Greetings.

Dear readers, this story is going to be revolve around the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black and the Sacred Twenty-Eight. It will be a story of pain, reconciliation and filial love between the last scions of the House of Black. This will tie in with another major fanfic that will center on Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson so it may take a while for me to update both. The setting of both stories is after the events of "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child".

If you take an interest in my story, please do read and review; I accept both praise and criticism.


He roared with laughter as he dueled his cousin, blocking and dodging curses and firing several of his own back. He hadn't felt so challenged, so vigorous, so alive…so good in such a long time. Despite his loathing of the woman, he couldn't deny that Bellatrix was tenacious, keeping him on his feet and dancing all through their bout. Hell, he barely even had time to register that they were the only pair battling at that moment.

He didn't see the trap that was being set.

She was on the offensive now and wasn't letting him up. Step by step, he was being forced back, barely managing to keep his defense up.

Fuck, she's strong, he thought and he blocked a curse aimed at his face. The worst part of it was that she was aiming at parts where he was hard-pressed to block in time or dodge, lest he be dealt a fatal blow or worse, be disabled and then dispatched by a signature Bellatrix coup de grâce curse.

Inevitably, she began to slow, her curses becoming more predictable and he blocked and dodged them with ease, even beginning to counter-attack. Her saw her face contort with rage and hatred and felt smug.

Not so such a tough bitch after all, he grinned to himself.

He knew she wouldn't give him the easy way out now and he was right; she was casting silent disarming spells against him. He knew fully well that she would finish him off with some horrid curse after rendering him wandless and for some reason, the thought made him feel reckless and fey. He jeered as he ducked when she shot a jet of red light at him, cackling like he was drunk on Firewhiskey laced with enchanted moonstones.

"Come on, you can do better than that, you bitch!"

He'd made a fatal mistake; he had mistaken Bellatrix's deliberate slowness to be exhaustion, had failed to see where he was standing and had just fractionally lowered his guard, giving enough opening for the red beam fired from his cousin's wand to hit him square in the chest. And even as he smiled, the gravity of the situation dawned on him as he began to topple backwards. He had only a split second to feel the fear and confusion take hold of him and to take in the sight of his horrified godson's face as he toppled beyond the Veil before a bright white light blinded him.


He was aware of lying face down on the floor, his head strangely blank, both like and unlike how it feels when one wakes up from a deep sleep. He raised himself off the ground and shook his head, before taking a look at himself. The first thing he realized that his tattoos were gone, leading him to marvel at the change and question the strangeness of it. He was dressed in the clothes he'd died in, but they seemed to be clean and brand new as opposed to their worn and shabby state as they had been when he died. That was when he realized that he was still holding a wand too, only that this wasn't the one he'd been using when he was dueling his cousin, but the one he'd bought from Ollivander's almost twenty-five years ago which had been taken from him on the night of his arrest. Then it hit him; he remembered the duel with Bellatrix in the Department of Mysteries and how it ended. A strange feeling settled on him as he realized the full implications of it; he was dead. He looked around apprehensively and saw that wherever he turned, there was a bright white light which was soft and soothing to his eyes and that he was standing on a white surface which he couldn't feel under him. However, something else caught his attention and he saw that somewhere far off, there was a darkness, just about the size of the joint of his thumb, pitch black and stark against the backdrop, dark and forbidding, something which stirred a hideous unease in him, yet entranced him, although he was wary of approaching it.

He marveled at the strangeness of it all, but had not the time to dwell on it as two figures materialized in the distance, causing him to jump and assume a fighting stance. It turned out to be quite unnecessary; it was his best friend James Potter and his wife Lily, as bright and hopeful as they were in life, beaming happily at him. He'd forgotten what they'd looked like; James looked like a grown up version of Harry with the same untidy hair, the almost identical face and posture and the same kind of spectacles through which he looked out with his brilliant hazel eyes. Lily stood with her arm through his, her flame-red hair undone and happiness radiating from her bright emerald green eyes, the exact same ones as her son's. Both of them were dressed in the same clothes they'd died in; in fact, it could have been that those fourteen years since that night in Godric's Hollow had never happened and that he was paying them a visit in their Fidelus protected safehouse. He almost choked in delight and grief and began to run over to them, but a sudden shriek broke out from the direction of the momentarily forgotten darkness, which swelled in size and began to spread. He turned around to face it and stared in horror as it expanded, slowly backing away from it. It soon covered the entirety of his vision when he faced the direction opposite to where Lily and James stood, his gaze transfixed on the pitch blackness which loomed, gloomy and oppressive as it was terrifying.

What happened next was something he wasn't prepared for. The darkness seemed to twist and in the middle of it, he saw a small island with a strange stone basin in it's center and on the very edge of the island's shore sat a figure with his head buried in his hands. He stared in fear, his vision seeming to sharpen as he focused in on the figure until he saw him as clearly as he would see someone standing beside him. It was then that the figure raised it's head and he looked into the haunted, broken eyes of his brother, Regulus Arcturus Black.

He felt as if someone had hit him in the stomach as he stared at his brother's gaunt, sallow face. Those dead grey eyes looked at him expressionlessly before something stirred in them and he rasped out in whisper that carried through clearly enough to him.

"Sirius?"

His hands shook and he gawked on, his mouth agape before he managed to register what had happened.

"Regulus?" he called out, his voice quavering. The specter that was his brother jolted, as if he hadn't been expecting his answer.

"Sirius", he breathed out, before the older Black saw tears of pain and fear swim in his eyes as he called out again, "Sirius. Sirius, help me."

The darkness seemed to ripple softly, which then turned into a churning and then without warning, dozens of grey hands erupted out of it, reaching and clawing. He heard his brother scream and then begin to scramble away, but several hands had already grabbed hold of him and he began to thrash like a fish out of water in an attempt to get away.

"NO!" Sirius bellowed, shooting a curse into the fray, severing a hand that gripped on to Regulus's ankle and to be horrified as the sources of the hands began to rise out of the blackness; Inferi, cold, lifeless and bent on dragging his brother into the dark.

"JAMES! HELP HIM" he cried as he showered a volley of curses into the melee. There was no answer. He roared while still focused on the scene before him, "JAMES! I NEED YOUR HELP!" It was when he got no reply again that he wheeled around in rage and almost stopped aghast at the sight of both Lily and James standing and smiling at him. His shock turned to rage and he snarled, "HE'S DYING OUT THERE, YOU BASTARDS!" When even that failed to elicit a response, he bellowed "JAMES!" and threw a haymaker at his best friend's face. His fist sailed through as if James wasn't there at all. A sickening feeling seemed to settle in the pit of his stomach as he reached out for both of them, his fingers slipping through them as if they were ghosts, even as they stared at him in silence, their smiles and expressions never wavering.

"Merlin...James…Lils…" he breathed out, his bowels seeming to turn to ice as his hopes began to die before him. A deafening scream brought him back to reality.

"SIRIUS!" his brother scream, sobbing furiously; he was barely visible among the mass of the living dead now and was being dragged down into the darkness.

James and Lily were blind to his need and deaf to his pleas; there was nothing more he could do in that regard. But his brother was in torment, drowning in the darkness beyond the door of death itself. He forsook him once; he wouldn't do so again. He steeled himself and whirled around to charge headlong towards the darkness, firing spells at the Inferi, trying to cut open a path to Regulus.

"I'M COMING, REG!" he bellowed, pushing on forward, blasting aside Inferus after Inferus. He dimly felt the darkness beginning to swallow him but didn't pause to look back; all that had mattered to him was gone, anyway. He also began to realize to his horror that the closer he seemed to get to that island, the further it seemed to be out of his reach. The Inferi in the meantime were dragging his brother under; already; his legs were trashing underwater, which he realized what the darkness was, although, he was surprisingly walking on it.

He strained forward at full pelt, never ceasing to cast curse after curse, blasting open a path into the middle of the fray, even as Regulus was pulled in deeper and deeper. He was getting closer now; just a few more feet and he would reach him. It was then that he saw it; with a mighty yank, Regulus was dragged off and into the water and he screamed like never before, fighting for dear life as he splashed to stay afloat. Sirius roared, barely hearing himself over the pounding in his ears as he unleashed a spell that burst out in the form a flaming blast, knocking over the Inferi into the depths they'd emerged from as he bounded forward. He was just a few bounds away now; only Regulus's hand stretched out from the dark and Sirius could just see through the dark depths now, clearly seeing the dead faces in the water with unseeing eyes, dragging down a boy of eighteen whose face held nothing but fear, sorrow, despair and resignation, as if he'd accepted that he could not be saved anymore. Something tore at Sirius's heart at that; he recalled seeing that look on Regulus's face the night he'd left 12 Grimmauld Place for good. Regulus had known that it was the end, an undeniable and irreversible end to any filial bonds that had remained among them. It was the look that had haunted him for years after, especially on the night that he heard Regulus had gone missing and it continued to do so until all hope for his recovery was lost. No words were spoken, but the look had said it all; Sirius had killed their bond that night as he'd left home. In other words, he'd failed to deliver on the one hope Regulus had held on to all his life, a promise that Sirius had made before he'd left for Hogwarts for the first time, all those years ago.


"I don't know what House I'll be sorted into, Reg, though I doubt it'll be Slytherin" he'd said, adding the last bit conspiratorially. "But I want you to know that no matter what, we'll always be brothers."

Regulus stared at the ceiling in silence as they sat in Sirius's room, stretched out on his bed.

"You promise? No matter what?"

Sirius had smiled and squeezed his hand, "No matter what, baby brother."


You failed him then and you'll fail him again.

"NOT AGAIN!" he roared and he jumped, diving toward the spot where his brother's hand stretched out and grasped it in mid-leap firmly, before he plummeted into the icy depths, just in time to see the Inferi dissolve and fade away into the blackness and a look of surprise dawn on Regulus's face before everything went pitch black.