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AUTHOR'S NOTE OF UNFORTUNATE NECESSITY: I am a writer of problematic things. I am aware that my writing and the ways my characters behave and think can be just that, problematic. I am not approaching it under any delusions. I am not pretending to be a moral authority, nor do I want to be. Objective, absolute morality is not my interest as a writer. I am not writing in a black and white world where the heroes are uncomplicated, always good, never flawed, perfect human beings with no bad qualities and no regrets. Regret is a major theme of mine. As is having to come to terms with the dark side of one’s own nature, or, sometimes, even making excuses and rationalising it. I do sometimes write stories where the bad guys win, and I do so fully knowing that is what I am doing, not concealing from myself or pretending they are good or their behaviour justified, but I try to make it clear when I do. I like to explore trauma and human psychology not an absolute, objective good and evil. If you don’t like that, or your thinking is so black and white you can’t comprehend it, please read no further. Neither this story nor any of my stories are for you. If you do chose to continue reading after this warning, and dislike what you find, you have no one to blame but yourself, so don't bother flaming me about it or else I will point out that fact.
***
Lily’s grumbling to herself as she makes her breakfast. He’s sitting with his cup of tea and some marmalade on toast, but she wanted porridge instead, and when he offered to make it for her she snapped at him so he left her to it.
It’s probably just the fact that Padfoot came over last night. Came over, got drunk, got obnoxious, Lily got irritated and started trying to pick a fight with the man, and he spent most of the evening trying to play mediator, and by the end of it Sirius was too drunk to safely get home and so it tucked into their spare room sleeping it off. That’s probably it. Probably. He hopes. He hopes it’s not just more of—
She’s pregnant, he reminds himself, and then, Mama said pregnancy can make a witch behave in ways she wouldn’t in any other circumstance.
Of course Lily wasn’t pregnant the first time they had one of their rows, or the first time she looked at him and he could see the contempt shining in her eyes, but maybe once the baby is born. Maybe. Maybe—
He feels uneasy. Some part of him wants very much to run away. The paper. He’ll read the paper—
But The Daily Prophet remains folded up on itself, face down on the kitchen table between the two of them. She might want to read it first. It would be hardly chivalrous to snatch it from her if that’s the case.
She’s hissing to herself about where the brown sugar has got to when somewhat starts violently beating on the front door. They both stop, exchange a glance, before drawing their wands. Lily turns off the stove and backs up towards the backdoor as they discussed; if it’s enemies she’ll run outside and Apparate to Hartsbridge Hall, his Family seat, and he’ll follow as soon as he can. If he can.
It is not enemies. It is Moony.
He’s halfway through a confused hello when his friend bellows in his face, ‘Is Padfoot here?! He’s not at his flat!’
‘Er— upstairs?’ he ventures, ‘He was rather worse for—’
‘Shut up Prongs! Merlin’s Beard, what are we going to do? He’s going to go bloody bonkers. You’ll help me, won’t you? If he goes after Snape I don’t know what Regulus will do—’
‘What on Earth are you talking about?’ he splutters. Snape? What?
Moony gives him a look like he’s a complete imbecile. ‘Haven’t you seen the Prophet?’ his friend shakes a copy of the paper at him with those words.
‘No, it’s still on the kitchen tab—’ he begins, but Remus is still shaking the paper at him, so he grabs it off his friend and turns it over to the front page.
BLACK HEIR WEDS BASTARD PRINCE blares out at him in large, blocky letters, just above a picture showing Regulus Black, dressed formally in a nice pair of robes, coming out of one of the best restaurants in wizarding London, his hand very proprietarily placed on the slender and graceful curve of the lower back of— of—
He chokes on his own spit.
The Snape in the picture gives him a dark look, a sneer on that— Did Snape always look like that? Bloody hell, he does clean up nice. Look at all that long, dark hair, it must be halfway down his back— the very back that Regulus’ hand is still very firmly planted on, a smirk on that face he had never really considered before. Everyone said Regulus didn’t have his brother’s looks, but— look how tiny Snape’s waist is— Those dark eyes have such a knowing look to them, so different to school, and the way the Snape in the picture moves closer to Regulus, seems to enjoy Regulus touching him. He bets Regulus touches him a lot. He bets—
‘WHAT?!’ he hears roared from the kitchen, his wife’s voice, moments before a crack of sound, and then a crash, a clatter. He and Moony sprint towards the kitchen—
She’s standing in the middle of the room, holding the paper, staring down at it. Above her, splattered across the ceiling, are the remains of the porridge, studded with shards of bowl. The air stinks of wild, wandless magic. ‘Lily—’ he calls out to her, but she ignores him in favour of the paper.
The sound of thuds upstairs, followed by running footsteps, has every muscle in his body not already tense turning to rock. ‘I’ll go and—’ Remus begins, heading back into the halls the staircase, but moments later Padfoot is sprinting into the room past him, wand in hand.
‘What’s going on? Where are the fucking Death Eaters?!’ he demands, standing there in nothing but his pants and vest.
‘What’s going on is that bastard brother of yours has seduced poor Sev!’ Lily roars, flinging the paper at Padfoot. He fumbles it, almost drops it, manages to catch it and then stares down at it like staring into the abyss.
Huh. He hadn’t thought Lily would care. She never even lets him mention Snape. The few times Snape has tried to write to her she’s burnt his letters and spent the next few weeks in an even more horrible mood than usual.
Why does it hurt? Why does he feel so resigned, staring into her fury?
Why does it feel like everything went wrong that day by the lake, when Snape called her a mudblood, when he tormented Snape to the point that Snape called her a mudblood? The Lily he thought he knew disappeared after then. Snape started acting strangely. Padfoot tried to feed the boy to Moony. Moony stopped trusting them all as much as he had before. He found himself questioning the Dumbledore that did nothing in response—
Sometimes in his dreams he can still smell the scent lingering in Snape’s hair as he had snatched the boy moments from Moony’s teeth, wrapped that slender form in his arms, and dragged him out into the quiet dark outside the shack. Sometimes he can still feel the boy’s warmth. Sometimes—
Sirius is shouting now, ranting, semi-coherent, infuriated with his brother, infuriated with Snape— and that gets Lily going, so now they’re shouting at each other, and Moony is trying to get between them. He should help. He should—
He turns his own attention back to the paper, unable to fight his own curiosity.
Beneath the headline is a subheading saying— No parental consent. No parental consultation. — and then the article itself. Rebellious Regulus (22) has taken the inalienable powers signed over to him when his elder brother, the notorious rake Sirius Black (24), was disowned, and used them to do what few Pureblood Heirs would dare to do, risking the wrath of both the The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black as well as the Gravitas, Dignitas, and Auctoritas of the House of Prince. In short Regulus Black has taken a spouse, and not just any spouse, but Severus Snape(23), the son of the scandalous Eileen Prince and unacknowledged grandson of none other than Augustus Prince.
In a secret ceremony performed at his solicitor’s officers at—
He tries to read more but his attention keeps getting caught on the word Prince. Prince. PRINCE.
The unacknowledged grandson of none other than Augustus Prince—
He hadn’t known. He hadn’t—
This must be what it feels like for someone who has just finished crossing the road and felt a breeze, glancing back to realise they have only just been missed by a speeding car roaring around the corner. So close, so close he has come to destruction. So close he may still come to destruction, if this catches Augustus Prince’s attention enough that the man decides to acknowledge Snape and then looks into his past, his history, the offences committed against him—
But Augustus Prince would never do such a thing, if for no other reason than Snape is a Death Eater and Augustus Prince abhors Voldemort. Of course Regulus could always bring a case against him now— but Potters vs Blacks— Potters have higher status, not by much, but quite possible by enough. It could prove an embarrassment, but not a ruination.
He will have to tell Mama. He will have to explain it all to Mama. Mama is going to kill him for exposing the Family Potter in such a way.
‘Prongs, get your head out of your arse and give me a hand here!’ Moony’s shout drags his attention back to the here and now, and the increasingly vitriolic argument between his best friend and his wife. Carefully he places the paper on the table and goes to help.
The next few days are not good. Lily is furious in an impotent kind of way that involves a lot of not admitting she is, Sirius is furious in a bombastic and obnoxious way where no pretence is made about his feelings, Moony is also quickly becoming— something— tired of them all— and he’s— he’s—
He doesn’t know what he is. He finds himself airy headed and easily distracted, waiting every morning for the Prophet to arrive so he can get to it before his wife or his friend— who is still staying in the spare room for some incomprehensible reason, even if by doing so he is risking being hexed by Lily. He devours the articles as the story builds. He can’t help himself.
The first couple of days are ugly speculations about Snape, that he’s nothing more that an uppity Halfblood marrying into the class his mother’s scandalous behaviour denied him— but then the story seems to change and it’s all about his purity, his chastity at school, the fact that Regulus Black is the only person he has ever had a relationship with, and then lurid speculations about his virginity and when exactly Regulus took it. Then comes the revelations about the duel between Lucius Malfoy and Regulus Black at the part celebrating Malfoy’s engagement to Narcissa Black, and the mythos of Snape expands to include him valiantly defending his virtue from the pursuit of a powerful Pureblood in favour of the man who he had devoted himself to, a man only of equal status to Malfoy, this confirming that Snape’s intentions cannot be those of a gold digger— and it’s all very Pureblood. It’s all written for Purebloods. It’s all directed at Purebloods. The way it’s all worded, the things speculated about, the way both Snape and Regulus Black are framed in the story. Regulus the conquering Pureblood Heir, sweeping poor Snape off his feet and promising him the life he was to lead, in exchange for Snape’s body and his devotion.
Then there’s the pictures— so many pictures, private, candid pictures from various Pureblood functions, the two of them always together, two dark heads tilted towards each other, often touching, Regulus displaying for the Purebloods present the fact that Snape is his, his body language possessive and Protective, and Snape leaning against him with perfect trust, and smiling at him, and laughing at things whispered into his ear—
He is struck by the reality that Snape, weedy, ugly, runty, skinny Snivellus, has grown into his looks, more than grown into them, has in fact become something of a— of a— of a— a beauty.
He doesn’t sleep well. There is something crawling under his skin. He’s fine— except he’s not, and it’s like he’s seventeen again, and Lily is tucked in under his arm, but his eyes are catching on the glimpses of darkness he sometimes sees out of the corner of his eye, the boy that dark hair belongs to scurrying away and avoiding him.
Back then he’d throw himself into Quidditch. These days the best he can hope is to throw himself into the fight— but things have been quiet, almost too quiet, and with his wife and his best friend obsessed with the same thing obsessing him he can’t get away from it.
Regulus and Snape must be on their honeymoon, because they’ve disappeared from public view.
He tries not to imagine what they’re doing together.
Regulus is shorter than him, shorter than Snape, shorter than Padfoot— but the skinny youth he remembers is absent in those pictures. Regulus is filling out. His hands look so large on Snape’s body. His shoulders broad. His face confident, arrogant, the very picture of an Heir. He has become what he has had to become since Sirius was disowned. He looks like beast. He probably fucks like a beast. He wonders if Snape cowers beneath that onslaught or glories in it.
It all makes him feel entirely too much like himself. The himself he has never wanted to be. He always wanted to be the hero. A Potter as is, not a Potter as was in the old stories, when his ancestors rode to war for their own ends and took what they wanted with no hesitation.
Lily looks at him like she hates him.
Sirius looks like he’s going mad.
Remus looks sick of all of them.
He has no idea where Peter is.
It’s three days after Sirius wanders off when none of them are looking and goes and has a screaming match with his mother in the middle of Diagon Alley when something finally happens. They don’t expect it, at this point, because the run on from the Black screaming match has been all over the papers, as has a lot of other things they all want to forget. Sirius is looking hunted, Remus is doing his best, Peter is still elsewhere, and he, himself, just got a rather displeased letter from his Mama that morning, while Lily has gone to visit Alice Longbottom, and he’d like to think that it’s because they’re friends, and both pregnant, but he suspects she’s been doing a lot of thinking these last few days and might just be regretting ending her friendship with Snape. Also he worries she might use an Unforgivable on Padfoot the next time he says something excruciatingly insensitive.
The problem with Sirius having loudly and vulgarly expressed his dislike of Snape while accusing his mother of inadequate parental supervision over Regulus, and her response of accusing Sirius in turn of leading his younger brother astray with his insistence in hanging around a bunch of degenerate muggles and mudbloods, started by drawing the papers’ attention to the Black Family’s inner conflict, but that soon leads to Sirius’ conduct at school in general, which means they’re all soon looking at headlines like:
Degenerates and Mudbloods! — Black Matriarch a Blood Purist! — Mother against sons! — Is this the fall of the House of Black? — What role did disgraced Sirius have in Regulus’ rebellion? — Sirius Black makes clear disapproval of brother's spouse! — Schoolyard Bully! Troubling revelations about disowned Black son’s conduct at Hogwarts— A Hell for Halfbloods! — Blood Will Out. Snape a Picture of Princely Virtues at School! — Disgraceful but not Disowned. What have the scions of some of our greatest Families been doing under Dumbledore’s watch? — and then, most personally troubling, Potter Heir Implicated. School misconduct scandal spreads!
He and his two closest friends— because none of them have heard from Peter since it all started— are sitting in the backyards of the beautiful terrace house his parents gifted him and Lily on their wedding, drinking lager— in the case of him and Padfoot— and stout in the case of Moony, when an owl arrives from Dumbledore.
The old man wants them to accompany him to meet a potential ally. That’s all the details they are given, other than a time later that evening, and a location. Of course they agree. Padfoot seems troubled though.
When they Apparate in the reason for that unease soon becomes obvious. They are in the middle of a field— which he soon realises is in fact a lawn, and ahead of them is a small cottage made of dark stone, that seems almost a void in the twilight. Dumbledore is there already, staring up at something above the door. He and Remus exchange a glance, but Padfoot is already heading over. When he and Remus scurry to catch up he finds himself standing in front of an ancient wooden door, and when he squints into the blue of early night, he sees it bearing the arms of the House of Black in the lintel above it.
‘This is—?’ he glances at Sirius.
‘We— I mean— My Family own this cottage. It’s on— it’s on Regulus’ Estate. The one they gave him when he was born— not— not any he was signed over when I was disinherited.’
‘Are we here to meet Regulus Black?’ Remus asks Dumbledore.
Padfoot scoffs, mutters under his breath, ‘You said potential ally.’
‘I am not quite sure what we are here to meet,’ the old man answers. ‘I thought it best to have those I trust at my side, and those— those that may be best suited to handle whatever is past this door.’
‘Well, we better get on with it, then,’ Padfoot snaps, drawing himself up and moving in until he’s closest to the door, hesitating, just a tiny bit, so little that no one who doesn’t know him would be able to tell, before reaching out and pushing the door open.
Inside is clean, well lit, the walls white plaster, the floors polished boards, the age of the wood obvious in the roughness of the grain. It’s Tudor, he thinks, the cottage. It looks Tudor. All exposed beams and woodwork. There are tapestries. The furniture looks old, well kept, antique— they are all cording around a small entrance hall. Stairs to the right and a corridor up ahead.
Beside him he feels, hears, Sirius take a deep breath and let it out, slowly. ‘This way.’
They follow him into the corridor, where he almost immediately stops in front of a door in the left wall. He hesitates again, before turning the knob and pushing it open.
Inside is a well appointed little sitting room, a fire in the grate, a Chesterfield lounge suite in dark green arrayed around a low table, and sitting there, on a two-seat couch Regulus Black and— and Snape.
Large black eyes slide across him, dismissive, and a velvety voice scoffs, ‘You’ve brought your pets, I see.’
‘Shut up Snivellus!’ Padfoot snarls, puffing up, drawing his wand. He’s been so angry. So angry and now confronted with the thing making him feel like that—
‘Go ahead and try it, Sirius,’ Regulus speaks up, voice deep and authoritative, sounding every bit the Heir. ‘We are on my land. The wards are up and they have never liked you.’
‘Can everyone please calm down,’ Remus says, holding his hands up in front of him.
Snape looks— Snape does not look well. Neither does Regulus. They look pale and sickly— but strangely content. They’re sitting pressed side to side— he can see a bruise, a lovebite, peeking just out of the top of Snape’s collar.
‘You wished to speak with me—’ Dumbledore says. ‘You asked me to come here, now—’
‘Is this a trap?!’ Padfoot demands. ‘Are the rest of your little Death Eater pals hanging around waiting to—’
‘Oh shut up, Black—’ Snape snaps, before hesitating, ‘Though I suppose I am now also a Black. Shut up, Sirius. We invited you here, Dumbledore, to offer you the chance of— of alliance.’
Regulus must really like Snape, letting him speak for the both of them, much like his own father lets Mama speak for the Potters.
‘Alliance?’ Padfoot scoffs.
‘I’m afraid I don’t quite understand,’ Dumbledore says. ‘You have both made your alliance to Voldemort quite clear—’
‘Coerced,’ Regulus pipes up. ‘Neither myself nor my husband chose willingly to join that monster. You will see in the coming weeks that I am intending to summon my parents to court on charges of Family mismanagement. When mother disowned Sirius she rather foolishly bestowed upon my shoulders rather more power than she perhaps should have.’
‘Coerced?’ Dumbledore echoes, while Sirius splutters. ‘What proof have you that this is so.’
‘Oh, no proof of that—’ Regulus begins, only to be interrupted.
‘Then why should I believe you? Why should I let you join our cause?’
A short, barking laugh escapes Snape. ‘Join? Oh, no, old man. We are not here to beg your pathetic protection. An alliance, as I said, and one of equals.’
‘I really don’t see what you have to offer us,’ Dumbledore replies after a moment.
‘Well, we have achieved what none on your side have ever achieved before,’ Snape replies, then— with shaking he sees— hands the man reaches into his top pocket and pulls out— a locket? A destroyed locket, blackened and charred and warped. ‘Do you know what this is?’ Snape asks, voice lingering silkily on every syllable, ‘It is, or rather was, a Horcrux, a little piece of Riddle’s soul— that he will now never be getting back.’
Dumbledore actually staggers back, one step, two— ‘A Horcrux? Can Riddle really have fallen so far?’
‘Further than you can even imagine,’ Regulus replies. ‘I doubt this is his first, or his only, and until they are all found and destroyed, he cannot be. If we had not discovered this, if we had not acted, if we chose not to bring this information to you, no matter the fact we, neither of us, have any reason to trust you— Well, then you would all go along throwing your lives away trying to kill the unkillable— We believe this is more than enough for you to accept our offer of alliance.’
‘I— Yes, you may very well be right—’ Dumbledore replies, blue eyes still fixed on the locket in Snape’s hand. The old man reaches out, careful, hesitant, beneath that merciless black gaze, before Snape delicately deposits the thing in the older wizard’s grip, snatching his own fingers back immediately, as if burned. Regulus, he sees, takes that hand in his own then, lifts it to his lips, presses a kiss onto the back of long, elegant fingers, and Snape shoots him a small smile in turn—
There is silence then. Silence while Dumbledore examines the destroyed Horcrux— a Horcrux— His own skin crawls. To think what they would have faced, unwitting, sure of their victory, but inevitable in their defeat, if Snape— No, if the Blacks hadn’t acted—
He glances at them, tired, obviously, he now realises, magically exhausted from whatever it took to destroy the thing, but happy. Happy with each other— Why does he feel so empty?