Fic: The Cruelest Months (The Blacks)
Title: The Cruelest Months
Author: gehayi
Pairing/Character: The Blacks (Regulus, Sirius, Andromeda, Bellatrix, Narcissa)
Word Count: 7,205
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: the cruelest month (The prompt table is here.)
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Summary: Twelve crises. Twelve months. One family.
Author's notes: I'm following book canon ONLY. That means no information from movieverse, interviews, trading cards, JKR's website, any family trees done for charity auctions, etc.
Also, heidi8 asked for a story in which Regulus and Sirius were twins born on different days, so that's the relationship here.
***
i. August 1971
August is the month colors trickle from trees
A first leaf unnoticed tumbles --"August is the dying month," by Wilma Swim Strunk.
August that year is warm and wonderful and luxuriant. Andromeda spends every waking moment with Ted (my Teddy-boy, she teases him, knowing that he is anything but the street thug she is calling him), the summer sun soaking into her pale skin and her dark, heavy hair as they walk and talk and kiss. Everything about Ted is warm, it seems-his tousled light brown hair that glints gold in the sun, his blue eyes as bright as the summer sky at noonday, his rich, full-bodied laugh without the vaguest hint of cruelty or bitterness.
She protests when he tells her jokingly that this must be the first time that a Hufflepuff has seduced a Slytherin into corruption, and when she protests, he tells her, a trifle more soberly, that that is how the wizarding world will see it, for much is being made of the importance of caste and tradition these days, and not merely by the Dark Lord and the Death Eaters. Ted, quite simply, is not of her class or pedigree. Lady Chatterly, he reminds her, dallies with the gamekeeper; she doesn't marry him.
"And if I wanted to?" she asks him as they watch the Perseids fall early one August morning. Hundreds of stars are falling from the black sky in dazzling streaks of bluish-white light as she speaks. "If I was more than willing to?"
Andromeda lies back against the dewy grass, the dampness soaking through her summer robes, and, imagining that she can feel the earth rotating beneath her and can hear the stars zooming past as they fall, she waits for his answer.
"Romy," he says quietly (for he will not call her "Andromeda," saying it's ill luck to curse a child with a name that means "chained lady"). "If you want to stay with me, I'd love it. But you can't have me and them. They'll never allow us to be together."
And Andromeda knows that he's right. The Blacks could never permit such a mésalliance. Ted is a Muggleborn wizard--no different than a Muggle in their eyes.
She doesn't want to hesitate, but she does. For despite everything, despite their differences, Andromeda knows that she will miss her family. She loves her parents, and has no desire to hurt them. She loves her little sisters, though Bella can be cruel and contemptuous to those whom she considers less worthy to live than herself, and though Cissy is entirely too enraptured by finery and her own good looks for a child her age. She even loves her cousins, and worries about them too, partly because she sees volcanic rebellion building in Sirius, and partly because Regulus has as much to rebel against as his brother...yet never does.
Some sliver of her soul cries out against the notion of marrying Ted, urging her to retain the beloved and the familiar. She can keep what she has, and continue to have Ted...for a while, at any rate. For she senses that Ted Tonks is not one to be satisfied with half-measures forever. If she does not stand with him, she will lose him.
And then what?
She envisions a life like her mother's in a house filled with empty rooms and echoing corridors, of a husband whose features are stamped in the same mold as her own, of children taken from her at birth and all but reared by Squib nannies, prim governesses and stern tutors before Hogwarts steals them away altogether. She thinks of parties filled with chattering kin who repeat the same ideas endlessly in idiotic fashion, pictures heavy silver place settings gleaming on the dining room table, untouched by any but house-elves' hands. She sees a proper, prim, do-nothing life stretching before her, and she recoils from the desolation of such an existence.
Andromeda reminds herself that there is a war on. A pureblood cannot merely marry a Muggleborn these days and say it is for love, even if this is so. Thanks to the agenda of the Dark Lord and the passions of his followers, such a marriage would be a political statement. She cannot marry Ted without taking sides in Voldemort's war. And she already knows what side that most of her kinfolk are on.
She only hopes that if it comes to fighting, both she and they will duck at the same time.
She cannot truly imagine what it will be like, being married to Ted. He has never had the money that she takes for granted; his family has never owned a house-elf, or possessed any other signs of status that the wizarding world, or her kin, would recognize. Being cast adrift in Ted's world, with no anchor except for him, will be difficult.
But-she is a Black. Blacks want what they want. And they get what they want.
"If I can't have them and you, I'll have you," she tells him decisively as she leans forward and kisses him lightly on the lips. "There's no one in the world that I want more."
She sees the fierce joy in Ted's face by the light of the falling stars and wonders, briefly, if the falling stars are an ill omen for the House of Black--if somehow her choice will lead to the fall of her kin.
Then she dismisses this, because Ted is here and he's kissing her with a great deal of tenderness and that's far more interesting than worrying about her family.
After all, she's a Black. And she has what she wants.
ii. September 1971
September: it was the most beautiful of words, he’d always felt, evoking orange-flowers, swallows, and regret. --"Darconville's Cat," by Alexander Theroux.
Regulus trudges after his parents as they escort Sirius to the Hogwarts Express, his bottom lip pooched out in a childish scowl, his shoes kicking at pebbles and pavement alike. He is furious at Hogwarts, as well as feeling sadly put-upon, and he wants the entire world to know just how miserable he is.
He wouldn't be miserable if he were going with Sirius. He knows that. That he cannot go with his brother is all the fault of that idiotic school. For Sirius was born just a few minutes before midnight on the thirty-first of August, eleven years ago. He was born a few minutes after midnight on the first of September.
For the sake of those few minutes, he must be parted from his brother.
"Only a year," the headmaster said when the Blacks raised this issue, but Regulus wasn't fooled then and he isn't deceived now. A year is an eternity when you are a child. Moreover, he won't be parted from Sirius for just a year, but for all the years of their schooling. He will forever be lagging behind, the younger, stupider brother learning things that Sirius already knows. Sirius will leave school, and he will still be there-alone.
He does not understand why it's so vital that he and his fraternal twin be parted. They've been together from the nursery onward. They've learned from and tormented an entire squadron of tutors. They've played together, fought together, cast spells together. They are best friends as well as brothers, and Regulus is not so young that he doesn't know how rare that is in their family.
What really hurts is that Sirius is so eager to go off to school, so curious to discover what adventure Hogwarts will bring him. It's as if Regulus's absence doesn't matter at all. Regulus can't comprehend this. If he dared, he'd tackle his brother hard enough to give him a concussion and then drag him back to Twelve Grimmauld Place until next year, when they can attend school together.
One quelling glance from his mother is enough to convince him that she has divined his line of thought, and doesn't approve. Regulus shuffles his feet and tries to look as if he is excited but jealous, knowing that his parents would be bewildered by the depth of his misery. A boy bidding farewell to his twenty-minutes-older brother for the first time should not feel as if his soul has been cleft in two.
As Sirius boards the Hogwarts Express, Regulus forces himself to smile and wave, hating the train for taking Sirius away to a new world, and hating Sirius--actually hating his brother for the first time--for not minding.
iii. February 1974
Why, what’s the matter,
That you have such a February face,
So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness? -- "Much Ado About Nothing," by William Shakespeare
It takes Andromeda a while to realise what's different about her baby.
It's not that she doesn't notice that Nymphadora's eyes vary in colour from grey to blue to brown, or that sometimes the child has a nose that's larger than the one she had yesterday, or a mouth smaller than the one she had two weeks ago. She chalks this up to Nymphadora growing into her features, and to her eyes gradually shifting to their permanent colour.
When the child's hair starts coming in, though, she has to accept that it's more than that.
For Nymphadora's hair alters with her moods. It turns a short straight sensible brown when Sirius and his friends come over during the holidays to not-babysit-plain, no-nonsense hair that's too short to catch on tree branches, or to be used as a leash for an obstreperous toddler. It becomes a curly blonde mop when the child is pleading for something. When she's angry, it turns the red of stolen apples. When she's bored or disgruntled, her hair alter to frost-white, while her eyes shift to the grey of storm clouds.
Ted loves his Metamorphmagus daughter unreservedly, and for that Andromeda is glad. Once they get past the first shock, his parents are also loving and accepting, trying to make Nymphadora's life somewhat easier.
For it does not take long for any of them to learn that they cannot take the baby anywhere. There is no way of knowing when or if her face or features will change. In Muggle areas, such as the one in which the elder Tonkses live, such uncontrolled power leads to the threat of exposure of magic. The Muggles who witness this are confused and frightened, which would be bad enough. Add in the potential for mental damage in Memory Charms (and the Ministry, frightened by the war, is Obliviating Muggles left and right in a frantic effort to cover up all trace of the magical world) and the child becomes a very real danger, both to her grandparents' neighbours and to the Muggles on her father's side of the family, who love her dearly.
The wizarding world is no better. Nymphadora's power is insanely rare, and the fact that a halfblood has been born with so unusual a power makes the baby's very existence political. Young Regulus (who dares not defy the family and visit her) has sent messages regarding comments he's heard from other Blacks about Nymphadora. Bellatrix has been particularly graphic, detailing all the cruel and bloody things she would like to do to "that halfblood freak with no true shape of her own."
Her sister is too young yet to be a Death Eater-or so she hopes--but Andromeda knows that it is merely a matter of time before Bellatrix joins. And in less time than it takes for Bella to be old enough join forces with You-Know-Who, some follower of the Dark Lord (please, Merlin, not her sisters or her cousins) will probably try to kill Ted and herself to get to Nymphadora, who so innocently and so thoroughly contradicts the Dark Lord's opinions on magical power and blood purity.
She loves her daughter dearly, but she fears for her. And she cannot help but wish, sometimes, that her baby had been born tediously, overwhelmingly normal.
And then she looks at her mother-in-law, listening with such intense concentration as Ted tries to make light of the accursed, never-ending war.
And Andromeda reads the same unspoken wish in in the other woman's eyes.
iv. December 1976
In a drear-nighted December...--"In Drear-Nighted December," by John Keats.
Twelve Grimmauld Place is unbearably cold.
Not in temperature. Kreacher makes sure that his masters are comfortable, and his cooking, if mediocre, is at least warm and filling.
The cold emanates from his father, who treats him as if he were an intrusion and a mistake rather than a son. His mother radiates cold so bone-deep that it burns, both when she lectures him about his everlasting failures and when she stares through him with ice-grey eyes as if he were nonexistent. Kreacher manages, in between bowing and scraping obsequiously, to utter words that sting as coldly as sleet striking Sirius's face. Regulus's face and eyes are like black ice, perilous and slippery and almost invisible, reflecting nothing back.
The house, too, is cold and unwelcoming. He scarce dares to stir from his room, for the very walls of the place seem to hate him. Sometimes, at night, he can almost fancy that he can hear the walls whispering as they conspire with each other. It's a foolish conceit and he knows it, but during the day, when he must battle with books bearing curses, and biting snuffboxes, and charms to transform the unwary trespasser, he is not so certain.
Being here, even over the holidays, is like being trapped in the Snow Queen's palace. Everything is rich and beautiful and barren of life, and so cold it would kill any mortal not under its spell. He is the only one here who is trying to spell out the word "love" with shards of ice, the word that he knows will free him, but he has been trying for so long that he's all but black with cold, and half cut to pieces by the jagged edges of the ice.
It hurts to know that there are sanctuaries out there, homes that belong to Remus, Peter and James. They gleam and glisten like three diamond-encrusted stars in a bleak, black midnight sky--unbearably lovely, painfully alluring...and never to be reached.
He does understand that he could leave this house and go to his friends. They would take him in, even though two of the three are poor and can ill-afford such generosity.
What stops him is the sure and certain knowledge that once he leaves, it will be for good. The family will never forgive him, will never take him back. He will be an orphan, for all that his family will still be alive.
And he will lose not only the ones whom he hates, but also those few whom, against his better judgment, he still loves. Uncle Alphard, who is something of a maverick even within the family. Regulus, who was once not only his twin brother but also his best friend. It hurts to think of being dead to them as well.
He wants a thousand things. Freedom. Laughter. Love. The right to be himself, and not a copy of his parents created by a Duplicating Charm.
He has to choose. And he does not want to choose. However much he hates and detests this home, it is still his. He does not want to surrender all that he knows, all that he's familiar with, for some uncertain dream of the future.
He cannot leave.
And he cannot stay either, for the cold of the Black house is working its way inward. When it reaches his eyes, everything he now loves will seem twisted and hateful to him. When it reaches his heart, his heart will be no more than a lump of ice.
Just like the rest of the Blacks.
He shivers, and leans against the window of his room, hoping that he'll spy a white stag approaching Twelve Grimmauld Place, signaling that his rescuer has arrived...and that once he leaves the chill and terrible palace of ice, he will not be alone.
v. January 1977
January is here, with eyes that keenly glow,
A frost-mailed warrior
striding a shadowy steed of snow. -- Edgar Fawcett.
He didn't mean to do anything wrong. That's the worst part.
Everything snowballed after he finally got up the gumption to leave over Christmas. To run away, really, though he doesn't like to think of it that way. It's so childish.
He didn't leave the way he wanted to, either, with pride and dignity intact. He left in the aftermath of a thundering row, so furious that he stormed out of the house without packing a thing. He still has his wand, but only because he had it stuffed in the pocket of the robes he was wearing. He left everything else behind, except for the robes he had on his back.
He changed into Padfoot-at least the dog had a thick, shaggy coat, and that provided some heat-and ran pell-mell toward James' house.
It took days.
He was a wreck when he finally arrived at James' door. The soft pads of the dog's feet had been bruised by rocks, torn by snow-hidden branches, cut by bits of ice. Once back in human form, Sirius' hands and feet were sorely injured, and frostbitten besides.
He barely had time to recover before it was time to return to Hogwarts. He has returned to what was once a haven...only to discover that the tale of his running away has preceded him. His cousins show family solidarity by ignoring him, and by watching Regulus to make certain that he says nothing, either. The Slytherins taunt him, and though they have mocked him before, it never bothered him then as it does now. He feels as vulnerable as if his skin had been flayed from his body, and every bitter glance and mocking word is coarse salt rubbed into the walking wound that he now is.
His friends say that they understand, but they don't. They can't. They have homes; they have families. And their failure to understand hurts all the worse because damn it all, they should.
He never intended to betray Remus. He'd swear to that, even if it meant going to Azkaban.
The problem is that Snape has been around since they returned to school, always making comments about Sirius and his new status as disinherited heir, always finding something about James and Remus and Peter to sneer at as well. Snape can do more with a curled lip and a drawling tone that anyone Sirius knows, and what makes it truly intolerable is that no matter what Sirius says in retaliation, Snape never shows that he's hurt, never withdraws into silence.
Enduring Snape's snide comments is like being pecked to death by ducks.
He really didn't intend to let Snape know Remus's secret. He only wanted--still does want, in fact--to hurt Snape, to terrify him so badly that the pride and arrogance were knocked right out of him.
He can't imagine why Snape, hearing the growls of a wild beast, nearly walked into the Shack.
James pulled him back, and got Crucio'd for his trouble.
The wolf, driven into a frenzy by the scent of nearby prey, nearly tore itself apart in frustration.
And now James-recovered from the pain the Unforgivable unleashed, but still shaken and white-faced-walks the halls of Hogwarts like a tight-lipped ghost. Remus, back in human form, lies wounded in the infirmary. He's breathing. That's all Poppy Pomfrey will say.
Snape has been blackmailed into silence by Dumbledore, who has pointed out that Snape is of age, and that casting an Unforgivable means an automatic life sentence in Azkaban.
As for him...well, Dumbledore can't expel him without the whole story leaking out. And that, he has been told in no uncertain terms, would mean a silver-bladed axe through Remus' neck. Werewolves are not allowed to threaten the lives of wizards, even if the threat wasn't their idea.
But the other students do know he's done something horrible, and are acting accordingly. No one will speak to him; no one will even look at him. No one is quite sure what he has done--Snape dares not tell, Remus is in no position to talk, and James and Peter are keeping shtum--but he knows that he has been judged and found wanting. He is a pariah now, isolated and alone.
Worst of all is the anger in James' eyes, and the mute bewilderment in Peter's. How could you? both sets of eyes say. How could you betray us?
I didn't mean to, he wants to say. And, I never planned any of it. I was stupid. I wanted someone else to hurt as badly as I did. It was a mistake.
Useless excuses.
He looks at their eyes, and thinks of the wounded, huddled form lying in the infirmary, and wonders if he is the one guilty of an Unforgivable, and if their friendship has been shattered past repair.
vi. March 1977
March is the month of expectation,
The things we do not know...--"Poem XLVIII," by Emily Dickinson.
Two months ago, his brother did something so ghastly that no one will tell him what it is. The silence and the wall of secrecy are driving him mad.
Because he is in Slytherin, he knows that whatever Sirius did had something to do with Severus Snape. And because Sirius is his brother, he also knows that whatever Sirius did likely involved his three best friends as well. Because it is common gossip-that is, the only current news that Regulus can obtain--he has heard that Remus Lupin was injured. He knows that's true, for he sneaked into the infirmary to see if Remus was really there...and for two weeks, he was. Snape has dropped enough hints so that Regulus knows that something happened to James Potter as well--but neither Snape nor Potter will say what.
Normally, he would go to Peter, who's as much Regulus's friend as he is Sirius's. But now...well, it's not that Peter won't talk to him any longer. He does. He even talks about Sirius, albeit elliptically and with a great deal of confusion and pain in his eyes.
What he won't talk about is whatever Sirius did.
"I can't tell you," he says, ducking his head in embarrassment when Regulus asks for what must be the fifty millionth time. "It's not that I won't. I simply can't. People could get hurt if I said something. You wouldn't want that."
"You mean Sirius?" Regulus says, frowning.
"Among others," Peter says grimly as he crosses his arms over his chest. "Stop asking about it, Reg. I can't talk about it, and I won't."
Peter's stubbornness rankles. Perhaps that's what pushes Regulus to say what he knows will hurt the most:
"You don't trust me."
As if he'd been struck, Peter turns pale and then Gryffindor red. "That's not true. I do. I always have."
"If you really trusted me,” Regulus says, twisting the knife in the wound, "you'd tell me. You won't tell me, so I guess you don't."
Not being one to waste a perfect exit line, he strolls away as if completely indifferent.
He knows he is not being fair, putting Peter on the spot like that, but right now he doesn't give two Knuts about fairness. His brother did something horrible--Snape has hinted that it should have resulted in Sirius's expulsion--and everyone seems to know more than he does. Three bloody Gryffindors know more about what happened than he does, and he's Sirius's brother.
He doesn't understand why Sirius won't talk to him. He's given his brother plenty of opportunities. He's dropped anvil-sized hints, telling Sirius that he can tell Regulus anything--and later, after Sirius, who does not do subtle well, completely misses the hints, he tells Sirius outright to come and talk to him about whatever-the-hell happened back in January.
Sirius's response is brusque and profane. In a few short sentences, he informs his brother that Regulus only wants to know so that he can blackmail Sirius with the news, and then stalks stiff-legged toward Gryffindor Tower.
And there is nothing Regulus can do but stand and stare, and wonder when his brother mislaid his memories of their childhood. They were best friends then. He knows they haven't been close for years-the House system of Hogwarts has kept them apart, both physically and emotionally-but he hadn't thought of Sirius as a stranger.
He knows that he could mend things between himself and Sirius even now...if only someone would trust him and tell him what's wrong.
But no one has.
He's beginning to think no one ever will.
vii. April 1979
The April's in her eyes, it is love's spring,
And these the showers to bring it on. --"Antony and Cleopatra," by William Shakespeare.
Narcissa gazes across the table in the breakfast nook at her husband of three weeks, who has just told her that he will join the Death Eaters formally in a week or two, and tries to keep her face schooled and calm.
It is not that she disapproves. Being in the Dark Lord's favour strikes her as an excellent foundation for post-war survival.
What troubles her is not the plan itself, but Lucius's temperament. For Lucius is a proud and haughty man, and Narcissa senses that he will not relish being a servant. She suspects that he sees this as a step to future power. She hears the whisper of conspirators in Lucius's composed, assured delivery of the news.
The Dark Lord is dead. Long live the Dark Lord.
It would never work. She knows that. Lucius is clever and influential--of that there is no doubt--but he would make a poor politician. He does not suffer fools gladly--in fact, he rarely suffers them at all. It is not in his nature to cooperate and compromise with temporary allies whom he detests. He seems to be a throwback to the days of the divine right of kings.
She cannot command him not to do this; they have not been wed long enough. She is still too new a bride.
If Lucius is to live, she will have to save him. And she will have to do it in such a way that conceals her manipulations, not only from his eyes, but from everyone's.
She detests the idea. Such constant manipulations and deceptions will kill his affection for her in no short order, if he finds out. And she does not know how long her own love will last, for she will have to trick and misdirect him for as long as he serves the Dark Lord.
But she would rather be wed to a living Death Eater than a dead member of a failed coup. She suspects that her family, and any children she may one day have, would agree.
Lucius has finally ceased to ramble about the wonders of being a Death Eater. "Well?" he says impatiently. "What do you think?"
Narcissa smiles tenderly, and hopes that love and joy are shining in her grey eyes. "That's wonderful, darling," she says softly.
viii. May 1980
You know how it is with an April day.
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud come over the sunlit arch,
And wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March. --"Two Tramps in Mud Time," by Robert Frost.
At first, being a Death Eater is easy.
Regulus learns early that he is ideally suited to be a Death Eater. The Dark Lord demands no more of him than his parents did-absolute obedience, total agreement. He and his fellow Death Eaters go out nightly, hexing and cursing fools who are helping the enemies of the wizarding world destroy a thousand years of tradition. It's almost like the wizarding duels that he used to fight back at Hogwarts.
As for the Muggles whom he kills...well, they aren't really people, are they? Humans, after all, possess magic. These creatures, for all their human appearance, don't. It's unnatural. There may be hundreds of thousands of Muggles rather than the small number of wizards in the world, but Muggles are still unnatural. Quantity doesn't imply humanity. Inferi remain soulless walking corpses, no matter how many of them there are.
It seems so obvious when he thinks of it this way.
Then, at one meeting, he sees Peter--Muggleborn Peter--kneeling at the feet of the Dark Lord. His skin is grey-tinged and slick with sweat, and he's shaking so badly that Regulus wonders if his bones will shatter. He stammers so badly that his answers to the Dark Lord's questions are little more than unintelligible syllables.
It would be laughable if Peter weren't someone that Regulus knew.
After the Dark Lord dismisses Peter--commanding him, with the wave of a spider-like hand, to melt back into the crowd--Peter scurries into the shadows. He doesn't look at anyone, least of all Regulus, but Regulus catches a glimpse of his face nonetheless. Peter's eyes are sickened, petrified, burning with self-hatred.
In that moment, all illusions dissolve, and the war ceases to be a harmless game.
ix. June 1980
Who comes with Summer to this earth
And owes to June his day of birth,
With ring of Agate on his hand,
Can health, wealth, and long life command. --Anonymous.
From the time that Narcissa hears Trelawney's prophecy third-hand from her husband, she frets.
Part of the difficulty, of course, is that there is a prophecy at all. Narcissa distrusts prophecy; she does not like the implication that there is some cosmic plan which overrides her own. It makes her feel weak and helpless, as if she is only a puppet dancing on stage for the childish amusement of some nameless entity.
Blacks are not weak.
The second problem with the prophecy is that it is so damnably vague. All that Snape told his fellow Death Eaters was that the child--referred to in the prediction as "he," though according to the formal rules of English, that might mean "he" or "she"-- would be born late in the seventh month. But which seventh month? Of which calendar?
Narcissa finds herself praying that the prophesied foe of the Dark Lord will be born in India or China--any place where everyone doesn't use the Gregorian calendar. Or perhaps the enemy could be born in September. After all, "septem" is Latin for "seven," and September did used to be the seventh month of the Roman calendar.
What she fears most is that her unborn child, boy or girl, may be born in late July.
She's not sure if the possibility has occurred to Lucius. She suspects not. For a man of his ambition, to sire the mortal enemy of his master would be unthinkable.
She suspects that it has occurred to Bellatrix. Her sister dropped by the night that Snape told everyone of Trelawney's prediction. Narcissa did not like the speculative look that Bellatrix was giving her swollen stomach.
She brews potions of raspberry and blue cohosh to help with delivery, and tries not to think about making a draught of tansy. Tansy would probably kill the child rather than enabling her to cast it from her safely.
She has tried casting spells on herself to start labour. None have worked; she suspects that she would need to be a a Healer to cast such a spell with the ease and skill that she needs.
The child will be born in June or July, of course. That is a certainty.
But until her son or daughter is out of destiny's threatening reach, Narcissa will pace and fret.
x. July 1980
The Summer looks out from her brazen tower,
Through the flashing bars of July. --"A Corymbus for Autumn," by Francis Thompson.
Bellatrix would like to hunt down all the mothers-to-be of children due in July of this fateful year and slaughter every woman before she can bring to birth the monstrous foe of the Dark Lord.
So many among the Death Eaters look appalled and sickened at the thought, and Bellatrix cannot understand why. If the only one who can defeat the Dark Lord is to be born in late July, then the best way of ensuring that the Dark Lord's victory is to kill the enemy before he can be born at all. In fact, if the only one who can defeat the Dark Lord is to be born this July, and if no one IS born this July, then the prophecy will be fulfilled--though not as Dumbledore would like. The Dark Lord would be safe for all eternity.
No one seems capable of grasping this.
Even the Dark Lord disapproves; he prefers to let his enemy be born before he attempts to kill it. He finds the idea of one spell, swift and deadly, more elegant than crude butchery.
Bellatrix disagrees, though she says nothing. Wars are not won by elegance or style. Cold, calculated efficiency, on the other hand, might have an impact.
She feels as if she is a guard standing in a brass tower overlooking an ancient city of wealth and power: Nineveh, Carthage, Troy. All seems well; the city is strong, rich, impregnable.
Yet, from her vantage point--one no one else shares, for the position of guard, though vital, is not coveted by many--she can just catch a glimpse of shadows in the distance. Shadows, tainting the sunlit summer of the city.
An enemy is approaching.
An enemy no other citizen sees.
And no one is stopping him.
xi. October 1981
Halloween.
Sly does it. Tiptoe catspaws. Slide and creep.
But why? What for? How? Who? When! Where did it all begin?
'You don't know, do you? ...You don't really know.' --The Halloween Tree, by Ray Bradbury.
Sirius falls asleep early on Halloween. He awakens several hours later with pain wracking his bones, a shriek from a nightmare reverberating in his ears, and the stone-cold certainty, deep in his soul, that something horrible has happened to James.
He races for his motorcycle. Apparition takes focus and concentration that his mind, which is skittering about like wind-blown leaves, cannot manage now, and, because James and Lily are posing as Muggles, their house isn't hooked up to the Floo Network. His mind insists that flying the motorcycle to Godric's Hollow will ensure that James and Lily are safe, for it's been part of their lives since they attended Hogwarts four years ago, when they were a million years younger and still untouched by war.
He doesn't remember the flight there. He doesn't even remember thinking. He only recalls hearing reverberating in his mind: Let them be alive. They have to be alive. Please, I'll do anything you want, only let them be alive, because if they aren't--
And here the thought breaks off and begins again, for the thought of James not existing is unbearable.
He arrives at the house...or what is left of it. It looks like Muggle pictures of buildings that have half-collapsed after a bombing. Shingles, broken beams, melted nails, shattered glass are everywhere. Sirius stares at it in shock for a long moment, telling himself that the house is empty, of course it's empty, James and Lily wouldn't have stayed in a house that was exploding or burning down...
But he can't quite believe it.
It takes more courage than he knew he had to enter the cottage.
The first thing he sees is a pile of bloody rags with glasses next to them, and though he knows what--or who--that must be, his mind recoils in horror, insisting that the rags are not human, were never human, they're just a pile of rags.
He forces himself to walk past the bloody pile and up the stairs, which fortunately haven't collapsed yet. Not until he reaches the top does he realize that Harry is wailing.
He draws his wand and mutters, "Lumos!" as he walks into the nursery. The first thing the wandlight shows is Lily crumpled to the floor beside Harry's crib. The green glow of the Killing Curse still tinges her face, making her look sickly and sallow, and that's wrong, for Lily isn't--wasn't--either of those things. On her face is the stubborn little frown that he and his friends saw so often when Lily was standing her ground and telling them to stop what they were doing immediately, and the familiarity of that expression in the middle of this chaos is almost too much to bear.
He picks up Harry (noting, as he does, that the baby's forehead is slick with what smells like blood) and cuddles him close. For a few moments, it's hard to tell who is comforting who.
Until he is holding Harry, Sirius doesn't realise that Voldemort is not here, nor are the Death Eaters. There are, however, an empty black robe and a wand made of yew lying some distance from Harry's crib.
Sirius stares, wondering where Voldemort's corpse is. If the Dark Lord is dead, then he wants the corpse there, so that he can stake it, behead it, nail its coffin shut and bury the obscenity at a crossroads.
A groaning in the rafters reminds him that the Potters' house is no longer stable, and that he needs to get himself and Harry out of here.
If it weren't for Harry, he thinks he would let the roof crush him.
But Harry's alive. Harry deserves a chance.
And James will be very angry if anything happens to Harry. Not to mention Lily. Lily will lecture him for hours.
Some small portion of his memory timidly protests that both those things are impossible after tonight, but he squashes it. He can only focus on one thing at a time, and right now putting one foot in front of the other is more important than anything.
He casts a dozen or so curses in every direction before he brings Harry outside. If any Death Eaters are still hanging about, he'll see to it that they're in utter agony, dead or both.
The noise and lights from the spells frighten the baby, who begins to cry once more.
"Don't cry, Harry," he says in a voice that hasn't been this high or this broken since he was thirteen. "Please don't cry. I swear to you, I'll get--"
Get who? Voldemort, who's out of his reach? Peter, the Secret-Keeper, who betrayed James, proving their whole friendship was a lie? James and Lily, for being cruelly, unfairly dead and leaving him alone?
He doesn't know.
He honestly doesn't know.
xii. November 1981
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member--
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds--
November! -- "No!" by Thomas Hood.
Since the Dark Lord vanished―-Bellatrix cannot bring herself to say "died"--an unendurable nothingness has filled her soul.
The world has become a hollow mockery of itself, with all the colour, joy and life seeping away. Nothing is left but grey skies, and grey earth, and grey confusion in every face she sees. Even words sound grey, as if they are not quite real.
The world has put on mourning for the Dark Lord, and it will never remove it.
She grew up surrounded by thickets of custom and brambles of etiquette, but now both have deserted her, leaving her unsure of how to mourn. Who do you pray to, when your god dies?
She only knows that it hurts to take a breath when he is no longer breathing, and that logic has melted into a mad, looking-glass version of itself now that he is no longer here to speak words of such clarity and sanity that they illuminated the world.
And oh, sweet Merlin, she is so angry that right now she would like to crush the entire planet underfoot. How dare it continue to exist when he is gone?
She would like to smash the Potters, but they are already dead, and she knows of no potion, unguent or incantation that could restore them to life so that she could kill them again. And again. And again.
She would like to destroy their vicious spawn, but he has been spirited away--doubtless to some infernal sanctuary, where the most vile and hideous of evil entities serve the little monster's every whim.
The Longbottoms are not an adequate substitute, but they have the advantage of having a name she can focus on. Besides, they are Aurors; they might know something, however shop-soiled and useless, about what has happened to him.
She goes to the Longbottom house in Lancashire. Her husband Rodolphus follows, as do his brother Rabastan and little Barty Crouch, but she pays them no mind. They are merely vehicles for carrying out any orders she might give, and she truly doesn't care if they are here or not.
Finding them is no trouble--they are tending their baby, a small, round-faced also-ran. She quickly decides that the child must die; he is not the child she wishes to torture and kill, but, for a brief moment, she can regard him as an adequate substitute.
But his parents first.
She casts spell after spell upon them, twisting their bones, slashing their veins, filling their brains with agony only slightly less than her own. She questions them about what has happened, about the Killing Curse, about counter charms...though she doesn't listen to the answers, because the answers don't matter. Any answer they could give would be wrong, because they are alive while he is gone, because they have been happy since he vanished, and for those wrongs they have to be punished, punished so harshly that it would give a Dementor nightmares.
And as she hears them scream (and oh, those jagged shrieks caress her ears like the gentlest Chopin nocturne), she can almost hear him praising her for being his good and faithful servant. The streaks of red blood on their faces is the first colour she has seen since he vanished, and as she looks at it, life and colour begin to ooze back into her as well. She gazes at their ravaged expressions, thinking that she could avenge him forever. Her life has a purpose again, and that is all that matters.
"Why?" cries Alice Longbottom. Her voice is hoarse; she screamed her throat raw a long time ago. "Why are you doing this?"
And it's such a foolish question.
***
Author: gehayi
Pairing/Character: The Blacks (Regulus, Sirius, Andromeda, Bellatrix, Narcissa)
Word Count: 7,205
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: the cruelest month (The prompt table is here.)
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Summary: Twelve crises. Twelve months. One family.
Author's notes: I'm following book canon ONLY. That means no information from movieverse, interviews, trading cards, JKR's website, any family trees done for charity auctions, etc.
Also, heidi8 asked for a story in which Regulus and Sirius were twins born on different days, so that's the relationship here.
***
i. August 1971
August is the month colors trickle from trees
A first leaf unnoticed tumbles --"August is the dying month," by Wilma Swim Strunk.
August that year is warm and wonderful and luxuriant. Andromeda spends every waking moment with Ted (my Teddy-boy, she teases him, knowing that he is anything but the street thug she is calling him), the summer sun soaking into her pale skin and her dark, heavy hair as they walk and talk and kiss. Everything about Ted is warm, it seems-his tousled light brown hair that glints gold in the sun, his blue eyes as bright as the summer sky at noonday, his rich, full-bodied laugh without the vaguest hint of cruelty or bitterness.
She protests when he tells her jokingly that this must be the first time that a Hufflepuff has seduced a Slytherin into corruption, and when she protests, he tells her, a trifle more soberly, that that is how the wizarding world will see it, for much is being made of the importance of caste and tradition these days, and not merely by the Dark Lord and the Death Eaters. Ted, quite simply, is not of her class or pedigree. Lady Chatterly, he reminds her, dallies with the gamekeeper; she doesn't marry him.
"And if I wanted to?" she asks him as they watch the Perseids fall early one August morning. Hundreds of stars are falling from the black sky in dazzling streaks of bluish-white light as she speaks. "If I was more than willing to?"
Andromeda lies back against the dewy grass, the dampness soaking through her summer robes, and, imagining that she can feel the earth rotating beneath her and can hear the stars zooming past as they fall, she waits for his answer.
"Romy," he says quietly (for he will not call her "Andromeda," saying it's ill luck to curse a child with a name that means "chained lady"). "If you want to stay with me, I'd love it. But you can't have me and them. They'll never allow us to be together."
And Andromeda knows that he's right. The Blacks could never permit such a mésalliance. Ted is a Muggleborn wizard--no different than a Muggle in their eyes.
She doesn't want to hesitate, but she does. For despite everything, despite their differences, Andromeda knows that she will miss her family. She loves her parents, and has no desire to hurt them. She loves her little sisters, though Bella can be cruel and contemptuous to those whom she considers less worthy to live than herself, and though Cissy is entirely too enraptured by finery and her own good looks for a child her age. She even loves her cousins, and worries about them too, partly because she sees volcanic rebellion building in Sirius, and partly because Regulus has as much to rebel against as his brother...yet never does.
Some sliver of her soul cries out against the notion of marrying Ted, urging her to retain the beloved and the familiar. She can keep what she has, and continue to have Ted...for a while, at any rate. For she senses that Ted Tonks is not one to be satisfied with half-measures forever. If she does not stand with him, she will lose him.
And then what?
She envisions a life like her mother's in a house filled with empty rooms and echoing corridors, of a husband whose features are stamped in the same mold as her own, of children taken from her at birth and all but reared by Squib nannies, prim governesses and stern tutors before Hogwarts steals them away altogether. She thinks of parties filled with chattering kin who repeat the same ideas endlessly in idiotic fashion, pictures heavy silver place settings gleaming on the dining room table, untouched by any but house-elves' hands. She sees a proper, prim, do-nothing life stretching before her, and she recoils from the desolation of such an existence.
Andromeda reminds herself that there is a war on. A pureblood cannot merely marry a Muggleborn these days and say it is for love, even if this is so. Thanks to the agenda of the Dark Lord and the passions of his followers, such a marriage would be a political statement. She cannot marry Ted without taking sides in Voldemort's war. And she already knows what side that most of her kinfolk are on.
She only hopes that if it comes to fighting, both she and they will duck at the same time.
She cannot truly imagine what it will be like, being married to Ted. He has never had the money that she takes for granted; his family has never owned a house-elf, or possessed any other signs of status that the wizarding world, or her kin, would recognize. Being cast adrift in Ted's world, with no anchor except for him, will be difficult.
But-she is a Black. Blacks want what they want. And they get what they want.
"If I can't have them and you, I'll have you," she tells him decisively as she leans forward and kisses him lightly on the lips. "There's no one in the world that I want more."
She sees the fierce joy in Ted's face by the light of the falling stars and wonders, briefly, if the falling stars are an ill omen for the House of Black--if somehow her choice will lead to the fall of her kin.
Then she dismisses this, because Ted is here and he's kissing her with a great deal of tenderness and that's far more interesting than worrying about her family.
After all, she's a Black. And she has what she wants.
ii. September 1971
September: it was the most beautiful of words, he’d always felt, evoking orange-flowers, swallows, and regret. --"Darconville's Cat," by Alexander Theroux.
Regulus trudges after his parents as they escort Sirius to the Hogwarts Express, his bottom lip pooched out in a childish scowl, his shoes kicking at pebbles and pavement alike. He is furious at Hogwarts, as well as feeling sadly put-upon, and he wants the entire world to know just how miserable he is.
He wouldn't be miserable if he were going with Sirius. He knows that. That he cannot go with his brother is all the fault of that idiotic school. For Sirius was born just a few minutes before midnight on the thirty-first of August, eleven years ago. He was born a few minutes after midnight on the first of September.
For the sake of those few minutes, he must be parted from his brother.
"Only a year," the headmaster said when the Blacks raised this issue, but Regulus wasn't fooled then and he isn't deceived now. A year is an eternity when you are a child. Moreover, he won't be parted from Sirius for just a year, but for all the years of their schooling. He will forever be lagging behind, the younger, stupider brother learning things that Sirius already knows. Sirius will leave school, and he will still be there-alone.
He does not understand why it's so vital that he and his fraternal twin be parted. They've been together from the nursery onward. They've learned from and tormented an entire squadron of tutors. They've played together, fought together, cast spells together. They are best friends as well as brothers, and Regulus is not so young that he doesn't know how rare that is in their family.
What really hurts is that Sirius is so eager to go off to school, so curious to discover what adventure Hogwarts will bring him. It's as if Regulus's absence doesn't matter at all. Regulus can't comprehend this. If he dared, he'd tackle his brother hard enough to give him a concussion and then drag him back to Twelve Grimmauld Place until next year, when they can attend school together.
One quelling glance from his mother is enough to convince him that she has divined his line of thought, and doesn't approve. Regulus shuffles his feet and tries to look as if he is excited but jealous, knowing that his parents would be bewildered by the depth of his misery. A boy bidding farewell to his twenty-minutes-older brother for the first time should not feel as if his soul has been cleft in two.
As Sirius boards the Hogwarts Express, Regulus forces himself to smile and wave, hating the train for taking Sirius away to a new world, and hating Sirius--actually hating his brother for the first time--for not minding.
iii. February 1974
Why, what’s the matter,
That you have such a February face,
So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness? -- "Much Ado About Nothing," by William Shakespeare
It takes Andromeda a while to realise what's different about her baby.
It's not that she doesn't notice that Nymphadora's eyes vary in colour from grey to blue to brown, or that sometimes the child has a nose that's larger than the one she had yesterday, or a mouth smaller than the one she had two weeks ago. She chalks this up to Nymphadora growing into her features, and to her eyes gradually shifting to their permanent colour.
When the child's hair starts coming in, though, she has to accept that it's more than that.
For Nymphadora's hair alters with her moods. It turns a short straight sensible brown when Sirius and his friends come over during the holidays to not-babysit-plain, no-nonsense hair that's too short to catch on tree branches, or to be used as a leash for an obstreperous toddler. It becomes a curly blonde mop when the child is pleading for something. When she's angry, it turns the red of stolen apples. When she's bored or disgruntled, her hair alter to frost-white, while her eyes shift to the grey of storm clouds.
Ted loves his Metamorphmagus daughter unreservedly, and for that Andromeda is glad. Once they get past the first shock, his parents are also loving and accepting, trying to make Nymphadora's life somewhat easier.
For it does not take long for any of them to learn that they cannot take the baby anywhere. There is no way of knowing when or if her face or features will change. In Muggle areas, such as the one in which the elder Tonkses live, such uncontrolled power leads to the threat of exposure of magic. The Muggles who witness this are confused and frightened, which would be bad enough. Add in the potential for mental damage in Memory Charms (and the Ministry, frightened by the war, is Obliviating Muggles left and right in a frantic effort to cover up all trace of the magical world) and the child becomes a very real danger, both to her grandparents' neighbours and to the Muggles on her father's side of the family, who love her dearly.
The wizarding world is no better. Nymphadora's power is insanely rare, and the fact that a halfblood has been born with so unusual a power makes the baby's very existence political. Young Regulus (who dares not defy the family and visit her) has sent messages regarding comments he's heard from other Blacks about Nymphadora. Bellatrix has been particularly graphic, detailing all the cruel and bloody things she would like to do to "that halfblood freak with no true shape of her own."
Her sister is too young yet to be a Death Eater-or so she hopes--but Andromeda knows that it is merely a matter of time before Bellatrix joins. And in less time than it takes for Bella to be old enough join forces with You-Know-Who, some follower of the Dark Lord (please, Merlin, not her sisters or her cousins) will probably try to kill Ted and herself to get to Nymphadora, who so innocently and so thoroughly contradicts the Dark Lord's opinions on magical power and blood purity.
She loves her daughter dearly, but she fears for her. And she cannot help but wish, sometimes, that her baby had been born tediously, overwhelmingly normal.
And then she looks at her mother-in-law, listening with such intense concentration as Ted tries to make light of the accursed, never-ending war.
And Andromeda reads the same unspoken wish in in the other woman's eyes.
iv. December 1976
In a drear-nighted December...--"In Drear-Nighted December," by John Keats.
Twelve Grimmauld Place is unbearably cold.
Not in temperature. Kreacher makes sure that his masters are comfortable, and his cooking, if mediocre, is at least warm and filling.
The cold emanates from his father, who treats him as if he were an intrusion and a mistake rather than a son. His mother radiates cold so bone-deep that it burns, both when she lectures him about his everlasting failures and when she stares through him with ice-grey eyes as if he were nonexistent. Kreacher manages, in between bowing and scraping obsequiously, to utter words that sting as coldly as sleet striking Sirius's face. Regulus's face and eyes are like black ice, perilous and slippery and almost invisible, reflecting nothing back.
The house, too, is cold and unwelcoming. He scarce dares to stir from his room, for the very walls of the place seem to hate him. Sometimes, at night, he can almost fancy that he can hear the walls whispering as they conspire with each other. It's a foolish conceit and he knows it, but during the day, when he must battle with books bearing curses, and biting snuffboxes, and charms to transform the unwary trespasser, he is not so certain.
Being here, even over the holidays, is like being trapped in the Snow Queen's palace. Everything is rich and beautiful and barren of life, and so cold it would kill any mortal not under its spell. He is the only one here who is trying to spell out the word "love" with shards of ice, the word that he knows will free him, but he has been trying for so long that he's all but black with cold, and half cut to pieces by the jagged edges of the ice.
It hurts to know that there are sanctuaries out there, homes that belong to Remus, Peter and James. They gleam and glisten like three diamond-encrusted stars in a bleak, black midnight sky--unbearably lovely, painfully alluring...and never to be reached.
He does understand that he could leave this house and go to his friends. They would take him in, even though two of the three are poor and can ill-afford such generosity.
What stops him is the sure and certain knowledge that once he leaves, it will be for good. The family will never forgive him, will never take him back. He will be an orphan, for all that his family will still be alive.
And he will lose not only the ones whom he hates, but also those few whom, against his better judgment, he still loves. Uncle Alphard, who is something of a maverick even within the family. Regulus, who was once not only his twin brother but also his best friend. It hurts to think of being dead to them as well.
He wants a thousand things. Freedom. Laughter. Love. The right to be himself, and not a copy of his parents created by a Duplicating Charm.
He has to choose. And he does not want to choose. However much he hates and detests this home, it is still his. He does not want to surrender all that he knows, all that he's familiar with, for some uncertain dream of the future.
He cannot leave.
And he cannot stay either, for the cold of the Black house is working its way inward. When it reaches his eyes, everything he now loves will seem twisted and hateful to him. When it reaches his heart, his heart will be no more than a lump of ice.
Just like the rest of the Blacks.
He shivers, and leans against the window of his room, hoping that he'll spy a white stag approaching Twelve Grimmauld Place, signaling that his rescuer has arrived...and that once he leaves the chill and terrible palace of ice, he will not be alone.
v. January 1977
January is here, with eyes that keenly glow,
A frost-mailed warrior
striding a shadowy steed of snow. -- Edgar Fawcett.
He didn't mean to do anything wrong. That's the worst part.
Everything snowballed after he finally got up the gumption to leave over Christmas. To run away, really, though he doesn't like to think of it that way. It's so childish.
He didn't leave the way he wanted to, either, with pride and dignity intact. He left in the aftermath of a thundering row, so furious that he stormed out of the house without packing a thing. He still has his wand, but only because he had it stuffed in the pocket of the robes he was wearing. He left everything else behind, except for the robes he had on his back.
He changed into Padfoot-at least the dog had a thick, shaggy coat, and that provided some heat-and ran pell-mell toward James' house.
It took days.
He was a wreck when he finally arrived at James' door. The soft pads of the dog's feet had been bruised by rocks, torn by snow-hidden branches, cut by bits of ice. Once back in human form, Sirius' hands and feet were sorely injured, and frostbitten besides.
He barely had time to recover before it was time to return to Hogwarts. He has returned to what was once a haven...only to discover that the tale of his running away has preceded him. His cousins show family solidarity by ignoring him, and by watching Regulus to make certain that he says nothing, either. The Slytherins taunt him, and though they have mocked him before, it never bothered him then as it does now. He feels as vulnerable as if his skin had been flayed from his body, and every bitter glance and mocking word is coarse salt rubbed into the walking wound that he now is.
His friends say that they understand, but they don't. They can't. They have homes; they have families. And their failure to understand hurts all the worse because damn it all, they should.
He never intended to betray Remus. He'd swear to that, even if it meant going to Azkaban.
The problem is that Snape has been around since they returned to school, always making comments about Sirius and his new status as disinherited heir, always finding something about James and Remus and Peter to sneer at as well. Snape can do more with a curled lip and a drawling tone that anyone Sirius knows, and what makes it truly intolerable is that no matter what Sirius says in retaliation, Snape never shows that he's hurt, never withdraws into silence.
Enduring Snape's snide comments is like being pecked to death by ducks.
He really didn't intend to let Snape know Remus's secret. He only wanted--still does want, in fact--to hurt Snape, to terrify him so badly that the pride and arrogance were knocked right out of him.
He can't imagine why Snape, hearing the growls of a wild beast, nearly walked into the Shack.
James pulled him back, and got Crucio'd for his trouble.
The wolf, driven into a frenzy by the scent of nearby prey, nearly tore itself apart in frustration.
And now James-recovered from the pain the Unforgivable unleashed, but still shaken and white-faced-walks the halls of Hogwarts like a tight-lipped ghost. Remus, back in human form, lies wounded in the infirmary. He's breathing. That's all Poppy Pomfrey will say.
Snape has been blackmailed into silence by Dumbledore, who has pointed out that Snape is of age, and that casting an Unforgivable means an automatic life sentence in Azkaban.
As for him...well, Dumbledore can't expel him without the whole story leaking out. And that, he has been told in no uncertain terms, would mean a silver-bladed axe through Remus' neck. Werewolves are not allowed to threaten the lives of wizards, even if the threat wasn't their idea.
But the other students do know he's done something horrible, and are acting accordingly. No one will speak to him; no one will even look at him. No one is quite sure what he has done--Snape dares not tell, Remus is in no position to talk, and James and Peter are keeping shtum--but he knows that he has been judged and found wanting. He is a pariah now, isolated and alone.
Worst of all is the anger in James' eyes, and the mute bewilderment in Peter's. How could you? both sets of eyes say. How could you betray us?
I didn't mean to, he wants to say. And, I never planned any of it. I was stupid. I wanted someone else to hurt as badly as I did. It was a mistake.
Useless excuses.
He looks at their eyes, and thinks of the wounded, huddled form lying in the infirmary, and wonders if he is the one guilty of an Unforgivable, and if their friendship has been shattered past repair.
vi. March 1977
March is the month of expectation,
The things we do not know...--"Poem XLVIII," by Emily Dickinson.
Two months ago, his brother did something so ghastly that no one will tell him what it is. The silence and the wall of secrecy are driving him mad.
Because he is in Slytherin, he knows that whatever Sirius did had something to do with Severus Snape. And because Sirius is his brother, he also knows that whatever Sirius did likely involved his three best friends as well. Because it is common gossip-that is, the only current news that Regulus can obtain--he has heard that Remus Lupin was injured. He knows that's true, for he sneaked into the infirmary to see if Remus was really there...and for two weeks, he was. Snape has dropped enough hints so that Regulus knows that something happened to James Potter as well--but neither Snape nor Potter will say what.
Normally, he would go to Peter, who's as much Regulus's friend as he is Sirius's. But now...well, it's not that Peter won't talk to him any longer. He does. He even talks about Sirius, albeit elliptically and with a great deal of confusion and pain in his eyes.
What he won't talk about is whatever Sirius did.
"I can't tell you," he says, ducking his head in embarrassment when Regulus asks for what must be the fifty millionth time. "It's not that I won't. I simply can't. People could get hurt if I said something. You wouldn't want that."
"You mean Sirius?" Regulus says, frowning.
"Among others," Peter says grimly as he crosses his arms over his chest. "Stop asking about it, Reg. I can't talk about it, and I won't."
Peter's stubbornness rankles. Perhaps that's what pushes Regulus to say what he knows will hurt the most:
"You don't trust me."
As if he'd been struck, Peter turns pale and then Gryffindor red. "That's not true. I do. I always have."
"If you really trusted me,” Regulus says, twisting the knife in the wound, "you'd tell me. You won't tell me, so I guess you don't."
Not being one to waste a perfect exit line, he strolls away as if completely indifferent.
He knows he is not being fair, putting Peter on the spot like that, but right now he doesn't give two Knuts about fairness. His brother did something horrible--Snape has hinted that it should have resulted in Sirius's expulsion--and everyone seems to know more than he does. Three bloody Gryffindors know more about what happened than he does, and he's Sirius's brother.
He doesn't understand why Sirius won't talk to him. He's given his brother plenty of opportunities. He's dropped anvil-sized hints, telling Sirius that he can tell Regulus anything--and later, after Sirius, who does not do subtle well, completely misses the hints, he tells Sirius outright to come and talk to him about whatever-the-hell happened back in January.
Sirius's response is brusque and profane. In a few short sentences, he informs his brother that Regulus only wants to know so that he can blackmail Sirius with the news, and then stalks stiff-legged toward Gryffindor Tower.
And there is nothing Regulus can do but stand and stare, and wonder when his brother mislaid his memories of their childhood. They were best friends then. He knows they haven't been close for years-the House system of Hogwarts has kept them apart, both physically and emotionally-but he hadn't thought of Sirius as a stranger.
He knows that he could mend things between himself and Sirius even now...if only someone would trust him and tell him what's wrong.
But no one has.
He's beginning to think no one ever will.
vii. April 1979
The April's in her eyes, it is love's spring,
And these the showers to bring it on. --"Antony and Cleopatra," by William Shakespeare.
Narcissa gazes across the table in the breakfast nook at her husband of three weeks, who has just told her that he will join the Death Eaters formally in a week or two, and tries to keep her face schooled and calm.
It is not that she disapproves. Being in the Dark Lord's favour strikes her as an excellent foundation for post-war survival.
What troubles her is not the plan itself, but Lucius's temperament. For Lucius is a proud and haughty man, and Narcissa senses that he will not relish being a servant. She suspects that he sees this as a step to future power. She hears the whisper of conspirators in Lucius's composed, assured delivery of the news.
The Dark Lord is dead. Long live the Dark Lord.
It would never work. She knows that. Lucius is clever and influential--of that there is no doubt--but he would make a poor politician. He does not suffer fools gladly--in fact, he rarely suffers them at all. It is not in his nature to cooperate and compromise with temporary allies whom he detests. He seems to be a throwback to the days of the divine right of kings.
She cannot command him not to do this; they have not been wed long enough. She is still too new a bride.
If Lucius is to live, she will have to save him. And she will have to do it in such a way that conceals her manipulations, not only from his eyes, but from everyone's.
She detests the idea. Such constant manipulations and deceptions will kill his affection for her in no short order, if he finds out. And she does not know how long her own love will last, for she will have to trick and misdirect him for as long as he serves the Dark Lord.
But she would rather be wed to a living Death Eater than a dead member of a failed coup. She suspects that her family, and any children she may one day have, would agree.
Lucius has finally ceased to ramble about the wonders of being a Death Eater. "Well?" he says impatiently. "What do you think?"
Narcissa smiles tenderly, and hopes that love and joy are shining in her grey eyes. "That's wonderful, darling," she says softly.
viii. May 1980
You know how it is with an April day.
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud come over the sunlit arch,
And wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March. --"Two Tramps in Mud Time," by Robert Frost.
At first, being a Death Eater is easy.
Regulus learns early that he is ideally suited to be a Death Eater. The Dark Lord demands no more of him than his parents did-absolute obedience, total agreement. He and his fellow Death Eaters go out nightly, hexing and cursing fools who are helping the enemies of the wizarding world destroy a thousand years of tradition. It's almost like the wizarding duels that he used to fight back at Hogwarts.
As for the Muggles whom he kills...well, they aren't really people, are they? Humans, after all, possess magic. These creatures, for all their human appearance, don't. It's unnatural. There may be hundreds of thousands of Muggles rather than the small number of wizards in the world, but Muggles are still unnatural. Quantity doesn't imply humanity. Inferi remain soulless walking corpses, no matter how many of them there are.
It seems so obvious when he thinks of it this way.
Then, at one meeting, he sees Peter--Muggleborn Peter--kneeling at the feet of the Dark Lord. His skin is grey-tinged and slick with sweat, and he's shaking so badly that Regulus wonders if his bones will shatter. He stammers so badly that his answers to the Dark Lord's questions are little more than unintelligible syllables.
It would be laughable if Peter weren't someone that Regulus knew.
After the Dark Lord dismisses Peter--commanding him, with the wave of a spider-like hand, to melt back into the crowd--Peter scurries into the shadows. He doesn't look at anyone, least of all Regulus, but Regulus catches a glimpse of his face nonetheless. Peter's eyes are sickened, petrified, burning with self-hatred.
In that moment, all illusions dissolve, and the war ceases to be a harmless game.
ix. June 1980
Who comes with Summer to this earth
And owes to June his day of birth,
With ring of Agate on his hand,
Can health, wealth, and long life command. --Anonymous.
From the time that Narcissa hears Trelawney's prophecy third-hand from her husband, she frets.
Part of the difficulty, of course, is that there is a prophecy at all. Narcissa distrusts prophecy; she does not like the implication that there is some cosmic plan which overrides her own. It makes her feel weak and helpless, as if she is only a puppet dancing on stage for the childish amusement of some nameless entity.
Blacks are not weak.
The second problem with the prophecy is that it is so damnably vague. All that Snape told his fellow Death Eaters was that the child--referred to in the prediction as "he," though according to the formal rules of English, that might mean "he" or "she"-- would be born late in the seventh month. But which seventh month? Of which calendar?
Narcissa finds herself praying that the prophesied foe of the Dark Lord will be born in India or China--any place where everyone doesn't use the Gregorian calendar. Or perhaps the enemy could be born in September. After all, "septem" is Latin for "seven," and September did used to be the seventh month of the Roman calendar.
What she fears most is that her unborn child, boy or girl, may be born in late July.
She's not sure if the possibility has occurred to Lucius. She suspects not. For a man of his ambition, to sire the mortal enemy of his master would be unthinkable.
She suspects that it has occurred to Bellatrix. Her sister dropped by the night that Snape told everyone of Trelawney's prediction. Narcissa did not like the speculative look that Bellatrix was giving her swollen stomach.
She brews potions of raspberry and blue cohosh to help with delivery, and tries not to think about making a draught of tansy. Tansy would probably kill the child rather than enabling her to cast it from her safely.
She has tried casting spells on herself to start labour. None have worked; she suspects that she would need to be a a Healer to cast such a spell with the ease and skill that she needs.
The child will be born in June or July, of course. That is a certainty.
But until her son or daughter is out of destiny's threatening reach, Narcissa will pace and fret.
x. July 1980
The Summer looks out from her brazen tower,
Through the flashing bars of July. --"A Corymbus for Autumn," by Francis Thompson.
Bellatrix would like to hunt down all the mothers-to-be of children due in July of this fateful year and slaughter every woman before she can bring to birth the monstrous foe of the Dark Lord.
So many among the Death Eaters look appalled and sickened at the thought, and Bellatrix cannot understand why. If the only one who can defeat the Dark Lord is to be born in late July, then the best way of ensuring that the Dark Lord's victory is to kill the enemy before he can be born at all. In fact, if the only one who can defeat the Dark Lord is to be born this July, and if no one IS born this July, then the prophecy will be fulfilled--though not as Dumbledore would like. The Dark Lord would be safe for all eternity.
No one seems capable of grasping this.
Even the Dark Lord disapproves; he prefers to let his enemy be born before he attempts to kill it. He finds the idea of one spell, swift and deadly, more elegant than crude butchery.
Bellatrix disagrees, though she says nothing. Wars are not won by elegance or style. Cold, calculated efficiency, on the other hand, might have an impact.
She feels as if she is a guard standing in a brass tower overlooking an ancient city of wealth and power: Nineveh, Carthage, Troy. All seems well; the city is strong, rich, impregnable.
Yet, from her vantage point--one no one else shares, for the position of guard, though vital, is not coveted by many--she can just catch a glimpse of shadows in the distance. Shadows, tainting the sunlit summer of the city.
An enemy is approaching.
An enemy no other citizen sees.
And no one is stopping him.
xi. October 1981
Halloween.
Sly does it. Tiptoe catspaws. Slide and creep.
But why? What for? How? Who? When! Where did it all begin?
'You don't know, do you? ...You don't really know.' --The Halloween Tree, by Ray Bradbury.
Sirius falls asleep early on Halloween. He awakens several hours later with pain wracking his bones, a shriek from a nightmare reverberating in his ears, and the stone-cold certainty, deep in his soul, that something horrible has happened to James.
He races for his motorcycle. Apparition takes focus and concentration that his mind, which is skittering about like wind-blown leaves, cannot manage now, and, because James and Lily are posing as Muggles, their house isn't hooked up to the Floo Network. His mind insists that flying the motorcycle to Godric's Hollow will ensure that James and Lily are safe, for it's been part of their lives since they attended Hogwarts four years ago, when they were a million years younger and still untouched by war.
He doesn't remember the flight there. He doesn't even remember thinking. He only recalls hearing reverberating in his mind: Let them be alive. They have to be alive. Please, I'll do anything you want, only let them be alive, because if they aren't--
And here the thought breaks off and begins again, for the thought of James not existing is unbearable.
He arrives at the house...or what is left of it. It looks like Muggle pictures of buildings that have half-collapsed after a bombing. Shingles, broken beams, melted nails, shattered glass are everywhere. Sirius stares at it in shock for a long moment, telling himself that the house is empty, of course it's empty, James and Lily wouldn't have stayed in a house that was exploding or burning down...
But he can't quite believe it.
It takes more courage than he knew he had to enter the cottage.
The first thing he sees is a pile of bloody rags with glasses next to them, and though he knows what--or who--that must be, his mind recoils in horror, insisting that the rags are not human, were never human, they're just a pile of rags.
He forces himself to walk past the bloody pile and up the stairs, which fortunately haven't collapsed yet. Not until he reaches the top does he realize that Harry is wailing.
He draws his wand and mutters, "Lumos!" as he walks into the nursery. The first thing the wandlight shows is Lily crumpled to the floor beside Harry's crib. The green glow of the Killing Curse still tinges her face, making her look sickly and sallow, and that's wrong, for Lily isn't--wasn't--either of those things. On her face is the stubborn little frown that he and his friends saw so often when Lily was standing her ground and telling them to stop what they were doing immediately, and the familiarity of that expression in the middle of this chaos is almost too much to bear.
He picks up Harry (noting, as he does, that the baby's forehead is slick with what smells like blood) and cuddles him close. For a few moments, it's hard to tell who is comforting who.
Until he is holding Harry, Sirius doesn't realise that Voldemort is not here, nor are the Death Eaters. There are, however, an empty black robe and a wand made of yew lying some distance from Harry's crib.
Sirius stares, wondering where Voldemort's corpse is. If the Dark Lord is dead, then he wants the corpse there, so that he can stake it, behead it, nail its coffin shut and bury the obscenity at a crossroads.
A groaning in the rafters reminds him that the Potters' house is no longer stable, and that he needs to get himself and Harry out of here.
If it weren't for Harry, he thinks he would let the roof crush him.
But Harry's alive. Harry deserves a chance.
And James will be very angry if anything happens to Harry. Not to mention Lily. Lily will lecture him for hours.
Some small portion of his memory timidly protests that both those things are impossible after tonight, but he squashes it. He can only focus on one thing at a time, and right now putting one foot in front of the other is more important than anything.
He casts a dozen or so curses in every direction before he brings Harry outside. If any Death Eaters are still hanging about, he'll see to it that they're in utter agony, dead or both.
The noise and lights from the spells frighten the baby, who begins to cry once more.
"Don't cry, Harry," he says in a voice that hasn't been this high or this broken since he was thirteen. "Please don't cry. I swear to you, I'll get--"
Get who? Voldemort, who's out of his reach? Peter, the Secret-Keeper, who betrayed James, proving their whole friendship was a lie? James and Lily, for being cruelly, unfairly dead and leaving him alone?
He doesn't know.
He honestly doesn't know.
xii. November 1981
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member--
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds--
November! -- "No!" by Thomas Hood.
Since the Dark Lord vanished―-Bellatrix cannot bring herself to say "died"--an unendurable nothingness has filled her soul.
The world has become a hollow mockery of itself, with all the colour, joy and life seeping away. Nothing is left but grey skies, and grey earth, and grey confusion in every face she sees. Even words sound grey, as if they are not quite real.
The world has put on mourning for the Dark Lord, and it will never remove it.
She grew up surrounded by thickets of custom and brambles of etiquette, but now both have deserted her, leaving her unsure of how to mourn. Who do you pray to, when your god dies?
She only knows that it hurts to take a breath when he is no longer breathing, and that logic has melted into a mad, looking-glass version of itself now that he is no longer here to speak words of such clarity and sanity that they illuminated the world.
And oh, sweet Merlin, she is so angry that right now she would like to crush the entire planet underfoot. How dare it continue to exist when he is gone?
She would like to smash the Potters, but they are already dead, and she knows of no potion, unguent or incantation that could restore them to life so that she could kill them again. And again. And again.
She would like to destroy their vicious spawn, but he has been spirited away--doubtless to some infernal sanctuary, where the most vile and hideous of evil entities serve the little monster's every whim.
The Longbottoms are not an adequate substitute, but they have the advantage of having a name she can focus on. Besides, they are Aurors; they might know something, however shop-soiled and useless, about what has happened to him.
She goes to the Longbottom house in Lancashire. Her husband Rodolphus follows, as do his brother Rabastan and little Barty Crouch, but she pays them no mind. They are merely vehicles for carrying out any orders she might give, and she truly doesn't care if they are here or not.
Finding them is no trouble--they are tending their baby, a small, round-faced also-ran. She quickly decides that the child must die; he is not the child she wishes to torture and kill, but, for a brief moment, she can regard him as an adequate substitute.
But his parents first.
She casts spell after spell upon them, twisting their bones, slashing their veins, filling their brains with agony only slightly less than her own. She questions them about what has happened, about the Killing Curse, about counter charms...though she doesn't listen to the answers, because the answers don't matter. Any answer they could give would be wrong, because they are alive while he is gone, because they have been happy since he vanished, and for those wrongs they have to be punished, punished so harshly that it would give a Dementor nightmares.
And as she hears them scream (and oh, those jagged shrieks caress her ears like the gentlest Chopin nocturne), she can almost hear him praising her for being his good and faithful servant. The streaks of red blood on their faces is the first colour she has seen since he vanished, and as she looks at it, life and colour begin to ooze back into her as well. She gazes at their ravaged expressions, thinking that she could avenge him forever. Her life has a purpose again, and that is all that matters.
"Why?" cries Alice Longbottom. Her voice is hoarse; she screamed her throat raw a long time ago. "Why are you doing this?"
And it's such a foolish question.
***