The Intricacies of Time

"Someone, somewhere, seeks to right a wrong that has been done to them. They take the greatest care to change as little as possible, but still they cannot restore everything to as it once was. How could it, when the wrong that which is righted now cuts through a series of other wrongs and of other rights? The intricacies of time are that all is connected in past, present, and future, and to change one is to change all." – excerpt from Oberon Yule's "A Series on the Connective Nature of Past, Present, and Future"

Chapter 1

Regulus Black died on an absolutely miserable day in November.

The day had dawned dreary and grey, with an early morning fog rolling along the street outside of 12 Grimmauld Place that soon turned to rain. Regulus had woken alone, had risen from bed alone, had padded downstairs on his last pass of the familiar old stairwell alone. Breakfast at the old kitchen table had been a morbid affair, as it had been since April when Father had died, and even more so since July when Mother stopped making any effort to come down at the same time as Regulus in the mornings. Kreacher was the very picture of misery, but then again so was Regulus. Both of them had been sporting these new looks all summer so nothing was out of the ordinary.

Regulus's initial plan had been to leave as soon as possible and, subsequently, seal his fate as soon as possible. Kreacher, forever in tune with his (treacherous, wavering, cowardly) feelings, took his time to clear the plates and wash them up. The old house elf fussed and dawdled over Regulus's cloak. He wrung his wrinkled hands together as Regulus made final adjustments to the two carefully crafted letters that would be his only legacy. He fell into wide-eyed and remorseful silence when Regulus exhausted all possible methods of procrastination, and wound his fingers through Regulus's own when the boy held out his hand.

If Regulus pretended hard enough, he could have said that the shake in his hands was all due to Kreacher, but Regulus was done lying.

The trip to the seaside cave had been every bit as horrible as the stilted morning ritual. Side-along Apparition had never agreed well with Regulus, even as a child. Now an adult, wracked with nerves and burdened with forbidden knowledge, he entertained the very real possibility of simply passing out on the rocky outcrops. Only the crush of his wand and that cursed pendent in his hand keep him upright.

The rest happened in a blur. The slit of his wand against his palm, the grit of the rocks against the cut as he offered up his blood as token of passage. What would Mother say, he wondered, dimly, as the entire thing creaked and groaned, eagerly sucking in his offering. What would Mother have said about him so easily letting the blood of the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black drip into the palm of a madman? Surely his parents hadn't preserved the purity of his blood for it to be used like this.

Kreacher crouched at his feet as they went across the lake in the dingy little rowboat. The water rippled all around them in silent promise. Even drawing in breath felt too loud in the oppressive silence, and so Regulus tried his best not to breathe.

"Remember what I told you, Kreacher," he said when they alighted on the curiously illuminated island in the middle and he made the most ungraceful scramble to the basin at its heart. "Sirius is long gone. Father is dead. I am the master now and my word shall override all of Mother's." When he unfurled his hand to pass the replicate locket to the most unhappy house-elf, he found that the piece of jewelry had cut a sharp imprint into his palm. With a harsh swallow, he curls his fingers over it again and strode forward.

The first drop slid down his throat and it's his first taste of liquefied misery. He might have started babbling by the time he swallowed the third cupful; might have started begging like he hadn't since he was eight after the next one. His iron resolve was crumbling, and at some point he had ended up on his knees, his head cradled by Kreacher's spindly hands as cup after cup was poured into his screaming mouth and forced down his spasming throat. His blood may have been the purest in all of Great Britain, but not even that could have saved him from the agony as his head thrashed back onto the rocky ground and he saw stars. He wand dislodged itself from his pocket and clattered off somewhere. No one made any move to retrieve it.

"It is done, it is done!" the elf cried out after that last cup and he had leapt up to switch the lockets. "It is done, Master," Kreacher sobbed, "and Kreacher is leaving."

Regulus swallowed past the bone-dry desert crawling up his throat. He blinked away the tears in his eyes. Forced his body up onto his elbows. "Go," he croaked, "Go and tell no one." The words had scarcely been forced out from between his clenched teeth before there was a resounding crack, and he let his head drop back onto the ground as his ears rung in the echo of the house-elf's departure. He was tired. He was miserable. He was dying of thirst, in addition to actually dying, so he might as well—he really ought to—

The first sip was a welcome relief, powerful enough to have brought a manic grin to his face even as the first of the Inferis burst out of the water. Here he was, Regulus Black, pure and soft as his brother always said but much more foolhardy than any of them ever could have imagined. Here he was, eighteen years old, filled to the brim with poison and armed with only his teeth. "Couldn't take me before this, yeah?" he yelled as the first icy hand clamped down on his wrist. "Well now I'm ready for you!"

He might have laughed then. He might have had just enough time to let out a harsh bark of a laugh that was like Sirius's, back when they were seven and his older brother had left him behind in their Grandfather's haunted shrubbery to fend for himself. He didn't know. By then he was too busy screaming. More hands than he could ever hope to count were clawing at him, and he gulps down the blessedly cold water between gurgled shouts as he sinks lower.

He wondered if Sirius would still call him soft. He wondered if Sirius would come to his funeral. He wondered if Mother would even hold a funeral for him—she seemed so tired and run-down lately and Regulus would never want her to jeopardize her health over something like his own funeral. Maybe it would be better if they didn't hold one. There wouldn't be a body, anyway.

A hand closed around his throat, followed by a second, and then a third. Auburn-colored hair flickered across his wavering vision, followed by dark eyes and a worried frown. Almost hysterically, he thinks about charms that once caused flower petals to rain down like snow and kisses stolen in the quiet sunny corner. Sirius might scoff at his death. Mother might not even make a sound as they lowered an empty casket into the ground. But by Merlin, he hoped that Aria would cry for him.

Regulus Black died on an absolutely miserable day in November. He died with poison in his veins in place of blood, and water in his lungs in place of air. He died with hands on his throat, crushing like vices on his muscles even as more hands drew him down, down, down into the murky depths of the lake. Three days later, his name would be splashed across the pages of the Daily Prophet, and both his mother and his brother would rage—for different reasons, for the same reasons—but then that would be it. Regulus Arcturus Black would fade away, and everyone, sans a house-elf no one would even think to ask, would be none the wiser about how the golden boy of the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black perished.

That was the way it should have been, and so that was the way it was.

But then, in early November of 1995, Regulus Black stumbles back into existence on a side street just off Grimmauld Place. He is thirty-four years old, with a worn wand of aspen tucked at his side, wearing a jumper that's just shy of too thin for the weather. His arm aches almost constantly, and his throat still feels the press of phantom hands, but he is irrevocably and undeniably alive. Someone, somewhere, caught in their own troubles, had reset their own time, and Regulus (curiously, puzzlingly) had been caught along with it.

Perhaps, Regulus thinks, he'll get to carve his mark out in history after all.