(no subject)
He salvages the guitar from the wreckage of the house at the dying request of its inhabitant, an old man with fading blue eyes and a network of laugh lines around his mouth. He doesn’t know why they always turn to him; victims seem to have an unerring instinct of pinning him as their only hope.
He can’t help much. Still, death by two quick words is easier than an hour of Macnair’s wildest dreams. It earns him a name as a formidable but efficient killer, but that doesn’t stop the fact that each time he forces out the words he throws up a little.
That night once he has scourgified his mouth twice and drunk a tall glass of milk he opens the guitar case. It has two brass clasps and when he lifts them up a picture flutters out. It is a picture of the old man but younger, one hand around the neck of the guitar and another around the waist of a girl. They are both smiling at the camera, full of laughter. Looking at it a wave of inexplicable sadness rolls over him as he looks at the worn picture.
The old man lived alone.
Out of some peculiar whimsy he keeps the guitar.
After one particularly bad night he takes it down from the shelf and tries to play. It should be easy; five strings a couple of notes-it ought to be easy to make music.
He thinks it’s going better until his landlady shows up and demands to know why he’s strangling a cat.
After that he puts a silencing charm on the room before he practices.
It’s rather a different kind of Christmas Party.
For one thing the scotch is better and the jokes are racier. For a second thing he’d have no hope at getting laid at an Order gig. He doesn’t quite wear a giant red S on his chest, but nobody wants to get involved with a seventeen year old suicide case.
Especially one who still looks like he’s seventeen. Sadly enough the growth spurt his mother predicted when he was fourteen has finally caught up with him and he now looks more like an emaciated beanpole than a dashing James Bondesque figure.
He forgot a costume so he takes his shirt off as a joke and goes around telling people he’s a skeleton before Narcissa hits him with a rolled up newspaper and then attempts to force feed him cake.
Say what you like, but they look after their own. And really, nothing can top the shocked looks of eighty year old Grand Dame’s of high society. Then again, maybe he’s imagining it but Reg feels like their gaze rested just tad too long.
Realizing his self esteem is low enough to warrant granny-flesh he promptly heads back to the bar and shamelessly hits on every girl from the age of seventeen to forty.
The next morning is a bit awkward, and Regulus wonders if it’s just part of his masochism bent that makes him attracted to women with tattoes or some unexplained tragedy in his youth.
Reg knows when to quit. When he hears a half whispered monologue between his insane master and his insane master’s pet he knows in his heart that the word horcrux is important. Life-changing even.
Still, something keeps him from mentioning it at his next appointment in the Hogshead.
He doesn’t show up for the one after, nor does he return the delicately worded missives-even the one from Dumbledore. He writes back informing the Headmaster that he is fine and tries to put as much concealed venom into the missive as he can.
He knows this is too important not to go it alone. Ever a Slytherin.
If he was wearing boots he would be quaking in them, instead his heel digs into cool dirt and it keeps him grounded as if he’s been cuffed there.
The babble of Deatheaters making merry surrounds him in a deafening chorus, but somehow even with Rosier’s cheers echoing in his ears and Nott’s hand on his shoulder he can still hear the woman’s cries.
It is almost more than he can do to not throw Nott’s hand off and shout at them to stop, but God knows he’s always hated confrontation.
So he stands there, Nott’s arm still flung casually around his shoulder, a gesture of friendship, but to him a mark of shame.
He knew they were low; he knew they were despicable, but for some reason he’d thought they might be worth saving, the more fool him.
That night lying alone on his bed, the first time in a while he hasn’t sought comfort when he can get it, he hears Marlene’s voice ringing accusations in his ears.
He knows that she couldn’t have recognized him, not with the pains he took to disguise himself whenever he went to Order meetings, but he cannot delude himself that her eyes did not seek out his.
He can’t delude himself that there wasn’t something beyond hate in those eyes, something more like pity.
It is somewhat later, he knows this by the shadows falling lightly through the window in a stream of moonlight and by the way the level in the wine bottle has fallen.
That night drunk and intolerably sober at the same time he explains to Marlene that he will fix it. He will. He will fix everything.
He wonders as he stares up at the ceiling, his arms crossed in pseudo-prayer, why a man who has the power to bring down a tyrant wouldn’t do so.
He wonders what kind of a man would be too much of a fucking coward to face down a bloody piece of jewelry.
He wonders how despicable it is that it isn’t death galvanizing him into action, but rather the death of someone he knows. The death is a reminder that this is total war.
And God knows, Regulus Black isn’t man enough for that.
* * * * *
Regulus has never considered himself a connoisseur, but even he can tell that the locket is a real piece of art.
He is almost sad when Kreacher takes it away. He waits until he is sure that the elf has escaped the grasp of the clammy cave and then activates the port-key in his pocket.
He is sorry for the misle, but he knows it was a smart thing to do when, sitting at his cousin’s Andromeda’s house three days later, he finds out that death eater’s have raided his house.
He’s glad he took out the guitar.
It is odd to think that he is dead. The idea entertains him, and he reflects he is the first person to ever have attended his own funeral.
The fact that he is the only person there only increases the salty feeling choking up his throat. He wonders if it’s considered tacky to buy himself flowers. He rather fancies irises.
He lies in bed for a week, staring up at the ceiling and humming tunelessly under his breath until Andromeda kicks him out of bed. It is, she says, a chance for him to reinvent himself completely.
“And maybe this time,” She says, her voice softening, “You won’t make such rubbish choices.”
He strolls down Diagon Alley, the frost nipping at his ears. He figures he ought to buy a pair of ear mufflers to cover them; they are almost obscenely large-at least in his opinion. It is only common decency after all. But the only ear mufflers in Madame Malkins are a horrendous product of interhouse unity in garish red and green.
It is nearly Christmas after all. Back on the street he puffs a whisper of hot breath into his hands in a vain attempt to warm them and settles with stuffing them deep in his pocket. A group of carolers rush past him towards Saint Mungo’s, he notices grimly that someone had the good sense to cast a bat bogey hex at them.
Still holiday spirit pervades Diagon Alley manifesting itself in twinkling fairy lights strung up on shop windows and a man selling carnivorous mistletoe guaranteed tongue everytime!.
Last year at least, he reflects, he belonged in two places. Now he belongs nowhere.
Regulus attempts to cheer himself up, after all half the people, more the rum for him! But somehow the thought of eating an entire Christmas fruitcake by himself is too depressing to stomach.
Not that they used to eat it anyway, his lips curl up at the memory of Sirius and him dropping slices of fruitcake off of the balcony of their Italian vacation home to see whose reached the ground first.
Despite his disguised appearance (and really what disguise is better than being dead?) he ducks into nearby shop when he sees his brother approaching, arms swung casually around the shoulders of Lupin and Potter, while Pettigrew huffs behind them-arms laden with gift bags.
The shop he so fortunately entered is plain and simple, dusty sleeves stuffed with records line the shelves. There is a record player in the corner and an armchair, and as his brother and his friends have a ridiculously long snowball fight outside, Reg explores melodies he has only heard in his dreams.
He recognizes the Beatles, whom Patil introduced him to in sixth year, but there are others, many others. An entire realm of sounds, so apart from the awful wailings of Celestina Warbeck that he feels a twitching in his fingers, and feels a dumb urge to summon his guitar.
The shop belongs to a woman, a bit older than him, he likes her instantly. She has braided brown hair, which is flopped casually over her shoulder and grey eyes. But what he really likes is that there is a smudge of dust on her nose and the pencil behind her ear and the way she smiles when he comes in.
She’s not old in years, but in the lines on her face. She introduces herself as Iris. He learns that she is a war-widow, that she is a muggle, that her late husband was a halfblood, and she likes lemon meringue.
“The shop belongs to me,” Iris laughs when he asks if she and her husband ran it together. “Cyrus might have been a progressive, but he wouldn’t do anything as plebian as running a shop. Let alone a muggle one. Still” She says, smiling, “I get enough customers in my way.”
“So all the music here is muggle, then?” Regulus asks. “Yes” Iris answers with a twinkle, “I have to say, I was mightily impressed by many things in the Wizarding World, but the music-my dear, was not one of them.”
He grins back at her. “I wish we knew how to make music like this” He says, almost wistfully.
He’s slightly taken a back when she laughs at him, head thrown back, laugh lines appearing magically around her lips.
“I can never understand you wizards, and the way you think you’re so different from ordinary folk.” She says shaking her head, eyes warm. “You get everything so easily that you think life is as easy as snapping your fingers. Let me tell you kid, things that are important in life-you have to work your arse off for them. If you want to play like George Harrison-well you better damn well let your fingers bleed.”
She winks at him then and Reg smiles uncertainly back. Even if it takes fewer muscles to smile he’s out of practice and is relatively sure it comes out more of a grimace.
Still, gold star for effort he tells himself.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reg takes her words to heart, and when he arrives back at Andromeda’s he has a bouqet of flowers for Andromeda, a bag full of discs, a record player and a somewhat lighter heart.
In the days that follow he frequents The Blue Note a lot. It is pleasant not to run into anybody he knows, though he sees Lily Evans in there, red hair curled around a finger as she chats to Irene.
At first Regulus wonders why someone so apparently whole would frequent the Blue Not. Which, he’s not deluding himself, is a refuge for those who have nowhere else to go.
But when he sees her from his armchair, playing a game of muggle cards with Irene and bobbing to a selection from Queen, he knows.
Potter, Gryffindor and Muggle’s friend extraordinaire he may be, but he’s still as pureblood as they come. Even if he does wear glasses.
He sees her in there a couple more times, and slowly begins to talk to her a little. She is nice to talk to, is Lily Evans. She doesn’t expect him anything from their conversations. When a week after they talked for an hour he completely ignores her, she doesn’t take it badly. Instead she makes extra sure to give him a smile as she leaves.
One day she brings Sirius and Lupin into the shop to buy a present for Potter. He can tell that she realizes her mistake the moment they enter the shop. Lupin himself is at home, as an outcast he fits right in, and immediately strikes up a conversation with Irene about the goblin strike at Gringotts-but Sirius stands in the middle of the shop, hands stuck deep into his pockets, the very essence of awkwardness.
A frown crinkles around his mouth, the hair which made a hundred Hogwarts girls swoon flopping in front of his eyes.
Not even an extra teasing comment from Irene will make him unwind. Reg reflects that you might be able to take the boy out of the Blacks, but you can’t take the Black out of the boy.
He thinks this as he stares determinedly at the notice board on the wall, making sure he avoids eye contact with any of the trio.
Somehow, after the hundredth time of reading the notice about the lost krup, an advert for a genuine muggle-style guitar and a coupon 50% off butterbeer at the Leaky Cauldron he notices the other sign. It is stuck to the bottom of the page, which might explain why he didn’t notice it.
It reads: Band seeks guitarist, apply to following address.
For a brief second he wonders about fate.