Chapter Text
Walburga Black was a very accomplished Legilimens, but she had made a mistake; had pulled on something fragile and snapped it clean in two.
Regulus’s migraines were relentless.
It felt as though his insight magic was stuck in a constant state of reach—catching on everyone and everything around him like a fishhook dragged through tangled weeds. This wasn’t like before, however, when his wand was the conduit and he the recipient. Now, magic rolled directly through him like a wild lightning storm; no buffer, no quarter—only ferality and raw perception of moments he didn’t recognize.
—Sirius—an older, taller version of him anyway—stumbled back up the dark stairs of Grimmauld Place, staggering towards his room, desperate to keep quiet. His heart raced in his chest and his sweaty hands shook as he fumbled for the doorknob.
The precipice had been upon him for some time now.
To run or not to run?
Sprinting to his closet, he shoved armfuls of robes, ties, his favorite leather jacket, and a random shoe into his open school trunk. From his dresser, he snatched up the purse of knuts, sickles, and galleons he’d acquired over the years, along with his cigarettes, tossing it into the fray as well. The photo frames from his nightstand came last, shattering as he gathered them up and threw them into the trunk, closing the lid as fast as he could before shrinking the whole thing down to put in his pocket.
He was panting.
He was leaving.
Bloody fucking hell, he was leaving.
Sixteen years, he’d put up with this place and its inhabitants. Sixteen. And tonight, Sirius would leave this hellhole behind and all the misery that came with it. He wouldn’t look back; wouldn’t give anyone the chance to drag him down—
Sirius was worried about him.
He knew that.
But the sheer volume of information being thrown at him was overwhelming. Even one more word being forced into his head was too much. So, every time Sirius tried to talk to him, Regulus would curl into a tighter ball under the bed covers, squeezing his eyes shut even harder than before.
That first night, Sirius had hidden Regulus away in his room.
The next morning, Sirius resisted their mother’s intrusion with everything he had.
“LEAVE ME ALONE!”
BANG BANG BANG.
“WHERE IS HE? WHERE IS REGULUS!?”
“WHAT DO YOU CARE!?”
Regulus felt completely useless, huddled in the corner of his sibling’s bed, covered in sheets and a thick duvet like he was five years old. But each slam of their mother’s fist at the door sent shockwaves through his skull until a film of tears collected at his eyelashes from the pain of it.
“I ALLOW HIM TO MISS MEALS IN THE DINING ROOM IF HE REMAINS IN HIS ROOM! THIS IS NOT HIS ROOM!”
“WHAT FUCKING DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE!?"
“WHEN I GIVE ORDERS I EXPECT COOPERATION TO THE LETTER, YOU UNGRATEFUL BOY!!!”
His older brother tried arguing, cursing, and even the meager amount of second year spells in his repertoire to keep her away from Regulus, but in the end, Walburga Black was just too nasty a person to defy.
She blasted the door down.
Words were said.
Threats were made.
Sirius suffered.
And still Regulus could do nothing.
Every sound, smell, taste; every faint brush of air was like threads of translucent white fire feeding straight into his nerves. Sight, however, was the worst by far. A flicker of light could send Regulus to his knees. Kreacher had darkened Regulus’s bedroom as much as possible, but it didn’t help. Even blindfolded, Regulus’s eyes were obsolete when he could see so much more in the shadows.
“—Oh! Sirius!”
“Merlin, what happened!?”
A witch and wizard appeared at Sirius’s side swathed in dressing gowns. Regulus had seen them both before, peering jealously over as Sirius hugged them both tightly before reluctantly slouching over to join Regulus with their parents. These were James Potter’s parents, Euphemia and Fleamont Potter—
“I wouldn’t say he’s ‘catatonic,’ Lady Black.”
“What in Merlin’s name would you call it!?”
The healer they called in two days later was unmoved by either Walburga’s venomous personality or Sirius’s barely contained hostility boiling just beneath his skin, vibrating from his guard-post at the foot of the bed back in Regulus’s room. He felt the faint tremor of his brother’s fingers as they clutched the hem of Regulus’s pajama pants.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Alistair Song, Mister Black. I am your grandmother’s healer, and I would like to meet Regulus. I’m told he’s unwell.”
Again, Regulus did not need to be told this, absorbing the truth through his skin like water on a frog. Despite his blindness, he could perceive a middle-aged wizard with dark chestnut hair streaked with white, steeped in the blistering heat of a powerful desert. Regulus thought he had seen this man before at Black Castle making house calls to his decrepit and increasingly senile Grandmother Melania, which did not bode well for his current circumstances.
“You’re a healer,” Sirius repeated skeptically.
“I am.”
The conversation amongst the room’s occupants sounded as though it was reaching him from under water. Regulus tuned in and out of the fighting, noting the occasional raised voice but utterly preoccupied by the overwhelming pull of another vision clouding his mind.
“—Mum? Dad?” James Potter’s sleepy voice called from a short distance away. “Who’s here?”
Lord Potter hobbled to his feet, shuffling towards the direction of his son down a dark hallway. The voices started out soft but turned much louder as Potter was informed of what was happening.
“I want to see him—!”
“Stand aside, Sirius, or I will make you.”
The tremor in Sirius’s fingers grew more pronounced.
“I’M NOT LEAVING!”
Healer Song did his best to diffuse the situation. “You needn’t leave, Mr. Black. I just want to take a look at Regulus, if that may be permitted.”
“—This is powerful blood magic,” Lady Potter murmured, still running her wand over Sirius’s shuddering throat.
Waving her wand, she summoned a book from another room and thumbed through it until she reached a page with a horrific depiction of a wizard swaying slowly from a gallows in an invisible wind. The illustration did not hold back: the body’s neck stretched nauseatingly long and the expression on its face was almost inhuman.
Blood Magic: the Hanged Man, the heading of the page read—
A slow fog of gentle calm began to reach over him; a horribly familiar thing. The kind of thing that preceded being forced to swallow his rotten tongue from a jar. Regulus wanted to fight it; fight the loss of control that he had become familiar with already. But… the endless visions had exhausted him, and he was just so tired.
“Open your eyes.”
He did so. The new hurricane of visual information clashed with the vision at hand—
—Shifting a few pages further, she found a new chapter with a new animation: a frail wizard who grew stronger by the second as a second wizard began to waste away.
Parasite Bonds, the heading read—
More talking. An explanation, maybe, that Regulus couldn’t process—
Slowly, his field of vision began shifting sideways. It felt like something just behind his eyes was being soldered together by waves of desert heat; the instability of his mind stabilizing through the will of someone else. He was sewn tighter and tighter together until he finally felt a dull sort of pressure, and then something clicked back into place within his mind.
There was a brief, instantaneous relief that crashed over him like cool lake water. His insight magic at last curled up into his core like a hibernating snake, no longer responsible for drawing in every detail of his surroundings.
However, just as quickly, came what felt like a backlash—a surge of thrashing, feral, frantic pressure, that sought to split his skull in two.
He had traded one hell for another.
When Regulus had visited his cousin Narcissa and her family in Mermaid Loch four summers ago, the severed tentacle of a leviathan had washed ashore on their private beach. Sirius had refused to let him get too close as the amputated limb thrashed and spasmed against the ground, sending pebbles and sand into the air for nearly ten minutes before becoming still.
It felt like a piece of that leviathan was thrashing around his head now, attempting to find space for itself in a place that was thoroughly occupied by Regulus. The inside of his skull felt hammered and torn with the violence of a phantom presence; a wild animal trying to escape a cage.
Healer Song had been adamant that Regulus’s shields were now correctly sealed shut, though it was clear that the lack of respite from migraines had surprised him. Song visited Regulus three more times under Sirius’s fuming glare before deciding on what potion to prescribe. Walburga had tried to fire him, accusing Song of incompetence at the top of her lungs, but had ultimately been overruled by a less than cordial visit from Grandfather Arcturus Black, who held their mother under a Strangulation Hex for a nail-biting sixty seconds as he scathingly asked if the healer he’d hired for his own wife was not good enough for her.
It was hard to describe the difference in his visions before and after the healer’s visit except to say that the visions before came with a certainty that they would eventually come to pass, while those after felt like a truth that didn’t quite belong to him; a reality parallel to his own, kept at such arm’s length that it seemed more hypothetical than inevitable.
For example, in a world where Regulus Black was betrothed to Augustus Rockwood, they would spend their first few months as newlyweds in Mermaid Loch. As second sons, neither Augustus nor Regulus would inherit a title, but they would live well from their stipends from the Black and Rockwood estates in addition to the proceeds from Augustus’s work at the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry of Magic and Regulus’s position as a Hogwarts librarian assisting Madam Pince.
It was a good enough life. The men got along and would frequently spend time in their sitting room reading together. There would always be this space between them that Regulus would never quite understand though. His husband kept all sorts of odd hours that kept Barty and Evan, together but never married, indignant on his behalf.
“Has he taken a lover?” Evan asked carefully when they came for a visit in Augustus’s absence.
“I’ll beat the shit out of him,” Barty promised.
“I don’t think so...” Their sex life was nearly non-existent even when Augustus was actually around, and Regulus couldn't help but wonder if he had much interest in the act at all.
But he could never really be sure.
“Is he nice to you?” Sirius demanded during tea at his home with Remus in Tulgey Wood on one of the few occasions when he acknowledged that Regulus was married at all.
Sirius had never thought Augustus was good enough for him. He found the Ravenclaw too serious and silent at school and refused to bend on the few occasions that Remus attempted to coax his husband into a conversation with Rockwood.
“Yes, he’s nice to me,” Regulus agreed blandly, watching curiously as James Potter looked despondently into his teacup when the conversation of marriage came up.
Other than that, it would all go well enough until the day Sirius appeared white-faced at the Hogwarts library, dressed in his scarlet Auror robes and asking to speak with him. Agitated, Regulus dragged him to his office before demanding to know what was going on.
“Your husband has been arrested. He’s been passing Voldemort information, Reggie! He’s a fucking death eater!”
Regulus woke in a cold sweat, wide-eyed and breathing quickly.
Arrested.
His husband had been arrested.
Regulus scrambled from his bed, frantically searching for his wand. He needed to get to the Ministry of Magic. Wait, no—first he needed to call Evan, the Black family solicitor.
Except his wand was not where he left it, and he was not in his bedroom at Rockwood Manor.
It was like looking through a window where all the objects on the other side seemed hauntingly familiar, yet nothing was recognizable. The framed photos carefully arranged on the desk near the bed were filled with people and places that didn’t mean anything to him. He didn’t even recognize the boy that had startled awake next to him, who had been calling his name repeatedly as Regulus spun in circles, trying to get his bearings.
“REGGIE!”
But wait… he did recognize him! It was as though Sirius had regressed to his early schoolboy days. His hair and status were both much shorter—and yet, as the other Black sprang from the bed, he was somehow still taller than Regulus.
Regulus opened his mouth to express his shock, but what came out was: “Augustus isn’t a Death Eater!”
“...What?”
“He wouldn’t pass Voldemort information! I know you never liked him, Sirius, but this is insane!”
The younger version of his brother stared at him. “What the hell is a ‘Death Eater?’”
Baffled, Regulus could do nothing but stare helplessly back.
Something about the combination of silence and the confused look on his face seemed to raise alarms.
“What’s the matter with you?” Young Sirius demanded, coming right up to his face in the dark room to peer more closely at him. It was striking how similar this Sirius looked to the adult version who had swept into his office at Hogwarts to deliver the awful news; like two shades of the same color. “And why do your eyes look like that!?”
Regulus tried to resist as the boy wrestled him down to pry his right eyelid up. “Stop it!”
“Just open your eyes! Ow!” he added when Regulus tried to bite him. “What the fuck, Reggie!?”
“Leave me alone! You arrested my husband, Sirius! Let me go!”
Finally, that made the boy freeze, immediately dropping his arms from where he had been holding Regulus in place. “Your husband? What husband? Reggie, you're twelve! What are you talking about?”
But Regulus couldn’t answer him. His thoughts and memories were like foamy bubbles scattered around his head—there,but not accessible to him. He watched the boy press his palms against his eyelids, inhale shakily, then remove them with an expression of forced calm.
“Drink this,” Sirius said abruptly, reaching over to his bedside table and shoving forward a potion bottle that hadn’t been there when Regulus went to sleep.
“What? No!”
“It’s the potion the healer’s been giving you. I nicked it from our parent’s medicine cabinet.”
Our parents.
“What are you talking about? Our parents are at Grimmauld Place!”
Sirius stared even harder at him. “Are you sleepwalking or something?”
“I need to get to the Ministry, Sirius!” Regulus snapped impatiently, scanning the room for a change of clothes. “They’ve arrested my husband!”
At that point, Sirius seemed to decide that Regulus was completely beyond reason because he did not ask again. Instead, he suddenly lunged forward, wrestling Regulus until he’d pinned him against the wall. With his teeth, he tore the cork from the potion bottle and, ignoring Regulus’s protests, began to force the potion down his throat.
It was slow going and Regulus choked and spat more than he swallowed, but with his brother holding his nose, Regulus found he had little choice but to comply. The effects began to kick in just as Sirius let him go, so he staggered the short distance he could manage towards the door until he felt too dizzy to continue.
There was a beat.
Then a wave of exhaustion nearly knocked him flat.
He found his eyes suddenly impossible to keep open, as though a blanket of fog had cloaked him, buffering his senses from the real world. It was a dragging, frightening feeling that he whimpered against, but not for long.
Regulus woke to raised voices and another potion being spelled down his throat.
He was getting really tired of passing out.
“WHAT IN MERLIN’S NAME WERE YOU THINKING!? YOU COULD HAVE KILLED HIM!”
“I GUESS WE HAVE THAT IN COMMON THEN!”
“CAN YOU NOT READ? ARE YOU STUPID? ‘NOT FOR CHILDREN’S HANDLING.’ THAT MEANS YOU, SIRIUS BLACK!”
“Young Master Regulus?”
Disoriented, Regulus looked over at the house-elf hovering by his bedside. The old thing was wringing its hands nervously.
“How is you feeling?”
“IT WASN'T HELPING HIM ENOUGH! YOU DIDN’T SEE HIM—HE WAS ACTING CRAZY! YOU NEEDED TO GIVE HIM MORE!”
“I DIDN'T REALIZE THEY WERE GIVING OUT HEALING DEGREES WITH THE HOGWARTS SCHOOL LETTERS NOW!”
“I feel better,” he said quietly, and it was true. Astonishingly, the splitting migraine of the past several days had vanished. He felt very strange still, like his head was stuffed with cotton, but overall, it was a vast improvement.
“YOU NEVER BLOODY HELP US! I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING AROUND HERE!”
The familiar crack of a Stinging Hex made him look up.
“DON’T YOU DARE GO SNOOPING THROUGH OUR MEDICINE CABINET AGAIN! DO NOT GO INTO OUR ROOM AT ALL!”
“What happened?”
“Bad Young Master Sirius is giving you too much Entrancing Tonic,” he replied. “You is not breathing when Mistress Black calls for you.”
The mention of her snagged Walburga’s attention. Their mother cast a scrutinizing look at him. “Well, you’re awake at least—no thanks to your brother. Speak.”
Uncertain, he bit his lip. What was he supposed to say?
“Are you mentally incompetent now!?”
“No,” he replied quietly.
She sniffed. “You get your weak mind from your father, clearly.”
Regulus didn’t dare say anything to that, watching their mother leave the room in a storm of fashionable pale blue robes. Kreacher cast a last worried look at him before following suit.
The door shut.
Sirius sagged in relief, relaxing out of his guarding position in front of him. “Merlin. You scared the hell out of me! You were rambling like a lunatic! Do you remember that?”
“I… don’t know,” Regulus admitted shakily. He pulled himself up in bed, tucking his knees to his chin, slightly disoriented.
Sirius began to pace.
“You kept saying your husband had been arrested. You were acting crazy, saying you had to go to the Ministry.” Sirius paused, ran a hand roughly through his hair. “So I figured, maybe you just needed more of that medicine they’d been giving you, you know? Just to calm you down. But I gave you way too much. Kreacher said… I mean, he’s a wanker and was probably just trying to scare me… but he said I gave you four times the dose you were supposed to have for someone your size. I didn't think…” His brother looked back at him. “I thought she wasn’t giving you all of it because she’s awful; not because it would hurt you.”
“It’s okay—“
“It’s not!” Sirius snapped, spinning around to glare at him. “It’s not fucking okay! I almost killed you!”
“Not on purpose,” Regulus tried to soothe him. “It’s okay—“
“STOP SAYING THAT!”
Regulus jumped.
“Sorry,” Sirius added at a normal volume. “I’m just… I can’t even trust our own mother to take care of you... I don’t think it’s supposed to be like that. It’s not like that for James.”
Regulus couldn’t help but think back to his conversation with Barty on the train home for Yule last year.
“I don’t think she’s allowed to do that… Your mother, doing those things. It’s not allowed.”
And his automatic answer.
“It’s just what’s done.”
“Well maybe it shouldn’t be!” Sirius replied hotly.
“Maybe,” Regulus agreed honestly.
But saying it wouldn’t make a difference.
Not here.
Not in this house.