Chapter Text
PART I
Regulus Black has spent a good portion of the last two months wondering how in all the burning depths of hell he has found himself in this situation.
One of his own making, no less, but it doesn’t change the fact that he spends his nights sleeping in a dorm with a trunk at the foot of his bed inside of which there are books on topics of such unholy and unfathomable evil that he figures the only reason he can fall asleep at all is to escape the constant, grating horror of the notion.
When that notion becomes too persuasive and sleep eludes him, Regulus traces back the chain of events that led him there and settles comfortably on the night he finally had to admit that his parents didn’t love him.
It was the end of June, two months or so after Sirius’s predictably dramatic (and bloody) departure at Easter, when his mother informed him that he would be accompanying her and his father to a meeting. He’d known exactly what kind of meeting this would be—you had to be stupid (Sirius) or intentionally oblivious (also Sirius) to ignore the rumblings of discontent and murmured plans that crossed the threshold of Grimmauld Place—but given his mother’s nearly constant state of coiled rage since the whole Sirius incident, Regulus made the conservative decision not to voice his numerous objections and thereby extend his life another few days.
Walburga had been in a rare mood since the night she and Sirius had clashed for the last time when she had made sure he’d had to drag himself out of the house with significantly less blood than he was entitled to. Regulus had long understood the political machinations of the elite pureblood community, so he’d compiled a rather comprehensive list of expectations for the fallout of Sirius’s little stunt. As he’d predicted, Walburga’s normally despotic standards for his deportment, academic performance, and general indulgence in blood supremacy culture tightened even further to a crushing and illogical degree. Nevertheless, Regulus somehow found a way to appease her, probably because he simply left no chinks in the armor for her to dig her nails into.
He’d also predicted the quiet but undeniable response from other pureblood families that the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black deigned to associate with. It didn’t matter that they had no context for Sirius’s escape (and they certainly didn’t think of it as an escape); they didn’t know how he had shouted every thought Regulus had ever secretly entertained in his lockbox mind right at their mother’s face, or how he’d trailed blood down the stairs and smeared it on the front door, or how he was probably off somewhere right at that very moment living a much happier, sunshiny existence in the care of non-psychopaths and the company of his best friend. What mattered to the poshest and most bigoty of the Sacred Twenty-Eight was the fact that one day Walburga and Orion Black had two sons and the next they had one. The title of heir slipped onto Regulus as quietly as the snick of their front door closing.
(Regulus had additionally predicted that the only thing worse than going from two sons to one was two sons to none, a rather important distinction that he suspected prevented his mother from carrying out the full force of her temper on him, thus sparing his life. It is also the distinction that kept him from packing his bags and joining Sirius in his flight.)
Of course the lack of information surrounding the whole debacle only meant that there was that much more speculation flying about, and if there was one thing Walburga hated, it was not being able to control what people were saying about her family. So, as Regulus predicted (he really was quite good at this), she took the first opportunity to recapture the narrative and raze any lingering embarrassment left over from her first son and his terrible disappointment to the name of Black.
What Regulus decidedly did not predict was that her way of doing this consisted of shoving her youngest child into a room with a mass murderer.
In hindsight, he can appreciate that it was an effective strategy: the Black name had recently suffered a dreadful blot from an unfortunate genetic combination named Sirius, so what better way to showcase its continued prowess and wipe their hands of the whole situation than to present a perfect example of the Black family on a silver platter? This strategy had the added benefit of cementing the Blacks’ position in the upper echelons of an upstart cult that was very in vogue these days.
From an objective perspective, it’s a pretty good plan. From the perspective of the person on whom it unwillingly hinges, it fucking sucks.
Regulus had naively assumed that his attendance at this meeting would be in a decorative capacity only, a sort of Look at this one. See? He’s well behaved and obedient and honestly we’re all much better off without the other one anyway. He knows now not to underestimate two things: how quickly and deeply one’s loyalties can be questioned in such tumultuous times as these and how far his mother will go to correct any misgivings.
Needless to say, Regulus had not been expecting to meet the leader of the Death Eater movement that night, much less to be sacrificed to his service and advertised as what his mother proudly called a “promising secret weapon” and what Regulus thought of more as an indentured child soldier.
He had dressed himself according the role he’d thought he would play, a quiet, straight-backed paragon of pureblood wizarding ideals, and he couldn’t bring himself to regret the stiff high neck of his dark robes if it reminded him to keep his head up through the night and covered another centimeter of skin. In the vaulting halls of the Blacks’ ancestral country manor, he tried to ignore how similar he looked to the austere portraits of Blacks past with their cold eyes gazing down on him from high up on the walls. Walburga had pulled whatever strings necessary to host the meeting this time, and the only comfort Regulus took from it was that he knew the layout and the exits and could perhaps lean into some semblance of haughty authority as the heir apparent.
He held on to his lofty attitude even when he was seated at their sprawling banquet table surrounded by more members of his family than he cared to see in a year. With his mother to his left and his father at her other side, Regulus couldn’t help but be keenly aware of how close he was to the empty seat at the head of the table; the only people separating him from it were his cousin Bellatrix and her husband, neither of which exactly inspired confidence in him. Across the table Narcissa kept trying to subtly catch his eye. He knew what he would see if he allowed it, a desperate plea for him to explain how he had ended up in the mix with the rest of them, so he didn’t look and instead reinforced his expression of entitled indifference.
All concept of his safety or relative power under his own roof disappeared when the doors to the hall opened for a man to step through and the low buzz of conversation abruptly ceased.
In his mind, this man only existed as a gaping patch of negative space that his family talked around but never really about. In the same room as him, Regulus couldn’t tell if he was grateful for their inability to address the topic or incensed by how unprepared that had left him. Most of all he just felt fear, an instinctual, life-preserving fear that he was intimately acquainted with and that was currently telling him to get out, now.
Regulus supposed the man might be around his parents’ age if not a little older, with dark hair and dark eyes with nothing behind them. To be perfectly frank, guessing things like his age or ancestry were useless; in his presence the inherent wrongness of him overrode most of Regulus’s analytical reasoning and left him wondering why the hell everyone else here seemed okay with this.
He had heard Bellatrix refer to him in tones of shameless reverence as The Master or The Dark Lord as she waxed on about his potential to advance the dark arts further than any wizard before him. Regulus wasn’t particularly impressed by her fanaticism. Her brand of madness was not grounded enough for him to find it remotely helpful when trying to parse out what exactly it was his family and a disturbing portion of the wizarding world had gotten themselves into.
The man took an unhurried pace to his seat and stood behind it as he looked out over them. Then he smiled in a way that could have come across as appreciative to people more gullible than Regulus and said, “It is so compelling to see you all gathered here tonight, old friends”—here he shifted his gaze directly to Regulus—“and new.”
Regulus considered it his bravest act to date that he didn’t lower his eyes. They matched stares for a moment too long before the man returned his gaze to the assembled and said, “Now, let us discuss business…”
He took his seat, and proceeded to lead a discussion that meandered its way around an assortment of topics: acts of targeted violence, atrocities both planned and already executed, people reduced to slurs and numbers in the same sentence as words like “extermination” and “purification”.
Through it all, Regulus sat as still as he could manage and focused his efforts on schooling his expression against the mounting panic.
It lasted for hours and by the end, he felt as if a cavity had broken open at the top of his head and the blinding pain was just around the corner if he so much as allowed himself to blink. He hated Sirius for putting him in this position. He hated that he understood why his mother had brought him here and sat him in between her and a man responsible for more death than he could fathom. He hated even more that some part of him, a part that was very much fifteen years old and still looked for moments that might allude to her secret affection for him, had the audacity to feel betrayed by her actions. Somehow, despite years raised under her unforgiving wand and the fresh memories of her mutilating Sirius, a piece of Regulus had still believed that he was capable of earning and deserving her love.
That belief was summarily laid to rest when Walburga spoke into the silence at the end of the discussion: “My Lord, if I may…”
Regulus felt the muscles around his spine tighten even further, like a rope twisted to the point of creaking. The man at the end of the table turned his calm eyes towards her and waited for her to continue. Though she was the one who had spoken, Regulus’s instincts were berating him with the awareness of everyone’s attention on him.
“I had hoped to take this opportunity to present to you my son and the heir to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.” She rested one hand against his shoulder, the perfect visage of a dignified mother. “Regulus will make a fine addition to your ranks, and I hope that you might recognize the potential he holds to perform beyond ordinary expectations.”
The hall was silent as they held their breath for the man’s reaction. Regulus had no idea what his mother could possibly mean and experienced a wild, arbitrary moment where he imagined Sirius in this room with all of them. He would probably take this moment stand so abruptly his chair would screech on the marble floor, and he would gesture to Regulus and say something like What the fucking hell are you talking about? Reg can’t do half of what you say, in that way he had that simultaneously pissed Regulus off and drew their mother’s attention away from him. He banished the thought before it could proceed further into embarrassing fantasies of Sirius dragging him out the door by his hand and hauling him to safety.
The man folded his hands on the table and asked, “Please elaborate, Walburga.”
Regulus didn’t miss the lack of titled address for his mother, but he also didn’t miss the game his mother was running. She’d waited until the discussions were over to introduce her little surprise, delayed the real information for as long as possible under the guise of simple manners. Regulus knew better; the room, the man included, were eating out of the palm of her hand as they waited to find out just what exactly could make Regulus so exciting. Regulus himself was also interested in this.
But he was not prepared for his mother to say, “It is no secret that the House of Black has a lineage of admirable magical prowess in the blood of its kin,” —Regulus wanted to yawn at this blatant moment of self-promotion—“but a lesser known and perhaps more powerful strand of magic has bestowed on select members of the House a propensity for the arts of legilimency and occlumency.”
If Regulus had not already been frozen in his seat, he imagined he would have been then. And his mother knew it too because her grip on his shoulder tightened to a painful clench.
“Regulus showed an early aptitude for such magic and has spent years honing his skills. I am pleased to say that he may very well be the most talented legilimens and occlumens this family has seen in generations.”
Regulus’s breaths shortened to a pant that did nothing to help his spinning head.
How had she known? He had been so careful, all these years. It was common knowledge that Walburga was proficient in legilimency and occlumency, but few people knew that she both taught it to and used it on her own children. Sirius had hated those early lessons, always so stubborn about the intrusion, shutting down his own mind in response. They were such delicate arts that a willful personality like his had little hope of mastering them. Regulus had been different. Even a year and a half younger than Sirius, his six-year-old self had appreciated the nuance and persuasion necessary to slip into another person’s thoughts as well as the obstinance and cunning required to protect one’s own.
Walburga had given it up as a lost cause after Sirius’s vocal disapproval and punished them both accordingly for the failure. But during those long days and nights locked in the closet, Regulus couldn’t help but relive the feeling of stretching himself thin for a moment or two; it was the closest he had ever felt to slipping out of his own mind, and the versatility was intoxicating.
When they were finally released, Sirius ran to the backyard, and Regulus crept up to the library.
The years in between then and the meeting where he now found himself were filled with his own studies on legilimency and occlumency. After he had thoroughly exhausted the Black family library on the topics (it had taken three years all on its own), he began the arduous work of crafting his own mental shields. At first they were cumbersome and exhausting to maintain, and at times it was like he had taken a wrong turn and employed the wrong piece of self to protect his mind, in which case he suffered horrible migraines until he could identify the offending piece or start over again. But after much practice, most of which took place during that first lonely year when Sirius swanned off to Hogwarts and left Regulus alone in Grimmauld Place, it was almost effortless.
The legilimency work only really began when it was his turn to start at Hogwarts. Regulus was under no impression that his probing would be fine-tuned enough to escape notice, the mark of a true legilimens, so he figured his next best bet was to practice on people who wouldn’t know what was happening even if they felt it. The crop of fellow first years proved to be a rather ideal testing pool. He started out shallow, which worked well because most eleven-year-olds didn’t have very deep thoughts to offer anyway. Just walking through the hall from class to class, Regulus could pick a subject and drag a metaphorical hand through their thoughts, drawing it back to study the ones that clung to his fingers like drops of water. They were, of course, inane: I miss home, I wonder what’s for lunch, I have to find that damn owl or I’ll be out another ten sickles.
Second year had presented a bit of a snag. He’d been in the library studying with Barty when his own boredom led his mind to branch out, just a bit. As a rule, he tried not to practice on his friends; they were his friends because they had a mutual respect and part of that respect included boundaries. But he’d found that as he got better at it, he sometimes didn’t even realize he was doing it, reaching for someone else’s thoughts as easily as his own. He was sure it was just the slightest touch, like laying a single finger against the still surface of a pond, but Barty had stiffened anyway and slowly lifted his eyes to Regulus.
“What in the hell do you think you’re doing, Reg?” Barty had asked with enough contained tension to give away the fact that he already knew the answer.
Regulus had been stunned into silence; no one had ever noticed that their thoughts were not safe from him. In most cases, they felt it like a vague bruise and shrugged it off when he quietly slipped away. But Barty had clearly caught him in the act, so Regulus said nothing and waited for an explosion the likes of which only Barty was capable of producing.
Barty continued to stare at him as he dropped his chin into his palm and said, “Huh. Who knew?”
Regulus hadn’t known what that meant, especially when Barty said, “Tell you what, let’s make a deal. You can practice on me as long as you swear to never do that again without my permission. Got it?”
Regulus was sure that his face had portrayed a rather doltish confusion at that proposition, but Barty just raised his eyebrows. He finally said, “Deal,” and Barty said, “Great,” and he went back to studying. It took Regulus a bit longer to process that particular exchange.
From then on, Regulus would ask Barty to sit down with him for an hour or two a couple times a month when he wanted to try something new or test a certain tactic. Barty always said yes and Regulus always worked carefully. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt Barty for what was a rather magnificent display of trust. Typically Barty would select one thought of varying privacy, and Regulus would have to try and find it in an exercise Barty liked to call Go Fish (he assured Regulus that this would be very funny to anyone with a knowledge of muggle games). Regulus felt much better knowing Barty was in control of which thoughts Regulus would receive, and it made all the difference having someone who could tell him what they sensed.
Some nights they would get to talking, which was how Regulus found out that Barty’s father had a rather clumsy handle on basic legilimency and had tried a stint of parenting that employed it on Barty. It was refreshing to find out that there was all sorts of crazy out there and that Regulus wasn’t the only child that had been reared by it. He had offered to try and teach Barty what he knew, but he had only accepted a few lessons on the fundamentals of occlumency before he cited boredom with the whole process and declared it was much more fun to watch Regulus exhaust himself trying to navigate the labyrinth of Barty’s mind.
Regulus had advanced quickly from there, identifying the levels a person’s mind could produce, how personality affected the organization, the different strategies he’d have to use to access a thought versus a memory, and how long and quickly he could peruse before he felt himself stretched too thin or the other person caught on to the intruder in their head.
Most importantly, he learned how not to be caught. Instead of running a hand through their mind it was a bit like diving in, and like diving, the cleaner and faster and sharper you were, the fewer ripples you produced.
In fourth year when Regulus could slice into Barty’s mind, snatch his proffered thought, reel himself back out and the only response Barty had was “Merlin, are you going to take all day to get in me or do I have to hold your hand?” Regulus decided that was enough. He recited Barty’s thought back to him and watched his face morph from an expression of shock to one of devious glee (and maybe a bit of pride). Regulus then told him that he wouldn’t practice with him anymore. Barty had, of course, objected, saying that just because he could do it once didn’t mean he could keep doing it, and Regulus had answered that he wouldn’t practice with him, not that he wouldn’t practice at all. Barty’s responding cackle had made Regulus smile. He had a shortlist of people whose minds he would never invade including his friends (and a few others for reasons that Regulus would not look at too closely), but the rest of the school was fair game. By fifth year, he could tell the exact phrases his professors would say the moment before they said them, and he’d change key words as he dictated them to Barty in the back of the classroom to try and get him to laugh loud enough for a detention.
Now just a few days shy of his sixteenth birthday, Regulus was not too humble to say that he’d maxed out the mechanics of legilimency and occlumency; if there were more tricks to it, he had yet to find them and what he did know came to him as naturally as breathing.
Perhaps he’d been a fool to assume he could sneak this past his mother, but the thing was he really thought he had. Nothing good could come from Walburga having this information, as he was currently learning. He’d thought his own mind well enough protected that he would notice if she decided to seek out answers on her own. But an unfortunate principle of occlumency dictated that the better you knew the person, the easier it was to slip past their defenses, and as much as he hated it, Regulus and Walburga Black understood each other very well.
As Regulus sat stone still in his chair with that incredible secret dropped on the table in plain view, he thought that there was a small chance his own mind hadn’t even recognized Walburga as an imposter and had let her in thinking it was him. This was not an idea he could entertain for long before the implications forced him to tune back into the murmuring from the shocked Death Eaters.
When the man spoke, the room quieted again.
“Walburga, that is most fascinating. Thank you for sharing it with me.” He then turned to address Regulus. “Regulus, is this true?”
With no other option in sight, he said, “Yes, my Lord.”
“And you would be generous enough to share this gift with our worthy cause? To employ it at my behest against our mutual enemies?”
A fool Regulus may have been, but he was not fool enough to miss the meaning of those words. Being at the behest of this man meant he was not even the drafted soldier he’d assumed, no, he’d already been demoted to weapon. Something mindless and thoughtless and completely without a say in its direction. But he also knew an opportunity when he saw one. The offer to “share” his skills was the only one he would receive before they were taken by force. A trained legilimens was a rare and valuable asset to any cause, and Regulus had no doubt that his choice in the matter was purely ceremonial.
At this moment, Regulus recognized himself at a crossroads that would define the next years of his life. (Or months: he was beginning to think that his life might be much shorter than he had hoped). It would be remiss to say that Regulus had not considered his own place in the looming war, but he’d really thought he’d have a bit more time before making any drastic decisions.
And now that time was up, and Regulus had already decided. In reality, Sirius had made the decision for him two months ago.
“Of course, my Lord. It would be an honor.”
The man smiled again, genuine this time, pleased with his own mastery. “That is wonderful to hear, Regulus. The wizarding world will be indebted to your service. You have done your family proud.”
Regulus bowed his head and settled back in his seat as the attention finally shifted away from him. He didn’t think his parents were proud of him; he had done what he was told and met an expectation but only after lying to them for years, something he was sure his mother did not consider forgiven just yet. He couldn’t help but follow his thoughts back to Sirius. Sirius who would have been appalled to witness what Regulus had just done. Sirius who’d always thought there was something redeemable about Regulus despite his vicious words comparing his put-upon apathy to their mother. Sirius who had never really gotten the hang of being a survivor.
But Regulus figured if his brother wanted to leave him here then he could take responsibility for what Regulus had to become in order to stay alive.
The meeting adjourned and Regulus rose to his feet on stiff legs. Narcissa was looking at him with a confounded expression, like she didn’t think he fully comprehended what he’d just done. He did though, so he sent her a glare and turned away, more than ready for this night to be over so he could retreat to his rooms and mull over whether he might be better off jumping from the roof.
But Regulus had never been lucky, and he certainly wasn’t when he heard the man’s soft voice call his name.
Regulus turned back to him as he said, “I wonder if you might join me to further discuss your future.”
He swallowed and said, “Gladly,” before following the man into the smaller parlor with the garden view. The doors closed behind him. As much as Regulus disliked being in the same room with him and every miserable pureblood within a thousand kilometer radius, being alone with him was much worse.
The garden parlor was normally one of Regulus’s favorites, but he knew that after tonight he wouldn’t be able to stomach it anymore. The candles that illuminated with a wave of the man’s hand bounced reflections off the darkened window panes and made the whole room feel much tighter. The man gestured for Regulus to sit on one of the low couches and poured himself a goblet of something from the sideboard. Then he walked over to stand before Regulus and consider him with undivided attention.
“I must admit,” he began, “that I’d thought myself much more capable of sensing a fellow legilimens. Your mother most certainly possesses the gift, but you took me by surprise.” He waited a moment as he sipped his drink. Regulus said nothing, too aware of the consequences that followed answering when no questions were asked. “How is it that I could not detect your skill?”
Regulus took a breath and subtly rolled his shoulders. Then with a nonchalance he felt not at all, he said, “I believe it has to do with the occlumency, my Lord. A good shield prevents not only outside intrusions but also the potential for internal projections.”
It occurred to him a moment too late that he had possibly offended whatever occlumency skill this man had, but he just hummed thoughtfully. He still towered over Regulus, but to someone who had grown up in a household that operated on power struggles and intimidation tactics, it was easy to keep a neutral expression even if his palms sweated against his robes.
“Would you indulge me in a brief test of sorts, to gain a more comprehensive understanding of your handle on the arts?”
Regulus resisted the urge to shift in his seat. “Naturally, my Lord.”
“Very good. Just a simple exercise.”
He had barely finished the word when Regulus felt a flash of warning like a quick shadow in his peripheral followed closely by the heavy wallop of a battering ram slamming into his shield. It reverberated along his mind with a sickening resonance but did not penetrate. He had only just wrapped his head around the first when another and then multiple began assailing him from what felt like all possible directions. Regulus had never trained against a direct assault to his shields, but he had crafted them carefully. Instead of a stagnant, brittle wall, Regulus had coerced his shields into a malleable but deeply layered barrier. The battering rams this man employed hit a solid resistance like pounding a fist on packed wet sand and receiving no give. The trick with his shields, Regulus knew, was to go in slowly. Where the wet sand held against brute force, it yielded to gentle pressure.
Which was how Regulus recognized when the battering rams became less of an attempt to breach his mind and more of a distraction from the insistent little worm that started subtly carving a path for itself. Regulus supposed he wasn’t meant to notice this and briefly entertained the idea of letting it go to hide the true extent of his control, but allowing the man anywhere near his unprotected thoughts sent a wave of spiked nausea through him, so he pulled out his next trick. As soon as the worm had fully submerged itself in Regulus’s shield, he caved in its point of entry and clamped down to trap it completely. He was pleased to see the man flinch slightly and held eye contact as he turned the worm over and over in his mind.
The thing about any attempt at legilimency was that you risked exposing yourself as much as sought to expose another. Every instrument crafted to infiltrate the mind was a piece of your own person and could reveal your secrets if you weren’t careful. Regulus knew he didn’t have long, so he threw caution to the wind and dissected the squirming worm of thoughts and intentions as quickly as he could.
What he found was strange, a jagged picture from the distorted reflections of a broken mirror. There were pieces but they weren’t cohesive like the mind should be. And more importantly, there were gaps, empty spaces occupied only by image negatives that Regulus couldn’t quite make out. It was like staring too long as a bright light then closing your eyes to see a glowing, globular impression of an object against the dark. And there was that same pervasive sense of wrongness in those gaps. The longer he looked, the wider they gaped until he felt a lurch of vertigo as if he were about to tumble into the cracks of this man’s self. He whipped his consciousness away from it just as the man yanked on the worm and Regulus let him take it back.
He hadn’t realized his heart was racing and his breaths were coming heavier until he noticed the slight shine of perspiration on the man’s temples.
“Most impressive, Regulus,” the man said. Regulus didn’t like the way he was looking at him, hungry and greedy. He was sure that if this man could take his skill for himself he would and avoid the whole ordeal of having to go through Regulus to access it.
“Thank you, my Lord.”
“Just one more test now to try out your legilimency.” He took another sip of his drink before setting it on the table and seating himself on the sofa next to Regulus. Regulus really wished his sense of self-preservation was less finely tuned than it was so that he might ignore the chorus of Run! Leave! Get away from him! that sounded in his head.
“I will bury a specific thought, and I would like for you to attempt to find it. When you do, tell me what you see.”
Regulus nodded. He told himself this was nothing he hadn’t done before with Barty and looked into the man’s eyes. Then he sent a tentative hand to brush against his shield.
It was cold and Regulus was surprised to find it was also intangible; his hand passed right through like it was disappearing into a dark mist. He took another step closer and allowed the mist to settle across him in a sheen. He could almost feel it sticking to him, and he tried to ignore its cloying grasp. Regulus knew there would be some trick to it, he just hated that he’d have to find out to understand what it was. He took one more step fully into the mist before he learned. With the darkness surrounding him he felt himself start to suffocate like the mist was toxic and was choking off his consciousness. Regulus did his best to remind his corporeal self to breathe as he quickly took the two steps backwards to escape its hold. The mist released him without objection. He imagined that most people who tried to infiltrate it immediately lost their way and got turned around as they panicked. It was a clever mechanism, misleading and deadly in a way Regulus almost wished he’d thought of himself.
Where he stood outside the mist, he tried to peer through to gauge its depth, but there was no seeing past the blank expanse of swirling, cloudy black. Given the sophistication of the shield, though, Regulus reasoned that it couldn’t go on forever; no one had the energy or power to produce an infinite shield, not even this man. So if the trick to Regulus’s shield was a gentle touch, the trick here was speed. Regulus took a moment to steel himself and then hurtled his consciousness as fast as he could into the mist.
The darkness engulfed him immediately, but he only moved faster (he was no stranger to darkness anyway). The mist clung to him and congealed into thick drips like tar, pressing down on his mind and cutting him off. He pushed himself faster and just when he thought he would surely pass out, crumpled under the drag of the sticky substance, he burst through the last of it right into a freefall.
For a moment, Regulus thought he’d made a mistake; there was no light and no layers of depth like most people’s minds. Instead he found himself floating in the middle of a dimensionless pool. It reminded him of those blue holes around the world, revered for their unnatural uniformity of dense color but feared for the way divers lost their bearings and died suspended deep in the water when they couldn’t find their way back up. Except this one was black and silent, and Regulus allowed himself one incredulous second to wonder who the hell this man was what the fuck was wrong with him before assessing his situation.
He told himself it was just another mind even if it felt as foreign and inhospitable as the depths of space. He tried moving around and met no resistance but also saw nothing that looked like a thought or memory he could grab on to. Regulus stamped down his rising hysteria and tried to reason out how to complete his task blind. He thought that maybe there was another trick at play. Entering required speed, navigating might require patience. So he stilled himself and waited.
He wasn’t sure how much time had passed before he picked up on a sensation. It wasn’t necessarily a sound and it certainly wasn’t light. It was more like a rhythmic pulse of pressure that he felt in his head and his chest and his bones, faint but unrelenting. He tried to allow himself to settle into the pulse, to breathe in time with it, five beats of pressure followed by three of silence before it looped again. After a while it began to feel like a heartbeat in a forced, contrived kind of way, like someone had ripped the heart out, tinkered with it, and stuffed it back in when it beat how they wanted it to. Regulus moved in one direction, then another, until he felt the pulses become heavier as if he was moving closer to the source. He figured it was as good a starting point as any and continued forward.
As he progressed, the pulsing turned uncomfortable then almost painful. It squeezed him like it was trying to crush his lungs and crack his skull and override his own heartbeat. He began to feel it throb in his fingertips and hear it as a the pump of some giant beast’s wings. He was almost delirious with it when he could have sworn that there were images within, those same inscrutable designs from the gaps when Regulus picked apart the worm. He couldn’t exactly see them, just like he couldn’t exactly hear the pulse, but it was like they had bypassed his eyes entirely and were being branded onto his brain, shifting from one to the next with each pulse and repeating again. Regulus pushed against the surging tumble of his own mind, tried to gather it up and hold it together even as he felt it slowly shredding under the weight of the pulse. He moved again, quietly, just a bit closer, and the images sharpened like his eyes were adjusting to the impenetrable dark. He focused past the horrible tempo and they sharpened again. And then five clear objects flashed in his own mind one after the other and he could stand it no longer.
Regulus pulled back to where he could breath, though he still felt that faint pulse in his sternum like they recognized each other now. The images made no sense to him, seemingly arbitrary objects that had no connection to each other except for how fundamentally they were woven into this man’s person. This couldn’t possibly be the thought he had intended for Regulus to uncover. For starters, they weren’t exactly thoughts so much as they were literal pieces of the self. But that made no sense because the self could not be an object. Were they a representation then? But why would there be multiple? For another thing, Regulus was positive that they were a part of that wrongness, so much so that they might be the source of it and so deep within the mind that they must have been nestled next to the very source of the man himself.
Before Regulus could dwell on the images any longer, he saw a spark out of the corner of his eye like a small, bright fishing lure. He turned to face it head on. It winked and twisted a little, and when Regulus extended one careful finger towards it, it snapped into an image of his brother, in full light and full color, casual and smiling and looking right at Regulus. He was so close and real and sudden that Regulus’s heart jumped into his throat. He could barely suppress a scream at the horror of Sirius held within this man’s mind. Sirius took one step towards him and he scrambled back. He took another, then another, stalking Regulus down with his hands in his pockets and burning intention in his eyes and Regulus decided he’d had enough. He allowed the pull of his own mind in his own body to suck him back out and away from this distortion of his brother in that godforsaken pool of black.
The sensation of being back in himself left him so light with relief and simplicity that Regulus swore he would never complain about being stuck in his own head again. He felt a single drop of sweat slide down the back of his neck and buried his hands in his robes, half for the thrilling feel of real fabric in a real world, half to hide the tremors.
In front of him, the man leaned back against a pillow.
“Tell me what you saw, Regulus.”
Regulus was very aware that what he said next could get him killed, Ancient House of Black or not. If the man knew how deep Regulus had ventured into his mind, he would likely already be dead, so chances were he hadn’t noticed. The idea that Regulus had seen those five images and now had to keep it secret was almost more anxiety inducing than the idea of the man knowing about it. So he turned his attention to Sirius.
He suspected this was a trial of loyalties, a test within a test of the variety his mother preferred. The words “my brother” were stuck to his tongue with a kind of pathetic, childish longing that would gain him no favor. He twisted the vision instead, and with it, the words.
“A traitor,” Regulus responded. “I saw a blood traitor.”
The man smiled. Regulus had guessed wisely; men like this never tired of being told what they wanted to hear.
“I believe you have the makings of a very promising follower, Regulus. Given your potential, the ordinary probationary period might even be accelerated before your final indoctrination.”
Regulus didn’t know what this meant at the time, but he felt viscerally the beginning of a new countdown, another clock ticking away in his chest before he passed a point of no return.
“Thank you, my Lord.”
The man stood and Regulus took his cue to stand as well.
He said, “I look forward to seeing the things you can accomplish in the name of Lord Voldemort.”
Then he exited the parlor and left Regulus alone on shaking legs.
As soon as he was gone, Regulus let his knees give out and dropped onto the sofa. His whole body twitched and shuddered like he had been torn apart and sloppily stitched back together, and his brain felt as painful and slow-moving as magma. Deep within it though, those five objects flashed again and again.
Regulus pushed himself off the sofa and took a few wobbling steps to the door. He vomited into the broad vase of a potted plant and wiped his mouth on his sleeve before straightening his back and his robes and sucking in one deep breath. He had never felt his life balanced on a knife edge like that before, never been so primally afraid of another person.
Then again, he thought as he pushed through the parlor doors, he would probably have found the whole situation much more terrifying were he not so appalled that Lord Voldemort had referred to himself in the third person.
Regulus avoided his mother for the rest of the night; he could pay for hiding his legilimency from her another time. He denied Kreacher when he offered him a late supper and crawled into bed with the windows open as wide as they could go. From where he lay, he clung to the silvery moon shadows cast across the whorls of plaster embellishment on his ceiling. He spent the rest of the night both exhausted and wide awake because every time he closed his eyes, he saw those same five images over and over and over again.
book,cup,ring,tiara,pendant,book,cup,ring,tiara,pendant,book,cup,ring,tiara,pendant
*
That was in June. It is now September.
Regulus guesses that most people his age spend their summers traveling or hanging out with friends. His summer looked very much like his school year, if his school year was half as rewarding and ten times darker.
After the meeting, he allowed himself two days of inconsolable crisis. He spent his sixteenth birthday locked behind his bedroom door ignoring the owls from his friends. Then on the third day, he pulled himself out of bed, dressed, and stepped into the library. From sunrise to long past dusk from July to September, Regulus had shut himself away in the library surrounded by open volumes of wizarding history, tomes on genealogy, and his personal notebooks filled with theories and drawings that looked more like the ravings of a madman every day.
The way he saw it, his problem was threefold: first, Regulus had to figure out who Lord Voldemort was. He wasn’t exactly sure how that might play into who he had become, but if nothing more, it would give Regulus some peace of mind to know that he was human after all. Lord Voldemorts weren’t just born, they were made. Of this he was sure. The morbid biographies of other dark wizards in their rise and inevitable fall always confirmed this. Names that struck fear into the hearts of wizards, like Brovanushka, Atanase the Immortal, and Grindelwald, all had their origins as unassuming people before their reputations overshadowed their pasts. Regulus would comb through centuries of wizarding lineages until his eyes crossed and his fingers traced spidery lines of family trees in his sleep if he had to.
Second, Regulus needed to know what the five objects were and how they had been incorporated into Lord Voldemort’s person. He had drawn them in his notebooks with as much detail as he could recall, which was quite a lot as it turned out. They didn’t fade like a memory as much as Regulus would have preferred it that way; instead, it was like once he had seen them, he couldn’t unsee them. He would slump in the chair by the library window sketching the same five things over and over so lightly they appeared on the pages as ghostly watermarks or with a heavy hand that left behind thick lines and dark blots of ink.
He'd had slightly more luck identifying the objects. It was an oppressively hot day in the middle of July, and Regulus had flung open the windows and rolled up his sleeves but his shirt still stuck to his back with sweat. He was flipping through The Visual Index of Wizarding Britain’s Most Treasured Heirlooms by Constantin Windsom in a heat-induced stupor when he turned the page and jolted so violently he fell out of his chair. He scrambled back up and snatched the book closer. Embossed on the paper was the tiara, the exact one, Regulus would know it anywhere. The top of the page read “The Lost Diadem of Ravenclaw.” Regulus could scoff at the word diadem later (it was a goddamn tiara, for Merlin’s sake), just then he was too busy speeding through the largely unhelpful description of the tiara’s origins and even less helpful rumors of its current whereabouts. He flipped through a few more pages and released a single short laugh when he saw the cup (excuse him, goblet.) Hufflepuff’s apparently. A few pages later he found Slytherin’s locket. Founders’ Objects. Three out of four anyway.
The ring and the book still eluded him. They weren’t catalogued in The Visual Index (Regulus’s new favorite book, by the way), and were likely much less notable than the Founders’ Objects. The only clue he had for the ring appeared by way of the faint G carved into the dark stone. If pressed for an answer, Regulus would guess that made it a family piece, passed down like so much of his mother’s jewelry in the Black vaults. This would link it to his first task, and he was hoping that finding one would find the other.
The book was about as plain and untraceable as a book could be. It was only after hours by candlelight staring at the library books next to his own journals that Regulus decided the soft, worn cover, without words or special binding, reminded him much more of the journals than an actual published book. It was very little to go on, but it was better than nothing.
The third and most personally distressing problem was the Death Eaters. Since that first meeting, Regulus had attended two more, in July and again in August. The location changed from one sprawling country manor to the next, but the members were the same. The Blacks occupied a good portion of every table along with the Malfoys, Averys, Mulcibers, Dolohovs, Lestranges, and a substantial selection of lesser but still prominent pureblood families. Regulus noted with overwhelming relief that while the Rosiers were present, he had yet to see Evan at one of these functions.
It was through these meetings that he got a sense for the Death Eaters’ goals and methods, both equally insane in Regulus’s opinion (he kept this opinion to himself). He also gained some clarity regarding his “probationary status” and eventual “indoctrination.” The ugly tattoo on Bellatrix’s arm and those of a few others around the table leered at him when he could stand to look at it. The Dark Mark was ordinarily rewarded to the most fanatic of followers after a year of commendable service to the cause. Regulus had been lucky enough to be fast-tracked on account of his unique skillset and family, and he willed the time between now and December to lengthen itself out infinitely. He knew it was futile; his mother wanted her son to be the youngest marked and so he would be. But that same part of him that kicked and screamed against his own mask of apathy begged that he do everything in his power to avoid crossing that line. As much as it was a sentence, it was also one last chance to turn back. Everything was undoable until the mark was forced on him. It was that until that he clung to.
After the July meeting he had found himself in another panic. His vision blurred around the edges and sounds reached him in a muffled heap like he was underwater. In his room he slammed his door and wrote one desperate, coded message to Evan, the only one of his friends his mother would allow him to correspond with. In the letter, he told Evan about his situation. About being sacrificed by his mother and poached by the Dark Lord. About the meetings and the Dark Mark and the ticking clock. He did not tell him about the five objects or the legilimency because even writing about them felt taboo. He’d done his best to steady his hand, but his fear came through in his words. Evan would understand, though. With his father as powerful as he was in the Death Eaters, he’d been one of the first to know about the movement and the first to bring it up in their group.
Three days later, Evan’s response arrived, coded as well. On the surface he talked about boring summer days at their estate. On the underside, he heard Regulus’s fear and walked through the problem. That was one thing Regulus loved about his friends: none of them had any patience for placating words or empty promises. They were tough, clever, and loyal to the point of destruction at its extreme. Regulus took comfort from the fact that if he died a sixteen-year-old at the hands of his shitty parents and a psycho with too much leeway, his friends would slash and burn the whole of England until they deemed his memory avenged. Evan had shared Regulus’s letter with Barty, and Regulus already felt much better knowing Barty’s brand of unpredictable genius was at work in the wings. Evan assured Regulus that Barty had said there might be a way to buy him time, about six months if it worked as it should, and that Barty would bring the necessary papers to school in September. Regulus didn’t know what papers would save him from a cult initiation, but he was overdue for some trust in his friends.
The August meeting changed things. After the Death Eaters were dismissed, Voldemort called on Bellatrix, Lucius, and Walburga to speak with him privately. Regulus tried to think of a way he could listen in, strained his consciousness to see if Bellatrix or Lucius had any idea what might be coming, but all he felt was their anticipation. Regulus flooed back to Black Manor with his father and bid Kreacher goodnight before going upstairs.
The meeting was not long; less than half an hour later Regulus heard the crack of apparition beyond the border wards. He crept to the staircase and watched his mother enter through the front door and drop her cloak with Kreacher. Kreacher met his eyes where he stood shadowed by the banister but continued on to the cloak room without a word. Then Walburga removed her gloves and Regulus’s breath stopped somewhere between his lungs and his throat.
Immediately, his head pounded with the pulse, the same five beats that he heard in his dreams sometimes. It was faint, as if distant, but he didn’t need to question its source when he spotted an extra ring on his mother’s hand. To anyone else, it would blend in seamlessly with the heavy, expensive jewelry Walburga wore every day. To Regulus, who had sorted through her jewelry box as a child, who had felt the heft of those rings against his cheekbones when he misbehaved, who had the image of one in particular seared into his mind, there was no mistaking it for a piece from the Black family collection.
Walburga strode into the formal sitting room and out of sight. The pulsing thankfully lessened. Regulus stumbled back to his bedroom and closed the door silently. He sat on his bed and stared at nothing.
It was in his house. That pulsing and the wrongness somehow lived with him now on his mother’s hand. He didn’t know how she could stand it, if she could feel it too or if it was just him because he could recognize it from its source. An overused part of his mind strung out to hysteria by the pressure and his research and what was shaping up to be a summer of continuous horrors supplied the funny idea that even though he had lost a brother, the space had been filled by a new companion in the form of this affront to nature parading as jewelry.
The thought was not comforting.
But there was some truth to it. His parents had nearly killed and very much disowned their own blood only to turn around and invite an abomination to cohabitate with them. Because if nothing else, Regulus was now sure that there was something alive about the ring, and he’d be willing to bet that the same was true of the book and cup and locket and tiara wherever they were. The idea that an object might become a part of a person seemed less and less impossible by the day.
He thanked every deity he knew of that he’d be leaving for Hogwarts at the end of the week.
After that night, his research shifted focus to inanimate possession and theories on magical origin. He would not have expected to find it necessary to explore the various philosophical musings on where wizards derived their magic from, but his own experience with legilimency and what he’d seen in Voldemort’s head fueled his need to understand how it interacted with and depended on the self and how that relationship might be altered or, in this case, corrupted. He was sure that he was close; the disparate pieces of information swirled in his head like they were orbiting some mass that would tie them all together but that Regulus couldn’t yet see.
The day before the Hogwarts Express chugged out of Kings Cross, Regulus vacated books from the library by the armful and crammed them into his trunk next to his journals. He would continue his research at school and find answers where the Blacks’ own impressive collection had failed him.
Now as he lays in bed a week and a half into the quarter and follows the patterns on the deep green bed hangings, he has to reconsider. He hasn’t let up on his research in recent days, but the number of leads he’s found is pitiful. He’d even snuck into the Restricted Section (a laughably easy endeavor; it’s like they think the word “restricted” is all it takes to keep students out) to no avail.
He considers that it might be time to employ another one of his summer projects. Granted, this one had begun long before school let out, but when it finally came to fruition in early August, the overwhelming relief of finally having an animagus form as an escape was almost greater than the sense of accomplishment. At least Sirius was good for one thing, even if it was just the occasional inspiration.
Spending time as the cat is now the only way, besides Quidditch, that Regulus can find any sense of peace from his troubled mind. As the cat, his thoughts are pared down to cool analysis and the freeing physicality of the its natural agility. He has quite enjoyed those quiet hours watching the sunset and stars from the top of the Astronomy Tower.
Sleep begins to settle on him, casting his churning thoughts in an unfamiliar, darker hue.
He dreams of the stars arrayed above him, slowly swallowed up one at a time by a wave of roiling black that stretches from one horizon to the other.