Chapter Text
Regulus Black had no reservations with being a Prince. He kept his head down, he did what his mother asked of him, he turned his nose up at those he deemed inferior to him. He enjoyed the power he felt coursing through his flesh and blood when servants would scurry in his wake. He revelled in the glory that came with being crowned Prince Black to Riddle Kingdom.
His friends were jealous, Regulus assumed they hated him. He didn’t care.
When the twenty eight most prominent families tried their hand at being coined royalty under the sword of the Dominus Viperae, Regulus sought to it that his family succeeded.
The Lord and Lady of each family would, respectively, grovel at the stained feet of Riddle. Regulus found it wretched, the proudest people he knew reducing themselves to the likes of a mutt for regality.
There was a duel of sorts. Between the children of the families. To deviate the weak from the weaker. Regulus was gifted an arena and a sword, and he wielded it like a knight bourn from legend. His opponent stood no chance once Regulus placed the iron bascinet upon his noble crown.
Regulus was a skilled fighter, that much was true. He took no pity on the skinny boy stood opposite him.
Of course, he respected the art of sword-wielding enough to practice the proper bow of respect before he took hand. Though, Regulus saw it more like an apology on his behalf to the torment he’d place in his opponent.
Riddle attested that each child of the family would be weaker than he, a view Regulus thought more pathetic than any self-deprecation his parents could have committed.
Regulus Black was a product of steel and fire. One juxtaposes the other. He long ago elected use of the steel running through his veins as his mask. It was stronger than fire, and Regulus had no matches with which would light the flame.
Regulus Black had no reservations with being a Prince. He’d crowned himself Magister Nigri when his lamentable brother went missing in the name of love.
Prince was a title to bide the time. Regulus Black knew he’d wear the crown.
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James Potter had long been loyal to the Ward of Resurgens.
The group was electric in its prime, with characters from each corner of the Kingdom joining in truce to tear the power out of Riddle’s fingertips.
It had been a secret war, so far. The Royal Court deemed it unfit to be public knowledge, for the self-crowned God was trying to build an army.
He mistook the Ward for a group that would back down silently.
They’d been quiet, for the most part. Ceasing their The Crown Will Bleed posters, which were hammered up on trees in the hush of dark. They’d stopped storming the executions, though it was killing them to do so.
Riddle needed to think they’d died out.
But the remaining members lived, rather snug, in an underground bunker at the edge of the forest, only just bordering the Kingdom that Riddle deemed his own.
They considered themselves a democracy, all truth aside. For where one slacked, another soared.
Now twenty, James was much more active than he was when he’d first joined. He’d sneak around the Kingdom in the dead of night, wearing the velvet obsidian cloak passed down by his late father.
He’d been sketching a map of the Kingdom, of the safe houses belonging to known sympathisers to the cause. They had a plan, see. And they’d need a refuge to lay low, incase not everything went according to plan.
The castle itself was included in the map, the walls of it anyway. James had to admit that he’d been neither lucky nor stealthy enough to sneak inside.
He’d joined the cause when he was sixteen. His parents were his predecessors, in a way. They were nobles, Euphemia and Fleamont Potter, and their involvement in the Ward was invaluable.
His parents had been publicly executed in the town square after word got to Riddle that they were loyal members of the Ward. It was the most painful day in young James Potter’s life, but it was the day he turned into a man. James saw it fit that he carry on the legacy that his parents never got the chance to pass down to him.
He never visited the town square to map it out.
Such a job was taken up by Remus.
Remus had been a member of the Ward since he was fifteen and he’d been found by Moody fighting a Revenant - one of Riddle’s men.
Moody had told him that the Ward could use someone like him as they walked away from the mangled corpse of the boy who couldn’t have been much older than Remus himself.
He’d heard rumblings of the resistance group from his father. Lyall had publicly disagreed with the movement, stating it was causing more trouble than it solved. Remus, however, thought his father just enjoyed watching the executions.
They happened daily, almost, when Remus joined.
He never really found out what happened to his mother, but he never found it in him to care. She’d watch passively as his father would strike him until he bled. He’d been hit so much in his youth, he’d gone completely deaf in one ear.
It was the final night that Remus could have sworn his brain was dripping out of his ears, that he finally snapped. He’d been thinking of it for a while, killing his father. He didn’t have a plan of sorts, and after all was said and done, he didn’t think he actually meant to kill him, but Remus was pushed too far.
Lyall Lupin was lay to rest three feet deep into the ground that Remus would sleep on. He was quick about it. His mother had already left when he’d come to after the attack.
Remus is coined animal by Moody. When he starts fighting, he can’t stop until he feels the warm, thick blood of his victim, for everyone Remus fights end up being his victims with the way they end up.
The members of the Ward, as it went, were much older than Remus that first year. So when a teary, red eyed James Potter marched through the door and demanded that he see McGonagall, Remus felt inclined to befriend the boy. James was naturally heartbroken by the death of his parents, and it took him years to properly recover. Remus wasn’t naive enough to believe that he was the one to finally bring James over the bridge of grief.
It had been Sirius.