Disclaimer: The list is long, so let's leave it thus— I do not own anything you recognize; that is JK Rowling's.
Author's Notes: Hullo all, and welcome to Part III. Wow. For those of you who don't know, this is third in the Double Trouble series; 1993 and 1994 have already been written and posted, and they explain what breeches in canon have already taken place and what, exactly, Regulus is doing here. For those of you who do, welcome back; I hope this installment is just as much fun as the last two, both for you and for me! Cheers! --- Loki
Once concealed by the spells that his father had used to make Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place invisible to all Muggles and any wizard who didn't know where it was, Sirius Black transformed from dog to human and ignored the quiet groan of his brother as Regulus Black and Remus Lupin followed him onto the front steps. Instead, he eyed the front door with a bloody-minded suspicion. It wouldn't do much good to try to blow it down with a spell— his dad knew what he was doing when he first cast the protections, and the spells shouldn't have to be renewed— and it was impossible to unlock without a key. Without much expectation, he tried the doorknob. It was locked. "Damn," he said without much feeling.
"Well?" Remus asked quietly. "How do we get in?"
"Er. . . ." Sirius glanced sidelong at his brother, who was glaring back at Sirius over his spectacles. "Well, Reggie, you're the littlest— would you care to climb through the window?"
"Not particularly."
Sirius sighed. "Well, I know dad had every spell he knew on the door, but I wouldn't let him put more'n the locking spells on my bedroom window so I could let the owls from James and Remus in. If we're gonna get in, someone'll have to climb through that. You're the littlest."
Regulus shot him the Black family grin— the one that suggested that the bearer was a few logs short of a roaring fire— and replied, "there are two reasons that I'm not going to climb through that window. The first is that you're more athletic than me, and you're no bigger around the shoulders than you were at fifteen." After the moment it took for Sirius to cross his arms over his chest and scowl, he added, "Besides, unless Dad changed the locks, which I wouldn't put past him, I still have a key."
Sirius shook his head, the scowl fading a little. "Leave it to you, Reggie. . . ."
Regulus shrugged and fumbled in his pocket for a moment before pulling out an antique-looking key that bore the same vaguely gothic design as the door he was going to try to open with it. "I know you left your key to the house behind when you ran away— you never intended to come back, after all. I on the other hand, always wanted a back door in if I needed it."
Sirius shrugged. "If it doesn't work, you're still the one going through the window," he grumbled.
Regulus inserted the lock into the key and turned it. After a moment there was a click, and he twisted the handle and pushed the door open before looking back at his brother and lifting an eyebrow. "You were saying?" he asked quietly.
"Hey, I never said it wouldn't work," his brother answered.
"Good. Now get out of the open. I thought you agreed not to transform in it in the first place, anyway." Regulus gently shoved his brother towards the door— no easy task for him; both were skinny but Sirius was about a foot taller.
Sirius looked back once he'd gotten to the doorway. "That was out of the open, Reg."
Remus sighed. "Sirius, just get in. Regulus has a point."
He shrugged and complied, the other two on his heels.
Just entering the house stirred up enough dust to send all three of them into a coughing fit. Sirius was the first to recover and looked around speculatively— at the troll's foot umbrella holder, the ugly and increasingly threadbare rug, and the glowering family photographs on the wall. He noticed with some satisfaction that he was not in a single one, and the only two of Regulus looked distinctly nervous. "Well," he announced. "I guess Kreacher's dead."
Remus shut the door a little harder then necessary, sending a little plaster down from the frame. "How did this place get worse than the Shrieking Shack?" he demanded, brushing the plaster and dust out of his graying brown hair.
"Well, we'd been cleaning the Shrieking Shack up a bit," Regulus pointed out sensibly, pulling his jacket off. Under it, the t-shirt he was wearing did nothing to hide the brand of the Dark Mark on his forearm, although he had to stick out nearly as much with the jacket on— it was inhumanly hot outside. "And the occasional student probably broke in on a dare. If Kreacher died right after Mum did, on the other hand, no one's disturbed this place in ten years."
"Do you remember where he kept his den?" Sirius asked.
"Under the boiler, I believe," Regulus answered, shrugging.
"Reckon that's where we'll find what's left of him? That's the first thing I want cleared out of this house, after all," Sirius announced, starting in the general direction of the kitchen. "And then everything on the walls, and then everything on the floor. And then everything I've no doubt our dear mother hid under the floorboards in case the authorities ever got presumptuous enough to raid the place."
"Fine, whatever," Regulus answered, clearly not really listening. "I'm headed upstairs to prop open a few windows. The place needs an airing."
Remus glanced between Sirius, whose mood was bad and clearly not going to improve, and Regulus, who looked a little annoyed but otherwise had the same guardedly friendly look he always seemed to be wearing. "I'll go help you, Regulus," he announced. "And then we can look for a broom."
"Dunno if we'll find one," Sirius answered, following the other two up the stairs.
Regulus glanced back, and his eyebrows soared over the wire rims of his spectacles. "I thought you were hunting for Kreacher's body under the boiler."
Sirius grimaced. "I don't like being back here," he said quietly. "I'm not going down into the kitchen alone."
Remus and Regulus glanced at each other. Sirius wasn't sure whether to be angry with himself or not, since they were the only two people he'd admit that to. He settled for being annoyed, and passed the both of them as he continued up the stairs. "C'mon— are we airing this place out or not?" he demanded.
Neither of them got a chance to respond. A female shriek that froze all three of them thundered down from the top of the stairs. "What the hell are you doing here again?"
"Mum?" Sirius asked quietly. "Did you come back as a ghost?" Then he added under his breath, "I am not staying here if Mum's back, oh no way in hell am I going to."
Behind his he could practically feel Remus tensing up behind him. As a half-blood, he'd always been too sensible to go farther into Black territory than the entryway, and only then in a heavy rain. Bella or Sirius's mother had always been in the hall making sure of that. He was probably already uncomfortable but not going to say so, and certainly the last thing he would want to do was witness this reunion.
Regulus, on the other hand, tapped Sirius on the shoulder after a few moments of their mother's screams. "We're never going to find out if you keep blocking the staircase," he announced.
Sirius stepped out of the way and waved a hand, beckoning him on. He wasn't going any farther until she'd calmed down. If she calmed down. Most incarnations of their mother wouldn't be willing to put up with him, or him with her.
Regulus simply raised an eyebrow at him, shrugged, and started up the steps again. He was met at the top by an abrupt stop in the screaming. After a moment of silence, just as deafening as the screams by contrast, Walburga Black's voice said quietly, "Regulus?"
"Yes, mum."
"But . . . you're not a ghost. Or an Inferi. You should be dead."
"Common misconception, mum," Regulus answered briskly.
Sirius's lips twitched a little at the reply. It was quickly becoming a catchphrase of Reggie's— Remus, Snape, Molly Weasley, and just yesterday Mundungus Fletcher had all received it in some form, and the question of "Aren't you dead?" was unlikely to cease anytime soon.
"Now, if you wouldn't mind not swearing at my brother?" Regulus continued. "Unless you actually changed the will, which I doubt Dad bothered with, what with the spells he'd have to do it, it's Sirius's house, after all."
This prompted the renewal of her screaming. Regulus groaned and wrenched at something— Sirius could hear the thumping of heavy, dusty cloth beating against itself. "Sirius! Lupin!" he growled. "Help me! She's a portrait and there's a curtain! Out of sight, out of mind for them!"
Sirius hesitated, not quite ready to incur the blistering rant he was sure to get if she actually saw him, and Remus sighed, glowered at him for half a second, and went up the stairs himself. There was further yanking and a few curses before the curtain slid across and the shouting grew muffled for the rest of the sentence. Then it stopped entirely.
Again, the silence seemed loud by contrast. Then, as Sirius started up the steps once again, Remus said conversationally, "Did the rings actually rust to the pole?"
"Something like that," Regulus answered. "You know what? Forget the broom. We'll open the house up and find Kreacher's mortal remains, because if that drape's been closed that long he's nothing but bones and maggots. Mum didn't exactly like this portrait."
Sirius arrived in time to see Remus shudder. Regulus was leaning against a dusty black velvet drape and cleaning his glasses— the dust closing it seemed to have stirred up had coated the lenses. Remus had been examining the rings, but he'd turned to give Regulus a funny look instead.
"Dead maggots," Sirius added, mostly to see Remus shoot him a venomous look at the thought. "That goes down right after we get Kreacher buried."
"We can try," Regulus answered quietly. "She isn't in the gilded frame— something that big and framed in solid silver is going to be heavy. I won't guarantee three people can manage it."
Sirius glowered at the curtain. "Point. But as soon as we can. . . ." He faded off ominously.
There was a yelp of pure rage and something came flying out of a doorway and barreling down the hall. It narrowly missed Sirius, and when it doubled back, Regulus reached out and seized it around the waist, bringing the yelping creature up to his chest and, after a yelp of his own, pinning its arms to its side.
"What— do we have a ghoul in here or something?" Sirius asked.
"Nope. Kreacher."
"What?" Sirius demanded.
A wrinkled face looked up at him, framed by two enormous ears sprouting copious amounts if white hair. Kreacher went noticeably paler for a second before opening his mouth— which was missing several teeth— and shouting the same sorts of things his late mistress had been shouting.
Sirius had endured a lot of those words from his mother in the flesh— if he hadn't exactly been afraid of her, she'd made him nervous enough that sneaking away as quickly as possible had usually seemed the best course of action, and every time he had confronted her seemed to end in physical violence. But the house elf had never made him nervous. He sighed. "Just . . . just shut up, Kreacher."
Kreacher's mouth continued to open and close, but no sound came out. After a moment or so he stopped trying and simply glowered venomously at his master.
"This afternoon seems to be a juxtaposition of shouting and silence," Remus remarked mildly.
"Yeah . . . how did that happen?" Sirius asked absently, running his fingers through his shoulder-length hair and staring at Kreacher.
Regulus put Kreacher down. "Dad never changed his will, then. You're the eldest male heir, Sirius— therefore, you're his master. He might not like it, but he has to listen."
"Oh." Sirius couldn't think of anything else to say.
Kreacher could clearly think of many things, but since he was under orders to shut up, he merely threw himself to the ground and pounded it with his fists.
"You can stop that, too," Sirius added, glancing nervously at the curtain.
Kreacher sat up and continued to glare.
"What have you been doing for the past ten years?" Sirius demanded of the house elf. After a moment of sullen silence, he added, "You're allowed to talk. Just not to yell."
"Kreacher has been doing what Mistress tells him to," Kreacher supplied promptly. Then, in what he clearly thought was under his breath, he added, "His proper mistress, not like the blood traitor that is come back now that Kreacher's mistress is dead. He's not a proper master at all, no, Kreacher knows this much—"
"What, nothing?" Sirius interrupted.
Kreacher shut up long enough to glower.
"Well, she's not speaking to you from the grave, is she?" Sirius added.
"I think he means the portrait," Regulus supplied. He was looking between Kreacher and Remus with the slightly embarrassed look of someone out in public with an eccentric relative and fiddling with his glasses.
"Oh, well. . . ."
Kreacher began muttering again, along the same lines as he'd begun. Sirius grimaced and looked helplessly at his brother.
"Well, it's not yelling," Regulus pointed out. He kneeled down beside the house elf. "Look, Kreacher. I know you've been alone for a long time and everything . . . but we can hear you."
"Kreacher doesn't care. Master knows what a blood traitor he is, yes he should, and if not it is Kreacher's duty to tell him . . . yes it is."
Regulus stood back up and shrugged at his brother, equally helpless.
"Well," Remus announced quietly. "I think this clears up any problems concerning bones and maggots—"
"Knowing Mum, it does not," Sirius muttered. "They'll just be better hidden."
"—but I believe the reason we came upstairs was to crack the windows. Perhaps we should do so and then find a broom?" he asked, as clearly as embarrassed to be witnessing this drama as Regulus was to have him around while it unfolded.
"Excellent idea, Lupin," Regulus said quickly.
"Yeah," Sirius muttered. "Just, Kreacher? Try to stay out of my way, will you?"