School: Durmstrang Year 2
Theme: Veritaserum
Prompt: Sirius Black [Main Character]; Begging [Action]; Tragedy [Genre]
Word Count: 2100
TW for mentions of child abuse and canonical character death
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"Come with me."
The words hung in the air, mistakenly said but unable to be taken back.
"Go with you?" Regulus repeated, his voice flat, not looking up from his intense study of Sirius' torn and stained Gryffindor tie, wrapped around and around his pale hands, nails bitten to the quick. Sirius paused in his frantic packing, tossing the jumper in his hands into the open trunk and turning to face his younger brother.
Regulus looked ill. Their family had never produced healthy looking individuals due to the years of inbreeding, pale skin and sallow faces were the norm with the ever-present black hair. Narcissa was a rarity in the family, prized as the star jewel for her fair features and blonde hair. She was going to go far, always closer to Regulus than to Sirius. But Regulus...
"What happened to you?" Sirius asked softly, stretching out a hand towards Regulus, the other shooting him a look filled with such venom the gesture died in its tracks. Regulus raised his head fully. His skin was as pale as ever, seeming to be untouched by the sun for years rather than the few weeks they had been in this house since Hogwarts. Dark purple bags smeared underneath his eyes made him look haggard, far older than the fourteen that he was, combining with the mottled blues and purples of the bruise around his left eye. His hair hung loosely around his face, strands pulled and bunched from the loose ponytail he previously had it in. Sirius knew only too well what had happened in the hours before Regulus snuck into his room, during the argument he had heard raging beneath his feet, having escaped upstairs at the height of it. Regulus couldn't do that, wouldn't do that. Always the golden child, the son they wished had been born first. Quiet and malleable but with a viper's tongue and backbone of steel, the perfect pureblood heir but for one solitary flaw. Sirius had been born first.
"You know what happened or has all that red and gold you surrounded yourself with fogged your brain?" Regulus snarled, shifting away from Sirius with an angry jerk of his bony shoulders. He seemed so small, so delicate now. His jumper, one of Sirius' old ones, hung loose on him, cuffs pushed up to stop them dangling past skinny wrists.
"They shouldn't do that to you," Sirius replied softly, sitting on the edge of the bed and resting his heels on the exposed jut of the bedframe. His boots were caked with dirt, laces fraying and knotted in several different places.
"No. But they want this family to survive. I want this family to survive."
Regulus' voice cracked, Sirius glancing over out of the corner of his eye. He was addressing the far wall, not moving to look at Sirius, chin raised and set in determination. He looked every inch the pureblood heir and not even the mottled bruising and re-opened split lip could detract from that.
"This family is sick and wrong Reggie," Sirius tried once more, twisting so he was facing Regulus who refused to meet his gaze.
"This family is our family. We have survived, this bloodline has survived since the Middle Ages. It has survived through the wars, through the witch trials, through every near miss of the Mudblood's-" Regulus ignored, Sirius' reflexive hiss at the slur, speeding up and rising in volume as he slung the words out in rapid fire, gaze never moving from the opposite wall "-persecution and you want to throw all that away? For a boy? For James Potter?"
"You sound just like Mother," Sirius chuckled despite himself, catching a matching grin flickering across Regulus' face.
"She isn't exactly wrong you know. Even if she has the boy you're doing all this for wrong."
Regulus stretched out a hand, knuckles reddened and scraped, to gently nudge Sirius' thigh, the elder rocking with the movement as if it had force behind it.
"James helped. This family is rotten to the core. Dottie had the right idea in getting out."
"Dottie was a fool," Regulus replied dismissively, "But she wasn't stupid. She waited until she could claim her birth right before abandoning the family for a Mud-" Regulus huffed out a breath, mouth twisting, "-a muggle. You will have nothing and no-one."
"That's why I'm asking you, begging you to come with me!" Sirius exclaimed, fighting to keep his voice hushed enough that no sound would travel through the old house.
Regulus' eyes fluttered closed and he sighed heavily, wriggling off the bed so he could lie down, resting his head on some of Sirius' discarded clothes.
"You are a strange one Sirius Black," Regulus said finally after a few long seconds of silence. The house groaned around them, water rushing through old pipes a long way away, the skittering of the house elves feet as they silently raced around the house coupled with the faint pops of their apparition. Sirius remained silent.
"Do you remember that family gathering when we were younger? Before the mess with Cousin Andromeda happened, before Hogwarts, before all this?" Regulus said finally, raising his hands up above his face to twist the Gryffindor tie more firmly around his fingers.
"The park," Sirius said flatly. How could he forget that?
"The park," Regulus repeated, nodding slightly, "That's when I saw what our parents said was the truth, and you turned away from that for your own version."
Sirius sighed, flopping backwards less gracefully than Regulus had, groaning as his head landed solidly on a pair of unpacked shoes.
"That man wasn't well Regulus. You can't base all Muggles off him," Sirius tried, already knowing the outcome of this argument.
"While you saw the good side of Muggles, their games, their joy and laughter, how good they could be," Regulus said, ignoring Sirius as if he had never spoken, talking over him with practiced ease, barely a glimmer of emotion in his voice other than fake pleasantness, "I saw a man attack another, attack several people, unprovoked and unwarranted. I saw him brandishing a knife and hurting people. I saw them bleed and break and cry and beg."
"Wizards can do the same thing."
"We have traditions, which you break. We have rules, which you break. We are more efficient and effective. If that man had had access to magic, it would have been catastrophic."
Regulus raised himself up on an elbow and stared at Sirius, dark eyes pinning him in place, a butterfly laid out for inspection.
"Our parents are telling the truth. Muggles are dangerous and are beneath us. That is what matters. That is the only truth I need."
"They are wrong," Sirius hissed, moving so he was kneeling over Regulus, staring down at his brother as he glared back, "Their truth is not the only one that matters."
"That truth will keep us safe! And you want to run off to James Potter and break the traditions that have kept us alive and safe for generations?" Regulus raised himself up slightly, malice lacing his every word, "I won't be a part of that, no matter how much you beg."
"You have no heart Reggie," Sirius ground out, moving away jerkily and resuming his packing, feeling his nails dig into every piece of clothing he picked up.
"I care for myself and I care for Kreacher. I used to care for you," Regulus said, relaxing almost imperceptibly now that Sirius was no longer towering over him, "And that's all I need."
"No romance in your life?" Sirius teased, unable to resist throwing in a few final moments of brotherly affection before they were forever separated by Regulus' determined grip on the wrong system of beliefs.
"I've seen what being around your boyfriend does to you," Regulus scoffed, idly kicking a bare foot in Sirius' general direction, "My brain is perfectly good in my head and not leaking out of my ears."
"So the family line will die with us," Sirius concluded, balling up a shirt to chuck it Regulus who let out a startled laugh despite himself.
"Looks like it. Such a shame we're both a bit broken," Regulus mused, tossing the shirt up in the air and catching with an ease that showed he was the right choice for Seeker.
"The eldest who is an unrepentant blood traitor Gryffindor and in love with a half blood male werewolf...," Sirius started.
"And the younger who is not in love with anyone and never will be and so dooms the male family line to die out after hundreds of years of careful family planning," Regulus finished with a quiet laugh, "And isn't that just the strangest truth of all?"
Sirius threw the last item into the trunk and closed the lid, latches snapping together with ease. He stared up at the room in which he had lived for the last fifteen, almost sixteen years. He knew every inch of this room from the squeaking floorboards, to the chest of drawers that never quite shut right regardless of how many charms had been applied to it. The floor was cold through his jeans and he shuffled around one more time to see Regulus. His brother had drawn his knees up to his chest and was looking down at Sirius kneeling on the floor, his face carefully blank.
"I'm telling the truth Reggie. I wish you could see that."
Regulus shrugged.
"You might be. But at this moment, for this decision, that is the truth I know is correct."
"Come with me?" Sirius tried once more, head tilting to the side as he stared up at Regulus.
"I hate seeing you beg Sirius. It's unnatural almost. And you're much better at it when you're a dog."
He let out a very undignified snort of laughter at Sirius' face.
"You can't hide things from me Sirius. I am your brother after all, and you have a terrible poker face."
"You haven't-"
"I haven't told anyone. And I won't tell anyone. I may not like James Potter but at least he's not boring."
They both slowly stood then, both Black brothers in the same room alone for what may be the last time.
"I will miss my room I think," Sirius admitted, glancing around the red and gold room one more time to commit it to memory.
"If you see it again, something has gone horribly wrong," Regulus grinned.
"Or you become head of the house and restore me back to my former glory."
"We'll see."
Sirius snapped his fingers twice, the noise startlingly loud in the silence that descended on the pair. The trunk shrunk in response and he scooped it up and stashed it in his jacket pocket.
"I'll see you later Reggie. Love you."
"See you. Love you too."
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The rain beat down relentlessly as the black dog nosed open the cemetery gates, rusted iron giving up the fight with a loud screech that echoed loudly in the still night. Magic shimmered in the air, complex charms to drive away those unworthy or those disowned but they had no effect on the dog who easily slipped his way through the rows of graves to the mausoleum. There he changed, a man in mismatched clothing where the dog had been. The heavy door easily swung open at his touch and he slipped inside, eager to hide from potential prying eyes. Names seemed to scream down at him from brass plaques: Licorus, Hestia, Elladora, Belvina, Walburga- there. Regulus Black II.
Sirius had had everything once. He had friend turned family who loved him, a boyfriend he would die for, a godson he would move heaven and earth for, a brother who believed in the wrong truth but at least he was still there. And now? His chosen family was dead or a traitor; his godson kept away from him, trapped in a family that didn't care if he lived or died; his boyfriend still loved him (How? How? After everything Sirius had put him through?); and his brother was dead somewhere somehow by the orders of an evil megalomaniac without even a body to show for it and yet Sirius survived.
"Should've come with me when I begged you Reggie. Should've made you listen, should've tried harder."
Should've, should've, should've. The words seemed to echo in his head, past mistakes amplified. And Sirius was going to have to live with this. Live with his regrets and past mistakes and the never-ending guilt for the rest of his life. And that was the truth of it.