Disclaimer: What you recognize belongs to J.K. Rowling.

A/N: I'm back, guys! But I'm starting a new story...no one has asked for "In Times of War," so I might continue it sometime. We'll see. Updates on this will be fairly quick at first, since I'm on Christmas Break, but they'll slow down considerably as soon as I go back to school. So enjoy! And don't forget to review! :)

Someone was repeatedly poking Regulus Black in the shoulder, drawing him out of a lovely, deep sleep, the kind full of rest and lacking in unpleasant dreams. He groaned and flipped over, trying to bury his face in his pillow and forget about breakfast or shopping or whatever else it was Dove would be too-cheerfully trying to get him up to do. When he didn't have something important to do of a morning, something like Scout training or Omega meetings, Regulus preferred to sleep through it. Mornings irritated him, and people who had the nerve to be cheerful in the morning irritated him even more.

It was when his endeavor to bury his face in his pillow failed that he began to realize that something was off, and very much so. Not only did his bed not have a pillow, but his mattress was much thinner and harder than he remembered. He could feel a solid, flat metal surface beneath it. He had only one blanket, which was also quite thin, and the air was very cold and damp.

Regulus stiffened and instantly became fully alert. He knew exactly where he was, though not how he had gotten there; the tiny, dismal cell had served as his bedroom for three long years of what ought to have been his childhood, and he knew its atmosphere intimately.

But why was he here? Was he dreaming? If he was, why did it all seem so real?

A sudden, cold fear gripped his insides and yanked hard. Regulus nearly cried out.

What if it was real? What if it was the past few years of relative safety and freedom that had been the dream? What if he was still a much younger boy, lost and alone in a never-ending cycle of fear and –

"Oof!"

Something warm and solid and alive slammed into his body with a triumphant "Ha!" and a loud cry of "I knew you were awake!"

Regulus acted on instinct and squirmed beneath the slightly larger, stronger body, trying to break free even as his fearful, confused brain attempted to place the voice. It was somehow very familiar, even more so than the room, though the memory was from even younger days. Finally managing to shove the intruder off the thin bed, Regulus rolled to his feet, ready to defend himself. But the other boy – for a fellow child his "attacker" indeed was – merely gingerly rubbed the wrist he must have landed on while whining, "Merlin, Reg! What was that for?"

Regulus just stared at the person who casual observers often thought looked just like him, but who to him looked infinitely different. Though all these differences were slight, his older brother had a rounder face, smaller eyes of a more steely gray color, thicker hair, broader shoulders, and greater height than Regulus. Of course, that was just the physical differences; in personality, temperament, and so on, the brothers Black were about as similar as night and day.

"S…Siri?" Regulus croaked in disbelief. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Sirius?"

"What?" the other boy snapped, apparently still annoyed at having been pushed roughly off the bed. When he at last looked up he narrowed his eyes at his younger brother. "What is wrong with you?"

Regulus barely heard him through an increasing haze of panic. Frantic mumblings slipped out of breathless lungs almost of their own accord. "No, no, no, no, this isn't right, you shouldn't be here, Sirius was never here. Sirius is safe, my big brother is safe at home with Mummy and with Father and Kreacher too. And that's good, that's the way it should be because Sirius is the heir, Sirius is the firstborn, Sirius is going to be head of the House of Black someday and he'll be brilliant because he's strong and never gets scared of anything." He stopped to breathe.

Sirius just blinked up at him. "Um…thanks?" Then a few of Regulus' words began to sink in and he grinned. "Not supposed to be here? As in, it's against the rules? Wicked!" He glanced around the cell curiously, no trace of fear in his bright eyes. "Are we beneath the house or something?"

Trust Sirius Black to read the potential for mischief into everything, even horrible danger. For one brief moment, Regulus forgot his fear in a wave of annoyance. Trust Sirius to be strong and fearless and the biggest idiot ever to walk the face of the earth, although there were probably a handful of Muggles out there who could give him a run for his money. For one moment, Regulus almost laughed at his older brother's sheer stupidity. Didn't he know that they were trapped here? Didn't he know what the Dragons would do to him?

Then the door opened, and everything changed.

As if his mind wasn't confused enough, Regulus felt himself stretching and growing and suddenly he wasn't a child, he was Wraith once more, in the familiar robes he wore on Scout missions for Omega, robes the cloudy hue of fog at night. Only now, he was neither a child nor a teenager, but a young man, and a weary one. Exhaustion dragged at him from deep within his battered bones.

This cell was even colder and clammier than the one in the Dragon's Den had been. There were rusted, nasty-looking manacles chained to the wall, and there wasn't a bed to speak of, just a pile of straw and a couple of blankets.

In all honesty, it looked less like a place where you keep someone and more like a place you put someone who you'd rather forget about because you don't expect them to survive anyway.

What a horrible thought. What a horrible place. Had he been left here to die? Yes, to die. This, this was reality, everything else was the dream. All of his entire life was just a fiction concocted to keep him sane. But he wouldn't be much longer, and why would it matter, since he was a dead man walking? Yes, he never had an older brother. He never had parents. His early childhood and the sporadic peace of his teen years were a mere fantasy. The dark was all there was, the dark and the cold. There was no happiness.

He would never be happy again.

The wording of that thought, combined with a scratching and scraping from the other side of the room, brought an old memory of a childhood fear to light, along with a name. A name forgotten until now, that had long ago been used to make him behave. Regulus breathed it softly.

"Azkaban."

He looked over at where the noise had come from, and was surprised to see an enormous but mangy-looking black dog. For a second he thought it was a Grim come to foretell his death in Azkaban, not that he needed any help with that particular prediction. Then the dog shrank back away from him – no, not from him, Regulus realized.

For the change in location had been begun by the opening of the cell door, and Regulus had still not turned to look behind him.

He did, and saw exactly what he had feared to see: fear itself. A dementor. He fumbled in his robes for his wand, but having drawn it, found that he had been under the creature's influence for far too long to ever be able to conjure his Patronus.

It was as he stood there helpless that the thought came to him, sounding clear as if he had tapped his wand upon a crystal glass.

Sirius had entered his living nightmare, and then he had entered Sirius'.

But Sirius' was yet to come.

Regulus shot upright in bed, gasping for breath like a diver surfacing from deep water. He clutched the soft, quilted coverlet with sweaty, shaking hands. He nearly leaped out of bed when the large grandfather clock in the hall began to chime. When he realized what it was, he did his best to quiet his shuddering breaths and listen. Four chimes sounded throughout the cozy, suburban American Muggle house, their steadiness and normalcy taking the edge off Regulus' adrenaline rush.

Four o'clock in the morning. Very well. When even his dreams made their best effort to cure him of his lazy habits, he supposed he had better listen, at least this once.

Of course it had all been a dream. Though it had felt incredibly real, looking back, most of it made absolutely no sense. Regulus grabbed his wand and slipped silently out of his bedroom (that had originally been the guest bedroom of the small one-story starter house) and entered their bathroom. He flipped the light switch and splashed some cold water on his face, then stared long and hard at his reflection in the mirror.

A slim sixteen-year-old on the tall side of short stared back at him, looking more obviously distressed than Regulus' sense of Black dignity typically allowed. He wondered vaguely how much different he looked from Sirius now that the two of them were essentially grown; indeed, Sirius would be seventeen now, an adult according to British wizarding law.

Regulus' own features had only been accentuated with age: short and slim but not unathletic – a Seeker's build, he'd often been told; fine black hair; large, misty gray eyes; and extremely fair skin. In short, he might have been a bit effeminate – Regulus scowled at the very thought – were it not for the long diagonal scar running from the middle of his forehead to just shy of his left ear, a memento of his escape from the Dragon's Den at the age of eleven.

Add to that the way he liked to keep his hair cropped quite short and spiky to avoid the uncanny resemblance he was starting to bear to his father, and add again the dangly bauble hanging from his right earlobe (which was actually one of Rogue's more brilliant inventions) and he dared say he looked downright punk. He definitely looked the part of a boy the respectable middle-class Muggle mothers of suburban America would steer their ridiculously sheltered daughters well away from, out of fear he was going to mad from too much…what was the phrase? Sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll.

He smirked at himself. "Going to go mad?" he sneered at his reflection. "I thought you already were."

And maybe he was, because while he had no experience with the first two items in the list, he was developing a guilty preference for the more intense Muggle music, especially that new thing that Robin said was called "metal."

He sighed heavily, stretched lazily, then switched off the bathroom light and headed to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee brewing. There was going to be an Omega meeting this evening, which meant he didn't have to go in for training today, so there was only studying and a bit of homework. Nothing too challenging, but since no one was going to be up for at least two hours, he might as well use the time.

It was going to be a long day.