The Fire in His Soul

"You're not supposed to be here."

The words echo across the room like dream whispers; the tiny, fleeting impressions of what could have been, what should have been. Grey eyes, intense and smoky on one side, hard and anguished on the other. Their haughty brows are matched for pride and their conviction perfectly paired. He is fourteen and cold, heart beating fast, waiting and hoping. His brother, sixteen; impassioned and hot-headed, raring to dare the world. Or perhaps only their world. Youth is not necessarily less wise, he reminds himself. His older brother is not right. He is wrong, and he must understand!

He knows he shouldn't have come. Mother will punish him terribly, but he cannot allow his brother to leave in exile without being given the chance for redemption. If only he'd see, then they could go back into the drawing room, and Mother would not sneer and rage and they would all be happy together again-

But he is fourteen and he has seen this end coming for a long time, even as early as his brother's first year of school. That was the pivotal point and nothing beyond it could ever be what he'd dreamed. So he consoles himself with offering his brother a last chance to accept his ancestry and what he should know is right. Because they are right; Mother knows these things. She had shown him so, but if only his brother had listened, everything would have been fine!

He doesn't know how to say it. He doesn't know how to undo years of conflict and disagreement.

"Sirius, I - "

He can't do it, he can't say it. "I wish you wouldn't," he whispers at last.

His brother laughs harshly, his grey eyes glowing with the smoke from the fire in his soul.

"No, Regs," he breathes, face alight with joyous determination. "If I stayed, you wouldn't be my brother any more."

He is frightened; he doesn't understand. Maybe he can change Sirius' mind, even now.

"Please, Sirius, please, just stay, we can work it out. I know you can't see it, but we can work it out."

"No, Regs," he says again. "We never could, and we never will. As long as you stay here, as long as you listen to them and believe them, we never will. At least this way, I know you trust me to be me." He is standing tall, back straighter than Regs has ever seen it, the hastily packed bag already cocked at his shoulder. The Floo is within arm's reach.

"Sirius! Wait! I don't believe them!" For a moment, while he pauses to take a breath he can see the hope bloom on his brother's face. "I don't have to, because I know they're right! Please, won't you just listen? I can - "

But a shuttered look has fallen on Sirius' face; something blank has come between their eyes, so similar. For a moment he fears Sirius will leave instantly, but the soft look Sirius knows only for his little brother brings a bitter smile to his face and he reaches an arm around to pull Regs close.

"Don't ever stop trying, little prince," he whispers to Regs. "Don't just listen, think! The world has many more colours than you've ever seen, if you'd only look beyond the scope of what you've been told." He pulls away and reaches for the mantle. Regs opens his mouth one last time, but knows somewhere inside that nothing can be said now without turning Sirius away forever. And he lets him go.

He is empty and cold and shivering. Mother mustn't know. She mustn't know he spoke to Sirius one last time when she'd forbidden it expressly, specifically. No one was to ever associate with him again. He thinks he can hold out until after supper, when the elves come out with Father's cigar and whisky, and maybe something a little stronger than tea for Mother. He will be allowed to leave for his room then, for solitude and tears when he can't keep them at bay any longer. Until then: he hauls his cool and haughty Black family trademark expression into place. It settles heavily over the aristocratic features. Maybe the slight twist to his lips will be taken as contempt instead of anguish, the wrinkled brow for disgust instead of regret. He can do no more.

Chin angled upwards, he strides to the drawing room, preparing to put on the show of horror of the scandal for his parents and aunt and uncle and cousins. And he is ready but for one thing. He's forgotten the tapestry.

For one horrible, horrible moment the mask falls as he stands in the doorway and he is openly shocked before he yanks it back into place. Of course, he thinks, the blood traitor son - no, heir - of the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black can never be allowed to remain in pride of place in the family tree. So he watches as Mother, enraged, jabs her wand at the cloth until the hex has obliterated every stitch of her traitorous son's existence. Then she turns to him and he almost wishes she would open her arms to him, but Mother was never very affectionate and she is more likely to duel now, than to embrace. She is speaking to him, of honour and justice and righteousness and he listens and agrees because she is right, of course. But he only wishes that somehow Sirius had seen the truth because the real truth hurts too much. But he shoulders it and lets his eyes alight at the thought of the glorious truth and magic and purity. There is satisfaction on his mother's face.

All evening he sits with his mother, the good son, and agrees with her every word. And the aching loss he feels for his brother, for the stupid faces he would pull in private to Regs while their parents ate, and the amusing stories of the pranks of his dorm mates, as horrifying and unrefined as they are; these residual feelings he takes and binds away until supper is over and the alcohol emerges. He takes his leave and retreats to isolation. But the tears he has saved for this very moment do not come, and all he can think about are the tiny wisps of smoke rising from the smoldering tapestry as all traces of his brother are removed from his life. He will be a good son and heir; he will not cause his mother any more grief and he will learn the truth. But the smoke trickles through his brain and tickles his conscience until Sirius' eyes burn beneath his lids every time he closes his own.

Regulus opens his eyes and vows to do what his brother could not.