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'Both Alike In Dignity'

Introduction

Looking back, I never should have done it.

And as I sit here, awaiting my fate as a betrayer, it is all I can think about.

I hadn't known about Sirius' death in the Ministry of Magic, not until Lucius Malfoy took it upon himself to tell me. Lucius had always like to see me in pain, and he knew that night when he revealed the death to me that it would be the most intense pain I've ever experienced.

And it was.

This was my life, my gift, and my curse. To know of his death was a prophecy in itself, and the production of that prophecy was what brought me here.

Through the flood of tears streaming form my eyes, through the growing pain in my throat as I screamed out Sirius' name over and over, I felt Lucius' evil smirk as I melted into his arms, clinging to him as those horribly beautiful grey eyes look lasciviously over my quivering form. He knows what the 'Dark Lord' is going to let him do to me before the most unforgivable of all the Unforgivable Curses is cast upon me, not that Lucius would even have to ask permission, considering our history.

The look he gives... it makes me shiver just to think, to remember, but I cannot stop crying. It makes me remember everything even more clearly. The two of them, Sirius and Lucius, would fight so incredibly brutally that I could never watch. Especially that one time- no magic, no wands. Just bare-knuckle brawling that would have gone to the death if Professor Dumbledore hadn't broken it up.

And I know that it is all my fault...

But I'm getting ahead of myself. That's not where it started; it started right before my sixth year, before the name of Voldemort had even reached my ears.

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There were only three days left before Sirius and I returned to Hogwarts.

"YOU CANNOT CONTROL WHAT OR WHO I SHAG! "

Father had pulled himself away from work to give Sirius his bi-annual lecture. Of course, I was inclined to listen.

"Sirius, would you calm down?" Father's voice was hostile, but calm, the way that it sounded whenever he and Sirius argued, "NO, I WON'T! YOU CAN'T CONTROL MY LIFE! I'LL SHAG WHOEVER I BLOODY WANT WHILE I'M AT SCHOOL, AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN-"

"Don't you dare!"

Father had slammed his fist down on the table. Things were about to get ugly, and I had to see this. I opened the door the smallest bit and looked through, Sirius and Father were standing, both giving each together the terrible death stare, that was so incredibly common in our family.

"Don't you dare say that there is there is nothing I can do, Sirius. Because you know, you know that there are a great many things I am able to do."

At this point, father's eyes became as if they were two pools of black chemical acid in the burning centre of Hell, and I felt a chill go up my spine, and then Father began to speak again, "And you also know that there are a great many ways I can do away with that poofter werewolf mate of yours."

Sirius, who had kept his composure up until now, seemed to have deteriorated under father's words, and he didn't stop at that, "Yes, I know that you two have had it on, and you hold some kind of personal connection to him, unlike your many female callers."

There was a certain disgust in father's voice at this last sentence, "But, nevertheless, I have connections, as you well know, and I could have those connections harm your friend in ways that he could never imagine."

The hatred in Sirius' eyes was so intense, it nearly surpassed our father's, "If you touch one hair one his head, " Sirius growled, "Then I will kill you with my bare hands. No magic, just death."

So that was it. My older brother, Sirius, who I had always looked up to, who was probably one of the most notorious playboys Hogwarts had ever seen- was gay. He was a bloody poofter. Unbelievable...

Father paused for a moment, seeming to take in what Sirius had just said, and then, as fast as lightning, a fiery blue flash came out of the end of Father's wand, which had just been sitting on his desk. Sirius was blown back against the wall, a loud thud resulting from the impact. Father waltzed over to Sirius, whispered something inaudibly, and punched Sirius right in the mouth- hard.

Maybe it was the shock of what I had just seen my father do (he had never taken a hand to either of us), or just the shock of finding out my older brother was gay, but the way Sirius looked against the firelight was nearly breathtaking. The way the shadows danced across his pained and angered face, the way the blood gushed out of his mouth, or just the way he looked overall, he was a work of art, something I would never be.

I rocked myself out of my euphoria and got up from the crouching position I was in, the conversation had ended, and I knew that this was the time to get to my room and pretend like I hadn't heard, and didn't know, a thing.

I snuck back to my room as quickly as I couldjust hearing the door of father's study as I turned the corner into the next hallway. Grimmauld Place was much larger than it looked from the outside, and the rooms were even larger. My room itself was at least half the size of the Slytherin Common Room, and Sirius' was bigger than mine. I hadn't even seen the inside of our parents' bedroom, but I wouldn't have been surprised if ti was half a dining hall.

I shut the door to my room and quickly sat in a chair and grabbed a book from the shelf and opened it to a random page, pretending that I was heavily involved in my reading, which was really just staring at the page and flitting my eyes back and forth. I heard Sirius' footsteps approaching, and quickly sent a fireball hurling into the fireplace so that it looked like I had been sitting in my room, reading innocently the entire time (it didn't exactly help, though, that the book was entitled Great Executions of the Middle Ages).

Sirius came plowing through the door and stalked into my bathroom, rummaging around for a bit in the mirror cabinet. I could only see this because of the mirror on the opposite side of the room that I had strategically placed in order to see into the bathroom whenever Sirius came in to get something. This was a common thing for Sirius to do, as he usually just came into my room and 'borrowed' my things without asking anyway.

After a few minutes of completely destroying the neatness of my bathroom and then fixing it again with a flick of his wand, Sirius came into the room and sat on my bed without a word. He had four large gashes on his face, which startled me. I hadn't seen that when father punched him, which I concluded to be the cause of the dim light in the room, that he didn't hit in him in the mouth, but on the side of the face with pointed knuckles.

Pointed knuckles were the self-explanatory and very popular 'discipline tools' used within the Black and Malfoy family during the eleventh century. The fad went out of style when the methods by which they used were found out by the Ministry (like they wouldn't have been able to guess that anyway), and therefore looked down upon as savage and cruel. They were made of a silver band that was slipped across the fingers, and on the rises where the knuckles were to go, there were four small but sharp studs that hurt terribly when they collided with any part of you own body, as you could understand. Unfortunately, just because the pointed knuckles were looked down upon, did not mean that the silver instruments were outlawed because of the strong influence of both families on the Ministry at that time. A few of the original pointed knuckles still existed after the Ministry's discovery, and their design was duplicated and sold. As for our family, I'm quite sure father still owned and kept fresh our ancient family set of pointed knuckles, complete with the Black crest on the underside.

Sirius held up a roll of bandages and whispered something, tapping the bandages with his wand. In a spiral motion, the white pieces of cloth swirled about and covered his face. I watched him as the bandages tightened around his face and then relaxed.

"What happened?" I asked, trying to be as coy as possible.

Sirius sighed and looked away, "One of father's 'talks'." He said, pointing to the bandage.

"Oh..." I said under my breath, my eyes glancing back to the book.

"Don't oh me, Regulus. I know you were listening."

I snapped the book shut and said in a jocularly sarcastic tone, "Mistrust? From my own brother?! I am shocked and disgusted that you would challenge my integrity." I smirked and Sirius laughed, running his hand through his hair and gazing into the fire. The light from the flames danced about his features in a hypnotising way that aroused something in me I did not recognise. He seemed to be aloof and uncaring for what had just happened, but the look in his dark blue eyes told me that he was thinking very hard. As I watched him, I saw something in Sirius I had not seen before. The bandages wrapped around his jaw gave him a distinct look of some sort of depraved person, which was somehow enticing. The fire, casting light back and forth across his face, playing some sort of ghastly trick on my eyes that made my own brother look... attractive. I must have been really zoning out, because he smacked me in the face in a playfully aggressive way and asked what the hell my problem was, "What?" I asked, tuning back in.

"I asked," he said, "What did you hear?"

There was a certain sense of panic in his voice, and I knew what it was about. He hadn't wanted me to find out about Lupin, and you can probably understand why. Just then, though, I could barely speak to him, his blue eyes were glowing with such an intensity that I could only be from the dread of the possibility that I knew his secret, so I decided to cut him a break. I stood and walked to the bed, sitting down next to him, and I said, "I only heard the part at the end when you were slammed against the wall."

His face eased and he looked at me, smiling, "Good," He said in a relieved tone,

and he lowered his shoulders down from their offensive state. His chest heaved in a small motion that was accentuated only by the firelight, and it was just too much- I quickly moved my hand to his face, to his warm, alabaster skin that made him reminiscent of a living statue, and ran my fingers through his hair. here was nothing I could do to stop myself. Sirius was too much for Lupin, Lupin couldn't handle him, only I could... These were all the thoughts running through my head as I leaned forward and brushed my lips against his, the fire inside of me burning right along with the one in hearth. I knew what I was doing, and though it seemed crazy, it felt so right... He put his hand on my shoulder and pushed me back, looking down, "Regulus," he whispered, "Don't..."

He blew air out his nose and bit his upper lip, then looked into my eyes and said, "Get to sleep, we're going to Diagon tomorrow."

With that, he walked out of the room and shut the door, leaving me in utter confusion of what the hell I had just done.

I awoke the next morning, not having a very clear idea of what I had attempted to do the night before. All I could really recall was myself trying to kiss Sirius (and almost succeeding), and them him walking out, I had such a bad mind in the mornings.

What am I talking about? I still have a bad mind in the mornings.

I walked downstairs and nearly tripped over Kreacher, who mumbled some nasty words and kept going. How I hated that foul-tempered house elf, but mother always insisted on keeping him around, though she never really told me why. I sauntered through the dining room and into the kitchen, where Sirius was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee in one hand, and one of those muggle cigarettes he had grown so fond of. It was funny, the fire inside me that I remembered from last night wasn't there when I saw him sitting at the table that morning, and I looked at him like any other younger brother would looked at his older brother. Though, unfortunately, he didn't look at me at all.

"Morning..." I said in attempt to catch his gaze, "Morning." He grunted, barely glancing in my direction. I sat down at the table, not ready to give up yet, "Look, about what happened last night-"

"Don't worry about it."

"But, Sirius, I-"

"Don't worry about it." He looked at me now, but not in the way I would have liked him to. He spoke with such a austere tone that could only have reminded me of father. Sirius sometimes looked so much like father it was scary, and this was one of these times. Though it was morning, it was still quite dark out, and the light above made him look all the more intimidating. He stared at me, his dark blue eyes bearing into me as they had bore into the fire the night before. In those eyes, I saw so much pain, something I had never experienced. My mother would never let me experience anything close to discomfort, and suddenly I became very jealous, not necessarily because of the pain he endured, but of Lupin. I had no real reason to be envious of him, but I suppose it was just my Black blood setting in. Nonetheless, I had no control over what I was about to say, "Look, it's not my fault that you and Lupin are flamers and that Dad put a stop to it! Maybe it's better that you're not off shagging some goddamn werewolf!"

That was the slicer.

I had known Lupin was a werewolf ever since Severus Snape told me during my first year, and I had kept quiet, knowing that Sirius would trust me if I said nothing. Following my outburst, everything happened so fast; the table I had been leaning on to support my screaming was suddenly gone from beneath my hands as I was shoved up against the wall. The clatter of Sirius' discarded chair against the tile floor echoed across the walls of the large room, but was soon blanked out in my mind as Sirius began to speak in a harsh and abrasive tone, "You're just like them. Dad and Mum, you are EXACTLY LIKE THEM," His eyes were intense, his voice hushed and terrifying, "Judging everything I do, everything I say... I'm fucking sick of it, Regulus!"

He was pressing me so hard against the wall that I thought he was going to push me through. I tried to shove him off, but he was bigger and stronger than I was, "Sirius, I..." I found it quite difficult to speak, which I concluded was Sirius pushing so hard against me that he was crushing my lungs, "What, Regulus? What do you all want from me?!"

"Sirius, I lo-"

My mother came crashing through the door and screeched at what she saw, "Boys! Stop fighting!" We both looked at her in shock and Sirius got off instinctively. He then looked at me, the anger not nearly gone from his eyes as he turned and walked pass our mother, who was clad in traveling robes. As soon as Sirius was out of earshot, she brushed the hair out of my eyes and said as if I was eight years old, "Did he hurt you, darling?" She cupped my face in her hand and I broke loose, incredibly annoyed, "I'm fine, Mum, Christ!"

I stormed out of the room, jealous and angry and annoyed all at the same time. It was no wonder I turned out the way I did, with my mother doting upon me all the time like that. She used to do the same to Sirius, but she became a bit standoffish towards him in a subtle way ever since he was placed in Gryffindoor. I assume father never told her about Lupin, or the things Sirius did with Lupin, or else she would have been a little more than standoffish towards my brother.

But I wondered, as I put on my own traveling robe, what I was going to say right before mother came in. Was I going to say that I loved Sirius? Well, of course I loved him. But, as disgusting as it may seem, I wasn't sure if it was only brotherly love I was feeling.

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When Sirius, Mum, and I arrived at the two Alleys (this is what people who shopped at both Knockturn and Diagon called them), Sirius vanished in about five seconds upon our arrival. Mother soon disappeared as well, but not before telling me where she was going to be if I ran into any trouble. This was the last thing I needed- to be known as the little Black boy that ran to his mummy every time he got into trouble. I told my mum that I would do so, though, just so she didn't start going crazy like she usually did.

Diagon Alley was lively and busy, as it always was this time of year. It was sort of an escape for me; being kept in that dreary house for nearly the whole of the summer holiday with no friends to be my refuge made it a big deal to actually be in public and around other people. When you're kept in a confined area for a long time, quite like the area I'm in right now, writing these words down, you get desperate for wizard and witch contact, and will take anything for just a moment of it... But we're not nearly that far in the story yet.

I tried to stay out of Knockturn Alley for as long as I could, as it was not a particularly pleasant place to be to begin with, also because I knew my mother was going to be there for at least an hour, and I really did not want to be around my mother right now, if you already haven't figured that out. Knockturn was not the way it is today, that is to say, it didn't have that much of a bad reputation. Witches and wizards could walk freely there in those days without becoming free game for the Ministry of Magic to spy on. Though it was (and always has been) quite dark and depressing and reeked of evil, it was quite acceptable to shop there for anything a person saw fit.

I walked around Diagon for a while, not really having any real destination. When I got bored of that, I made my way to Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions and got myself a new school robe, seeing as I had accidentally set mine on fire last year in Charms. After I was finished getting the robe fitted, I walked to Flourish & Blotts right across the street. Since I really had no friends to write to when I was at home, I immersed myself in books in hope of trying to live up to Sirius' level. I know what you're thinking right now; pathetic. Well, I would have to say that you are right, but I wasn't going to let the fact that I basically worshipped the ground Sirius walked on stop me from being as good as he was in school.

I walked out of Flourish & Blotts with an arm full of books and looked into the window of Gambol and Japes Wizarding Joke Shop to see none other than Sirius, James, Peter, and, to my twinge of envy, Lupin. In the old days, roughly around first to third year, Sirius would let me tag along with the rest the Marauders (this is what they used to call themselves, don't ask me why), but those days were long since past, and there was probably no chance of resurrecting those times today. But when I looked in on Sirius, he was laughing. Sirius never laughed when he was at home, and I could sort of understand why. Just like me, Sirius was barely allowed out of the house during summer holiday, and closeness that he and his friends shared probably just made it all the more difficult... especially the closeness shared between him and Lupin.

I walked away from Gambol and Japes before I was noticed, knowing that Sirius would have been royally pissed off if he caught me watching him and his friends. So, I walked down the dreaded Alley, thinking that maybe I'd go and check out Borgin and Burkes to see if they had anything that wasn't too creepy, and I was suddenly off of my feet and into a dark part of the Alley, my arms held up high against the wall.

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