Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of the characters associated with the book series.
Summary: After Andromeda runs away, the Black Family are left distraught. Already troubled by Sirius's refusal to talk to him, Regulus is upset further as he is forced to choose between his two favourite cousins. Sequel to 'Not What You Think'.
AN: This story is mostly from the point of view of Regulus Black and tells of the events between when Andromeda and Sirius run away. If you haven't read my previous story, all you need to know is that Andromeda has already given birth to Nymphadora; Becky and Steph are Regulus's childhood friends, and that Narcissa (Cissy) is a lot younger than she should be. Regulus is secretly keeping in touch with Andromeda, but no one else in the family knows. This chapter may contain quite a lot of description. The other chapters will have more action: this one is just setting the scene.
Chapter One: The Wedding
I carefully held onto my cousin's baby, supporting her head with my other arm. She was absolutely tiny. She gazed back up at me: her eyes not dissimilar to mine, and her hair the same colour too (though it fluctuated between black, brown, blonde and pink, depending on who was next to her). She was metamorphagus, which meant that she could change her appearance at will, though she liked to look like me or Andromeda.
Nymphadora increased her hold on my finger and started pulling it. I didn't see what harm it would do so I let her. It wasn't until I felt something warm and wet that I realised where it had ended up. Luckily, she was still young enough to have not grown any teeth yet.
Today was the day of Andromeda's wedding, hence the reason that neither she nor Ted were currently able to look after their daughter. Since nobody else in my family had been able to come, they'd chosen me to be responsible (though Ted's parents looked a little annoyed about this).
As Nymphadora squirmed around in my arms, I thought about all that had happened in the past few weeks, including that frightening moment when Mother had held her wand up to the tapestry and blasted an enormous hole in it. Since then, Cissy had been crying on and off for hours, and, since everyone else was too busy to do anything about it, it had been left to me to comfort her.
I hadn't really done a very good job of it. I'd tried telling her what I thought: mainly that Andromeda was still the same caring older sister (or cousin in my case) that she always had been, and that marrying someone that was a muggleborn didn't really change anything. Being Cissy, she had let out a stream of horrible language, yelling at me about how disgusting it was to "marry a mudblood" and how much shame her sister had brought to the family. Then she had made me promise never to follow in Andromeda's footsteps. I'd promised her that I would never "get pregnant with the child of a muggleborn and then run away from everyone". Since I had no intention of ever getting pregnant, there was no way I could possibly ever break that promise.
For the majority of the summer, Sirius had hardly said a word to me. He'd spent most of it locked in his room. I wasn't sure if he was sulking because of what had happened with Andromeda, or because Father had had a go at him for lying about his friend Remus being pureblood. I'd tried to get Sirius to come to the wedding with me. Since I'd told Father I was going to my friend Becky's house, though, Sirius didn't really know what I was asking him and had slammed the door in my face.
I wished I'd tried harder with him. So far Nymphadora was a whole month old and Sirius still hadn't seen her yet! He didn't even know she was a metamorphagus! And Nymphadora hadn't met Sirius either: all she had to go on was what Andromeda had told her about him. To make up for it, I'd let her have Sirius II – the toy dog Sirius had given me for my second birthday. She seemed to like it, but it wasn't a very good representation of Sirius.
She had now stopped holding my finger and was reaching up to touch something behind me. I turned around and saw Andromeda and Ted walking down the aisle together. Andromeda was wearing a beautiful white wedding dress, much prettier than the one Bella had had. Behind her were two bridesmaids; each were wearing floor-length blue dresses.
I recognised them both as Andromeda's friends from Hogwarts. One of them was called Amelia. I'd been introduced to her once before and she'd seemed okay. The other was called Sophia and had a younger sister in Cissy's year called Hannah. Hannah was in Gryffindor and Cissy hated her, as did just about everyone in Slytherin. I'd never really talked to her so I didn't really know if I agreed with them or not.
The actual wedding ceremony wasn't really very interesting. There was a lot of talking and a lot of speeches.
After it was over, everyone headed to a different venue for a party.
It didn't take me long to spot my best friends Stephannie (Steph) and Becky. I handed Nymphadora to Ted's parents, who were standing nearby and giving me very odd stares, and ran over to greet them.
"Hi Reggie!" shouted Becky. As usual, she enveloped me in an extremely tight hug and clung to me like a limpet. "I'm so glad you came: I've hardly seen you all summer!" she said. I hugged her back and told her I'd seen her a lot more than I had seen my other friends. In fact, apart from Robert, she was the only friend Mother and Father actually let me talk to outside of Hogwarts. Since Steph was not only a Gryffindor but also a muggleborn, no one except for a select few people in my friendship group knew that we were even friends.
"How's your summer been?" Steph asked.
"Good, I suppose."
"Reg, if your summer was "good" then I'm a crumple-horned snorkack," said Becky.
"Well, we haven't had any visits from the Lestranges, and Father hasn't murdered Sirius yet," I told her. In my book, that counted as a pretty decent holiday. Bella and Rodolphus had gone on a 'holiday' of their own (after listening in on a couple of conversations I'd learnt that it was actually a mission for 'the Dark Lord'), and Rabastan had found a new source of entertainment (probably a muggle). With all three of them away from the house, I hadn't had an unforgiveable curse thrown at me for over a month - neither had Sirius. It was almost a new record.
"That sounds absolutely thrilling," said Steph, sarcastically.
"Have you even been on a broom this month?" asked Becky.
I nodded.
"Other that when you came to my house?"
"No." Sirius hadn't wanted to play. I wasn't sure why: I knew he liked Quidditch because he played it all the time at Hogwarts. He'd even played it with me when I'd used polyjuice potion to pretend to be James Potter. Sometimes I felt like life would be so much easier if I was James. Cissy had not wanted to play quidditch at all. Kreacher was not allowed to ride on a broomstick.
"Exactly. So unless you think playing chess with Kreacher is 'fun', I'd say you've had an absolutely lousy summer," said Becky.
"What do you want me to do about it?" I asked.
"Have some fun of course."
"How?"
"Umm, dance?" suggested Steph.
"Dance? I uh…"
I didn't have time to reply. Steph grabbed both of my arms and started dancing around to the party music. It wasn't really proper dancing so I gave in and showed her how to do it properly: the way my parents had shown Cissy and I how to do it. The music was much faster than the ballroom style music that Bella had had at her wedding, but that was okay. All we had to do was to dance faster and wilder.
"You're quite good at this," whispered Steph, after we'd been dancing quite a while. She was very good at dancing too.
"Mother made it her duty to teach us so that we didn't disgrace the family," I told her. "Sirius hated every minute of it."
"Bet you anything she'd hate it if she saw you now," she said.
"She'd probably burn me alive if she found out I was here at all," I said.
"Well let's just be glad she's not here, what with you dancing with a "Mudblood" and all."
"I hate that word."
"Me too," she said.
Half an hour later, we headed off to the side to get some food. On the way, we saw Steph's father, who was talking to a red-haired man that I'd never seen before. Her father grabbed hold of Stephannie so that they could talk.
"Arthur, this is my daughter Stephannie. Steph, this is Arthur Weasley," he said. I'd heard of the Weasley family. Mother had said I was to have nothing to do with them because the whole lot of them were blood traitors. I didn't really care what mother thought anymore: not now she'd burnt my cousin off the family tapestry.
Arthur held out his hand and Stephannie shook it. Then he held out his hand for me to shake, and looked expectantly at me.
"I'm Regulus Black," I said. "I'm not like Mother. I don't think you're…"
"Reg, shut up before you say something stupid," whispered Steph.
"Nice to meet you," he said before turning back to Stephannie. "Your father was just telling me all about eltrical sockets."
"Do you mean electrical?" I asked. He nodded. "Steph told me all about them. You plug muggle things like vacuum cleaners into them to make them work," I told him.
"What are vacuum cleaners?" asked Arthur.
"Oh, they're a muggle invention. They suck up dirt fluff. Muggles don't have cleaning spells you see..."
"Reg, come on! We're supposed to be getting food!" said Steph, pulling me away.
"Isn't that a bit rude? We were having a conversation."
"Well if you want to spend the entire night talking about vacuum cleaners…"
"Fine. I'll come, but we Purebloods don't know so much about muggle things. To us, electricity is as interesting as magic is to you."
Eventually we found the food. I picked up two plates and handed one to Steph. Then the two of us filled up our plates with the food: Steph took one of every kind of cake or biscuit, while I took some pasta, and salad, and one piece of cake. Her plate had considerably more food on than mine, to which her only response was to dump about six different varieties of chocolate cake on top of my food.
"You need to eat more," she told me.
"You're not my Mother," I told her. Actually, my mother didn't usually care how much I ate. Andromeda was the one who used to fuss and make sure I didn't starve.
"Whatever, but I'm making you eat those cakes."
They were, in fact, very nice. One of them tasted exactly like the chocolate cake Andromeda and Cissy had made me for my twelfth birthday. The only problem was that some of them had been dumped next to the pasta sauce, which didn't really go very well with the chocolate.
"Where do you think Becky has disappeared to?" asked Steph, looking around her. "What the hell? What's he doing here?"
I looked in the direction she was pointing in. There was a man, perhaps a little older than my Dad, standing next to a woman, who looked around the same age. Between them, stood Sirius's best friend, James Potter.
…..
AN: Sorry this took so long to write and update. I've been trying to think up a full back story for one of my subplots, and I needed to make sure what I wrote won't contradict what I write later. I also put this story down while I was at University so its taken a while to reacquaint myself with it. Thanks for reading whether you are new or an old reader.