April Morning Almanac
Title: April Morning Almanac
Pairings: Sirius/Remus, Remus/Regulus
Rating: PG-13
A/N: For hiddendaze who, many many months ago, requested "Marauders-era Remus, Regulus with a crush, UST or RST." Funny thing. I misread Regulus as Remus and was all set to proclaim a certain Valentine fic hers when I finally decided to reread the prompt. Whooops. Also for devkel who, many many months ago, had a birthday and arranged the ficathon for which this was intended. Here are my 500 words at last! Sorry it took so long.
Thank you statelines and hostile_21 for being total sweethearts and encouraging me like mad.
April Morning Almanac
i. The house had always been quiet.
But it's changed, he said. It's worse.
ii. Sirius's door was ajar for the first time in weeks. A record was playing softly, the knob for volume turned clockwise two thin silver ridges, so quiet but jarring in the mausoleum stillness. The music was foreign and the instrument shimmering and at once rust; he imagined he saw the melody as a line, curving and drifting sinuously like incense. A box lay open on the bed. Sirius sat next to it, a globe in hand, England obliterated under his thumb. Give it a spin, he said, when he noticed Regulus.
What you do is this. Hold it in one hand. Other hand, just sort of hover a finger, let it touch down, gently, don't stop the globe. Let it stop on its own, and let the finger trail. Where it rests when the spinning's stopped-
Regulus peeked under his finger. Kashmir, he read. That's where it stopped.
Sirius snatched the globe back. I got Algeria. Fascinating.
What?
Ancient divination technique. Finds the place where you die.
It doesn't.
It does.
Sirius gave the globe another experimental spin, managing ten revolutions, all the continents a whir of peach lime and blue. The colors were faded from too many months in a junk shop window. (He was always collecting rubbish: chess pieces and broken jewelry refuge from his tours of Sunday parks, a leaf Regulus found, kept, and preserved for its color. And the records. He liked his assortment though it pained him a little that everything was doomed to antiquity; he said there was enough of that, and tried to avoid it if he could.)
'S'one of Moony's records, he said casually. Like it?
Maybe. I don't know.
Sirius frowned.
He fiddled with the volume a moment and down the hall someone coughed, stirring dust and pulses. Sirius made Regulus wear the headphones, fitting them over his ears like a crown in a strange coronation, untangling his hair for him when a lock caught in the device, and telling him he was going to Listen, goddamnit.
Listen.
When he let it the music flowed more potent than blood. Sirius pressed close to hear the escaping sound until they were nearly temple to temple. The window light glowed all golden and August. He saw the room drawn in sharper lines and sound saturated the faded French wallpaper until it was nearly proper green again, and then, and then, everyone just breathed. The moment passed.
Muggle, is it? he asked.
Sirius stared at him a while before answering. You might try surprising me someday. Would it matter if I said yes?
By sunset the house was still quiet. The rain beat upon it hard in the same grey murk of deep lakes, and they sat and listened to distant cars spraying waves through the streets. Radio said it would continue to rain, 16ºC, light breezes, damp tomorrow. At nightfall Sirius went for a walk and didn't come back.
iii. Slytherin was quiet in a different way, with minds at work and the people restless and wandering the common room after hours, always thinking. All things familiar: the tarnished silver, stale tea feel of it, and the green lamp-eyes suspended by chains from the ceiling. Bright boys named Charles and Picus and Cassius with nothing to talk about, who saved him a spot in the Great Hall.
A few of them came to him the beginning of the year and asked if he'd like to join a group, OWLs preparation, once a week, every Thursday depending, 8:00 p.m. approximately, in the library, third aisle counting from the left, at the sixth table which everyone knows is our domain anyway. Regulus said all right. So they left a stack of books on the end of his bed along with their fervent hopes and an alertness brew.
A week into it Regulus realized they were talking about more than OWLs: they meant all the life beyond. Everyone else marked paragraphs and dog-eared pages. They sat up from hunches and stabbed their quills squarely into the best-executed points and said, That’s it, Merlin, that’s it. He watched a few of their eyes tear with the profundity, at the knowledge. It was too big for him.
When he told Remus about it (he listened with wide eyes, god what lashes he had for a boy) Remus told him in no uncertain terms that one, Regulus was ridiculous; two, it was only a study group; and three, said group were not after his soul. They only wanted Regulus to read about Llewyla Gribble, the floo powder embargo of 1923, and the proper use of dragon saliva.
His fourth point was stated as an expletive, in a decent imitation of Sirius. Then, satisfied at untangling the knot of Regulus Black’s life, Remus went back to his book. (French in One Month, which he’d been reading for two.) Regulus left the group anyway, the very next day.
He was back on his own again standing just outside the library when Charles stopped him, his hand splayed against the door with his nails habitually chewed in an eggplant shade. He said, Is it true about your brother?
Calmly: Yes.
His eyes widened. Charles mumbled that he was sorry - what about, it wasn’t clear; Regulus let it pass in silence as one of the Great Mysteries of Modern Times. Charles didn’t get the hint so they studied together and made loose arrangements to do it again, even though Charles kept flushing over his question, and Regulus kept saying No it’s okay really let’s not talk about it.
After that none of the rest of his crowd asked. They’d all lost interest in Sirius years ago, except during the more destructive outbreaks of his Gryffindor patriotism. People always learned sooner or later.
iv. He collected Regulus like an errand boy.
Everyone demanded the best part of him and by the time Regulus saw him, Sirius was blue beneath his eyes and veins stood out as tiny tributaries, a mottled rose-color flooding the sockets which made everything purple. When they did meet he’d haul Regulus down to the elliptical clearing they’d found in second year, where they used to go when Sirius masterminded Certain Plots and wanted to give Regulus fair warning. Lately he did little more than smoke quietly: a brief orange flare cupped in his palm, waxen cheeks sunk in on inhale, eyelids fluttering almost imperceptibly. Fucking no, Regulus, you can’t have one. This is my last pack.
His smile was reserved for Remus, who followed them down those odd mornings, never sitting with them but standing up among the trees and resting a palm against the bark. Strange mossy growths held special sway. He identified them, and the trees, and the ground cover (occasionally mispronouncing his Latin in an altogether charming way). He could name the clouds rolling by in their billowing grey, inky purple, cirrus nimbus cumulus. Deadly serious, he expressed a fervent desire for a weather course.
And Sirius smiled for just a moment. Remus returned it, a little absently, somewhere else, and wandered off in a strange nature daze. (Sirius said that before Remus was born his mother lived in a tent under a tree in order to Commune, and this was before it was fashionable, remember.)
When it was quiet Regulus said, I’ve got a letter.
Sirius smiled wryly. This should be good.
It’s from home.
I know.
She mentioned you, Regulus said earnestly. You ought to see. He dug in his pockets and unearthed the envelope. Sirius stared at it warily before taking it in his hands, holding it gently as if it were a sword. They could both smell the slightly cloying scent of the house, something syrupy but dry, pressed flowers maybe, slowly turning to powder. Not quite decay.
I don't have time for this, he said suddenly. He handed the letter back. Careful with that thing. Watch out for combustion. I have to go.
Regulus asked where. Sirius told him, Regulus choked a little and Sirius said it wasn't the first time anyway, I don't know what your problem is I mean Christ.
What do you talk about, even?
Politics. Quidditch. The decline in brass cauldron sales. Regulus, we talk about the new world.
Regulus huffed. Dumbledore doesn't know a thing about us.
Did I say that? He asks to see me, all right, and we just talk a little. You have no idea, Regulus, he's brilliant, knows just what's going on. Forget I said anything if it bothers you because I have to go. Have fun. Behave. Goodbye Moony, I know you're listening.
Remus stepped back into the clearing a moment later, a little sheepishly, turned to Regulus and said, Oh, you didn't know? And Regulus wondered about the state of things with brothers cultivating alliances with headmasters. Who knew. Who ever knew.
The rest of the morning Remus taught him to play cards. The kings and queens bothered him, with their blank renaissance eyes, the same faces of relics. Remus said he learned to play in the summer, somewhere in the mountains, smell of pine, white flowers. His first real holiday. And there in Regulus’s mind was Remus sitting in the lounge with his cousins and a pile of silver and thin pastel notes. The money, miraculously, never depleted because they were all of them dreadful players or maybe it had something to do with the marijuana Remus said he’d smoked for the first time, ha ha ha.
Around one he was looking down saying maybe he should go. His eyes were vague. He said perhaps Gryffindor had fallen asunder in his absence, maybe I should check things out, prefect and all. He sighed and hunched his shoulders, relaxed, gave a jerky little wave. Regulus said So I’ll see you and Remus said Right, right, and he colored a little. He didn’t stumble as he walked away but he gave that odd appearance as he turned to silhouette, glowing green.
Regulus thought how odd they were, how years hadn’t made them close. There were still acquaintance lulls and shy smiles and they clung to the boy who connected them. Remus was terribly nice, of course, but there was something reflexive about it. It was nearly indifferent. All the same, he thought. All the same. They were good acquaintances.
v. On the Prophetic Qualities of Household Objects?
Regulus closed the book guiltily. M-aybe.
He told Remus why, and Remus laughed.
He unshouldered his heavy sack onto Regulus’s lonely table. (The opposite seat was vacated by frail Charles, sick and in the infirmary. Thin boy, blond hair? Remus said. We've met.) The contents spilled out in an academic avalanche: clinking amber inkpots, pristine notes attached to the wrong half-finished essays, sharp quills and pencils, twelve different books in serious earth-colored binding with tiny lettering and no pictures. Regulus’s astronomy and Remus’s arithmancy overlapped. So did their elbows.
You may not realize it, but your home is the medium through which the Other Side is calling. Your possessions are speaking to you. Are you listening? Remus read about portends and omens and their manifestation in teacup fractures, and Regulus bit his lip and looked off to the side and didn’t tell Remus he’d read the introduction already, twice.
I didn’t say I believed it. I don’t believe it. All this stuff, divination and everything, it’s all rubbish, he said. Horoscopes. The Book of Birthdays-said I was sensitive. Should grow jasmine.
Remus laughed. If it makes you feel any better it said my astral color is pink.
After that they were together, studying. (Charles rejoined the original and true Slytherin OWLs prep group, which began to mutter darkly at having to always shuffle the alphabetical seating arrangement.) It was convenient and quiet rather like the story of their odd-hour friendship. They accidentally started meeting on Wednesdays.
Sometimes, Remus cracked open old familiar volumes and started fact-checking Regulus’s essays. Regulus never asked him to. Remus said he needed to learn the material again anyway.
Could work at the Prophet, Regulus said. They always need, you know, some manner of research. For their pieces. Don’t they?
Remus shrugged. I don’t know what I want to do.
I don’t either, Regulus said quickly.
Remus tapped the spine of Regulus’s book with his wand. I think you’ve found your calling. You like this prophecy business, don’t you? You say you don’t but every week you pop up with a new book.
Regulus frowned. He explained that he got curious, that Sirius had said some things, that it was all his fault, and that his brother was a lying bastard.
Remus shook his head. Not really.
What?
He doesn’t lie. Not when it matters.
He does what he likes, if it’s a slow day. Or didn’t he tell you about this last holiday?
Remus narrowed his eyes. Is that what you think?
Regulus didn’t ask again.
Remus squirmed a little, when they talked about his brother; Sirius wasn’t one of their twenty-six pre-approved topics of conversation. Remus felt responsible for everything, Regulus knew, like he had to sweep up the detritus of ill relations. But Regulus liked the look on his face when they talked, all sweet convictions souring slightly. He played innocence nicely.
vi. When winter came and the lake froze they’d go examine the ice-skin, testing it first with rocks and then their weight. Remus held back cautiously, like an animal on a tether. He poked the surface with forked sticks, cracking hard snow, and Regulus knew the boy was breathing shallowly because he could barely see his frozen breath, haloing his head. He found himself watching Remus’s chest and trying to discern the intake under all the grey-brown layers; watching for the mechanism of life, his lungs, and heart.
Sirius raised an eyebrow.
Sirius liked to pass the time by practicing the snow shower charm over clusters of Slytherins. He said it cured his itching hands, this chronic sort of thing, a disease. Maybe they’d name it after him.
Don’t you think? he said, as he slithered an arm around Remus’s shoulders, an arm around Regulus’s. Off in the distance flailing sixth-years popped up out of those roving bands of snowdrifts you sometimes saw, natural phenomena they were, strange enough all right. Strange enough.
Remus bit his lip in saintly concern for All Living Things; that means Slytherin too. Oh dear, he said.
Don’t get sentimental, Moony.
Regulus left for London on the 18th. They stood on either side of him in the steam of the train and made him feel like a departing soldier with their good-humor faces and the melancholy they couldn’t quite hide, wherever Grimmauld Place was concerned. Four times Sirius tried to convince him not to go, and he left the room every time Regulus explained that it was expected. You’re going to be terribly boring someday, Sirius said.
At the train he said, Keep up the grim old guard.
He added, We have something for you.
Remus stepped forward with the little cake. It was smeared with acid green icing, sugar crystals and sprinkled all over with small-hard lemon and strawberry sweets. Has it got a flavor? Regulus asked.
Yes, said Remus. It’s called original. Happy Birthday.
Sirius told Regulus he was mad one last time, bound for St. Mungo’s or worse yet, Bedlam. He smiled and glared. He seemed to be on the verge of decisions that would be decided in blinks. Sirius and Remus exchanged a look.
Then Sirius gave Regulus a one-armed hug and said Fare thee well. Tidings. Happy Christmas. And yes Happy Birthday. Regulus, my god think of it: if you’d only waited a week, you could’ve been the Christ Child.
vii. The new maid had been fired, his father was working, his mother was tired, and the cousins were giggling. The snow melted when it hit the sidewalk. The house was warm. It smelled balmy and green, red waxen berries glowing as stars in the corners, and sometimes they forgot to light the Christmas candles. Every evening the sky turned clear and cobalt, it froze, so the night seemed permanent.
They ate in the dining room for the first time in months, disturbing the garden of wild lace and dust and dark wood reviving the old nobility but no one was fooled. Regulus couldn’t eat from the dishes; they were new, or rather old, or rather recently inherited. (A man had died and they were eating from his china. But that’s half of tradition right there, Sirius said, once. Half of it’s being dead.)
On Christmas Eve he accidentally saw the girl cousins huddled around a mirror wearing sheer pink, slips with roses, arms bare. Narcissa was brushing her hair. Regulus walked back to his room, his heart pounding, their image in his mind when he found an owl scraping its talons against the window. There was a letter waiting, a terribly polite letter from Remus. I thought you might be lonely, he wrote. Everything whirled in his head and he didn’t know where he wanted to be.
viii. The first time they kissed Regulus didn't know any better than to lean in and lean in until their mouths pressed together so hard their lips ached and he felt like the bottom row of his teeth might puncture something. The problem was too big hands, a parched mouth full of dust, and it felt like nothing so much as a reprise of numb-sticky kisses performed on dares in childhood. He wondered vaguely if he'd bruise and thought maybe he’d wear brown and blue like a badge.
When they pulled apart Remus started to laugh. It had started as an odd snuffling against Regulus’s mouth, breath tickling them both. Regulus said Fuck you and Remus half-apologized, said You've got me wrong, I didn't meant to.
The second time was ripe.
He opened his mouth and every time Remus's tongue slipped against his it was distinct, a color, a burst of fruit red and moistness. Their teeth clicked and it was strong clean white and the noise of the contact - the scrape - was inside him so he felt it more than he heard it. Remus was groaning mmmph and mmm in low vibrating notes as he kissed his bottom lip again and again, and there were silk strings stretched thin between their lips. He cradled Regulus’s skull and left permanent fingerprints, whorls in ivory where no one could see. He pushed Regulus into the domino-line of books on the library shelf. He sucked and teased his tongue all slick and obscene until Regulus was nearly sick at how wet it was (was it polite to spit afterwards?) and then he wondered if through every layer he could taste his brother.
They pulled apart slowly with a quieter kiss that left Regulus staring through unfocused eyes under a crosshatch of sticky lashes. Everything was distorted but bright, occasionally clear, like looking through a glass bottle. Remus’s lips were shining.
You must be joking, he said, but Regulus hadn’t spoken. Remus began to laugh again, and couldn’t stop. You laughed like that when you already had what you wanted. You would forgive anyone anything, not because you were full of grace but because you didn’t care about the rest, all peripherals.
Afterward Regulus walked to the courtyard. It was snowing and he pretended the grounds were white seas, foaming, and he stood there till he got numb.
ix. Sirius said bedrest and sad pink noses were all very well but Regulus was still a hypochondriac, really you are, you hibernate if anyone so much as breathes on you. Regulus said pneumonia chose him, not the other way around and could he help it?
You sodding well could, Sirius said. You could eat once in a while, you delicate little rosebud you. It's pathetic.
But still he stole a potion from Madame Pomfrey because Regulus was afraid to do it himself; he'd hated the infirmary since second year when he broke his wrist, and Pomfrey's ancient predecessor did something that made his whole hand turn colors Sirius likened to a peacock. Now three years later he was standing before Regulus, dispensing warm medicine and saying, You know I think I'll be a nurse. Call me Florence. Don't tell me you don't know about Florence, Regulus, d’you ever read a fucking book?
Regulus said Sit down, close the curtains.
Sirius crawled into bed and told him to budge the hell over please. He wrapped that horrid cloak tight around his shoulders so there was just a head floating over a thin strip of cotton and denim. If Regulus forgot and looked over suddenly he was terrified for just a moment.
The medicine tasted like herbs, earthy, and it felt like swallowing steam. It wasn’t unpleasant. He sipped slowly. By the time Regulus finished, Sirius's eyelids were drooping and he was nearly falling off the bed. There was a little chink as Regulus set the mug down on his bedside table and the sound made Sirius start, a little, wrap his cloak even tighter and sigh. Regulus looked at him and thought: Now.
Sirius was sitting up when Regulus took out the letters. The scent was back but this time there was her perfume, which neither could describe adequately except to say it was old, a smell beyond clean, which made their throats close up. Regulus's whole body was sore and a little hunched with the medicine but Sirius was the one who looked ill.
When Regulus was finished there were perhaps two dozen in all spread out in a lemon-colored fan. March 3rd (fourth year) was written on different stationary so he removed it gently, pinched between his thumb and forefinger. None of the letters contained a single error in even the minutest of details. Regulus had checked. The polished black ink was even and perfect.
I don't want to see them, Sirius said quietly. I told you before.
Regulus stared. Sirius made to get up.
Look, if you want I'll take the cup back to the infirmary, all right? I'll get more if you need any.
You won’t even look, Regulus complained. You never try.
I have tried. Leave it alone.
Sirius-
Regulus, put the goddamn letters away. You've been like this ever since you got back, what do you want? I don't care what she's said about me, do you get it? The cloak slipped off his shoulders and the hair on Sirius's arms stood up a little. He took a deep shaky breath as though it were his last. He blinked.
Regulus looked at September 16th.
There were lamentations about various heads of house, and the way Regulus was thrown in with lesser people as though it were all a stew, One would think things might be different after the generosity of the Blacks. Later on, two paragraphs down, there was an oblique reference to Sirius. Regulus bit his lip.
It's not too late, he began at last. It's not lost. The words sounded odd now that he'd finally said them; speeches felt false.
What isn't lost?
You could write to her, Regulus said. Have you even tried, once? It's been months now, Sirius, maybe that's all you need.
Sirius's expression calmed a little. He sat still and there was something slowly turning in his face that made Regulus close his mouth. It was like lying on his back in lush summer and watching the clouds stare impassively back, promising rain or shade, and he remembered being five or six and mesmerized the first time he realized he could see them move. Massive but quiet. No urgency. Something odd reflected in Sirius's eyes, slowly stirring.
If there's a chance-Regulus blurted.
Sirius shook his head in disbelief, a little smile lighting (there it is sun breaking through the clouds). You don't understand. You really don't understand.
He wasn’t accusing.
Later Regulus thanked him for the medicine. It flushed you, really; you felt fine even and better than before, maybe a little sick in your soul but.
x. Regulus found them by the lake, their hands dangling in cold brown March water and reaching at glinting things below the surface. Sirius flapped his wrist and chased after Remus’s fingers, his hand distorted, fish-pale and gliding through the water with aquatic grace. He caught Remus’s wrist. A shadow crossed over them. They looked up at Regulus and waited and waited and finally Sirius said What? All the while Remus smiled this sugary little smile and Regulus realized, for the first time, that Remus didn’t think anything was wrong, with any of them.
Regulus said there was no reason. He turned away.
Alone in his bed he held his hands out in front of him and imitated the way they touched, the game they made. He curled his hands into awkward shapes, willing his fingers to contrast like theirs did, all peach and white. Laced together his fingers made slick, repetitive sliding noises. It looked as though he were praying.
The rest was easy to imagine: milk-skin beaded with sweat, legs falling open, bodies cradling bodies, boys. He gasped and gasped and came with both hands down his pants. When he went to sleep he buried them under the pillow, and thought how he couldn’t be clean enough.
The next day Remus asked if he’d like to walk to Hogsmeade with them but Regulus said no, he had to study, and it was true. He opted out of academia that afternoon, though, and taught Charles to play poker instead. By nightfall he was sitting outside, just in time to watch the village revelers trickle back into the castle in twos and threes. He heard Sirius before he saw him, and when he came into view there was only a smile, his teeth looking phosphorescent blue in the light. Remus’s arm was threaded through his. They were tripping over each other, over the brown thawing earth, over a path that no one else knew.
He began to remember.
Remus had sent three letters to Sirius before he’d left Grimmauld Place. Plain stationary lined in a dust color, a sloppy hand, and words that were alive, that paled the face Remus wore every day, a face of complacency and bland contentment. Or: the only Remus he’d ever known.
Regulus had kept the letters for himself but as the paper grew limp and the words faded, whether by spell or the science of cheap ink, he realized the letters were all he’d managed to contain-there was still the thought in Remus’s mind. The childlike smile for Sirius. Maybe paths altered, but people didn’t.
Maybe everyone found what they were supposed to.
xi. Remus used to read out loud from the same ancient book, his voice light, contorted into strange patterns so they’d pick up the rhymes and hear the poem that it was intended to be. Sirius and Remus would look at one another after certain passages and grin with bleak humor; medieval currents ran through their minds and after a reading they became oddly superstitious. Tea leaves for Sirius. Weather phenomena for Remus. Regulus thought the whole thing was ridiculous. Clearly there was something in the water of the writer’s 14th century Italy, and that accounted for the whole strange book.
It didn’t stop him from buying what would be Remus’s sixth copy, the latest translation. He’d found it in London the day after Christmas. His finger pads had tingled and his palms were wet because he knew just what he’d do with it. There was possibility, back then.
In March it felt like dying empires. The air smelled sweet and marshy but he was convinced nothing would grow, not for a long time. Regulus thought how appropriate March was for Remus’s birth, unassuming and quiet between the extremes of summer and winter.
He forgot the exact date and had to ask Sirius.
The night before he couldn’t sleep and crept to his trunk, found the parcel, and unwrapped it (safe red plaid tissue paper; it didn’t mean anything). It was the first time he’d read the book himself. He remembered everything: adulterers swept up in the winds, the wasps and rivers of boiling blood, the indecisive angels chasing a banner, forever. The book was a warning. Some people had odd ideas about redemption.
Next day he couldn’t find one without the other (Sirius said it got lonely, otherwise) so he gave Remus the present with Sirius looking on critically. Remus said it was one of the nicest most thoughtful things he’d ever received, which only struck Regulus as funny afterwards.
How’d you find it? Remus asked.
I went looking, Regulus said, and frowned a little.
You’re a strange boy, did you know?
Then Remus opened the book and was lost. He seemed a quiet, inextricable whirlwind-unconcerned, grateful, sweetly flawed, selfish. Sirius put his mouth to Remus’s temple as Regulus left for the second time. Regulus had done what he wanted to do. He didn’t see Remus as often, after that.
xii. In all his dreams he let a crowd shuffle him on, too tired to care where they were going.
It was midspring when Sirius came to him with a letter of his own. Bright white sun obscured the writing, and it took Regulus a moment to realize it was addressed not to him but to Sirius. It stated that his room had been emptied, that Gringotts would no longer open the family vault to him, that he was by every definition disowned.
You remember when you told me there was a chance? Sirius said with a wry smile.
If I had known, Regulus said, bittersweet in his throat. If you’d told me it was that bad I’d. I would have-
No, Sirius said. You wouldn’t have.
At the words and the easy dismissal, Regulus squeezed his fingers into a fist until there was red behind his eyes, till tendons stood out in sharp relief. He could hurt Sirius. Sirius saw what he’d done and began to talk, his voice falling in plain simple notes like the singers in his old records, telling you the truth till you ached with it.
Regulus, you’ve always known. You saw everything that happened, and you never did a thing.
For a moment he couldn’t breathe.
(The dark pink of Sirius's left cheek, raw lid of his eye, salmon pink, the way he clutched at his back on the one day, the very worst time. The way they hadn’t eaten meals together since Sirius threw the plate in sixth year. The way she had his walls stripped and the paper put up in place of the posters and prints, photographs of Gryffindor boys grinning cheek-to-cheek. The way he squinted over the film that had built up in his window, watching orange sunsets over the city because he wasn’t allowed out, during those last days. How she closed herself in her bedroom and winced, winced, at the very sound of her son's voice.)
Regulus could no longer convince himself that his brother’s leaving had anything to do with whims.
The question-, Sirius said, striking a match, What are you going to do?
Later he wished he hadn’t said it. I suppose you’d like me to be just like you. Do just like you.
To his surprise Sirius nodded. I wish you would, sometimes. I wish you’d get out of there, Regulus, the things I’ve seen….
Sirius looked up, inexplicably. Cerulean sky. It would be summer again, soon, before anyone knew it, and they’d all keep running with the mad thrush and the color of their lives. Maybe Regulus would stand still and just watch. If he could choose it would’ve been April forever, not because it was a moment he wanted to remember, not because he thought Sirius might forgive him if he had the time, but because it was now. Sirius blew a smoke ring
You’re not always right, Regulus said.
I know, he replied softly.
xiii. Sirius said everyone has to choose, in the end.
Pairings: Sirius/Remus, Remus/Regulus
Rating: PG-13
A/N: For hiddendaze who, many many months ago, requested "Marauders-era Remus, Regulus with a crush, UST or RST." Funny thing. I misread Regulus as Remus and was all set to proclaim a certain Valentine fic hers when I finally decided to reread the prompt. Whooops. Also for devkel who, many many months ago, had a birthday and arranged the ficathon for which this was intended. Here are my 500 words at last! Sorry it took so long.
Thank you statelines and hostile_21 for being total sweethearts and encouraging me like mad.
April Morning Almanac
i. The house had always been quiet.
But it's changed, he said. It's worse.
ii. Sirius's door was ajar for the first time in weeks. A record was playing softly, the knob for volume turned clockwise two thin silver ridges, so quiet but jarring in the mausoleum stillness. The music was foreign and the instrument shimmering and at once rust; he imagined he saw the melody as a line, curving and drifting sinuously like incense. A box lay open on the bed. Sirius sat next to it, a globe in hand, England obliterated under his thumb. Give it a spin, he said, when he noticed Regulus.
What you do is this. Hold it in one hand. Other hand, just sort of hover a finger, let it touch down, gently, don't stop the globe. Let it stop on its own, and let the finger trail. Where it rests when the spinning's stopped-
Regulus peeked under his finger. Kashmir, he read. That's where it stopped.
Sirius snatched the globe back. I got Algeria. Fascinating.
What?
Ancient divination technique. Finds the place where you die.
It doesn't.
It does.
Sirius gave the globe another experimental spin, managing ten revolutions, all the continents a whir of peach lime and blue. The colors were faded from too many months in a junk shop window. (He was always collecting rubbish: chess pieces and broken jewelry refuge from his tours of Sunday parks, a leaf Regulus found, kept, and preserved for its color. And the records. He liked his assortment though it pained him a little that everything was doomed to antiquity; he said there was enough of that, and tried to avoid it if he could.)
'S'one of Moony's records, he said casually. Like it?
Maybe. I don't know.
Sirius frowned.
He fiddled with the volume a moment and down the hall someone coughed, stirring dust and pulses. Sirius made Regulus wear the headphones, fitting them over his ears like a crown in a strange coronation, untangling his hair for him when a lock caught in the device, and telling him he was going to Listen, goddamnit.
Listen.
When he let it the music flowed more potent than blood. Sirius pressed close to hear the escaping sound until they were nearly temple to temple. The window light glowed all golden and August. He saw the room drawn in sharper lines and sound saturated the faded French wallpaper until it was nearly proper green again, and then, and then, everyone just breathed. The moment passed.
Muggle, is it? he asked.
Sirius stared at him a while before answering. You might try surprising me someday. Would it matter if I said yes?
By sunset the house was still quiet. The rain beat upon it hard in the same grey murk of deep lakes, and they sat and listened to distant cars spraying waves through the streets. Radio said it would continue to rain, 16ºC, light breezes, damp tomorrow. At nightfall Sirius went for a walk and didn't come back.
iii. Slytherin was quiet in a different way, with minds at work and the people restless and wandering the common room after hours, always thinking. All things familiar: the tarnished silver, stale tea feel of it, and the green lamp-eyes suspended by chains from the ceiling. Bright boys named Charles and Picus and Cassius with nothing to talk about, who saved him a spot in the Great Hall.
A few of them came to him the beginning of the year and asked if he'd like to join a group, OWLs preparation, once a week, every Thursday depending, 8:00 p.m. approximately, in the library, third aisle counting from the left, at the sixth table which everyone knows is our domain anyway. Regulus said all right. So they left a stack of books on the end of his bed along with their fervent hopes and an alertness brew.
A week into it Regulus realized they were talking about more than OWLs: they meant all the life beyond. Everyone else marked paragraphs and dog-eared pages. They sat up from hunches and stabbed their quills squarely into the best-executed points and said, That’s it, Merlin, that’s it. He watched a few of their eyes tear with the profundity, at the knowledge. It was too big for him.
When he told Remus about it (he listened with wide eyes, god what lashes he had for a boy) Remus told him in no uncertain terms that one, Regulus was ridiculous; two, it was only a study group; and three, said group were not after his soul. They only wanted Regulus to read about Llewyla Gribble, the floo powder embargo of 1923, and the proper use of dragon saliva.
His fourth point was stated as an expletive, in a decent imitation of Sirius. Then, satisfied at untangling the knot of Regulus Black’s life, Remus went back to his book. (French in One Month, which he’d been reading for two.) Regulus left the group anyway, the very next day.
He was back on his own again standing just outside the library when Charles stopped him, his hand splayed against the door with his nails habitually chewed in an eggplant shade. He said, Is it true about your brother?
Calmly: Yes.
His eyes widened. Charles mumbled that he was sorry - what about, it wasn’t clear; Regulus let it pass in silence as one of the Great Mysteries of Modern Times. Charles didn’t get the hint so they studied together and made loose arrangements to do it again, even though Charles kept flushing over his question, and Regulus kept saying No it’s okay really let’s not talk about it.
After that none of the rest of his crowd asked. They’d all lost interest in Sirius years ago, except during the more destructive outbreaks of his Gryffindor patriotism. People always learned sooner or later.
iv. He collected Regulus like an errand boy.
Everyone demanded the best part of him and by the time Regulus saw him, Sirius was blue beneath his eyes and veins stood out as tiny tributaries, a mottled rose-color flooding the sockets which made everything purple. When they did meet he’d haul Regulus down to the elliptical clearing they’d found in second year, where they used to go when Sirius masterminded Certain Plots and wanted to give Regulus fair warning. Lately he did little more than smoke quietly: a brief orange flare cupped in his palm, waxen cheeks sunk in on inhale, eyelids fluttering almost imperceptibly. Fucking no, Regulus, you can’t have one. This is my last pack.
His smile was reserved for Remus, who followed them down those odd mornings, never sitting with them but standing up among the trees and resting a palm against the bark. Strange mossy growths held special sway. He identified them, and the trees, and the ground cover (occasionally mispronouncing his Latin in an altogether charming way). He could name the clouds rolling by in their billowing grey, inky purple, cirrus nimbus cumulus. Deadly serious, he expressed a fervent desire for a weather course.
And Sirius smiled for just a moment. Remus returned it, a little absently, somewhere else, and wandered off in a strange nature daze. (Sirius said that before Remus was born his mother lived in a tent under a tree in order to Commune, and this was before it was fashionable, remember.)
When it was quiet Regulus said, I’ve got a letter.
Sirius smiled wryly. This should be good.
It’s from home.
I know.
She mentioned you, Regulus said earnestly. You ought to see. He dug in his pockets and unearthed the envelope. Sirius stared at it warily before taking it in his hands, holding it gently as if it were a sword. They could both smell the slightly cloying scent of the house, something syrupy but dry, pressed flowers maybe, slowly turning to powder. Not quite decay.
I don't have time for this, he said suddenly. He handed the letter back. Careful with that thing. Watch out for combustion. I have to go.
Regulus asked where. Sirius told him, Regulus choked a little and Sirius said it wasn't the first time anyway, I don't know what your problem is I mean Christ.
What do you talk about, even?
Politics. Quidditch. The decline in brass cauldron sales. Regulus, we talk about the new world.
Regulus huffed. Dumbledore doesn't know a thing about us.
Did I say that? He asks to see me, all right, and we just talk a little. You have no idea, Regulus, he's brilliant, knows just what's going on. Forget I said anything if it bothers you because I have to go. Have fun. Behave. Goodbye Moony, I know you're listening.
Remus stepped back into the clearing a moment later, a little sheepishly, turned to Regulus and said, Oh, you didn't know? And Regulus wondered about the state of things with brothers cultivating alliances with headmasters. Who knew. Who ever knew.
The rest of the morning Remus taught him to play cards. The kings and queens bothered him, with their blank renaissance eyes, the same faces of relics. Remus said he learned to play in the summer, somewhere in the mountains, smell of pine, white flowers. His first real holiday. And there in Regulus’s mind was Remus sitting in the lounge with his cousins and a pile of silver and thin pastel notes. The money, miraculously, never depleted because they were all of them dreadful players or maybe it had something to do with the marijuana Remus said he’d smoked for the first time, ha ha ha.
Around one he was looking down saying maybe he should go. His eyes were vague. He said perhaps Gryffindor had fallen asunder in his absence, maybe I should check things out, prefect and all. He sighed and hunched his shoulders, relaxed, gave a jerky little wave. Regulus said So I’ll see you and Remus said Right, right, and he colored a little. He didn’t stumble as he walked away but he gave that odd appearance as he turned to silhouette, glowing green.
Regulus thought how odd they were, how years hadn’t made them close. There were still acquaintance lulls and shy smiles and they clung to the boy who connected them. Remus was terribly nice, of course, but there was something reflexive about it. It was nearly indifferent. All the same, he thought. All the same. They were good acquaintances.
v. On the Prophetic Qualities of Household Objects?
Regulus closed the book guiltily. M-aybe.
He told Remus why, and Remus laughed.
He unshouldered his heavy sack onto Regulus’s lonely table. (The opposite seat was vacated by frail Charles, sick and in the infirmary. Thin boy, blond hair? Remus said. We've met.) The contents spilled out in an academic avalanche: clinking amber inkpots, pristine notes attached to the wrong half-finished essays, sharp quills and pencils, twelve different books in serious earth-colored binding with tiny lettering and no pictures. Regulus’s astronomy and Remus’s arithmancy overlapped. So did their elbows.
You may not realize it, but your home is the medium through which the Other Side is calling. Your possessions are speaking to you. Are you listening? Remus read about portends and omens and their manifestation in teacup fractures, and Regulus bit his lip and looked off to the side and didn’t tell Remus he’d read the introduction already, twice.
I didn’t say I believed it. I don’t believe it. All this stuff, divination and everything, it’s all rubbish, he said. Horoscopes. The Book of Birthdays-said I was sensitive. Should grow jasmine.
Remus laughed. If it makes you feel any better it said my astral color is pink.
After that they were together, studying. (Charles rejoined the original and true Slytherin OWLs prep group, which began to mutter darkly at having to always shuffle the alphabetical seating arrangement.) It was convenient and quiet rather like the story of their odd-hour friendship. They accidentally started meeting on Wednesdays.
Sometimes, Remus cracked open old familiar volumes and started fact-checking Regulus’s essays. Regulus never asked him to. Remus said he needed to learn the material again anyway.
Could work at the Prophet, Regulus said. They always need, you know, some manner of research. For their pieces. Don’t they?
Remus shrugged. I don’t know what I want to do.
I don’t either, Regulus said quickly.
Remus tapped the spine of Regulus’s book with his wand. I think you’ve found your calling. You like this prophecy business, don’t you? You say you don’t but every week you pop up with a new book.
Regulus frowned. He explained that he got curious, that Sirius had said some things, that it was all his fault, and that his brother was a lying bastard.
Remus shook his head. Not really.
What?
He doesn’t lie. Not when it matters.
He does what he likes, if it’s a slow day. Or didn’t he tell you about this last holiday?
Remus narrowed his eyes. Is that what you think?
Regulus didn’t ask again.
Remus squirmed a little, when they talked about his brother; Sirius wasn’t one of their twenty-six pre-approved topics of conversation. Remus felt responsible for everything, Regulus knew, like he had to sweep up the detritus of ill relations. But Regulus liked the look on his face when they talked, all sweet convictions souring slightly. He played innocence nicely.
vi. When winter came and the lake froze they’d go examine the ice-skin, testing it first with rocks and then their weight. Remus held back cautiously, like an animal on a tether. He poked the surface with forked sticks, cracking hard snow, and Regulus knew the boy was breathing shallowly because he could barely see his frozen breath, haloing his head. He found himself watching Remus’s chest and trying to discern the intake under all the grey-brown layers; watching for the mechanism of life, his lungs, and heart.
Sirius raised an eyebrow.
Sirius liked to pass the time by practicing the snow shower charm over clusters of Slytherins. He said it cured his itching hands, this chronic sort of thing, a disease. Maybe they’d name it after him.
Don’t you think? he said, as he slithered an arm around Remus’s shoulders, an arm around Regulus’s. Off in the distance flailing sixth-years popped up out of those roving bands of snowdrifts you sometimes saw, natural phenomena they were, strange enough all right. Strange enough.
Remus bit his lip in saintly concern for All Living Things; that means Slytherin too. Oh dear, he said.
Don’t get sentimental, Moony.
Regulus left for London on the 18th. They stood on either side of him in the steam of the train and made him feel like a departing soldier with their good-humor faces and the melancholy they couldn’t quite hide, wherever Grimmauld Place was concerned. Four times Sirius tried to convince him not to go, and he left the room every time Regulus explained that it was expected. You’re going to be terribly boring someday, Sirius said.
At the train he said, Keep up the grim old guard.
He added, We have something for you.
Remus stepped forward with the little cake. It was smeared with acid green icing, sugar crystals and sprinkled all over with small-hard lemon and strawberry sweets. Has it got a flavor? Regulus asked.
Yes, said Remus. It’s called original. Happy Birthday.
Sirius told Regulus he was mad one last time, bound for St. Mungo’s or worse yet, Bedlam. He smiled and glared. He seemed to be on the verge of decisions that would be decided in blinks. Sirius and Remus exchanged a look.
Then Sirius gave Regulus a one-armed hug and said Fare thee well. Tidings. Happy Christmas. And yes Happy Birthday. Regulus, my god think of it: if you’d only waited a week, you could’ve been the Christ Child.
vii. The new maid had been fired, his father was working, his mother was tired, and the cousins were giggling. The snow melted when it hit the sidewalk. The house was warm. It smelled balmy and green, red waxen berries glowing as stars in the corners, and sometimes they forgot to light the Christmas candles. Every evening the sky turned clear and cobalt, it froze, so the night seemed permanent.
They ate in the dining room for the first time in months, disturbing the garden of wild lace and dust and dark wood reviving the old nobility but no one was fooled. Regulus couldn’t eat from the dishes; they were new, or rather old, or rather recently inherited. (A man had died and they were eating from his china. But that’s half of tradition right there, Sirius said, once. Half of it’s being dead.)
On Christmas Eve he accidentally saw the girl cousins huddled around a mirror wearing sheer pink, slips with roses, arms bare. Narcissa was brushing her hair. Regulus walked back to his room, his heart pounding, their image in his mind when he found an owl scraping its talons against the window. There was a letter waiting, a terribly polite letter from Remus. I thought you might be lonely, he wrote. Everything whirled in his head and he didn’t know where he wanted to be.
viii. The first time they kissed Regulus didn't know any better than to lean in and lean in until their mouths pressed together so hard their lips ached and he felt like the bottom row of his teeth might puncture something. The problem was too big hands, a parched mouth full of dust, and it felt like nothing so much as a reprise of numb-sticky kisses performed on dares in childhood. He wondered vaguely if he'd bruise and thought maybe he’d wear brown and blue like a badge.
When they pulled apart Remus started to laugh. It had started as an odd snuffling against Regulus’s mouth, breath tickling them both. Regulus said Fuck you and Remus half-apologized, said You've got me wrong, I didn't meant to.
The second time was ripe.
He opened his mouth and every time Remus's tongue slipped against his it was distinct, a color, a burst of fruit red and moistness. Their teeth clicked and it was strong clean white and the noise of the contact - the scrape - was inside him so he felt it more than he heard it. Remus was groaning mmmph and mmm in low vibrating notes as he kissed his bottom lip again and again, and there were silk strings stretched thin between their lips. He cradled Regulus’s skull and left permanent fingerprints, whorls in ivory where no one could see. He pushed Regulus into the domino-line of books on the library shelf. He sucked and teased his tongue all slick and obscene until Regulus was nearly sick at how wet it was (was it polite to spit afterwards?) and then he wondered if through every layer he could taste his brother.
They pulled apart slowly with a quieter kiss that left Regulus staring through unfocused eyes under a crosshatch of sticky lashes. Everything was distorted but bright, occasionally clear, like looking through a glass bottle. Remus’s lips were shining.
You must be joking, he said, but Regulus hadn’t spoken. Remus began to laugh again, and couldn’t stop. You laughed like that when you already had what you wanted. You would forgive anyone anything, not because you were full of grace but because you didn’t care about the rest, all peripherals.
Afterward Regulus walked to the courtyard. It was snowing and he pretended the grounds were white seas, foaming, and he stood there till he got numb.
ix. Sirius said bedrest and sad pink noses were all very well but Regulus was still a hypochondriac, really you are, you hibernate if anyone so much as breathes on you. Regulus said pneumonia chose him, not the other way around and could he help it?
You sodding well could, Sirius said. You could eat once in a while, you delicate little rosebud you. It's pathetic.
But still he stole a potion from Madame Pomfrey because Regulus was afraid to do it himself; he'd hated the infirmary since second year when he broke his wrist, and Pomfrey's ancient predecessor did something that made his whole hand turn colors Sirius likened to a peacock. Now three years later he was standing before Regulus, dispensing warm medicine and saying, You know I think I'll be a nurse. Call me Florence. Don't tell me you don't know about Florence, Regulus, d’you ever read a fucking book?
Regulus said Sit down, close the curtains.
Sirius crawled into bed and told him to budge the hell over please. He wrapped that horrid cloak tight around his shoulders so there was just a head floating over a thin strip of cotton and denim. If Regulus forgot and looked over suddenly he was terrified for just a moment.
The medicine tasted like herbs, earthy, and it felt like swallowing steam. It wasn’t unpleasant. He sipped slowly. By the time Regulus finished, Sirius's eyelids were drooping and he was nearly falling off the bed. There was a little chink as Regulus set the mug down on his bedside table and the sound made Sirius start, a little, wrap his cloak even tighter and sigh. Regulus looked at him and thought: Now.
Sirius was sitting up when Regulus took out the letters. The scent was back but this time there was her perfume, which neither could describe adequately except to say it was old, a smell beyond clean, which made their throats close up. Regulus's whole body was sore and a little hunched with the medicine but Sirius was the one who looked ill.
When Regulus was finished there were perhaps two dozen in all spread out in a lemon-colored fan. March 3rd (fourth year) was written on different stationary so he removed it gently, pinched between his thumb and forefinger. None of the letters contained a single error in even the minutest of details. Regulus had checked. The polished black ink was even and perfect.
I don't want to see them, Sirius said quietly. I told you before.
Regulus stared. Sirius made to get up.
Look, if you want I'll take the cup back to the infirmary, all right? I'll get more if you need any.
You won’t even look, Regulus complained. You never try.
I have tried. Leave it alone.
Sirius-
Regulus, put the goddamn letters away. You've been like this ever since you got back, what do you want? I don't care what she's said about me, do you get it? The cloak slipped off his shoulders and the hair on Sirius's arms stood up a little. He took a deep shaky breath as though it were his last. He blinked.
Regulus looked at September 16th.
There were lamentations about various heads of house, and the way Regulus was thrown in with lesser people as though it were all a stew, One would think things might be different after the generosity of the Blacks. Later on, two paragraphs down, there was an oblique reference to Sirius. Regulus bit his lip.
It's not too late, he began at last. It's not lost. The words sounded odd now that he'd finally said them; speeches felt false.
What isn't lost?
You could write to her, Regulus said. Have you even tried, once? It's been months now, Sirius, maybe that's all you need.
Sirius's expression calmed a little. He sat still and there was something slowly turning in his face that made Regulus close his mouth. It was like lying on his back in lush summer and watching the clouds stare impassively back, promising rain or shade, and he remembered being five or six and mesmerized the first time he realized he could see them move. Massive but quiet. No urgency. Something odd reflected in Sirius's eyes, slowly stirring.
If there's a chance-Regulus blurted.
Sirius shook his head in disbelief, a little smile lighting (there it is sun breaking through the clouds). You don't understand. You really don't understand.
He wasn’t accusing.
Later Regulus thanked him for the medicine. It flushed you, really; you felt fine even and better than before, maybe a little sick in your soul but.
x. Regulus found them by the lake, their hands dangling in cold brown March water and reaching at glinting things below the surface. Sirius flapped his wrist and chased after Remus’s fingers, his hand distorted, fish-pale and gliding through the water with aquatic grace. He caught Remus’s wrist. A shadow crossed over them. They looked up at Regulus and waited and waited and finally Sirius said What? All the while Remus smiled this sugary little smile and Regulus realized, for the first time, that Remus didn’t think anything was wrong, with any of them.
Regulus said there was no reason. He turned away.
Alone in his bed he held his hands out in front of him and imitated the way they touched, the game they made. He curled his hands into awkward shapes, willing his fingers to contrast like theirs did, all peach and white. Laced together his fingers made slick, repetitive sliding noises. It looked as though he were praying.
The rest was easy to imagine: milk-skin beaded with sweat, legs falling open, bodies cradling bodies, boys. He gasped and gasped and came with both hands down his pants. When he went to sleep he buried them under the pillow, and thought how he couldn’t be clean enough.
The next day Remus asked if he’d like to walk to Hogsmeade with them but Regulus said no, he had to study, and it was true. He opted out of academia that afternoon, though, and taught Charles to play poker instead. By nightfall he was sitting outside, just in time to watch the village revelers trickle back into the castle in twos and threes. He heard Sirius before he saw him, and when he came into view there was only a smile, his teeth looking phosphorescent blue in the light. Remus’s arm was threaded through his. They were tripping over each other, over the brown thawing earth, over a path that no one else knew.
He began to remember.
Remus had sent three letters to Sirius before he’d left Grimmauld Place. Plain stationary lined in a dust color, a sloppy hand, and words that were alive, that paled the face Remus wore every day, a face of complacency and bland contentment. Or: the only Remus he’d ever known.
Regulus had kept the letters for himself but as the paper grew limp and the words faded, whether by spell or the science of cheap ink, he realized the letters were all he’d managed to contain-there was still the thought in Remus’s mind. The childlike smile for Sirius. Maybe paths altered, but people didn’t.
Maybe everyone found what they were supposed to.
xi. Remus used to read out loud from the same ancient book, his voice light, contorted into strange patterns so they’d pick up the rhymes and hear the poem that it was intended to be. Sirius and Remus would look at one another after certain passages and grin with bleak humor; medieval currents ran through their minds and after a reading they became oddly superstitious. Tea leaves for Sirius. Weather phenomena for Remus. Regulus thought the whole thing was ridiculous. Clearly there was something in the water of the writer’s 14th century Italy, and that accounted for the whole strange book.
It didn’t stop him from buying what would be Remus’s sixth copy, the latest translation. He’d found it in London the day after Christmas. His finger pads had tingled and his palms were wet because he knew just what he’d do with it. There was possibility, back then.
In March it felt like dying empires. The air smelled sweet and marshy but he was convinced nothing would grow, not for a long time. Regulus thought how appropriate March was for Remus’s birth, unassuming and quiet between the extremes of summer and winter.
He forgot the exact date and had to ask Sirius.
The night before he couldn’t sleep and crept to his trunk, found the parcel, and unwrapped it (safe red plaid tissue paper; it didn’t mean anything). It was the first time he’d read the book himself. He remembered everything: adulterers swept up in the winds, the wasps and rivers of boiling blood, the indecisive angels chasing a banner, forever. The book was a warning. Some people had odd ideas about redemption.
Next day he couldn’t find one without the other (Sirius said it got lonely, otherwise) so he gave Remus the present with Sirius looking on critically. Remus said it was one of the nicest most thoughtful things he’d ever received, which only struck Regulus as funny afterwards.
How’d you find it? Remus asked.
I went looking, Regulus said, and frowned a little.
You’re a strange boy, did you know?
Then Remus opened the book and was lost. He seemed a quiet, inextricable whirlwind-unconcerned, grateful, sweetly flawed, selfish. Sirius put his mouth to Remus’s temple as Regulus left for the second time. Regulus had done what he wanted to do. He didn’t see Remus as often, after that.
xii. In all his dreams he let a crowd shuffle him on, too tired to care where they were going.
It was midspring when Sirius came to him with a letter of his own. Bright white sun obscured the writing, and it took Regulus a moment to realize it was addressed not to him but to Sirius. It stated that his room had been emptied, that Gringotts would no longer open the family vault to him, that he was by every definition disowned.
You remember when you told me there was a chance? Sirius said with a wry smile.
If I had known, Regulus said, bittersweet in his throat. If you’d told me it was that bad I’d. I would have-
No, Sirius said. You wouldn’t have.
At the words and the easy dismissal, Regulus squeezed his fingers into a fist until there was red behind his eyes, till tendons stood out in sharp relief. He could hurt Sirius. Sirius saw what he’d done and began to talk, his voice falling in plain simple notes like the singers in his old records, telling you the truth till you ached with it.
Regulus, you’ve always known. You saw everything that happened, and you never did a thing.
For a moment he couldn’t breathe.
(The dark pink of Sirius's left cheek, raw lid of his eye, salmon pink, the way he clutched at his back on the one day, the very worst time. The way they hadn’t eaten meals together since Sirius threw the plate in sixth year. The way she had his walls stripped and the paper put up in place of the posters and prints, photographs of Gryffindor boys grinning cheek-to-cheek. The way he squinted over the film that had built up in his window, watching orange sunsets over the city because he wasn’t allowed out, during those last days. How she closed herself in her bedroom and winced, winced, at the very sound of her son's voice.)
Regulus could no longer convince himself that his brother’s leaving had anything to do with whims.
The question-, Sirius said, striking a match, What are you going to do?
Later he wished he hadn’t said it. I suppose you’d like me to be just like you. Do just like you.
To his surprise Sirius nodded. I wish you would, sometimes. I wish you’d get out of there, Regulus, the things I’ve seen….
Sirius looked up, inexplicably. Cerulean sky. It would be summer again, soon, before anyone knew it, and they’d all keep running with the mad thrush and the color of their lives. Maybe Regulus would stand still and just watch. If he could choose it would’ve been April forever, not because it was a moment he wanted to remember, not because he thought Sirius might forgive him if he had the time, but because it was now. Sirius blew a smoke ring
You’re not always right, Regulus said.
I know, he replied softly.
xiii. Sirius said everyone has to choose, in the end.