Brothers Grimm: Prologue/Chapter 1 (abandoned)
A/N: This was initially intended to be an ongoing project where Regulus was captured by the Ministry, Snape planted memories in Rookwood's brain of Rookwood killing Regulus in exchange for Dumbledore proclaiming Snape's innocence, and after Voldemort's failure to kill Harry Snape is the only one to continue the torture (on Dumbledore's orders, in an attempt to find out about the Horcruxes) because they are the only two to know that Voldemort will return. Later, Regulus would escape and join his brother, who would together get revenge on all of the old Death Eaters still around. I can't put more into this, so the prologue/first chapter is all you'll get from me.
Prologue: Tell Me
A flash and a sizzle of sparks. "Ahh! Fuck!"
"Once more, and maybe this time you'll answer truthfully. Tell me: why did the Dark Lord require a house elf?"
Regulus grunted, breathing heavily, before dry heaving, pulling hard against the restraints that bound him to the chair. He looked up at his torturer, cloaked in shadow, through matted, stringy hair, and muttered, "You'll have to do better than that."
He was rewarded with a backhand across the face, throwing his head back and spitting out a trail of blood as the gaoler stepped slowly around to stand behind Regulus, gripping the back of the chair tightly. Regulus bucked, bringing the front legs of the chair off the ground, as gloved hands reached over his shoulders - one gripping his throat, and the other taking hold of his forefinger...
He twitched spasmodically as the hand closed over his neck, squeezing the breath from him, choking the life out. Regulus hammered his feet on the floor, making frantic animal noises as his windpipe was increasingly crushed. Throwing his head back was no use, and lowering it only made the pain worse. He tried to scream, but no sound came out, and suddenly a torrent of heat tore through his captor's fingers, ripping what felt like a hole of pain through his tender flesh. Wizards' hands.
The fingers released suddenly, and Regulus took the opportunity for several ragged, gasping breaths before letting loose a gut-wrenching scream, jerking against the ropes that bound him to his prison and slamming the heels of his hands against the arms of the chair. He caught his breath as he realized the shadowy figure standing there watching him still had a grasp on his fingers. Regulus whimpered, and tried to curl his painfully exposed digits back under his palms. The torturer gave an irritated sigh.
"Must I really try harder, you utter fool? Are you going to make me break your body before your spirit. To think I once agreed with you... Now what is the Dark Lord hiding!"
Regulus gave a relieved gasp as his fingers were thrown back at him, recoiling in such a way as to almost throw himself and the chair over onto the hard stone floor behind him. He heard the man whirl about and begin to pace angrily back and forth, back and forth across the cell behind the damaged prisoner. He had only a respite of a couple of lengths before the hooded monster was back beside him, grabbing his fingers, forcing them apart.
"I've been doing this for years, and I've had nothing from you, nothing! I've had enough of it, now you will answer this or pay the consequences! What have you done in service of the Dark Lord, Regulus," *snap* "Arcturus," *snap* "Black!" *snap*
Regulus howled, in the grip of inconceivable pain as the bones in his shattered hand retracted in on themselves and sliced through his flesh and muscle. Tears streaming down his face, he screamed out his agony to the ceiling of his cold stone prison, drawing in breaths and screeching them back out again until his voice gave out and he slumped in the chair, sobbing, unable to look up and meet his captor's eyes.
"Snape," he moaned, "Snape, what have you," he gulped, "What have we done, no, I won't do it anymore, I swear, he's gone, gone, I won't help you, I won't help him, I can't tell you anything or he'll come back, and I, and I," he took a deep breath, "I don't regret it. If what I did was enough to make sure that Voldemort will never return to power, I'm satisfied. Torture me all you want, Snape, I'll never help you or your master return to power."
He listened to the footsteps carry themselves to the door of his prison, and stop just outside the opening.
"You have my word," came the dry, sardonic response, "that is the last thing I would wish."
The door slammed shut, and Regulus Black was left alone with his pain and his silence.
Chapter 1: A Severe Disappointment
Grinding his teeth together to keep from letting out another howl of frustration, Severus Snape stalked down the corridors of Hogwarts, robes billowing out behind him as he clenched his wand with one hand and his fist with another. Sirius Black had just escaped - again - Snape had missed out on the Order of Merlin, Second Class, and Dumbledore was twinkling at him as if absolutely nothing was wrong! It was enough to drive a man to hysterics - and italics.
Scowling ferociously, Snape paced angrily, stepping loudly past empty classrooms and closed doors in his journey toward the dungeons. He pointed his wand at all the doors in succession, causing them to open with loud bangs against the cold stone walls and interrupting more than a few trysts along the way. "Another ten points from Hufflepuff, Fawcett! And ten points from Ravenclaw, Stebbins!" "Fifteen points from Gryffindor, Johnson! Fifteen from Hufflepuff, Diggory!" The points mounted with his temper, and he was in a towering rage by the time he reached his destination.
He threw a pinch of Floo powder into his office fire, and stepped through in a flash of green flame.
- o - o - o -
"Luftwood?" Snape called, stepping down the cellar stairs cautiously. "Are you here?"
Promptly he heard a scuffling down a corridor, and the scruffy, greasy gaoler scurried into view. "Yes, m'lord - merely making my rounds, I was, nothing unusual - my regular practice this time o' the night, it is."
Severus wryly noted the bottle in the cellar keepers grasp and the faint smell of alcohol permeating the air. "Ah, sampling the wares, were we? I really don't think there was anything suspicious in the ale, Luftwood."
The barkeep turned turnkey gulped nervously, and eyed the bottle before thinking better of it. "Well, I was thinking if'n you were wanting to work on the prisoner again tonight, the ale might help him to, ahem, loosen up a bit, if'n you see what I was thinking."
"An excellent idea, Luftwood." Snape snagged the bottle himself and uncorked it as he stepped out down the corridor, draining what was left before tossing it aside. "Fetch me another, I feel I'll have need of some Muggle beer before the night's out. Important to be properly lubricated for an interrogation, you know."
He smirked inwardly as he heard the shuffling footsteps move off back down the corridor it had come from. He wouldn't be hearing from that moron again soon. Too fond of his precious ale. But more importantly, he could avoid showing him the new precautions...
He stopped at the seventh empty cell down the dim-lit stone corridor, tapping the lock open with his wand and stepping into the tiny room, locking the clasp behind him. He waited, until from out of a corner of the darkness sprawled a growling figure.
"Heel, Cerberus!" Snape snarled, but the miniature three-headed rottweiler paid no heed, preferring instead to flop cutely over Snape's boot and let its tongues hang out. "Fine, scurvy cur," Snape growled, tossing the puppy aside with his toe. It yelped as it hit the floor, then crawled back into the shadows whimperingly. Snape strode forth through the solid wall and into the true interior of the other Black's cell.
The prisoner jerked up as he entered, a door visible only from the inside clanging shut behind the man he associated with the majority of his night terrors. "Come to try to break me again, Severus? Or just up for a chat about old times?"
"Neither," Snape stated coldly. "I'm here about your brother."
That got an eyebrow raise. "Last I heard, he was in Azkaban. Though that's information a decade old... Couldn't leave me a paper every now and then, could you? I miss the crossword."
"He's gone, as you might well know!" Snape roared, striding angrily back and forth across the dungeon. "Gone, and we have no idea how! So you're going to tell me," his voice lowered dangerously and he seized Regulus' wrists, "Exactly how he might have escaped."
Regulus looked him in the eye for a moment before beginning to laugh, then going on to do so hysterically. Snape stepped back to wipe a fleck of spittle from his cheek, frowning distastefully down at the madman in the chair before him. When the laughter finally petered out, Regulus wiped his eyes as best he could, awkwardly, on his shoulders. He giggled weakly once more.
"You know, Severus, I really had no idea my brother was going to escape, or how the hell he did it... But now that I know exactly how discomfited that's made you, and how close you must have come to catching him again, to ask me about it..."
His smile became deranged, and he dropped his voice, prompting Snape to step in closer to hear properly.
"He's coming for you..." Regulus whispered. "And when I get out of here, I will too."
He spat, catching Snape square on the nose. It dripped down off the hooked appendage as Snape glared down at him. "You'll pay for that," he snarled. "Maybe when we chain your brother up again we can get you two a cell together, with a couple of dementors to share with and no Patronuses to warm your nights."
He backhanded Regulus across the face and strode out through the back of the cell, vanishing through the wall. Regulus heard the metal door slam behind the thick stone brick and relaxed at last, grinning through a mouth of blood.
He wouldn't really go looking for Snape if he ever got out of this mess. Not even Voldemort, the last master he had sworn himself against. He knew that Dumbledore was the cause for both of those mortal enemies turning against him. But having a brother free... His grin spread wider, head lolling against the head of the chair as he stared up at the ceiling... It gave a man ideas.
A/N: This would be a wonderful place to leave and begin recounting Harry finding out who R.A.B. was and mirroring Sirius to ask him about his brother. Then to cut back and forth between those two trying to find out what had become of Regulus and Regulus engineering his escape, and eventually the two brothers meeting up. Subsequently, Regulus would try to find out about what's happened with the Horcruxes, while Sirius would take his revenge on the Death Eaters, until the two brothers trust each other enough to tell each other about their respective missions.
A/N 2: But that would take way too much effort that I'm really trying to put into other projects right now, and though I would love to see that actually written it's absolutely not worth my meager skills and meager time. If anyone wants to steal this idea for their own writing, I would be fucking ecstatic to read it.