Reversathon Fic: Memento Mori (Sirius/Regulus, Sirius/Remus, R)
Might as well out my reversathon story before everyone gives up reading fic for HBP.
Here it is:
Title: Memento Mori
Rating: R
Characters: Regulus, Sirius, Remus, Narcissa, Andromeda, Little Tonks, Bellatrix
Pairings: possible Sirius/Regulus (it may or may not be real), implied Sirius/Remus
Word Count: 7,729
Summary: It's bad enough being alive in a situation like this. It's even worse being dead, because then you get to watch the people you care most about throw away their most valuable possessions--their lives.
Author's Note: Request: I'd like a story about the Black family during the first war--how Regulus and Sirius interacted, Sirius and Regulus's relationship with the Black sisters...anything like that. I'd be very pleased with gen, Remus/Sirius, or Blackcest.
Warnings: Slash, Blackcest.
Many thanks to underlucius for beta-ing and Brit-picking, and to fluffyllama for her ineffable patience in running reversathon.
***
I'm not sure why my parents decided to bring me into the parlour after my death. A death, mind you, that I was informed was premature, shameful and an utter disgrace.
"Well, yes," I said dryly. "I would consider dying at the age of nineteen to be a tad premature."
Mind you, I'd never have talked to my mother like that before I died. She never used Unforgivables on Sirius and me, but then she never had to. Plenty of other curses can be used to make life a living hell--say, the Full-Body Bind (which paralyses the entire body, and renders you incapable of moving or screaming) or the Confundus Curse (which muddles your thinking). Her weeks-or-months-long silences--icy as glaciers, and just as slow to leave---were the most terrifying of all, for we never knew why she was angry, or what she would say or do as a result.
After a couple of weeks, I used to beg her to speak, no matter if she lashed out with a hard, bony hand encrusted with diamond rings--the wealthy witch's equivalent of brass knuckles--or with a cruel curse or with stinging, venomous words.
I used to beg on my knees.
Sirius never begged at all.
That really says everything about the two of us, doesn't it?
Mother--Lavinia Black, neé Black--glared up at me. I didn't care. There really wasn't much she could do to me at this point. Certainly nothing that could possibly hurt me. My present condition, limited though it is in some respects, is wonderfully liberating.
"You will behave yourself at the reception," she said through gritted teeth--a clear sign I'd upset her. Mother considered any demonstration of emotion, positive or negative, to be the apex of vulgarity. "You will not speak to the guests unless you are spoken to. You will not make bad jokes about your...unfortunate demise..."
"I believe that the Aurors called it 'first-degree murder' when they came to question Father and you," I said cheerfully. That's me. Ever helpful.
Mother shot me a glare that could not only kill, but could draw and quarter. "You disobeyed the Dark Lord," she said in icicle tones. "You swore yourself to his service and you refused to obey his orders. What else did you expect to happen?"
It's true, by the way. I did disobey Voldemort--honestly, I don't think there's much point in calling him You-Know-Who at present, do you? Of course, what Mother refuses to discuss is the fact that Voldemort commanded me to turn my brother's lover, the halfblood werewolf Remus Lupin, and to kill my brother. My loudmouthed, reckless, arrogant, irresponsible, impossible older brother.
It's not as if Blacks traditionally have an aversion to kinslaying. We're rather good at it. So I suppose you can just chalk up my refusal to pure ornery-ness. It's not as if I'd refuse to kill my brother for sentimental reasons. Of course not.
I didn't say any of this to Mother, of course.
Instead, I sighed. My body doesn't actually breathe these days, but sometimes sighing just makes you feel better whatever your physiology. "Fine," I said. "I'll be polite and discreet and totally regal. And I'll try not to joke about being dead. But you need to give me some leeway. It is my funeral reception, after all. And I really do doubt that I'll ever have another."
She didn't answer. She just scowled, then spun on her heel and whirled away in a spring-green shroud of false mourning.
***
The reception was dreary. Mother sat on the sofa in the middle of the parlour, looking like a queen in green, while her couriers--black-haired Blacks, chestnut-haired Lestranges, platinum blond Malfoys and sandy blond DuLacs--poured through the front door, wearing appropriately sombre expressions and clad in the spring-green of solemn mourning or in the half-mourning of lavender. At least half of those present were Death Eaters; I noticed quite a few of them rubbing their left arms, as if in pain. Apparently the Dark Lord was a touch displeased that so many of the purebloods in his service were officially grieving for me.
I could have told him that this was family tradition. When one of us dies, we mourn--whether we like the person or not. Sincerity has very little to do with it.
I tried desperately not to mind that, and failed.
Father stood against the parlour's far wall and stared moodily into a glass of claret. I would have liked it if just one of the mourners had gone over to him and murmured an insincere "I'm sorry," but no one did. And I couldn't comfort him myself…partly because I was the deceased, yes, but mostly because we didn't know each other. I don't think I ever saw him when he wasn't reproving me in a highly dignified manner for letting the family down yet again. He probably would have liked me better had I been a less rebellious version of Sirius; I would have preferred it if he had ever shown me the smallest scrap of affection or pride. It was too late to mend fences now. So he stood on one side of the room, and I stood on the other, and neither of us said a word.
To my astonishment, my cousin Bellatrix showed up, with her new husband, Rodolphus Lestrange, in tow. Actually, it was a tossup whether I was more amazed by her attire or by her attendance. We don't often obey the laws, we purebloods, but we're very good at obeying tradition and etiquette. Appearing in shockingly low-cut lavender dress robes at the funeral reception of the first cousin that you tortured to death might be construed in some quarters as mildly tacky.
Privately, I wagered myself that my mother would overlook Bella's boundless bad manners rather than make a scene. I couldn't really envision Mother becoming outraged on my behalf…or on Sirius's, for that matter.
I was never to know, for at that point the front door banged open. I heard voices in the hallway, followed by the shrill protesting screech of Kreacher. Since Kreacher is sycophantic even for a house elf, and since he will suck up to anyone of pure blood who isn't a blood traitor, his protests made me prick up my ears. It was more entertaining than listening to my relatives being poisonously polite to each other.
However, even I was surprised when the parlour door swung upon and Sirius and Remus strode in.
Looking back now, I can see how characteristic it was of both of them. At the time, though, I was furious. Once I had realised that I would undoubtedly die for my refusal to commit premeditated fratricide, I'd brewed a potion that, when combined with my life force, created a shield of protection against almost all curses. Now he and his boyfriend had walked into a den of Death Eaters and Voldemort sympathisers. Not that I wasn't glad to see my brother, but…well, I didn't know whether to kiss him or kill him, as the saying goes.
Mother, of course, took charge immediately. "Kreacher," she said, raising her voice slightly and speaking in a stiff, starchy tone. "Kindly escort these...pollutants...out of this house."
Ah, dear Mother. So kind, so gentle, so welcoming. Truly an aristocrat without parallel.
Before Sirius could let loose a single blistering comment, Remus stepped in. "Excuse us, Mrs. Black," he said, bowing. "We heard about Regulus's death and…well, he was quite important to Sirius. We thought that we should pay our respects. I'm truly sorry that we've distressed you; such was not our intention."
Mother blinked.
I stuffed my fist in my mouth to keep myself from laughing. Congratulations, Mother. You've just been outclassed by a halfblood.
But if Mother was at a loss for words, my cousins weren't. Bella stepped forward with a feral smile on her face, her wand of ebony raised and ready for cursing. "I can rid the house of these vermin," she said, her voice soft and joyful and utterly crazy. And Rodolphus and Rastaban nodded like twin shadows.
Cousin Narcissa, not to be outdone by her baby sister or said baby sister's minions simply because she, Narcissa, was voluminously pregnant and had no business fighting a wizard's duel and endangering the Malfoy heir, glared pointedly at Lucius until he drew his wand. Of course that was when Sirius decided he had to draw his wand as well.
It's bad enough being alive in a situation like this. It's even worse being dead, because then you get to watch the people you care most about throw away their most valuable possessions--their lives--out of stupid, illogical pride.
Not if I could help it.
"Excuse me," I said pleasantly, speaking clearly enough for everyone in the back to hear me. "While I appreciate your zeal in defending the family, I think that my mother might be mildly cross if the last male Black of the upcoming generation were to perish in front of her. Mother has always had a strong sense of family.
"And I, of course...well, I couldn't guarantee that witnessing my brother's murder wouldn't be a dreadful shock, causing me to babble all sorts of unpleasantries that we've all long since considered forgotten." I smiled--not quite so vicious a grin as Bella's, but close enough--and waited for a count of ten while it slowly sank into my relatives' minds that I had seen and overheard quite a few secrets since boyhood...and that I had no reason to keep silent now.
As Malfoy started muttering useless things about turpentine and palette knives, I turned to my brother. "Sirius. The Enchanted Castle."
As codes go, it wasn't much. It wasn't even a proper code, just the nickname of a single room. Sirius's boyhood bedroom, to be precise.
Yes, go ahead. Snigger. Make suggestive comments. Speculate. You won't be saying anything I haven't heard before. Not in this family.
Sirius stiffened as if he had been struck by lightning. A few moments later, after the family had decided, out of enlightened self-interest, to ignore Sirius's and Remus's existence, the two slipped upstairs. I followed a few moments later, though of course I had to use a more roundabout route than the stairs. Sirius was explaining the name of the place to Remus when I entered.
"...these three Muggle kids, two brothers and a sister, and they find this magic castle. Every time they turn around, there's a new enchantment. There's a ring that makes them invisible, and that grants wishes. Only things get complicated very quickly, and the more magic that's used to fix things, the more is needed to fix things..."
"Not unlike the entire wizarding world, in fact," I added dryly, leaning forward as much as I could. I couldn't touch Sirius, of course--but I wanted to let him know that I would, if I could.
Sirius hastily glanced away, avoiding my eyes.
Remus, on the other hand, faced me squarely.
I knew what he was seeing: a portrait of a dark-haired, blue-eyed boy of seventeen, with the waist-long hair that only boys from ultra-ultra-conservative wizarding families wore, and clad in elegantly cut wizarding robes of silver-trimmed Slytherin green--never mind that my house was Hufflepuff, and my colours are yellow and black, damn it. The Slytherin robes are my mother's method of coping with reality. If you don't like it, ignore it.
I was kneeling on a rocky seashore, at the moment, and a grotesquely ill-painted one. I think that someone Mother didn't want to offend gave her the seascape as a wedding present. Now my portrait is much handsomer. The artist painted me outside of our country house in the North of England, as a way of commemorating my coming of age. It's traditional among older families; such portraits confirm that the person who's come of age really IS the person, complete with memories and personality, and not some mindless golem or assassin look-alike.
I don't have many props, as portraits go; just a book--an anthology of wizarding detective stories, which I think I've read fifty billion times already--and my wand. English oak, ten and a half inches, dragon heartstring core. When I first got it, Sirius teased me for months for having a wand a quarter of an inch shorter than his own. I have since chalked that up to him being twelve. Much must be forgiven by the brothers of twelve-year-old boys.
I shoved both the book and the wand in my robes and knelt down on the shore. It was flat and smooth. Obviously an inferior painting. In a good one, I'd be able to feel the pebbles and shells against my enrobed knees.
I reached out as far as I could, flinching slightly as my fingers brushed the canvas. There's a whole world inside the paintings in which I can live, but I can never forget that there's an invisible wall between me and the world I used to be part of. The wall is the canvas, and if it weren't there, neither would I be...but I miss being able to touch that world, sometimes.
"Hello, Remus," I said. Zero for originality.
"Pleasure to see you, Regulus," he said, though I could see from his eyes that he didn't have a clue as to what he was saying. "Do you know what happened?"
My mother pushed me into joining the Death Eaters, on the pretext that it was some sort of social club that would help me professionally and personally. And it all seemed unreal until I started having to torture people. I did as little as I could. And Voldemort decided to test me. He ordered me to turn you, and murder Sirius.
"Only what I've been told," I said. And what I figured out for myself. "I'm only seventeen, after all. Not nineteen. Can't remember what hasn't happened yet."
Sirius flinched. I could tell that he wanted me to stop talking. I couldn't, because there was still something I needed to say.
"Get me out of here?"
This did make Sirius turn around. "What? Why?"
"Because I'll go crazy if I stay here. Look, Sirius, you ran away from home when you were sixteen. I lived through seventeen years here. If you don't get me out of here, I could be trapped here for seventeen times seventeen years." I looked at him rather desperately. "I can't run away. As long as my picture and my frame are here, I can never really leave. For Merlin's sake, Sirius, please."
"You'll get used to it." Sirius turned away again. His voice was muffled.
"I'll go crazy," I repeated. "Even portraits go crazy, you know. I'll be like cousin Araminta Melliflua's portrait--remember her? Remember how she was always screaming and howling and tearing at her eyes?"
"There'll be a sticking charm on the back of the picture. There's no point in even trying--"
"Could you just check?" My voice cracked. Things weren't supposed to be going this way.
"Why? How do you expect us to break in and get yo--your portrait--out of here?" Sirius sounded as if this were a tournament, and he was challenging all present. "Do you know how many spells are on this house to prevent burglary?"
Surprisingly, Remus answered. "Well. We already are in. We could just wait till the guests leave and the Blacks go to bed--and then grab the portrait and Apparate home."
I looked at Sirius, trying to beg without actually begging. I'd already asked, and that itself was beginning to seem like too much.
Sirius was scowling fiercely at the carpet, which had clearly committed a heinous offence against humanity. His bottom lip was sticking out, the way it would when we were children and he'd just been commanded to do something he didn't want to do. I saw that expression fairly often.
Remus glanced at me. I wasn't sure what he was trying to say with that look. However, I thought that I'd better get back to the reception and let the two of them talk.
I was just barely out of the frame--though not out of the picture--when they began.
"I don't want that thing in my house."
"Our house."
"All right"--grumpily--"our house. You think I want a Death Eater hanging about, reproaching me for--"
"He's just a boy, Sirius. This Regulus isn't, and never was, a Death Eater."
"Don't you see? That makes it worse!"
"He asked for your help--"
A groan. "I know, Moony." Silence. "You're not going to let up on this, are you?"
"No."
"...all right. As long as I don't have to see him, or talk to him. No. Don't ask me, Moony. There's only so much I can do."
And that was the last I heard before I crept back to the reception. Despite Remus's good intentions, I didn't really expect the two of them to steal my picture, frame and all; Sirius, I was sure, would rather eat the rotting flesh of a Nundu. I spent the remainder of the time glaring at the guests nattering on about nothing and wondering how long it would take before I lapsed into catatonia from sheer ennui.
Mercifully, I was wrong. Once the last guest was gone and Mother and Father had gone upstairs, the two snuck out of Sirius's room (looking considerably more dishevelled than when they had entered, can't imagine why), Accio'd my portrait, exited the front door, and Apparated home with me.
At Sirius's insistence, they hung the portrait in a guest room. "Where I don't have to look at him," Sirius explained coolly.
I said nothing, and tried to be grateful. Things were marginally better. But it did seem as if I'd gone from the fire to the frying pan.
Sirius stomped out of the room, without so much as a glance in my direction.
Remus looked after him, sighed, lit a few candles and lightly brushed the tip of one finger across the canvas that formed the barrier between my world and his. "Welcome home, Regulus," he said softly.
***
That was in February.
In March, I noticed that things were going askew between my brother and his...well, Remus. Nothing serious, on the surface. Preoccupation. Words, commonly used, dropping out of sentences. Abrupt disappearances, with no explanations. Missed signals. Forced smiles. Silences. Secrets. The insistence of both that everything was fine fine fine.
"Talk to him," I said to Remus, after watching a month of this.
And, "I can't," was all he would say. All he did say to me, for that entire week.
"Talk to him," I told my brother.
Sirius's face went crimson.
"Don't you DARE!" he yelled at me. "You're not my brother, you've never been anyone's brother, you can't care about anything, so don't you DARE tell me what to do! You're just a fucking soulless picture, and the real Regulus is dead, and you can't remember a thing about me, not really, so don't talk to me!"
And he slammed out of the spare room.
I sat down on the painted grass, running my fingers through each blade.
It's not true. It's not true. I do care. And I do remember.
I remember a summer day at our country house, splashing in a brook on the property. I remember the sunlight glinting on the water and on his skin and on his hair. I remember thinking he was beautiful, and maybe I said it aloud, I'm not sure. I remember that suddenly we were holding each other, and wondering who had grabbed whom first. I remember his mouth vibrating against my neck, murmuring my name in soft bursts of heat. I remember the touch of his skin, hot and sticky with sweat in some places and damp from the brook in others. I remember bone-deep hunger. I remember his mouth moving down and down and down until we were both sprawled on the ground, and somehow my cock ended up in his mouth and he was licking and tasting and teasing and flicking and sucking, and I couldn't think, couldn't even try to think, could only want it for forever. And forever. And forever.
Knowing, in the back of my vanished mind, that it was wrong.
Knowing, if this was wrong, I didn't ever want to be right again.
Oh, yes, I remember.
I think I remember.
But then I think, if pictures can be painted into life, can memories be painted into pictures? Did the artist who painted me paint one of his own memories into me?
How much of me is me, and how much is what the artist imagined?
How much do I remember?
Do I remember, really?
What is real?
Am I anything like the real Regulus?
Am I real?
Please. Somebody. Tell me.
***
Summer forgot England that year.
Oh, not in terms of the weather or weddings or a thousand other things that comprise June on the calendar. But I looked at my brother, his paramour, their friends and their colleagues in the Order of the Phoenix--which often met at Sirius's and Remus's--and I saw November in their eyes. Bleak, empty, bone-cold November. And as the month wore on, and the death toll climbed, I started to see hope and confidence withering in their eyes, just as leaves wither in autumn.
I saw it frequently in the eyes of Sirius and his friends, for they were about the house the most. They would have sworn, I think, that nothing was wrong, that they were fighting an ugly war but were unscarred by it. But I saw the strain and exhaustion in Remus's face, the impotent rage in my brother's expression. James, who had been a leader at school, perpetually looked as if the carpet had been jerked out from under him. He would have been fine in a time of knights and chivalry, for then there would have been rules of warfare and codes of honour that he could bend or break with a carefree smile. He could not adapt to a world without order or rules; he didn't know how. This was the wrong war for him. Quite profoundly the wrong war.
And Peter--Merlin alone knew what was wrong with Peter. Blank-faced, empty-eyed, he drifted through meetings and conversations, his voice little more than a monotone whisper. The only time I ever saw expression in his face was when someone mentioned the names of Malfoy or Bellatrix. Then he would cringe back in his seat, his eyes staring at some nightmare horror that only he could see.
I doubt if Sirius ever saw what I saw in Peter's face, for whenever someone--either a friend or an Order member--mentioned the names of our dear, cherished cousins and their latest slaughters, he would leave the room, white-knuckled and shaking with rage. He could not forget that he was a pureblood and a Black, you see, and he felt disgraced and dishonoured by our kin. I might have laughed at how much of a Black he still was, despite fury and rebellion…but he was hurting, and I couldn't abide that. I've mocked him, taunted him, teased him, ridiculed him--fine. That's all part of the Little Brothers' Code. But I never wanted him hurt.
Sirius never explained why he was leaving the meetings, never explained the guilt and shame he so clearly felt. I suppose he thought it was obvious. I did.
That summer brought babies. One was Narcissa's get. We found out about him thanks to the Prophet's bad habit of covering society functions…like the christenings of heirs to ancient names and somewhat newer money. Remus showed me the newspaper photograph of the Malfoys and little Draco; Sirius wouldn't even look at it. "Just another Death Eater, a few years down the road," he said. "I'd rather not get to know any more cousins I'm going to have to kill."
June was also when I heard a prophecy about a child destined to destroy the Dark Lord. Again.
Don't get me wrong. I've nothing against Divination, though I never studied it; I took Ancient Runes instead. It's just that predictions are easy to make. All you have to do is be spectacularly ambiguous, and let imagination do the rest.
And, well, I've been hearing predictions about the Dark Lord and the wizarding world's destined saviour since 1974. Gets old after a while, it does.
That Dumbledore took this one seriously didn't mean much to me; I figured he had to, just in case. But James's reaction was daft. Now, if it had been my wife and my child, and if I'd defied Voldemort three times, I'd have begged a Healer to induce labour in my wife while it was still June.
Stupid Potters. Stupid Longbottoms, too. Gryffindors have no bloody sense.
I railed about it, because I couldn't help it. It's not as if there was the faintest chance that Voldemort would let the prophesied child be. That doesn't even happen in fairy tales.
"Shut it," Sirius hissed at me, eyes glittering. "Don't want to see your old master toppled, is that it?"
I don't want this child to be born in July, I struggled to say. Because Voldemort will kill James and Lily to get to the baby. And James is everything to you. I don't want to see you being nothing.
But before I could get the words properly shaped and polished, he was gone.
And on the thirty-first of July, 1980--five minutes before it would have been 12:00 a.m. on the first of August--Lily gave birth to Harry James Potter.
I knew what was coming, of course--Sirius and Remus dashed to the Muggle hospital that Lily had insisted on. If there had been wizarding pictures at the hospital, I might have followed. As it was, I merely sat in my picture in the unlit guest room and sang softly to myself.
"O holy night,
The stars are brightly shining.
It is the night of our dear Saviour's birth."
***
Then, abruptly, it was October.
Remus was off on a mission somewhere. Sirius was auditioning as a ghost--not eating, not sleeping, merely drifting through the house like smoke, his eyes red, raw wounds in his white face.
I hated seeing him like this. The worst bit was knowing that I couldn't do a thing to make it better--that anything I could say would be the wrong thing to say.
I don't know why cousin Andromeda dropped by. I'd like to say that she must have sensed Sirius's torment--certainly it would make a better story--but the truth is, I think it was pure impulse on her part. Well, that and the fact that her small daughter, whom she had in tow, was driving her crazy, and she just needed to sit down and talk to a grown-up for a while. Unfortunately, there weren't any grown-ups home, so she had to settle for Sirius.
I probably would have eavesdropped on their conversation had I known it was occurring. I had never known Andromeda well, but I would have been interested in someone who had broken with the family and got away with it.
However, I was sleeping when she arrived. I do that…well, rather a lot. It helps break up the monotony. Consequently, I didn't know anyone was about until I heard a child's voice saying, "Hello? Can you hear me?"
I blinked, and rubbed my eyes. Standing in front of me, and staring upwards, was an offensively cute little girl. Really. If you were looking for someone to play Generic Adorable Blonde Moppet, this is who you would get.
"You can't be real," I said, crossing my arms. "Children aren't supposed to be that cute. It's unnatural."
The moppet giggled. "That's just my face for company." Then she--I don't know how to put it--shifted. A moment later, I was looking at a slightly more realistic little girl with short brown hair.
I tried not to show that I was impressed. Well, I was. Metamorphmagi are rare. "I don't suppose that's really you, either. You did that too fast."
She pouted. "You're not supposed to guess that. Who are you, anyway?"
"Regulus Black." I was not going to identify myself as Sirius's brother.
She did it for me. "Mummy's cousin is Sirius Black. She says I have to call him Uncle Sirius, though."
I snorted. I couldn't help it. "Please do. I can't wait to see his reaction when you call him that."
"You look like him. A little. Kind of like when I do a face but don't get it quite right."
"He's my brother." A bit curtly, I'll admit. "What's your name, anyway?"
A scowl. A thoroughly and characteristically Black scowl. "Nymphadora."
"Ah. I see your mother's keeping up with the fine naming tradition of the Blacks."
"I'm not a Black! I'm a Tonks!"
"Yes, you are." I wasn't going to argue with that. "But Nymphadora was the name of our great-great-grandmother. Believe me, I know. I had to memorise the entire family tree when I was eight."
"Oh." She thought that one over carefully. "Are you dead?"
"What the hell kind of question is that?" All right. I didn't handle that well.
She giggled again. "You swore!"
"Er...yes. Just forget about that, will you?" I could see she wasn't going to. "And in answer to your question, yes, I'm dead."
"How'd you die?"
"I don't know," I admitted. "I wasn't there. I was here in this picture when the other me died."
She glanced up at me with a face full of sorry. "Do you miss him?"
"I miss being alive. I miss...oh, breathing. And running someplace that isn't a painting. And books--I've only got the one." I held it up. "And being able to touch another person. I think I miss that the most."
Yes, I know. Blathering on like that to a kid who didn't look more than seven. I hoped that would be the end of it.
She looked at me thoughtfully, then plopped down on the floor in front of me and looked up at me. "Tell me a story." It wasn't a request, mind you. It was a royal command.
"Er..." What was I supposed to say to that? "I don't know any stories."
"You must know some."
I thought back to the kinds of stories that Sirius and I liked when we were boys--chock-full of nightmarish monsters, gruesome and violent in the extreme. "Well, yes, but I don't know any that are proper for little girls."
That got a huge grin. "Good. I hate those kind of stories."
The grin was what did it. "All right. Just don't tell your mother where you heard this." And I launched into a long and convoluted story involving a valiant group of Aurors of our family struggling to save a colony of wizards from ferocious Nundus, hungry Lethifolds, soul-sucking Dementors and deranged Muggles. For her sake, I made one of the Aurors a girl.
She scowled a bit over the mad Muggles. "Muggles aren't all bad. Gran and Grandpa are nice."
I shrugged. "That's just the way the story goes. I never knew any Muggles personally."
"You never met any?"
Only the ones I killed, kidlet. I must have done that, mustn't I? Being a Death Eater and all.
"We were never properly introduced." Since she was looking rather crestfallen, I added, "Why don't you tell me about them?"
The words just flowed out of her. I couldn't follow all of it; a lot had to do with inventions I didn't know about, like television and fellytones and moving pictures.
I felt as if I were being pulled in two. Half of me was fascinated; the other half was screaming. Muggles knew so much. They had so many inventions that we'd never dreamed of.
And, unlike the purebloods, Muggles weren't dying out. Quite the contrary.
They're the enemy, said something ugly inside me. They could destroy us all without even thinking about it. They have to be...eliminated.
Except...
Except Muggles didn't sound horrible. They sounded like Squibs who'd grown up without knowing about magic.
They sounded like real people.
She was in the middle of explaining about a Muggle sport named after an insect (and I thought Quidditch rules were confusing!) when her mother called her, "Nymphadora! Time to go!"
She groaned, but stood up. "Sorry. I have to leave."
"All right," I said, not quite knowing what to say. "Listen, don't be a stranger."
Silly thing to say to a little girl who can't go out by herself. Especially a little girl that her Auntie Bella would just love to slaughter for being a halfblood freak with no form of her own. I knew this was true, for I'd heard Bellatrix the bitch saying it often enough.
But to my surprise, the kidlet grinned. "This is what I really look like," she said. "I don't show many people. Just people I like." And with that, she shifted--just long enough for me to see long black hair, pale skin, high cheekbones.
Sirius's face. With my dark blue eyes.
And then it was gone, and she was back to her Adorable Blonde Moppet face again. She gave me a "we've got a secret" wink, and then barrelled out of the room like a herd of rampaging Erumpents.
I leaned against the invisible canvas and sighed. It's really ridiculous to start loving someone after you're dead. It's too late then for anything but everlasting regret.
Bellatrix, you'd better not hurt her.
***
October, a year later, and the house had been invaded by Aurors and reporters. Not by Order members, though. I figured that the Order was dead now, in spirit if not in fact.
Remus spent most of his time sitting in the kitchen, where there were no magical pictures. I couldn't enter that area, which I think was the idea.
Moody and his junior, Hector Ellsworth, Apparated in at all hours. Nothing so formal as an official investigation, mind. Moody gave that much consideration to a fellow--what would you call Remus? A rebel? A resistance fighter? No matter. Whatever Remus was, Moody was one too.
But that didn't mean that there weren't questions. Gentle questions, in persuasive tones, and Remus answering in that weary, threadbare voice over and over: I don't know when he changed sides. I don't know who turned him. I don't know why he betrayed James. I don't know.
Sometimes, I heard Moody and Ellsworth talking privately. That was how I learned about what Bellatrix had done to the Longbottoms. She wasn't alone--Rodolphus and Rastaban were both there, as well as Barty Crouch, Junior--but somehow those three faded into the background when Bellatrix's name was mentioned. It went without saying, really, that no one even thought of disobeying her.
No one would dare.
Somehow, Bella's torturing the Longbottoms into insanity counted against Sirius. Something severely wrong with the Blacks, whispered Ellsworth and I should have known better than to trust him, muttered Moody, and Wasn't Black's younger brother a Death Eater too? queried a young reporter named Skeeter.
They say my brother never got a trial. But they're wrong. He was tried by gossip, judged because of his family, and convicted by his own bitter laughter.
I tried to say something of this to Remus, but he wouldn't hear it. "Don't, Regulus," he said, exhausted. "Just...don't."
"He couldn't have done it," I insisted. "Not to James." My brother was stubborn, irascible, irresponsible and bloody impossible, but I knew damned well that he'd never hurt James Potter. Not willingly.
Remus took a platter and hurled it at my picture. I ducked, even though I knew that if the canvas was torn, that would be the end for me no matter what I did.
I was lucky. The platter hit the frame instead. It left a deep gouge.
Remus glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. He hadn't really looked at me since Sirius...well. Since Sirius.
"We will not," he said very politely, "talk about this again."
We didn't.
***
Andromeda came by once with Nymphadora, who was now eight. That turned out to be a disaster, and for once it wasn't my fault. Remus set the child off with two words: "Hello, Nymphadora."
Not too shocking. But an Exploding Charm seemed to go off in the child.
"Don't you call me that! Don't you ever call me that! Nymphadora's a Black name! Blacks are murderers and Death Eaters and evil! I won't be a Black! I won't! My name's Tonks, do you understand, TONKS!"
And she bolted from the house.
Andromeda looked after her daughter helplessly. "I had no idea she knew what people were saying. I'm so sorry, Remus."
Remus salvaged a sickly smile from somewhere. "She didn't mean it. It's all right, Andromeda."
But I knew that she had, and that it wasn't all right.
That maybe it never would be.
***
Sirius had been in Azkaban for a month when Remus decided I should join him.
"You're packing up everything and putting it in a storehouse? Including me?"
"I'm leaving England," said Remus calmly, as he continued to box up clothes, utensils and books. "I'm going to Singapore to teach English as a Foreign Language. I can hardly bring the contents of this entire house with me."
"But--"
But there wouldn't be any people in a storehouse. It would be dark and silent. My picture would be covered to prevent damage from dust or mould, which would mean that I wouldn't be able to see the outside world.
And there wasn't anyone who would want to lay claim to my portrait. Andromeda had no use for the Blacks, and I had never been close to her. Narcissa was all Malfoy now. Bellatrix, like Sirius, was in Azkaban. And my parents…no, they'd never want a portrait of the family failure.
Darkness. Silence. Isolation. Forever.
"Don't..." I was almost choking with terror. "Please, Remus, don't do this. Leave me behind, all right, but there must be someone, somewhere...just leave me with people, that's all I ask."
"There's no one I'd leave you with," Remus said in a no-thank-you-I-don't-care-for-any-more-peaches voice. "And there's no one I would leave you with. I don't hate anyone enough to curse them with a Black in their life."
"You can't do this," I whispered. "I'll go crazy."
"Perhaps." Remus looked up at me with empty eyes. "If so...I may be there before you."
In fact, the eyes added, I may be there already.
***
Fifteen years.
That's how long I was in the storehouse.
Don't ask me about it. Please.
The first non-storehouse thing I remember is light. Sunlight, shining through the windows of my family's parlour at Twelve Grimmauld Place.
And Remus in front of me, straightening my portrait.
"Remus...?"
"Regulus." He looked appreciably older. "Sit down. There are some things I need to tell you."
It was a struggle not to blather on to him for hours--after all, he was the first person I'd seen for ages--but I did as he said.
All right, maybe I was a little afraid of being shut up again if I didn't do as he said.
He told me everything. Sirius's escape. The Shrieking Shack. Peter, the real traitor. Sirius remaining on the run for a while and then coming back here, of all places, to give the Order a meeting place that was Unplottable. Kreacher's treachery. Harry's false vision of Sirius being tortured. And Bellatrix, who'd ended up destroying Sirius yet again.
I sat in my portrait, pulled up handfuls of painted grass and tried not to think of the fact that my brother was dead. That I'd never see him again. Oh, the other me would see him in the afterlife. Sirius and the other Regulus were probably together already. But I'm not alive. So I can't die. Living portraits have no afterlife.
"I see," I said at last, my voice sounding as if all emotion had been ironed out of it. "Well. Thank you for telling me. I can't say I'm happy about it, but I suppose it's better to know."
"There's one more thing." Pinching his nose, Remus paused for a moment. "I'm afraid I've been terribly selfish. I didn't think of you until after I'd--well, it doesn't matter. You're here now. At some point when you're wandering about the house, you might want to drop by Sirius's old room. The Enchanted Castle, I think you called it once."
He stood up abruptly, his face twisting in exactly the wrong way to keep from crying. "And Reg," he added in a husky voice. "I'm sorry."
With that he walked stiff-legged out of the room.
I watched him leave--then raced from my painting to Sirius's room.
On the wall opposite the seascape was a portrait of Sirius.
Not the young man I had known. This was an older Sirius, worn and somewhat haggard, with tired grey eyes. He was standing in the garden of a small cottage on a hill. He looked sad, and lost.
I galloped into his portrait.
"Sirius--!"
And then I was holding him, my face buried in a shirt that should have smelled of canvas and oil paint. It didn't--it didn't smell of anything that I recall--but I really wasn't able to focus.
Because Sirius was solid. And real.
And I hadn't touched another person for sixteen years.
"Reg?" he said in a voice that had grown rusty from disuse. He pulled back for a moment, holding me at arms' length, studying me as if I were a creature out of legend. "Regulus, is that you?"
Yes, I tried to say. Yes, it's me. But it came out as a cough. Not a sob. Definitely not a sob.
For a minute--or maybe a thousand minutes--everything was silent. Then I punched him in the shoulder. Hard. "'Course it's me. Idiot." I squinted up at him. "Why are you older?" After all, it wasn't as if chronological ageing had anything to do with it.
He shrugged. "Remus had my picture painted from a photograph he took last year when--I-- was hiding at his house in Scotland. I suppose he could have picked a younger version of me for the portrait, but--"
But he wanted you to know most of what had happened, I thought. He wanted you to understand why he's unhappy. And why he wanted to have you resurrected even this much.
"I don't know why he didn't have himself painted into this picture," Sirius added, sounding deeply confused. "I know he misses me."
"Because he couldn't bear watching the two of you together," I said baldly. "Not when he and the other Sirius are apart."
Sirius ducked his head and made a small indescribable noise.
A long, awkward silence filled the landscape once more. At last I broke it.
"I didn't think I'd ever see you again. I didn't think we'd even talk again. The last time we spoke, your favourite words for me were, 'Shut it, Reg.'"
His eyes flew up open and stared at me. "Well, do you blame me?"
"I never blamed you for anything--aside from being a stupid wanker. But you're my older brother and you're a Black, so you can't do anything about that."
He let go of me and rubbed his chin. "You don't know? You honestly don't know?"
"Know what?"
He turned his back toward me. "Reg...before you died, you came to me. You--you didn't say much, but I could tell you were in trouble. Only you wouldn't tell me what kind of trouble. And I threw you out of the house,"
I sighed. "That sounds typical...of both of us, actually. But what does that have to do with why you wouldn't talk to me?"
He spun around. "Don't you see? You came to me for help, and I threw you out! You died because I wouldn't help get you to Dumbledore or McGonagall or--well, someone in the Order who could do something. I murdered you!"
"Judging by what I heard at the funeral reception, I believe that Bellatrix was my killer, not you." Now it was my turn to stare. "Do you mean to tell me that you've been feeling guilty all this time?"
"Failed you, didn't I?"
I rolled my eyes. "You know, you could have simply asked about this years ago."
He shook his head. "You were seventeen when that portrait was painted. And nineteen when you died. You wouldn't remember."
I tangled my fingers in my hair. "Do you remember our family losing a lot of money and property after my death?"
Sirius nodded hesitantly.
"That was punishment. I'd failed the Dark Lord, you see. His more influential followers wanted to make sure Mother and Father knew it."
"I thought you disobeyed the Dark Lord."
"Oh, I did. And in disobeying him, I failed a test of loyalty." I gazed into his eyes. "I refused to kill my older brother."
Sirius stared at me blank-eyed, as if I had suddenly started speaking in Gobbledegook. "You…but you were a Death Eater. Why did you…?"
I exploded. "Because I love you, you brain-dead twat!"
He pulled me in his arms and kissed my forehead. "Goddamned Hufflepuff loyalty," he said softly.
Funny how it almost sounded like, "Thank you."
***
And that, really, is where the story ends--or begins, for we're still here at the Order's headquarters at Twelve Grimmauld Place, a matched set of portraits that can't be given away or sold separately. Sirius spends much of his time talking to Remus and young Harry. I spend as much time as I can with Sirius, talking--or, sometimes, not needing to talk. And, when Remus is not around, we touch…simply because it's good to touch someone else and know that they're real.
It's not a perfect life.
It's not even a perfect afterlife.
But please, Merlin, let us have whatever it is until our paint cracks and peels and our canvases are past repair.
***
Here it is:
Title: Memento Mori
Rating: R
Characters: Regulus, Sirius, Remus, Narcissa, Andromeda, Little Tonks, Bellatrix
Pairings: possible Sirius/Regulus (it may or may not be real), implied Sirius/Remus
Word Count: 7,729
Summary: It's bad enough being alive in a situation like this. It's even worse being dead, because then you get to watch the people you care most about throw away their most valuable possessions--their lives.
Author's Note: Request: I'd like a story about the Black family during the first war--how Regulus and Sirius interacted, Sirius and Regulus's relationship with the Black sisters...anything like that. I'd be very pleased with gen, Remus/Sirius, or Blackcest.
Warnings: Slash, Blackcest.
Many thanks to underlucius for beta-ing and Brit-picking, and to fluffyllama for her ineffable patience in running reversathon.
***
I'm not sure why my parents decided to bring me into the parlour after my death. A death, mind you, that I was informed was premature, shameful and an utter disgrace.
"Well, yes," I said dryly. "I would consider dying at the age of nineteen to be a tad premature."
Mind you, I'd never have talked to my mother like that before I died. She never used Unforgivables on Sirius and me, but then she never had to. Plenty of other curses can be used to make life a living hell--say, the Full-Body Bind (which paralyses the entire body, and renders you incapable of moving or screaming) or the Confundus Curse (which muddles your thinking). Her weeks-or-months-long silences--icy as glaciers, and just as slow to leave---were the most terrifying of all, for we never knew why she was angry, or what she would say or do as a result.
After a couple of weeks, I used to beg her to speak, no matter if she lashed out with a hard, bony hand encrusted with diamond rings--the wealthy witch's equivalent of brass knuckles--or with a cruel curse or with stinging, venomous words.
I used to beg on my knees.
Sirius never begged at all.
That really says everything about the two of us, doesn't it?
Mother--Lavinia Black, neé Black--glared up at me. I didn't care. There really wasn't much she could do to me at this point. Certainly nothing that could possibly hurt me. My present condition, limited though it is in some respects, is wonderfully liberating.
"You will behave yourself at the reception," she said through gritted teeth--a clear sign I'd upset her. Mother considered any demonstration of emotion, positive or negative, to be the apex of vulgarity. "You will not speak to the guests unless you are spoken to. You will not make bad jokes about your...unfortunate demise..."
"I believe that the Aurors called it 'first-degree murder' when they came to question Father and you," I said cheerfully. That's me. Ever helpful.
Mother shot me a glare that could not only kill, but could draw and quarter. "You disobeyed the Dark Lord," she said in icicle tones. "You swore yourself to his service and you refused to obey his orders. What else did you expect to happen?"
It's true, by the way. I did disobey Voldemort--honestly, I don't think there's much point in calling him You-Know-Who at present, do you? Of course, what Mother refuses to discuss is the fact that Voldemort commanded me to turn my brother's lover, the halfblood werewolf Remus Lupin, and to kill my brother. My loudmouthed, reckless, arrogant, irresponsible, impossible older brother.
It's not as if Blacks traditionally have an aversion to kinslaying. We're rather good at it. So I suppose you can just chalk up my refusal to pure ornery-ness. It's not as if I'd refuse to kill my brother for sentimental reasons. Of course not.
I didn't say any of this to Mother, of course.
Instead, I sighed. My body doesn't actually breathe these days, but sometimes sighing just makes you feel better whatever your physiology. "Fine," I said. "I'll be polite and discreet and totally regal. And I'll try not to joke about being dead. But you need to give me some leeway. It is my funeral reception, after all. And I really do doubt that I'll ever have another."
She didn't answer. She just scowled, then spun on her heel and whirled away in a spring-green shroud of false mourning.
***
The reception was dreary. Mother sat on the sofa in the middle of the parlour, looking like a queen in green, while her couriers--black-haired Blacks, chestnut-haired Lestranges, platinum blond Malfoys and sandy blond DuLacs--poured through the front door, wearing appropriately sombre expressions and clad in the spring-green of solemn mourning or in the half-mourning of lavender. At least half of those present were Death Eaters; I noticed quite a few of them rubbing their left arms, as if in pain. Apparently the Dark Lord was a touch displeased that so many of the purebloods in his service were officially grieving for me.
I could have told him that this was family tradition. When one of us dies, we mourn--whether we like the person or not. Sincerity has very little to do with it.
I tried desperately not to mind that, and failed.
Father stood against the parlour's far wall and stared moodily into a glass of claret. I would have liked it if just one of the mourners had gone over to him and murmured an insincere "I'm sorry," but no one did. And I couldn't comfort him myself…partly because I was the deceased, yes, but mostly because we didn't know each other. I don't think I ever saw him when he wasn't reproving me in a highly dignified manner for letting the family down yet again. He probably would have liked me better had I been a less rebellious version of Sirius; I would have preferred it if he had ever shown me the smallest scrap of affection or pride. It was too late to mend fences now. So he stood on one side of the room, and I stood on the other, and neither of us said a word.
To my astonishment, my cousin Bellatrix showed up, with her new husband, Rodolphus Lestrange, in tow. Actually, it was a tossup whether I was more amazed by her attire or by her attendance. We don't often obey the laws, we purebloods, but we're very good at obeying tradition and etiquette. Appearing in shockingly low-cut lavender dress robes at the funeral reception of the first cousin that you tortured to death might be construed in some quarters as mildly tacky.
Privately, I wagered myself that my mother would overlook Bella's boundless bad manners rather than make a scene. I couldn't really envision Mother becoming outraged on my behalf…or on Sirius's, for that matter.
I was never to know, for at that point the front door banged open. I heard voices in the hallway, followed by the shrill protesting screech of Kreacher. Since Kreacher is sycophantic even for a house elf, and since he will suck up to anyone of pure blood who isn't a blood traitor, his protests made me prick up my ears. It was more entertaining than listening to my relatives being poisonously polite to each other.
However, even I was surprised when the parlour door swung upon and Sirius and Remus strode in.
Looking back now, I can see how characteristic it was of both of them. At the time, though, I was furious. Once I had realised that I would undoubtedly die for my refusal to commit premeditated fratricide, I'd brewed a potion that, when combined with my life force, created a shield of protection against almost all curses. Now he and his boyfriend had walked into a den of Death Eaters and Voldemort sympathisers. Not that I wasn't glad to see my brother, but…well, I didn't know whether to kiss him or kill him, as the saying goes.
Mother, of course, took charge immediately. "Kreacher," she said, raising her voice slightly and speaking in a stiff, starchy tone. "Kindly escort these...pollutants...out of this house."
Ah, dear Mother. So kind, so gentle, so welcoming. Truly an aristocrat without parallel.
Before Sirius could let loose a single blistering comment, Remus stepped in. "Excuse us, Mrs. Black," he said, bowing. "We heard about Regulus's death and…well, he was quite important to Sirius. We thought that we should pay our respects. I'm truly sorry that we've distressed you; such was not our intention."
Mother blinked.
I stuffed my fist in my mouth to keep myself from laughing. Congratulations, Mother. You've just been outclassed by a halfblood.
But if Mother was at a loss for words, my cousins weren't. Bella stepped forward with a feral smile on her face, her wand of ebony raised and ready for cursing. "I can rid the house of these vermin," she said, her voice soft and joyful and utterly crazy. And Rodolphus and Rastaban nodded like twin shadows.
Cousin Narcissa, not to be outdone by her baby sister or said baby sister's minions simply because she, Narcissa, was voluminously pregnant and had no business fighting a wizard's duel and endangering the Malfoy heir, glared pointedly at Lucius until he drew his wand. Of course that was when Sirius decided he had to draw his wand as well.
It's bad enough being alive in a situation like this. It's even worse being dead, because then you get to watch the people you care most about throw away their most valuable possessions--their lives--out of stupid, illogical pride.
Not if I could help it.
"Excuse me," I said pleasantly, speaking clearly enough for everyone in the back to hear me. "While I appreciate your zeal in defending the family, I think that my mother might be mildly cross if the last male Black of the upcoming generation were to perish in front of her. Mother has always had a strong sense of family.
"And I, of course...well, I couldn't guarantee that witnessing my brother's murder wouldn't be a dreadful shock, causing me to babble all sorts of unpleasantries that we've all long since considered forgotten." I smiled--not quite so vicious a grin as Bella's, but close enough--and waited for a count of ten while it slowly sank into my relatives' minds that I had seen and overheard quite a few secrets since boyhood...and that I had no reason to keep silent now.
As Malfoy started muttering useless things about turpentine and palette knives, I turned to my brother. "Sirius. The Enchanted Castle."
As codes go, it wasn't much. It wasn't even a proper code, just the nickname of a single room. Sirius's boyhood bedroom, to be precise.
Yes, go ahead. Snigger. Make suggestive comments. Speculate. You won't be saying anything I haven't heard before. Not in this family.
Sirius stiffened as if he had been struck by lightning. A few moments later, after the family had decided, out of enlightened self-interest, to ignore Sirius's and Remus's existence, the two slipped upstairs. I followed a few moments later, though of course I had to use a more roundabout route than the stairs. Sirius was explaining the name of the place to Remus when I entered.
"...these three Muggle kids, two brothers and a sister, and they find this magic castle. Every time they turn around, there's a new enchantment. There's a ring that makes them invisible, and that grants wishes. Only things get complicated very quickly, and the more magic that's used to fix things, the more is needed to fix things..."
"Not unlike the entire wizarding world, in fact," I added dryly, leaning forward as much as I could. I couldn't touch Sirius, of course--but I wanted to let him know that I would, if I could.
Sirius hastily glanced away, avoiding my eyes.
Remus, on the other hand, faced me squarely.
I knew what he was seeing: a portrait of a dark-haired, blue-eyed boy of seventeen, with the waist-long hair that only boys from ultra-ultra-conservative wizarding families wore, and clad in elegantly cut wizarding robes of silver-trimmed Slytherin green--never mind that my house was Hufflepuff, and my colours are yellow and black, damn it. The Slytherin robes are my mother's method of coping with reality. If you don't like it, ignore it.
I was kneeling on a rocky seashore, at the moment, and a grotesquely ill-painted one. I think that someone Mother didn't want to offend gave her the seascape as a wedding present. Now my portrait is much handsomer. The artist painted me outside of our country house in the North of England, as a way of commemorating my coming of age. It's traditional among older families; such portraits confirm that the person who's come of age really IS the person, complete with memories and personality, and not some mindless golem or assassin look-alike.
I don't have many props, as portraits go; just a book--an anthology of wizarding detective stories, which I think I've read fifty billion times already--and my wand. English oak, ten and a half inches, dragon heartstring core. When I first got it, Sirius teased me for months for having a wand a quarter of an inch shorter than his own. I have since chalked that up to him being twelve. Much must be forgiven by the brothers of twelve-year-old boys.
I shoved both the book and the wand in my robes and knelt down on the shore. It was flat and smooth. Obviously an inferior painting. In a good one, I'd be able to feel the pebbles and shells against my enrobed knees.
I reached out as far as I could, flinching slightly as my fingers brushed the canvas. There's a whole world inside the paintings in which I can live, but I can never forget that there's an invisible wall between me and the world I used to be part of. The wall is the canvas, and if it weren't there, neither would I be...but I miss being able to touch that world, sometimes.
"Hello, Remus," I said. Zero for originality.
"Pleasure to see you, Regulus," he said, though I could see from his eyes that he didn't have a clue as to what he was saying. "Do you know what happened?"
My mother pushed me into joining the Death Eaters, on the pretext that it was some sort of social club that would help me professionally and personally. And it all seemed unreal until I started having to torture people. I did as little as I could. And Voldemort decided to test me. He ordered me to turn you, and murder Sirius.
"Only what I've been told," I said. And what I figured out for myself. "I'm only seventeen, after all. Not nineteen. Can't remember what hasn't happened yet."
Sirius flinched. I could tell that he wanted me to stop talking. I couldn't, because there was still something I needed to say.
"Get me out of here?"
This did make Sirius turn around. "What? Why?"
"Because I'll go crazy if I stay here. Look, Sirius, you ran away from home when you were sixteen. I lived through seventeen years here. If you don't get me out of here, I could be trapped here for seventeen times seventeen years." I looked at him rather desperately. "I can't run away. As long as my picture and my frame are here, I can never really leave. For Merlin's sake, Sirius, please."
"You'll get used to it." Sirius turned away again. His voice was muffled.
"I'll go crazy," I repeated. "Even portraits go crazy, you know. I'll be like cousin Araminta Melliflua's portrait--remember her? Remember how she was always screaming and howling and tearing at her eyes?"
"There'll be a sticking charm on the back of the picture. There's no point in even trying--"
"Could you just check?" My voice cracked. Things weren't supposed to be going this way.
"Why? How do you expect us to break in and get yo--your portrait--out of here?" Sirius sounded as if this were a tournament, and he was challenging all present. "Do you know how many spells are on this house to prevent burglary?"
Surprisingly, Remus answered. "Well. We already are in. We could just wait till the guests leave and the Blacks go to bed--and then grab the portrait and Apparate home."
I looked at Sirius, trying to beg without actually begging. I'd already asked, and that itself was beginning to seem like too much.
Sirius was scowling fiercely at the carpet, which had clearly committed a heinous offence against humanity. His bottom lip was sticking out, the way it would when we were children and he'd just been commanded to do something he didn't want to do. I saw that expression fairly often.
Remus glanced at me. I wasn't sure what he was trying to say with that look. However, I thought that I'd better get back to the reception and let the two of them talk.
I was just barely out of the frame--though not out of the picture--when they began.
"I don't want that thing in my house."
"Our house."
"All right"--grumpily--"our house. You think I want a Death Eater hanging about, reproaching me for--"
"He's just a boy, Sirius. This Regulus isn't, and never was, a Death Eater."
"Don't you see? That makes it worse!"
"He asked for your help--"
A groan. "I know, Moony." Silence. "You're not going to let up on this, are you?"
"No."
"...all right. As long as I don't have to see him, or talk to him. No. Don't ask me, Moony. There's only so much I can do."
And that was the last I heard before I crept back to the reception. Despite Remus's good intentions, I didn't really expect the two of them to steal my picture, frame and all; Sirius, I was sure, would rather eat the rotting flesh of a Nundu. I spent the remainder of the time glaring at the guests nattering on about nothing and wondering how long it would take before I lapsed into catatonia from sheer ennui.
Mercifully, I was wrong. Once the last guest was gone and Mother and Father had gone upstairs, the two snuck out of Sirius's room (looking considerably more dishevelled than when they had entered, can't imagine why), Accio'd my portrait, exited the front door, and Apparated home with me.
At Sirius's insistence, they hung the portrait in a guest room. "Where I don't have to look at him," Sirius explained coolly.
I said nothing, and tried to be grateful. Things were marginally better. But it did seem as if I'd gone from the fire to the frying pan.
Sirius stomped out of the room, without so much as a glance in my direction.
Remus looked after him, sighed, lit a few candles and lightly brushed the tip of one finger across the canvas that formed the barrier between my world and his. "Welcome home, Regulus," he said softly.
***
That was in February.
In March, I noticed that things were going askew between my brother and his...well, Remus. Nothing serious, on the surface. Preoccupation. Words, commonly used, dropping out of sentences. Abrupt disappearances, with no explanations. Missed signals. Forced smiles. Silences. Secrets. The insistence of both that everything was fine fine fine.
"Talk to him," I said to Remus, after watching a month of this.
And, "I can't," was all he would say. All he did say to me, for that entire week.
"Talk to him," I told my brother.
Sirius's face went crimson.
"Don't you DARE!" he yelled at me. "You're not my brother, you've never been anyone's brother, you can't care about anything, so don't you DARE tell me what to do! You're just a fucking soulless picture, and the real Regulus is dead, and you can't remember a thing about me, not really, so don't talk to me!"
And he slammed out of the spare room.
I sat down on the painted grass, running my fingers through each blade.
It's not true. It's not true. I do care. And I do remember.
I remember a summer day at our country house, splashing in a brook on the property. I remember the sunlight glinting on the water and on his skin and on his hair. I remember thinking he was beautiful, and maybe I said it aloud, I'm not sure. I remember that suddenly we were holding each other, and wondering who had grabbed whom first. I remember his mouth vibrating against my neck, murmuring my name in soft bursts of heat. I remember the touch of his skin, hot and sticky with sweat in some places and damp from the brook in others. I remember bone-deep hunger. I remember his mouth moving down and down and down until we were both sprawled on the ground, and somehow my cock ended up in his mouth and he was licking and tasting and teasing and flicking and sucking, and I couldn't think, couldn't even try to think, could only want it for forever. And forever. And forever.
Knowing, in the back of my vanished mind, that it was wrong.
Knowing, if this was wrong, I didn't ever want to be right again.
Oh, yes, I remember.
I think I remember.
But then I think, if pictures can be painted into life, can memories be painted into pictures? Did the artist who painted me paint one of his own memories into me?
How much of me is me, and how much is what the artist imagined?
How much do I remember?
Do I remember, really?
What is real?
Am I anything like the real Regulus?
Am I real?
Please. Somebody. Tell me.
***
Summer forgot England that year.
Oh, not in terms of the weather or weddings or a thousand other things that comprise June on the calendar. But I looked at my brother, his paramour, their friends and their colleagues in the Order of the Phoenix--which often met at Sirius's and Remus's--and I saw November in their eyes. Bleak, empty, bone-cold November. And as the month wore on, and the death toll climbed, I started to see hope and confidence withering in their eyes, just as leaves wither in autumn.
I saw it frequently in the eyes of Sirius and his friends, for they were about the house the most. They would have sworn, I think, that nothing was wrong, that they were fighting an ugly war but were unscarred by it. But I saw the strain and exhaustion in Remus's face, the impotent rage in my brother's expression. James, who had been a leader at school, perpetually looked as if the carpet had been jerked out from under him. He would have been fine in a time of knights and chivalry, for then there would have been rules of warfare and codes of honour that he could bend or break with a carefree smile. He could not adapt to a world without order or rules; he didn't know how. This was the wrong war for him. Quite profoundly the wrong war.
And Peter--Merlin alone knew what was wrong with Peter. Blank-faced, empty-eyed, he drifted through meetings and conversations, his voice little more than a monotone whisper. The only time I ever saw expression in his face was when someone mentioned the names of Malfoy or Bellatrix. Then he would cringe back in his seat, his eyes staring at some nightmare horror that only he could see.
I doubt if Sirius ever saw what I saw in Peter's face, for whenever someone--either a friend or an Order member--mentioned the names of our dear, cherished cousins and their latest slaughters, he would leave the room, white-knuckled and shaking with rage. He could not forget that he was a pureblood and a Black, you see, and he felt disgraced and dishonoured by our kin. I might have laughed at how much of a Black he still was, despite fury and rebellion…but he was hurting, and I couldn't abide that. I've mocked him, taunted him, teased him, ridiculed him--fine. That's all part of the Little Brothers' Code. But I never wanted him hurt.
Sirius never explained why he was leaving the meetings, never explained the guilt and shame he so clearly felt. I suppose he thought it was obvious. I did.
That summer brought babies. One was Narcissa's get. We found out about him thanks to the Prophet's bad habit of covering society functions…like the christenings of heirs to ancient names and somewhat newer money. Remus showed me the newspaper photograph of the Malfoys and little Draco; Sirius wouldn't even look at it. "Just another Death Eater, a few years down the road," he said. "I'd rather not get to know any more cousins I'm going to have to kill."
June was also when I heard a prophecy about a child destined to destroy the Dark Lord. Again.
Don't get me wrong. I've nothing against Divination, though I never studied it; I took Ancient Runes instead. It's just that predictions are easy to make. All you have to do is be spectacularly ambiguous, and let imagination do the rest.
And, well, I've been hearing predictions about the Dark Lord and the wizarding world's destined saviour since 1974. Gets old after a while, it does.
That Dumbledore took this one seriously didn't mean much to me; I figured he had to, just in case. But James's reaction was daft. Now, if it had been my wife and my child, and if I'd defied Voldemort three times, I'd have begged a Healer to induce labour in my wife while it was still June.
Stupid Potters. Stupid Longbottoms, too. Gryffindors have no bloody sense.
I railed about it, because I couldn't help it. It's not as if there was the faintest chance that Voldemort would let the prophesied child be. That doesn't even happen in fairy tales.
"Shut it," Sirius hissed at me, eyes glittering. "Don't want to see your old master toppled, is that it?"
I don't want this child to be born in July, I struggled to say. Because Voldemort will kill James and Lily to get to the baby. And James is everything to you. I don't want to see you being nothing.
But before I could get the words properly shaped and polished, he was gone.
And on the thirty-first of July, 1980--five minutes before it would have been 12:00 a.m. on the first of August--Lily gave birth to Harry James Potter.
I knew what was coming, of course--Sirius and Remus dashed to the Muggle hospital that Lily had insisted on. If there had been wizarding pictures at the hospital, I might have followed. As it was, I merely sat in my picture in the unlit guest room and sang softly to myself.
"O holy night,
The stars are brightly shining.
It is the night of our dear Saviour's birth."
***
Then, abruptly, it was October.
Remus was off on a mission somewhere. Sirius was auditioning as a ghost--not eating, not sleeping, merely drifting through the house like smoke, his eyes red, raw wounds in his white face.
I hated seeing him like this. The worst bit was knowing that I couldn't do a thing to make it better--that anything I could say would be the wrong thing to say.
I don't know why cousin Andromeda dropped by. I'd like to say that she must have sensed Sirius's torment--certainly it would make a better story--but the truth is, I think it was pure impulse on her part. Well, that and the fact that her small daughter, whom she had in tow, was driving her crazy, and she just needed to sit down and talk to a grown-up for a while. Unfortunately, there weren't any grown-ups home, so she had to settle for Sirius.
I probably would have eavesdropped on their conversation had I known it was occurring. I had never known Andromeda well, but I would have been interested in someone who had broken with the family and got away with it.
However, I was sleeping when she arrived. I do that…well, rather a lot. It helps break up the monotony. Consequently, I didn't know anyone was about until I heard a child's voice saying, "Hello? Can you hear me?"
I blinked, and rubbed my eyes. Standing in front of me, and staring upwards, was an offensively cute little girl. Really. If you were looking for someone to play Generic Adorable Blonde Moppet, this is who you would get.
"You can't be real," I said, crossing my arms. "Children aren't supposed to be that cute. It's unnatural."
The moppet giggled. "That's just my face for company." Then she--I don't know how to put it--shifted. A moment later, I was looking at a slightly more realistic little girl with short brown hair.
I tried not to show that I was impressed. Well, I was. Metamorphmagi are rare. "I don't suppose that's really you, either. You did that too fast."
She pouted. "You're not supposed to guess that. Who are you, anyway?"
"Regulus Black." I was not going to identify myself as Sirius's brother.
She did it for me. "Mummy's cousin is Sirius Black. She says I have to call him Uncle Sirius, though."
I snorted. I couldn't help it. "Please do. I can't wait to see his reaction when you call him that."
"You look like him. A little. Kind of like when I do a face but don't get it quite right."
"He's my brother." A bit curtly, I'll admit. "What's your name, anyway?"
A scowl. A thoroughly and characteristically Black scowl. "Nymphadora."
"Ah. I see your mother's keeping up with the fine naming tradition of the Blacks."
"I'm not a Black! I'm a Tonks!"
"Yes, you are." I wasn't going to argue with that. "But Nymphadora was the name of our great-great-grandmother. Believe me, I know. I had to memorise the entire family tree when I was eight."
"Oh." She thought that one over carefully. "Are you dead?"
"What the hell kind of question is that?" All right. I didn't handle that well.
She giggled again. "You swore!"
"Er...yes. Just forget about that, will you?" I could see she wasn't going to. "And in answer to your question, yes, I'm dead."
"How'd you die?"
"I don't know," I admitted. "I wasn't there. I was here in this picture when the other me died."
She glanced up at me with a face full of sorry. "Do you miss him?"
"I miss being alive. I miss...oh, breathing. And running someplace that isn't a painting. And books--I've only got the one." I held it up. "And being able to touch another person. I think I miss that the most."
Yes, I know. Blathering on like that to a kid who didn't look more than seven. I hoped that would be the end of it.
She looked at me thoughtfully, then plopped down on the floor in front of me and looked up at me. "Tell me a story." It wasn't a request, mind you. It was a royal command.
"Er..." What was I supposed to say to that? "I don't know any stories."
"You must know some."
I thought back to the kinds of stories that Sirius and I liked when we were boys--chock-full of nightmarish monsters, gruesome and violent in the extreme. "Well, yes, but I don't know any that are proper for little girls."
That got a huge grin. "Good. I hate those kind of stories."
The grin was what did it. "All right. Just don't tell your mother where you heard this." And I launched into a long and convoluted story involving a valiant group of Aurors of our family struggling to save a colony of wizards from ferocious Nundus, hungry Lethifolds, soul-sucking Dementors and deranged Muggles. For her sake, I made one of the Aurors a girl.
She scowled a bit over the mad Muggles. "Muggles aren't all bad. Gran and Grandpa are nice."
I shrugged. "That's just the way the story goes. I never knew any Muggles personally."
"You never met any?"
Only the ones I killed, kidlet. I must have done that, mustn't I? Being a Death Eater and all.
"We were never properly introduced." Since she was looking rather crestfallen, I added, "Why don't you tell me about them?"
The words just flowed out of her. I couldn't follow all of it; a lot had to do with inventions I didn't know about, like television and fellytones and moving pictures.
I felt as if I were being pulled in two. Half of me was fascinated; the other half was screaming. Muggles knew so much. They had so many inventions that we'd never dreamed of.
And, unlike the purebloods, Muggles weren't dying out. Quite the contrary.
They're the enemy, said something ugly inside me. They could destroy us all without even thinking about it. They have to be...eliminated.
Except...
Except Muggles didn't sound horrible. They sounded like Squibs who'd grown up without knowing about magic.
They sounded like real people.
She was in the middle of explaining about a Muggle sport named after an insect (and I thought Quidditch rules were confusing!) when her mother called her, "Nymphadora! Time to go!"
She groaned, but stood up. "Sorry. I have to leave."
"All right," I said, not quite knowing what to say. "Listen, don't be a stranger."
Silly thing to say to a little girl who can't go out by herself. Especially a little girl that her Auntie Bella would just love to slaughter for being a halfblood freak with no form of her own. I knew this was true, for I'd heard Bellatrix the bitch saying it often enough.
But to my surprise, the kidlet grinned. "This is what I really look like," she said. "I don't show many people. Just people I like." And with that, she shifted--just long enough for me to see long black hair, pale skin, high cheekbones.
Sirius's face. With my dark blue eyes.
And then it was gone, and she was back to her Adorable Blonde Moppet face again. She gave me a "we've got a secret" wink, and then barrelled out of the room like a herd of rampaging Erumpents.
I leaned against the invisible canvas and sighed. It's really ridiculous to start loving someone after you're dead. It's too late then for anything but everlasting regret.
Bellatrix, you'd better not hurt her.
***
October, a year later, and the house had been invaded by Aurors and reporters. Not by Order members, though. I figured that the Order was dead now, in spirit if not in fact.
Remus spent most of his time sitting in the kitchen, where there were no magical pictures. I couldn't enter that area, which I think was the idea.
Moody and his junior, Hector Ellsworth, Apparated in at all hours. Nothing so formal as an official investigation, mind. Moody gave that much consideration to a fellow--what would you call Remus? A rebel? A resistance fighter? No matter. Whatever Remus was, Moody was one too.
But that didn't mean that there weren't questions. Gentle questions, in persuasive tones, and Remus answering in that weary, threadbare voice over and over: I don't know when he changed sides. I don't know who turned him. I don't know why he betrayed James. I don't know.
Sometimes, I heard Moody and Ellsworth talking privately. That was how I learned about what Bellatrix had done to the Longbottoms. She wasn't alone--Rodolphus and Rastaban were both there, as well as Barty Crouch, Junior--but somehow those three faded into the background when Bellatrix's name was mentioned. It went without saying, really, that no one even thought of disobeying her.
No one would dare.
Somehow, Bella's torturing the Longbottoms into insanity counted against Sirius. Something severely wrong with the Blacks, whispered Ellsworth and I should have known better than to trust him, muttered Moody, and Wasn't Black's younger brother a Death Eater too? queried a young reporter named Skeeter.
They say my brother never got a trial. But they're wrong. He was tried by gossip, judged because of his family, and convicted by his own bitter laughter.
I tried to say something of this to Remus, but he wouldn't hear it. "Don't, Regulus," he said, exhausted. "Just...don't."
"He couldn't have done it," I insisted. "Not to James." My brother was stubborn, irascible, irresponsible and bloody impossible, but I knew damned well that he'd never hurt James Potter. Not willingly.
Remus took a platter and hurled it at my picture. I ducked, even though I knew that if the canvas was torn, that would be the end for me no matter what I did.
I was lucky. The platter hit the frame instead. It left a deep gouge.
Remus glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. He hadn't really looked at me since Sirius...well. Since Sirius.
"We will not," he said very politely, "talk about this again."
We didn't.
***
Andromeda came by once with Nymphadora, who was now eight. That turned out to be a disaster, and for once it wasn't my fault. Remus set the child off with two words: "Hello, Nymphadora."
Not too shocking. But an Exploding Charm seemed to go off in the child.
"Don't you call me that! Don't you ever call me that! Nymphadora's a Black name! Blacks are murderers and Death Eaters and evil! I won't be a Black! I won't! My name's Tonks, do you understand, TONKS!"
And she bolted from the house.
Andromeda looked after her daughter helplessly. "I had no idea she knew what people were saying. I'm so sorry, Remus."
Remus salvaged a sickly smile from somewhere. "She didn't mean it. It's all right, Andromeda."
But I knew that she had, and that it wasn't all right.
That maybe it never would be.
***
Sirius had been in Azkaban for a month when Remus decided I should join him.
"You're packing up everything and putting it in a storehouse? Including me?"
"I'm leaving England," said Remus calmly, as he continued to box up clothes, utensils and books. "I'm going to Singapore to teach English as a Foreign Language. I can hardly bring the contents of this entire house with me."
"But--"
But there wouldn't be any people in a storehouse. It would be dark and silent. My picture would be covered to prevent damage from dust or mould, which would mean that I wouldn't be able to see the outside world.
And there wasn't anyone who would want to lay claim to my portrait. Andromeda had no use for the Blacks, and I had never been close to her. Narcissa was all Malfoy now. Bellatrix, like Sirius, was in Azkaban. And my parents…no, they'd never want a portrait of the family failure.
Darkness. Silence. Isolation. Forever.
"Don't..." I was almost choking with terror. "Please, Remus, don't do this. Leave me behind, all right, but there must be someone, somewhere...just leave me with people, that's all I ask."
"There's no one I'd leave you with," Remus said in a no-thank-you-I-don't-care-for-any-more-peaches voice. "And there's no one I would leave you with. I don't hate anyone enough to curse them with a Black in their life."
"You can't do this," I whispered. "I'll go crazy."
"Perhaps." Remus looked up at me with empty eyes. "If so...I may be there before you."
In fact, the eyes added, I may be there already.
***
Fifteen years.
That's how long I was in the storehouse.
Don't ask me about it. Please.
The first non-storehouse thing I remember is light. Sunlight, shining through the windows of my family's parlour at Twelve Grimmauld Place.
And Remus in front of me, straightening my portrait.
"Remus...?"
"Regulus." He looked appreciably older. "Sit down. There are some things I need to tell you."
It was a struggle not to blather on to him for hours--after all, he was the first person I'd seen for ages--but I did as he said.
All right, maybe I was a little afraid of being shut up again if I didn't do as he said.
He told me everything. Sirius's escape. The Shrieking Shack. Peter, the real traitor. Sirius remaining on the run for a while and then coming back here, of all places, to give the Order a meeting place that was Unplottable. Kreacher's treachery. Harry's false vision of Sirius being tortured. And Bellatrix, who'd ended up destroying Sirius yet again.
I sat in my portrait, pulled up handfuls of painted grass and tried not to think of the fact that my brother was dead. That I'd never see him again. Oh, the other me would see him in the afterlife. Sirius and the other Regulus were probably together already. But I'm not alive. So I can't die. Living portraits have no afterlife.
"I see," I said at last, my voice sounding as if all emotion had been ironed out of it. "Well. Thank you for telling me. I can't say I'm happy about it, but I suppose it's better to know."
"There's one more thing." Pinching his nose, Remus paused for a moment. "I'm afraid I've been terribly selfish. I didn't think of you until after I'd--well, it doesn't matter. You're here now. At some point when you're wandering about the house, you might want to drop by Sirius's old room. The Enchanted Castle, I think you called it once."
He stood up abruptly, his face twisting in exactly the wrong way to keep from crying. "And Reg," he added in a husky voice. "I'm sorry."
With that he walked stiff-legged out of the room.
I watched him leave--then raced from my painting to Sirius's room.
On the wall opposite the seascape was a portrait of Sirius.
Not the young man I had known. This was an older Sirius, worn and somewhat haggard, with tired grey eyes. He was standing in the garden of a small cottage on a hill. He looked sad, and lost.
I galloped into his portrait.
"Sirius--!"
And then I was holding him, my face buried in a shirt that should have smelled of canvas and oil paint. It didn't--it didn't smell of anything that I recall--but I really wasn't able to focus.
Because Sirius was solid. And real.
And I hadn't touched another person for sixteen years.
"Reg?" he said in a voice that had grown rusty from disuse. He pulled back for a moment, holding me at arms' length, studying me as if I were a creature out of legend. "Regulus, is that you?"
Yes, I tried to say. Yes, it's me. But it came out as a cough. Not a sob. Definitely not a sob.
For a minute--or maybe a thousand minutes--everything was silent. Then I punched him in the shoulder. Hard. "'Course it's me. Idiot." I squinted up at him. "Why are you older?" After all, it wasn't as if chronological ageing had anything to do with it.
He shrugged. "Remus had my picture painted from a photograph he took last year when--I-- was hiding at his house in Scotland. I suppose he could have picked a younger version of me for the portrait, but--"
But he wanted you to know most of what had happened, I thought. He wanted you to understand why he's unhappy. And why he wanted to have you resurrected even this much.
"I don't know why he didn't have himself painted into this picture," Sirius added, sounding deeply confused. "I know he misses me."
"Because he couldn't bear watching the two of you together," I said baldly. "Not when he and the other Sirius are apart."
Sirius ducked his head and made a small indescribable noise.
A long, awkward silence filled the landscape once more. At last I broke it.
"I didn't think I'd ever see you again. I didn't think we'd even talk again. The last time we spoke, your favourite words for me were, 'Shut it, Reg.'"
His eyes flew up open and stared at me. "Well, do you blame me?"
"I never blamed you for anything--aside from being a stupid wanker. But you're my older brother and you're a Black, so you can't do anything about that."
He let go of me and rubbed his chin. "You don't know? You honestly don't know?"
"Know what?"
He turned his back toward me. "Reg...before you died, you came to me. You--you didn't say much, but I could tell you were in trouble. Only you wouldn't tell me what kind of trouble. And I threw you out of the house,"
I sighed. "That sounds typical...of both of us, actually. But what does that have to do with why you wouldn't talk to me?"
He spun around. "Don't you see? You came to me for help, and I threw you out! You died because I wouldn't help get you to Dumbledore or McGonagall or--well, someone in the Order who could do something. I murdered you!"
"Judging by what I heard at the funeral reception, I believe that Bellatrix was my killer, not you." Now it was my turn to stare. "Do you mean to tell me that you've been feeling guilty all this time?"
"Failed you, didn't I?"
I rolled my eyes. "You know, you could have simply asked about this years ago."
He shook his head. "You were seventeen when that portrait was painted. And nineteen when you died. You wouldn't remember."
I tangled my fingers in my hair. "Do you remember our family losing a lot of money and property after my death?"
Sirius nodded hesitantly.
"That was punishment. I'd failed the Dark Lord, you see. His more influential followers wanted to make sure Mother and Father knew it."
"I thought you disobeyed the Dark Lord."
"Oh, I did. And in disobeying him, I failed a test of loyalty." I gazed into his eyes. "I refused to kill my older brother."
Sirius stared at me blank-eyed, as if I had suddenly started speaking in Gobbledegook. "You…but you were a Death Eater. Why did you…?"
I exploded. "Because I love you, you brain-dead twat!"
He pulled me in his arms and kissed my forehead. "Goddamned Hufflepuff loyalty," he said softly.
Funny how it almost sounded like, "Thank you."
***
And that, really, is where the story ends--or begins, for we're still here at the Order's headquarters at Twelve Grimmauld Place, a matched set of portraits that can't be given away or sold separately. Sirius spends much of his time talking to Remus and young Harry. I spend as much time as I can with Sirius, talking--or, sometimes, not needing to talk. And, when Remus is not around, we touch…simply because it's good to touch someone else and know that they're real.
It's not a perfect life.
It's not even a perfect afterlife.
But please, Merlin, let us have whatever it is until our paint cracks and peels and our canvases are past repair.
***