Chapter Text
Sirius was crying, and Regulus didn’t know what to do.
Regulus was lying face down on the bed, clenching his jaw in an effort to remain silent as Sirius treated the cuts on the backs of his legs. The room was silent, but that only made Sirius’ quiet, gasping breaths more obvious. When Regulus risked a glance over his shoulder, he found silent tears streaming down his brother’s cheeks and turned back to the pillow in front of him almost immediately.
Regulus cried a lot, and Sirius was always the one comforting him. But now the roles were reversed, and Regulus didn’t know what to do. Sirius never cried. No matter what his parents did, no matter how badly they hurt him, he never shed a single tear. But now that Regulus was the one hurting…
Wincing as Sirius cleaned the gashes on the back of his leg, Regulus tried to think of something to do that might make the tears stop.
He didn’t want Sirius to cry.
But he couldn’t do anything to help.
And the tears didn’t stop.
Regulus was begging.
Ordinarily he would never do anything of the sort, but with Sirius standing there the way he was, bag clutched in one hand and tears in his eyes once more, he didn’t know what else to do.
"Please, Sirius,” He whispered. Because even now, it was imperative not to wake his parents. “Please… please don’t leave me.”
But Sirius was walking away, shaking his head as tears spilled from haunted brown eyes. “I’m sorry, Reggie,” He murmured, “It’s better this way. They won’t hurt you if I’m not here. I promise I’ll be safe.”
Regulus wanted to scream at his brother. To tell him that this simply wasn’t true, and the year Sirius had been at Hogwarts while he wasn’t had been the worst year of his life. But there was something caught in his throat and he couldn’t make a sound. Regulus knew where his brother was going. The Potters would take him in like a second son, and he couldn’t bring himself to take that safety away from his brother.
And so he kept his mouth shut.
When his brother walked out of the door, leaving Regulus alone in a house that he couldn’t bear to call home, he didn’t cry.
What sort of good had that ever done for him anyway?
“Where is your brother?”
Walburga wasn’t yelling, and that only made it all the more terrifying. Logically, Regulus knew he shouldn’t have been afraid of his own mother, but… well. Logic didn’t have much place in the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.
“I don’t know,” Regulus said, quietly, eyes glued to the old, wooden floorboards.
"You don’t know.” Walburga’s voice had gone softer still, a deadly edge creeping into her words. “Your brother is gone and you don’t know where he is?”
“No, mother,” Regulus replied. Inwardly, he was seething. That… that thing in front of him was not his mother.
Orion was nowhere to be seen, but Regulus didn’t need to hear the bottle clink in the kitchen to know where he was. He hated his father with almost as much passion as he hated his mother. For a man who claimed to be lord of such a powerful house, he held a shockingly small amount of power in his own home.
Walburga snaked out a hand and gripped her son’s chin tight enough to bruise, forcing him to look at her. Once again, anger began to course through Regulus’ body. He was taller and stronger than this woman. He could slap her hand away with ease, yet his body remained perfectly still. Obeying, always obeying. That was all he knew how to do around his mother and he hated it.
“I think you’re lying,” Walburga breathed, face inches from Regulus’. “I think you know exactly where your brother is.”
Regulus took a breath. Then, for the first time in his life, he lied to his mother. “Sorry, mother. I don’t.”
The torture he endured that night had been the worst for a long while. The worst since Sirius had been sorted into Gryffindor, as a matter of fact. There were no permanent scars, but the trembling in his hands and occasional muscle spasms betrayed what had happened in that room.
The Cruciatus curse never left physical marks.
Somehow, that was worse. As if the pain he was so sure he had been feeling was an illusion. Regulus knew that, technically, this was true.
But that didn’t stop the shaking in his hands.
This particular summer was spent mostly in silence.
There was no Sirius speaking up at the dinner table, or laughing too loudly at the letters his friends sent him.
Sirius had always fought. He had fought and fought and fought until, finally, he broke free. Regulus had never bothered fighting in the first place.
Yielding had always come easier to him.
He wasn’t a fighter, that was something he knew deep inside. But all this pain and torment and anger needed to go somewhere.
For the most part, he remained shut up in his room, reading books on spells that nobody should be using, let alone a fifteen year old boy. Yet it gave him a sense of control he had been longing for. The next time his mother came for him, he would fight back. He would do it, he would-
The next time his mother came for him, Regulus didn’t fight back. He was silent.
He wasn’t a fighter. He had never been a fighter. But how he so desperately wished that wasn’t true.
Often, he found himself contemplating his parents’ deaths. He had planned out the demise of the people who had raised him more times than he could count. It would be so easy too. A knife from the kitchen, or even Avada Kedavra straight to the chest. (Regulus was certain he had enough anger buried inside to make the spell work). Then, all he would need was an empty vodka bottle, the knife in his father’s hand, and a few tears in his eyes.
Certainly, the Ministry would believe the narrative.
And if they didn’t, Regulus wasn’t sure he cared much anymore.
He didn’t find himself caring about much at all these days.
By the time he reached the end of the holidays, Regulus was certain this summer had broken something vital inside him, because he still couldn’t feel anything. Perhaps it was the cruciatus curse, perhaps it was the silence, perhaps it was the nightmares. Perhaps it was the absence of his sunshine. The light of his life.
His Sirius.
But the fact remained that when the final days arrived, he didn’t feel a thing. No excitement, not even any relief, just a bone-deep emptiness that clawed at his insides, like a monster trying to escape.
He packed his trunk with hands that didn’t shake, and said goodbye to his parents as though nothing had changed. As though this was an ordinary school year, where he would keep his head down and his grades up just as was expected of him. As though there wasn’t an heirship ring weighing down his left hand, heavy with the broken promises and horrifying future it represented.
The Hogwarts express gleamed scarlet in the cheerful sun, and Regulus didn’t even bother scowling at the happy families waving teary goodbyes.
Instead, he headed for his usual compartment, made sure the little box he had shoved all his emotions inside was still locked up tight, donned a cool, detached mask, and readied himself for the year to come.
Everything was fine.
Regulus wasn’t crying anymore.
Regulus was never going to cry again.
“You look like shit.”
“Gee, thanks Evan.” This was easy. Regulus slipped back into his usual cold, dry humour with ease, and a part of him was happy to see Evan. One of the two people, he could actually call a friend.
But then Barty walked through the door, and Barty had always been more perceptive than most.
Regulus really didn’t want to lie to his friends.
So he simply waited.