Chapter Text
Regulus had left behind a note on the kitchen counter, beside the kettle, before he left Sirius’ home. He didn’t want Sirius to think he was running away. Sirius had suggested they visit the Hall together, but…
But Regulus needed to go there alone first.
Almost alone. Kreacher went with him.
Regulus didn’t bother with the Floo. He Disapparated from Sirius’ kitchen, appearing on the path leading up to Black Forest Hall.
The house still stood. There were new scars in the walls, pockmarks from the boulders hurled by the trolls, giant rocks smashing the meticulous gardens, but the house itself was still standing. All of the windows were gone. The front doors hung loose, smouldering and charred.
It felt like a physical wound.
Regulus pushed the blackened wood of the doors aside, stepping into the front hall. Glass crunched underfoot. Tapestries still smouldered faintly on the walls, and torn canvas fluttered from the portrait frames. Regulus felt like he was being beaten, each new damage a fresh blow.
He did not turn toward the library. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see what was left.
The ornately carved and painted ceilings Regulus remembered were gone. The curving grand staircase was only a skeleton of what it had once been. Plaster ornamentation was smashed to pieces, pillars shattered, artwork destroyed. Smaller pieces, items that had been gold or silver or encrusted with precious stones, those were all missing. Regulus suspected they would turn up in various stately homes across the continent before the decade was done.
Nine hundred years of Black heritage, gone.
Regulus headed downstairs. The overpowering scent of wine from scores of broken bottles hit his nose first, a pungent wall of fruit and brandy. Regulus kept walking, down the corridor, down to the ritual room.
Grandfather Arcturus and Grandmother Melania were still in the ritual room, but their bodies had been moved. They were laid out side by side now, the blood cleaned away, cooling charms placed over them to prevent them from rot. Regulus paused in the doorway, looking, wondering.
He stepped inside.
The magic of the room was staticky and broken, but it wrapped around Regulus in a way it never had before. It pulsed down his veins, an electric thrum that wasn’t quite in sync with his own heartbeat, though it felt like it wanted to be. He could feel the spells laced through the Black lands, the magic that managed to survive the destruction.
He could also feel a voidspace in the center of the ritual circle, where a Black would plunge their wand or the silver dagger (which Regulus could feel as a potential here, present but not, like he could just pluck it out of the air if he wanted to). It didn’t feel like a void that was supposed to be there, but neither did it feel like it was part of the destruction. The Black magic pushed against it slightly, upset by its presence.
Regulus stood near the edge of the circle for a long moment, staring at the place where the air felt so... wrong. So crackling and electric and wrong. He looked down at his grandparents, and bit his lip. Again, there was that same feeling of hollow imbalance that he felt in the Chamber—not like the void at the centre of the room, but something deeper and less mystical. The sheer sense that his being here, his being alive, was a cosmic mistake; that the wrong people had died. That errors had been made.
Regulus took a deep breath and, without really knowing what he was doing, reached into the space that ached with its own sense of mistake. The ring was oddly warm in his hand, and he realised without surprise that he had always known it would be there. It was, after all, a miracle.
He looked down at the black stone in his golden, lifeless hand. The thought crossed his mind, like a wisp of smoke: if I could break it...
He didn’t know what he thought would happen if he broke it. He just knew there was something about the thought, something oddly seductive. Everything felt so off-kilter, so out of balance. The world was wrong. How much more wrong could it get?
It was a stupid thought. He knew it was stupid. Miracles had been happening one after the other. The Dark Lord was dead. The Horcruxes are gone. Sirius had survived. Kreacher had survived. Regulus, impossibly, had survived. Objectively speaking, this was a better outcome than he had ever dared to hope for. And yet...
And yet, it was wrong. It just was. It gnawed at him, twisted in the pit of his stomach. He looked down at the ring again. And then, almost without thinking, he began to twist the stone, the movements to bring it to life now second nature to him..
When he looked up from the ring, the room was full. Full in a way that it never had been in Regulus’ entire lifetime. All around him were the shades of Blacks, familiar faces from photos and portraits, some faces that he had never seen before but were nonetheless familiar from the shape of their eyes or the color of their hair.
Grandfather Arcturus stood nearby, studying his own body. Grandmother Melania was tucked beneath his arm. Both looked much younger, in their mid-forties or so. Grandmother Melania was smiling at Regulus.
A child, no more than thirteen, with curly black ringlets and a wicked grin, came racing out of the crowd at Regulus, dragging another child-Black by the wrist. “I killed a dragon!” Grandfather Pollux shouted. “Don’t let them say Cassie did it! I did!”
“You could not have killed it without my help.” Great-Aunt Cassie looked older than Grandfather Pollux now but was still young herself, perhaps in her mid-twenties. She stood beside her sister, watching her brothers wrestle together.
The entire Black clan, stretching back nine hundred years, had gathered in the room around Regulus.
Regulus was quiet, his lips pressed together, his thumb tracing over the engraved symbol in the stone. His eyes, bloodshot and sunken, darted around the room, at the endless press of dark-haired, silver-eyed dead.
After a moment, still with that slow deliberation, he moved to sit cross-legged on the cold stone floor. He preferred to stand, of course, but right now, with his head swimming and the hoarse ache in his chest, standing didn’t seem like an option. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
When he opened them, they were all still there. Uncle Cygnus had moved closer to the front, looking at Regulus with an expression that suggested he wanted to say something, but wasn’t sure it would be a good idea.
Regulus took another deep breath. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Build the walls back up. Don’t cry any more. Nobody needed to see that.
“Regulus…” His father now, coming up beside him. He knelt down, lowering himself to Regulus’ level. “It is done. You did it. The Horcruxes are gone.”
“It’s over,” Uncle Cygnus said. “Regulus… it’s over. You can stop now.”
Regulus turned this over in his mind. It didn’t fit. He swallowed, and let his hand drift to the wand in his pocket—Voldemort’s wand. Over? How could it be over?
“It doesn’t feel right,” he said, again. “I think…” He glanced sidelong at his father, uncertain. “I think things are really out of balance. Really wrong. I should have died. Or Sirius should have. Or we both should have, and not… him. Now it all just... it’s off-balance. Like... like it just needs a nudge. I don’t think it’s safe, I think…”
Uncle Cygnus let out what sounded like a hurriedly stifled, and rather sad, laugh, and covered his mouth with his hand, looking guilty. “Sorry. I didn’t mean…” He cleared his own throat, smoothing his beard. “Regulus, that’s grief. You’re describing grief.”
“...grief?” Regulus looked from Uncle Cygnus to his father. He lifted his eyes, looking beyond, at his grandfathers. Grandmother Melania. Great-Aunt Cassie. “No, grief is a hole, dark and all-consuming. This is…”
“Grief.” It was Great-Aunt Cassie who spoke. “Survivor’s guilt. Why did you survive, when they did not? When we did not, I suppose. Why were you the one who had to live with the pain? Why could you not have taken the burden, so no one else needed to suffer?” She looked over at her sister, Great-Aunt Dorea, and took her hand. “Nothing is wrong, my darling. I promise. The universe is not unbalanced.”
“You are feeling,” his father said. “Regulus… you are feeling. You are not setting your hurt aside right now.”
Regulus touched his fingers to his chest, where he had cut the Family crest above his heart. “I don’t like it,” he whispered. “Perhaps I should-”
“No.” Grandfather Arcturus gave a sharp shake of his head. “Regulus, no. You need to feel this.”
“Why?” Regulus asked. “I don’t like being unbalanced. I don’t like feeling… feeling like I am about to cry at the drop of a hat, or the touch of a hand. Sirius is going to touch me. He’ll just… touch my back, or my shoulder, and I’ll start to cry, and I can’t… no one needs to see that.”
“You need to.” Uncle Cygnus covered Regulus’ hand with his own. Regulus looked at those slim fingers, a familiar challenger across the chess board, and was glad he could not feel his uncle’s touch. “Regulus, you need to feel your emotions. You need to acknowledge them. And you need to let them out. Because that is the only way they get out.”
“If you force them to remain inside, they build up,” his father said. “They calcify, choking you down and stopping anything from coming out.” He closed his eyes, ducking his head. “I taught you that. I taught you to hide your emotions, that anything less was a weakness. But Regulus… do you think me that strong?” His father looked at him, a knowing self-deprecation in his eyes. “You have been berating me constantly for never being true to myself. What I did to Sirius, what I did to you… the only emotions I let myself act on were fear. Fear and desperation. You are still young, Regulus. Do not… please do not become the wreck that I was.”
“I don’t like it,” Regulus whispered, his voice taut in his throat. “I don’t want to…!”
“No one does,” Uncle Cygnus said. “No one likes to be sad, or angry, or grief-stricken. No one likes it, Regulus. But you’ll need to feel it. And you’ll learn, with time, how to cope.”
“How?” Regulus repeated. “How can I… I have no one left.” He looked around the room, taking in all the familiar faces around him. “You are all dead,” he whispered. “You’re gone. You’re not here, you’re not. My legacy is a burnt out shell of a manor home and… and…”
“And the Boy Who Lived,” Grandfather Arcturus said. “You, Regulus, lived. Voldemort hit you with a Killing Curse, and you lived, and you stopped the war, and you saved countless other lives.”
“Sirius did that,” Regulus said. “Sirius and his love shield…”
“But you are the one who bears the mark.” Grandfather Arcturus gestured at Regulus’ forehead. “Regulus, the House of Black will never be forgotten because you will never be forgotten. You have done more for our Family’s legacy than all the rest of us combined.”
“And I’m still alone,” Regulus whispered. “You don’t understand, Grandfather. What meaning does my life have, without any of you? Without the Family… what am I?”
“You are Regulus Arcturus Black, Head of the House of Black,” his father said. “You are nineteen years old, and a champion of house elves.”
“There are five of them in your name now,” Uncle Cygnus said. “Kreacher and his sister, her partner, and their two children. All of the house elves survived the assault here. They’re all going to look to you now.”
“You are Regulus Arcturus Black,” his father repeated. “Nineteen years old, and finding your way in the world. You are not alone. You have your house elves and you have your mother, and, upstairs,” he glanced up briefly, then back to Regulus, “you have a brother, who is not about to leave you to drown.”
“That’s what big brothers do,” Grandfather Pollux said. “Especially Black ones.” His arm was still slung around the younger boy, and he gave him a noogie in his dark curls.
“You are Regulus Arcturus Black,” his father said. “And you are going to step forth with the love and pride of this entire family. And no matter what path you take, no matter what you do, you will always be my son. Our son. And we will always love you.”
He didn’t feel better. The world still felt off-balance. He still felt a dangerous need to cry. But he could hear, upstairs, Sirius calling his name.
Alive.
“Master Regulus?” Kreacher was in the doorway of the ritual room, looking loathe to enter. “Master Sirius has arrived. He is looking for you.”
Kreacher. Alive.
Regulus looked at his ancestors. He looked at his uncle. He looked at his father.
He pulled the ring off his finger and rose to his feet. “Thank you, Kreacher. Will you take me to him?” He held out his hand, and Kreacher curled his long fingers around Regulus’ own. There was a crack of Apparation and they were in the sitting room. Lupin was sifting through the ashes, rescuing fire-damaged books. Sirius was standing over him with his wand out, but he relaxed when he saw Regulus and Kreacher.
“There you are. There’s a lot to clean up here.”
“Yes.” Regulus looked around the room slowly. Sirius and Lupin. Kreacher. He could see, peering around the charred doorframe, four more little house elf faces.
Maybe it wasn’t much, but it was more than nothing. This was his family. Regulus took a deep breath and let his wand slide into his hand, slipping the ring into his pocket.
“Shall we get started?”
