruces were awful enough on their own, but they were notoriously hard to destroy, so destroying a human horcrux probably involved murdering the person and then desecrating the body. And by the scowl on Sirius' face, it had probably been someone he'd cared about. Had there even been enough of the body left to bury? Or had he been too reluctant and allowed the Dark Lord to maintain his immortality? The options were bad and worse.

“Did you destroy them all?” Regulus asked. “In the future, I mean?”

Sirius met his horrified gaze steadily. “I helped with the inanimate ones.” he answered. “Dumbledore was still working on how to get the snake since he carries it everywhere with him.

“And the person?” Regulus asked, as gently as he could, ignoring Sirius' hand tightening painfully on his shoulder. “You distinctly mentioned a person.” Had the Dark Lord succeeded at killing them? Would mere death rid a body of a horcrux?

“A death eater killed him before I even knew about the horcruxes,” Sirius snapped. Regulus flinched. Sirius only ever expressed that much emotion over James Potter, his preferred brother.

How could someone become a horcrux without noticing? Surely Potter would've told his brother about such a horrifying change?

“You could've just said they were horcruxes instead of trying to describe how urgently we needed to destroy some random collection of objects,” Sirius said, dropping his hand from Regulus' shoulder and sliding forward to glare at his older self.

“The less people who even know the word in connection with You-Know-Who, the better,” the elder said cooly, unapologetic in the same way he'd been when he first came home a Gryffindor. Sirius scoffed angrily at him, but Regulus thought it was just fitting that Sirius had to deal with himself now, just like everyone else had to.

“Settle down, boys,” a new voice said. They all turned to find Lily Evans – er, Lily Potter – standing in the doorway, holding a vial of something blue.

“How long have you been there?” the elder Sirius sighed.

“Long enough,” she answered, with a dismissive shrug. “I didn't want to interrupt.” She strode forward, into the room, and reached behind Sirius to present the vial to Regulus. “Your antidote, Mister Black.”

Regulus took the vial and inspected it, absently offering a quiet, “Thank you, Evans.” The potion had a slight purple sheen, and a relatively thin texture. It didn't look like any familiar potion; antidotes rarely did, but it wasn't separating, so it was likely made well – it wouldn't poison him accidentally. And it would be weird to have both Sirius tell him all of this, just to ask someone else to poison him. Drinking this wouldn't be any more reckless than drinking the other unknown potion, even if Kreacher had already survived that one.

She was silent for a moment, long enough that Regulus glanced up to meet her assessing gaze. “It's Potter, now,” she finally corrected him, tone perfectly neutral. “But you're welcome.” She turned to Sirius, the older one. “Was that all you needed me for?”

“Yes, thank you,” he replied, offering her a warm smile.

Lily Potter offered him a terse nod. Regulus was pleased to see he wasn't the only one uncomfortable with someone so new – even if he wasa version of Sirius – acting so familiar.

“I'll trust Junior to keep me appraised of your family's well being,” he told her, before she could turn away. “Regulus and I will be busy for the a while, I expect, so I won't be free to visit.”

“Excuse me?” Regulus asked. This was the first he'd heard of any future busy-ness he was committed to.

“Drink your potion,” Sirius said from next to him, taking a moment to refill his water.

Regulus sighed and glanced at Potter. “This won't interact badly with a calming draught?”

She grinned at him, an approving glint in her eye. “They told me you might need one, so I made sure that it won't interact. The dreamless sleep from last night, even if you need more tonight, also won't be an issue. But it does have enough eye of newt that you shouldn't take any other pain relieving potions for at least five hours.”

Regulus nodded his understanding and tossed it back. It wasn't the worst tasting potion ever, but he was still grateful he could chase the taste away with his refilled water. By the time he'd had that thought, his aches were already largely fading. Shortly, his arms and legs were a bit sore, as though he'd been flying quidditch drills the day before, but his joints no longer hurt, and the rest of his muscles felt as good as new.

“That's a pain reliever?” Sirius asked. “I thought it was supposed to be an antidote.”

“It's a counter to a potion designed to cause pain, among other things,” she answered, rolling her eyes. “If that counts as a poison then yes this is also an antidote. But it's a counter. All antidotes are counters, but there are many more counters than just antidotes. Honestly Sirius, you were in the same NEWT Potions class I was, you should know this.”

“Do you have another dose of that counter made?” Regulus interrupted, before Sirius could wilt too much under her scolding, or worse, start another argument.

Potter turned her frown to Regulus. “You don't need any more,” she stated confidently.

“No,I don't,” Regulus agreed. “I was asking for Kreacher.”

“Why did you make your house elf drink that awful potion?” she demanded, dangerously cold. “Was it before or after you realized-”

“He didn't,” the older Sirius defended him. “You-Know-Who borrowed an elf to test the defenses on the artifact Regulus retrieved. That's how Reg even knew where it was. When he went back, he insisted on drinking the potion himself.”

Potter's eyes softened. She pulled another vial out of her purse and handed it to Regulus. “Here,” she said softly. Regulus got the feeling that her renewed gentleness was all the apology he was going to get for the instant suspicion. He thanked her sincerely anyway, and tucked the potion securely away in a pocket.

“I'm going home now,” Potter announced, “before you idiots find someother adventure to keep me away from my wonderful family.” She turned and left the room before anyone could respond.

“Give Harry extra kisses from me,” Sirius called after her.

She didn't respond, and a few moments later, they heard the floo activate.

Regulus barely remembered the name Harry James Potter from the birth announcements section in the Prophet, but he did remember, so at least he didn't have to embarrass himself by asking. He turned back to the older Sirius. “What are you volunteering me for?” he asked again. “I didn't sign up to be 'busy for a while.'”

“You and I are going to collect the others,” he answered, unbothered by Regulus' frustration. “Collect and destroy. It's much less dangerous with backup that's allowed to ignore you when you're being self-sacrificing.”

He gave Regulus a pointed look at that, and the other Sirius followed suit. Regulus couldn't decide which one to glare back at.

“Fine,” he finally sighed. “When do we start?” Regulus was certain someone had used refreshing charms on him, but he was starting to crave an actual shower and a chance to change into clean robes. Sirius would give him time for that, surely.

Sirius grinned brightly, and the wrinkles around his eyes nearly disappeared. “First, we need to find a goblin-forged blade. Didn't Father keep a dagger in his office?”