Chapter Text
It had been ten years since Reina Black vanished.
Ten years since her older brother, Sirius Black, showed up at James Potter’s doorstep, broken and hollow, his eyes red and swollen from hours of crying.
The moment he stepped into the house, Effie Potter wrapped her arms around him, and Sirius had shattered, sobbing into her shoulder. Reina hadn’t come home from school that day. She was supposed to meet James and Sirius for coffee afterward, a ritual they’d kept up since she turned fifteen, but she never made it.
James had been the one to drive around the streets of London for hours, hoping, praying, she’d just gotten lost or delayed, but he knew better.
Everyone knew better. Reina had disappeared without a trace, and the void she left behind had only grown more suffocating as the years passed.
Now, at thirty-two, Sirius still felt the weight of her absence in every breath, every unspoken word. He hadn’t stopped searching for her, even when it felt like the rest of the world had.
His flat was a mess of maps, timelines, and blurry surveillance footage, all pinned to the walls like a grotesque collage of hope and despair. Reina’s face stared back at him from old photos—her wide smile, her mischievous eyes so like his own. She’d been fifteen when she was taken, a kid, barely old enough to know the world, let alone survive what he feared she had gone through.
Some people in town thought he'd gone mad, he'd hear their whispers on the street. He's mad! No way she's still alive.
James and his parents had been Sirius’s anchor through it all. Even when his moods turned dark, when his temper flared and his grief consumed him, they never wavered.
Effie and Monty had practically adopted him as one of their own when he fled his toxic family at sixteen. And now, when his world had once again been torn apart, they stood by him, unwavering.
“Mate, you’ve got to eat something,” James said, standing in the doorway of Sirius’s cluttered flat. He held a takeout bag, the smell of Chinese food wafting through the air, but Sirius barely glanced up from his latest search—a grainy image of a girl with dark hair being escorted out of a club in Soho.
“I’m fine,” Sirius muttered, his voice rough from lack of sleep.
James sighed, setting the food down on the coffee table. “No, you’re not. You’re wearing yourself thin. She wouldn’t want you like this.”
Sirius’s jaw clenched. “Don’t tell me what she’d want, James. You don’t know.”
James hesitated, knowing it was the grief talking but still stung by the words. He sat down beside his friend, his gaze drifting to the cluttered mess of papers on the table. “I get it, Sirius. I do. But you can’t keep going like this. It’s been ten years.”
“And what? You think I should just give up?” Sirius spat, turning to face him, fury flickering in his stormy gray eyes. “She’s my sister. I won’t stop until I find her.”
“I’m not asking you to give up. I'm not asking you to give her up. I’m asking you to take care of yourself. For her. For you.”
Sirius’s expression softened, and he sank back into the couch, running a hand through his long, tangled hair. “I don’t know how to stop,” he whispered, voice breaking.
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Reina hadn’t felt like herself in years. In the dim, neon-lit world she was forced to live in, she was a mere shadow of the girl she used to be. They’d taken her that day after school, two men in dark suits who’d shoved her into the back of a van. She remembered screaming, kicking, her heart pounding with terror, but they’d silenced her quickly.
When she woke up, she was in a room she didn’t recognize, her wrists bruised from the struggle.
Since then, her life had become a prison. She danced at a club now, a high-end strip joint catering to wealthy criminals and corrupt businessmen. She hated every second of it, but they watched her, monitored her every move; just as they had done when she was 15.
Her room was small, barely more than a box with a bed and a flickering lightbulb, and the food they gave her was meager, tasteless.
But it wasn’t the hunger or the cold that bothered her most. It was the loneliness.
She missed Sirius. She missed James and his stupid jokes, missed Monty’s warm smile and Effie’s gentle hugs. She missed Pandora, her best friend from school, who used to sneak her notes during class and who would always listen when Reina needed to vent about her messed-up family.
Now, she had Evan and Barty. They weren’t like the others. They worked for the same people who kept her captive, but they didn’t treat her with cruelty. Evan always had a kind word, and Barty sometimes slipped her extra food or a blanket when the nights got cold.
But they weren’t family. They weren’t the people she longed for.
Reina clung to the memories of them, of a life she could barely remember anymore. Because if she let those go, she feared she’d lose herself completely.