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Regulus Black had always hated public speaking. Which was unfortunate, really, considering the amount of people currently staring at him.
Though at present that concern ranked somewhere beneath the far more pressing issue of the frankly absurd number of flowers surrounding him.
He had genuinely never seen so many in his life. They crowded every available surface in great sweeping arrangements, spilling over tables in bursts of colour so bright it almost hurt to look at them for too long.
Roses, lilies, chrysanthemums, carnations, flowers Regulus couldn’t begin to name, all woven together in carefully arranged displays that somehow made the entire beach feel softer. Warmer. It was excessive, really. Entirely too much. Which meant, of course, that it had James and Lily written all over it.
Their flower shop had become something of an institution over the years, though Regulus privately suspected Lily did most of the actual work while James stood around charming customers into buying arrangements twice the size they’d originally intended.
Still, looking around now, Regulus had to admit they’d done beautifully.
He adjusted the folded sheet of paper in his hands for what was probably the fifteenth time in the last minute, though the words written there had long since stopped registering in any meaningful way. His throat felt oddly dry.
Not ideal, considering the amount of speaking he was apparently expected to be doing. Public speaking had never exactly been his forte, a fact Sirius had spent the better part of two decades finding endlessly entertaining. Even now, standing there in front of far too many people and far too many flowers, Regulus could feel the slightest tremor in his fingers no matter how tightly he tried to hold the paper still.
He cleared his throat quietly, then immediately wished he hadn’t when the small sound seemed to echo louder than expected. Wonderful. Perfect start.
Somewhere behind him he heard the unmistakable sound of someone sniffling softly and, without needing to turn around, knew immediately that it was Remus.
That didn’t surprise him in the slightest. Remus had always been terribly sentimental beneath all the books and cardigans and sarcastic muttering. Regulus resisted the urge to glance back at him, though he could picture it perfectly anyway. Eyes suspiciously bright, attempting and failing to hold himself together in that very Remus sort of way that usually only made Sirius laugh at him more.
And Sirius… God. Regulus could only imagine exactly what expression his brother would be wearing right now. That stupid grin. All teeth and mischief, probably with his arms folded as he watched his younger brother suffer through the ordeal with entirely too much amusement. Sirius had always found Regulus’ discomfort hilarious, particularly when it involved speaking in front of other people. He could almost hear him now. Go on then, Reg. Loud enough for the people at the back, yeah? Regulus pressed his lips together for a moment, fighting the smile threatening at the corners of his mouth.
Regulus let out a slow breath and finally looked up from the paper in his hands, though he wasn’t entirely sure why he’d bothered bringing it in the first place. He knew what he wanted to say.
Or at least, he thought he did.
“I suppose…” he began, voice quieter than he would’ve liked, forcing himself to clear his throat before continuing, “I suppose most people here know that Sirius and I never really had a mum and dad. Not in the way you’re meant to, anyway.”
A ripple of uncomfortable understanding passed through the room, though Regulus kept his gaze fixed somewhere above everyone’s heads. “We had Effie and Monty though.” At that, from somewhere near the front, Euphemia Potter let out a small watery laugh that sounded suspiciously close to crying, and Regulus smiled faintly. “Which, I think we can all agree, was probably a significant upgrade.”
He paused then, fingers tightening slightly around the paper.
“But before all of that… before James, before the Potters, before any of the people in this room really knew us…” he said, voice softening almost without meaning to. “I always had my big brother.”
Regulus paused there for a moment longer than he meant to, suddenly finding it difficult to focus on the words in front of him when his vision had begun betraying him slightly. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. He blinked quickly, once, then twice, willing away the sting gathering behind his eyes before anyone could notice.
Sirius would have had an absolute field day mocking him for that.
Oh come on, Reg, you’ve said three sentences.
He could practically hear it. The thought almost made him laugh, though instead he simply exhaled slowly and adjusted his grip on the paper again, hoping the slight shake in his hands looked more like nerves than anything else.
Truthfully, Regulus still wasn’t entirely convinced he should have been the one standing up here in the first place.
If anyone ought to have been doing this, it should have been James.
James, who had known Sirius nearly as long as Regulus had. James, who had somehow become so permanently attached to Sirius over the years that Regulus often wondered whether the universe had simply made a clerical error and accidentally given Sirius two brothers instead of one.
James would have been better at this too. Better with words. Better with people. Better at turning emotion into something warm and effortless. Regulus had half expected James to march up here ten minutes ago, shove him aside and say Move over, mate, I’ve got this.
Eventually Regulus forced himself to glance out towards the crowd, instantly finding James amongst the sea of faces as though he’d been looking for him all along.
James sat near the front, one arm loosely draped along the back of Lily’s chair whilst little Harry bounced impatiently on his lap, far more interested in wriggling about than understanding why everyone was being so terribly serious.
James caught Regulus looking and immediately offered one of those infuriatingly reassuring smiles he had always seemed able to summon exactly when people needed it most. Beside him, Lily dabbed absentmindedly beneath her eyes with the sleeve of her cardigan, sniffling softly as she leaned closer into James’ side.
Regulus let out a slow breath, glancing back down at the paper in his hands before almost immediately abandoning it again. There was no point pretending he was reading from it now.
“I lost my first tooth when I was five and a half,” he began, a small smile pulling at his mouth despite himself. “Sirius would’ve been almost seven at the time. Which, looking back now, feels absolutely ridiculous because seven-year-olds should not be responsible for solving emotional things like that but, well…” A few quiet chuckles rippled through the room and Regulus shifted his weight slightly.
“I was terrified. Properly terrified. I remember standing in the bathroom with blood in my mouth, staring at this tiny little tooth in the sink and being entirely convinced that I was somehow dying. Which, to be fair, felt like a reasonable assumption when you’re five.”
He paused briefly, his voice growing softer.
“I remember crying. Loudly. Loud enough that Mother came storming down the hallway demanding to know what all the noise was about. I showed her the tooth in my hand and she…” Regulus exhaled quietly through his nose. “She told me to stop behaving like an infant. Said it was pathetic to cry over something so stupid. I remember she left before I’d even stopped shaking.”
The room had gone noticeably quieter now but Regulus kept speaking, eyes fixed somewhere over everyone’s heads.
“And Sirius… Sirius had been standing halfway up the stairs the whole time. I don’t think I noticed him at first. I just remember him sneaking into my room later that night and telling me very seriously that losing your first tooth was actually a very important occasion and I needed to go to sleep quickly because the tooth fairy would be arriving.”
A small smile returned to his face now, warmer this time.
“Now of course, Sirius already knew perfectly well that tooth fairies weren’t real. Father Christmas wasn’t real. The Easter Bunny wasn’t real. Our mother had never done those sorts of things for us. There were no bedtime stories in our house. No Christmas magic. No silly childhood wonder. Things like that were considered… frivolous.” He swallowed slightly before continuing.
“But apparently Sirius had decided that I deserved those things anyway. So sometime during the night, while I was asleep, he’d gone down to the kitchen and stolen the flour. Tiny little footprints appeared all across my bedroom floor, leading from the windowsill all the way to under my pillow where I found a shiny coin and a note written in handwriting so appallingly bad it was frankly offensive to anyone over the age of six.”
A few people laughed and Regulus smiled faintly, blinking quickly before carrying on.
“I remember running downstairs the next morning absolutely beside myself with excitement. I found Sirius eating toast at the table and told him, very loudly, that the tooth fairy had actually come. And he didn’t even look surprised. Just shrugged at me and said well obviously, Reg, you lost a tooth. That’s literally her entire job.”
“Looking back now, I think that was the first time I realised who Sirius really was. Because the thing is… he did that sort of thing constantly. Sirius knew none of those magical childhood things were real because nobody had ever bothered creating them for him. But somehow, despite that…”
His voice caught slightly and he smiled through it.
“He always made sure they were real for me. Birthdays. Christmas. Easter eggs hidden round the house. Stories before bed when I couldn’t sleep. Little moments of magic where there shouldn’t have been any.”
Regulus looked down briefly at his shaking hands, then back up again.
“And I think… I think that’s who Sirius has always been. He spent his entire life creating beautiful things for other people, even when nobody had ever taught him how. Even when nobody had ever done the same for him.”
“I remember the first time I met Remus,” Regulus continued, as he glanced briefly towards the familiar tearful face near the front.
“And I should probably apologise because, truthfully, I didn’t particularly like him very much at first.”
A few quiet laughs rippled through the room and Regulus gave a small shrug.
“In fairness to me, he was horribly sarcastic, spent the better part of our first conversation looking deeply unimpressed by my existence, and within approximately seven minutes of meeting me informed Sirius, in front of me, I might add, that I seemed exceptionally stuck up. ”
“But I remember sitting there watching the two of them together and realising very quickly that none of that mattered. Because I had never… never seen Sirius look like that before. I’d seen my brother laugh thousands of times. I’d seen him happy, I’d seen him excited, I’d seen him being his usual dramatic self. But with Remus…” Regulus let out a quiet breath, “He looked lighter somehow. Softer. Like he’d found a piece of himself he hadn’t known was missing. And I remember thinking that if someone, even a terribly snarky someone, could make my big brother smile like that, then I had absolutely no choice but to like him.”
The soft sound of laughter reached Regulus almost immediately, quiet and warm and unmistakably tangled up with tears. He turned slightly to see Remus, head ducked slightly, holding Sirius tightly in one arm and pressing one fist against his mouth in that hopeless attempt to stop himself laughing whenever emotion got the better of him.
Remus had always done that. Laugh when he cried, cry when he laughed, as though somewhere along the line his body had simply stopped distinguishing between joy and overwhelm. The thought made something tighten painfully in Regulus’ chest, though he focused instead on the warmth of the sound, allowing himself the smallest smile as it echoed softly through the room.
For a brief moment, Regulus allowed the silence to settle around him, filling the space where his words had stopped.
Behind him, he could hear Remus shifting slightly, still holding Sirius close in that absent-minded, protective sort of way he always seemed to when Sirius was within arm’s reach.
Beyond the gathered crowd, just past the cluster of bright flowers swaying gently in the afternoon breeze, came the steady rhythmic sound of waves folding themselves against the shoreline.
The sea had been loud all morning, crashing against the rocks in a constant familiar hum that somehow softened the tension in Regulus’ chest. It was strangely comforting, that sound. Big and endless and alive. The sort of noise that made everything else feel a little smaller.
“Sirius always loved the sea,” he said softly, looking back up again. “I think some of my earliest memories of him are near water, actually. Which was terribly inconvenient considering I never properly learnt how to swim.”
A few quiet laughs rippled somewhere near the front and Regulus huffed out a small breath through his nose.
“But that never stopped him dragging me along anyway. We used to spend hours pretending. Pirates mostly. Occasionally mermaids, though Sirius insisted mermen were significantly cooler and therefore he was always one of those.”
“He had this incredible ability to make ordinary things feel enormous. A patch of sand became a deserted island. A cheap plastic bucket became buried treasure. Suddenly we weren’t two miserable children hiding from our parents for an afternoon. We were explorers. Adventurers. Entirely different people living entirely different lives.”
“I think that’s why he loves the ocean so much. It made him feel free. Like there was something bigger waiting for him out there.”
Loved.
Regulus lowered the paper in his hands for a moment and allowed himself to properly look out at everyone gathered before him.
It struck him then, not for the first time that afternoon, just how wonderfully bright everything was.
Nobody had shown up dressed in dull greys or blacks or anything remotely sombre. Instead the crowd looked almost painted in colour.
Lily in deep crimson, James in an obnoxiously loud yellow shirt Sirius had once described as offensively cheerful, Peter in pale blue linen, Effie draped in soft lavender, even little Harry kicking his legs wildly in bright green shorts that absolutely clashed with everything around him.
It looked chaotic.
Joyful.
Entirely too colourful for most occasions. Which is exactly how Sirius liked things.
And perhaps strangest of all was the fact that not a single person was wearing shoes. They had all abandoned them somewhere further up the shore, discarded carelessly amongst picnic blankets and flower arrangements, choosing instead to be barefoot against the soft pale sand that stretched endlessly beneath them.
Regulus curled his own toes slightly into it, grounding himself in the familiar warmth as grains shifted beneath his feet with every subtle movement. It felt strangely intimate somehow, all of them standing there with bare skin against the earth, waves crashing softly somewhere behind them whilst the afternoon sun painted everything gold. Sirius had always hated unnecessary formality. The idea of everyone gathered somewhere stuffy and polished and proper would have made him complain endlessly, so this, wild and warm and a little bit messy, felt infinitely more fitting somehow.
Truthfully, Sirius had never actually cared all that much about flowers. Regulus had learnt that years ago, usually after watching his brother wander aimlessly into James and Lily’s flower shop under the pretence of visiting friends only to spend twenty minutes dramatically sniffing random bouquets and declaring things like I don’t understand hydrangeas, they look suspiciously arrogant.
He never bought anything. Never particularly appreciated the actual flowers themselves. But Sirius had always loved colour.
Loud colours.
Bright colours.
The sort of colours that filled rooms and demanded attention and made life feel bigger somehow.
He looked down at the piece of paper he'd spent the past week perfecting and folded it up into his pocket.
“I think Sirius would've laughed at all these flowers.”
He remembered being curled awkwardly in the stiff plastic chair beside Sirius’ bed, half-heartedly reading a book he hadn’t taken in a single word of, when yet another nurse had knocked softly before wheeling in another ridiculous bouquet sent by someone who loved his brother dearly enough to think flowers might somehow help.
By that point they had been everywhere, covering every available windowsill, stacked on cabinets, balanced precariously on chairs because there simply wasn’t any room left.
Sirius had caught Regulus staring at them over the top of his book and, despite everything, had still managed to flash him that familiar irritating grin before winking lazily.
He’d looked so terribly unlike himself then.
Thinner than Regulus had ever seen him, all sharp collarbones and hollow cheeks where warmth used to live.
Bald, entirely bald, his dark curls nothing more than a memory against stark white pillows.
Even his eyebrows had disappeared, along with his eyelashes, something Regulus had learnt with great offence apparently happened during chemo, though Sirius had insisted it made him look mysterious and editorial.
Regulus remembered laughing at that.
He also remembered desperately trying not to cry.
Regulus was dragged abruptly from the memory by the soft, broken sound of another sniffle somewhere behind him, sharper this time, less restrained.
He blinked once, steadying himself, before finally turning properly toward Remus for what felt like the first time all afternoon.
Remus stood barefoot in the sand, shoulders trembling ever so slightly, both hands wrapped so tightly around the pale blue urn pressed against his chest that his knuckles had long since turned white.
Gold detailing curled intricately around the ceramic in delicate patterns Sirius himself had chosen months ago, because apparently even in death he intended to be dramatic.
It looked impossibly small somehow.
Offensive, almost.
That something so beautifully crafted and so heartbreakingly delicate now held the entirety of Sirius Black, his brother who had always seemed too loud, too bright, too enormous for the world itself, let alone something a single person could carry in their arms.
Regulus held Remus’ gaze for only a moment longer before turning back toward the sea, forcing one final breath into his lungs.
“When I was five years old,” he said quietly, voice trembling now in a way he no longer cared to hide, “I thought my big brother was the tooth fairy.”
“Today…I think I finally understand that Sirius Black was every kind of magic I have ever known.”