This is my first time writing Regulus, this pairing, second POV and a soulmate AU. Lots of first with other words.
You sometimes ask yourself what's more important - blood or your soulmate? Of course, you know the answer that your parents will give you; blood. There are whispered tales of purebloods that have been disowned for choosing their soulmate over keeping their line pure. You don't want to end up like one of them. Once, you would have been free to choose your soulmate foremost, but not anymore. Not since Sirius wrote a letter home informing you that he had been sorted into Gryffindor. Not since Sirius found his soulmate in a male halfblood. Sometimes, late at night when you're alone with your thoughts, you think that you might hate Sirius. You haven't even started Hogwarts yet, and he has already fixed your future for you. Those thoughts never last very long.
It's September 1st and Sirius have dragged you to meet his friends. There's a smile on your lips and your chest feels tight because even if your relationship was rocky during the summer, Sirius is now actively including you in his life. Unlike your parents, you still love your brother with all your heart.
"Regulus." Sirius says and pushes you forward. You stumble, and a dark-skinned boy with black messy hair, round glasses and a crooked grin catches you in his arms. Warmth spreads through your body at the touch and your heart starts to beat faster in your chest. You look up at him with a shy smile on your lips. He's your soulmate.
"I'm James. James Potter." he introduce himself and help you stand upright. You can't get a greeting out because of the butterflies in your stomach, but he does not seem to care. You hope Sirius have talked about you. For one glorious moment you imagine a future together with James - because surely your parents would approve more of a male as long as his blood is pure? - but then it's over and your heart is left in pieces.
"This is Evans," James introduces, and a girl with red fiery hair steps up next to him. James bends forward ever so slightly to whisper mischievously in your ear. "My soulmate."
You take an involuntary step back, right into Sirius' chest. You can feel your brother's worried eyes on you, but your heart is gaining speed and you fear it will come up through your throat and make you choke. With wide eyes, you turn around and run. Your soulmate already has someone else. You hear Sirius calling after you, but you ignore him. Instead, you step into the first empty compartment that you see and lock the door behind you. You ignore the elder student that was hiding in the compartment's shadows as you try to calm down your beating heart.
It's first hours later that you can properly breathe again, and you decide to distance yourself from your soulmate even if it means distancing yourself from your brother because hopefully that will lessen the pain.
Your first year at Hogwarts is over both too slowly and too quickly. As expected, as you don't know if you wanted; you were sorted into Slytherin. It helped in your decision to distance yourself, since you had no reason to spend time with the second years, but it made the responsibility weigh even heavier on your shoulders. You had already been the perfect son, but this is the first time that the role feels constricting. Every time your eyes meets Sirius', you feel sick, and every time your eyes meets James', you feel your heart breaking all over again. You regret that you fled on the train, but you would do it again if you could.
The elder student whose compartment you foolishly hid in turned out to be a second year Slytherin, and you avoid him more religiously than you avoid your brother and soulmate. You want nothing to do with Severus Snape, who is best friends with James' soulmate, and bullied by Sirius and James. You want even less to do with him when you overhear how he believe that Evans' is his soulmate and that James confounded her, because you find yourself wishing that it would be the truth. You feel horrible afterwards for it.
Sirius tries to talk to you during the summer between your first year and your second. You let yourself indulge in old times because you can't help yourself, but then he will mention James and you put up even more of a distance than before. Your brother is clever and he notices the pattern, but he lets you be. You wish you had the courage to talk to him about it - perhaps ask if James ever mentioned anything about you. You wish Sirius would ask you what's wrong. It's both a blessing and a curse when Sirius starts ignoring you as well.
The 1st of September comes once more, and you haven't spoken to your brother in over a week. You get on the train first to avoid catching a glimpse of James, and find an empty compartment. There's no one hiding in the shadows this time. You lock the door.
You recognize some of the last names during the sorting. One of them gets stuck in your head. Crouch. You focus on it because you know that you're related - his grandmother is Charis Crouch née Black. The relation is distant, and you only know of it because you studied the Black tapestry while avoiding Sirius this summer. While you're lost in thoughts, Crouch gets sorted into Hufflepuff. You decide to not dwell on someone that you're unlikely to meet, and turn to make polite conversation with your classmates instead.
Halfway through dinner, you look up because you feel someone's eyes on you. James Potter is looking at you from across the Great Hall. You lose your appetite and look down again. You never notice that someone else was looking at you as well.
Professor Slughorn takes you aside after the first Potions lesson of the year to invite you to the Slug Club. You smile politely and accept his invitation for a dinner party that Saturday. Your parents will be proud of you for making connections, or at least you hope so. You haven't spoken much to them this summer, as between your rocky relationship with Sirius and your feelings towards James, you've felt suffocated. Hogwarts is supposed to lessen your burden, and the Slug Club is a step in the wrong direction. You still go, because at the end of the day you have a responsibility to step into Sirius' abandoned shoes as the Black heir.
You regret the decision not yet ten minutes into the dinner party when you find yourself seated next to Evans. Snape glares at you from the other side of the table, as if you had planned to sit beside her. You hadn't. In fact, you sat down first. You don't want to make Snape an enemy - you've seen him defend himself against your brother and your soulmate - so you try to pretend that the chair next to you is empty during the dinner.
It works until it's time for dessert and you feel Evans nudging your side with her elbow. You look over at her with a raised eyebrow and an indifferent mask repressing your real emotions. You don't care that she's a mudblood, you only care that she has James when you do not.
"Black," she starts, her voice drowning in the chatter from the other Slug Club members. "You should talk to your brother. He misses you."
"Evans," you start, because you feel the need to warn her from involving herself in this mess that is suffocating you every minute of every hour of every day. She doesn't let you continue.
"Talk to Potter too." she asks, a pained grimace on her face. Your heart feels lighter when you realise that she doesn't call him James, and you give a weak nod. She smiles at you after that and straightens in her seat, while you in contrast hunch further down because Snape's black eyes are glaring a hole in your forehead and you don't know how to explain it to your classmates if he was to hex you.
You're on your way to Quidditch tryouts a couple of weeks after professor Slughorn's dinner party when you walk into a first year student, quite literally. Both of you fall to the ground, and in the midst of scraping your hands and knees you feel warmth spread through your body and your heart speeds up and the only thing you can think is not again. You stare down into brown eyes before you're scrambling up and running in the opposite direction of which you were headed. Quidditch can wait until third year, you think. The student calls after you, but you pretend to not hear.
As you're running inside the castle and through corridors because you can't make yourself stop even if the voices in your head is screaming at you that it's unfitting of a Slytherin and that you're a disgrace for the house of Black, and you're not sure that you can breathe, someone grabs your arm and force you to a stop. You want to scream until you realise that you're looking into Sirius' worried eyes and the scream dies in your throat. You let him take you down to the kitchens and get you a cup of cocoa from the house elves.
"What happened?" he asks and it's the first time you've spoken to your brother in a month, and you want to flee again but you can't.
"I ran into my soulmate." you answer into your cup of cocoa, and you hope that he doesn't hear you but you can see it on his face that he does.
"But," Sirius starts, and his voice sounds unsure. "I thought James was…?"
You shrug helplessly, happy that he trailed off because you don't think you would survive hearing the words spoken out loud.
"You have two." Sirius realise, and you shrug again. You're thankful for the cocoa because it has calmed you down, but you wish that this wouldn't be the situation in which you speak to your brother again.
"I'm sorry," Sirius finally sighs and gives you an awkward pat on the shoulder. You both give smiles that are more grimaces than anything at the action. Then he destroys the moment by continuing. "You should speak to James."
"Evans told me the same." you admit, your voice just slightly above a whisper. Sirius' eyes widen in shock but he doesn't comment. Instead, he gives you a decisive nod and that is that.
You wonder if some higher power has something personally against you when James comes up to you in the corridor the next day and asks if you can talk. You still agree and follow him into a nearby empty classroom, even as millions of possible scenarios are running through your head. None of them are particularly good.
"Look," he starts when the door is closed behind the two of you and you are standing while he's sitting upon a desk. "I'm sorry."
"For what?" you ask, but the words come out as strangled because they had to force themselves out through the lump in your throat.
"For not saying anything. I felt it too." James answer, and his nose scrunches up. It's adorable and heartbreaking and you wish that you could look away.
"That's how soulmates works." you say, out of the billion things that you wished that you could have said.
"Would you be okay to be friends?" he ask, and you read between the lines. He's not interested in boys, he's from a light family, he's the Potter heir and you're the Black heir and you both have responsibilities to carry on the family lines, he feel like he would betray Sirius… there's too many reasons, and they're all valid. You feel the same at some level, but you fell head first in love anyway.
"I think we both know that it wouldn't work." you answer, and the words echo eerily in the classroom. You wish that you could take them back but it's too late. James' nose scrunches up again.
"Yeah," he agrees. "We do."
You spend the next moment staring at each other, unspoken words passing between you until he jumps down from the desk and starts walking towards the door. He turns towards you when his hand is on the handle.
"Will you be okay?"
"I have another soulmate."
The words rush out of your mouth and you cringe inwardly at them, but James must understand because he gives you a nod and leaves. As you're standing in the empty classroom you start to resent the action of nodding. Nothing good comes from it.
Your second year is over before you know it, and you've survived more Slug Club meetings seated next to Evans with Snape glaring at you than could possibly be healthy. You haven't spoken to Sirius nor James again, but they've defended you from Snape's hexes a few times. You know that you should be upset at them for making you seem weak in the eyes of your fellow Slytherins, but it warms your heart too much for you to care.
Your second soulmate caught you in the library when you were studying for the end-of-year exams, and you now have a name to put to brown eyes. Bartemius Crouch Jr. You feel like you got slapped when you remember him from the sorting, and you wonder what your parents would think if you told them that your soulmate is a Hufflepuff. You don't know if the relation to Charis is enough for them to approve when Bartemius is a male from a light family. It's like another slap when you realise that they would approve more of him than they would of James, because in their eyes even Hufflepuff is better than Gryffindor.
The prejudice is tiring you out, and you feel like you could collapse. You are lucky that both your soulmates are pureblood, but what does it matter when they're both male? You're only twelve years old, yet you are burdened with the responsibility of having a heir of your own, which mean that you must marry a witch. For one moment you find yourself hating Sirius again, but then you remember the cocoa and hate yourself instead.
As the summer between your second year and your third come to an end, you realise that you haven't told your parents that you've met your soulmates. You think that it might be better this way. You decide to pretend that you don't have a soulmate if they decide to ask, but you don't think that they will. They've spent the summer gushing about your cousins - especially Narcissa who is betrothed to Lucius Malfoy. You wish that they would look at you and see you, not the Black heir. You wish that you didn't have to distance yourself from Sirius. You wish for a lot of things, but most of all, you wish that you could breathe.
September 1st comes as it does every year. You stay at Sirius' side for one awkward moment as you wish you had the courage to get your brother back, and then you flee. You step into a compartment only for someone else to step in after you. It takes you a moment before you recognise Bartemius. He has grown taller during the summer, and is now towering over you. You almost walk right out of the compartment but then you decide to sit down.
"Why did you run?" he asks, and you're momentarily caught off guard. You wonder why he waited to ask until now.
"Because," you answer, your voice faltering. "My first soulmate doesn't want me. Why would you?"
"I'm not them." he points out, and there's nothing more that needs to be said.
"No, you're not." you agree anyway. Bartemius gives you a long look before he leaves the compartment. You don't lock the door.
You sit down next to Evans during the first Slug Club meeting and continue to do so for the rest of the year. You don't know if it's because she's James' soulmate, or if you want to be more like Sirius, or because interacting with a mudblood without your parents' knowledge makes you feel both ashamed and proud. Perhaps it's a bit of everything.
"You can call me Lily." she offers halfway through the first term. You politely decline but you wish that you could. It's nice to have a friend.
You go to the tryouts for Quidditch and get the position as Seeker. Sirius smiles at you from the stands during your first match. You pretend that you don't see Bartemius in the Hufflepuff stands with a Slytherin flag.
Your third year is almost over and you have successfully avoided everyone except for Evans and your classmates. You feel Bartemius looking at you sometimes in the corridors and the Great Hall but you pretend that you don't notice. He's not James, and you don't know if that is supposed to be a reason to get to know him or a reason to continue to avoid him. It's been three years, and you're not really in love with James anymore, but your heart has yet to heal. What does it matter if Bartemius is also your soulmate if it's because of your soulmate that you feel this way? You feel that you understand why blood is chosen foremost.
The realisation that war is coming hits you like a reducto to the chest during the summer break before your fourth year. You've heard whispers in the common room, you've read the articles in the Daily Prophet, but it's first now when your cousin Bellatrix is shoving her marked forearm in your face that you finally realise that the war is real. You take a step backward and look at her incredulously. You're fourteen. What does she expect you to do?
Sirius drags you away from her before getting into a fight with your parents. The next thing you know, Sirius has moved home to James, and your mother has blasted his name off the Black tapestry. You feel more lost than ever.
Your fourth year have started. You're still in the Slug Club, still on the Quidditch team. You feel more lonely than ever. The whispers in the common room are louder. You know there is recruitment going on. You know some of the seventh years are marked already. You ignore it, and you ignore the looks that you get from the other purebloods.
Instead, you find yourself spending time with Bartemius. He's surprised at first, and the brilliant smile he gives you makes your heart ache. You wonder why you denied yourself happiness for so long.
"Barty," he says one afternoon as you're studying together in the library. "I want you to call me Barty."
"Okay." you promise and squeeze his hand.
"I'm not my father." he says quietly. You squeeze his hand again.
"I know, Barty." you answer. He smiles as if you just gave him the whole world on a plate of silver.
He kisses you as you're sitting by the Great Lake. It's the last day of school, the train is leaving from Hogsmeade station tomorrow morning. You run your fingers through his hair as you kiss him back. For one glorious moment you remember what it's like to breathe clearly, to not carry a burden on your shoulders. Then he withdraw and reality comes rushing back.
"Again?" you ask, because his kisses work better than oxygen. He smiles and leans back in. You relax as your thoughts quiet down and all you know is Barty, your soulmate.
You spend the summer between your fourth year and your fifth wishing that you could run away. You exchange letters with Barty, but you can't meet up because he's from a light family and you are not. You're not your brother, you're Regulus and that comes with a responsibility too heavy for you to carry on your own.
"Young master Regulus?" Kreacher asks after you've been locked inside your room for a week.
"Yes, Kreacher?" you ask and turn to him. Your heart clench at the thought that your house elf is more worried about you than your family are.
"You bes needing anything?" Kreacher asks. You don't, but you decide to request a cup of cocoa anyway. He looks so happy that you gave him something to do. You don't say thank you, but you smile at him and that has to be enough.
He gives you a cup of cocoa every night after that, without you asking for it. You don't have it in you to tell him to stop, and empty every single cup even if they turn cold.
The beginning of your fifth year find you crying into Barty's chest as you sit in a train compartment together. You cry because the world is on fire and you're choking on the ashes, because your brother didn't look towards you even once, because James is happy with Evans, because Bellatrix wants you to get marked next year. You don't say any of these things out loud as Barty holds you tight, but you think he understands anyway. He whispers into your hair about not being seen by his father and his mother overcompensating, about not being seen as his own person because he shares his father's name. He doesn't cry, but you cry for the both of you.
One more year of Slug Club meetings and Quidditch. You can't meet Barty as often anymore because it's your O.W.L year. You still sit next to Evans during professor Slughorn's dinner parties, and Snape glares at you more than ever. You have to defend yourself when Snape hexes you because no one else is there to do it, except for the one time that Barty sees and punches Snape in the face. You sit with Barty in the medical wing and kiss his bruised knuckles, and you tell him to not defend you again because what if your father hears about it, Barty?
Barty spends more time kissing away your worry lines than he spends kissing your lips. You bury your hands in his hair and wish that you could drown in his eyes. He ignores his own studies in favor of helping you prepare for your O. and you promise to make it up to him during the next Hogsmeade visit.
When the exams are over, you spend an evening in Barty's embrace, peppering his face with kisses. You make love for the first time, and you wish the rest of your life could be this way.
Your fifth year is over and Bellatrix is taking you to the Dark Lord to get marked. You don't believe in his cause as strongly as she does, but you're a Black and this is what is expected of you. Snape gets marked at the same time, and this is the first time he sends a friendly glance your way. You shiver and wish that you were back in Barty's embrace.
When you get home, Kreacher has a cup of cocoa ready for you. You swear that if you could have only two people in the whole world, it would be Kreacher and Barty. You don't need anyone else.
The rest of the summer is a blur. You're happy that you still have the trace on your wand and don't get sent on missions. You know that Snape does. You know some of your classmates does as well. You hope that the next summer never comes as you step onto the Hogwarts Express for the sixth time.
You find yourself in a compartment with other Death Eaters instead of with Barty, and you wonder if it's not for the best. He has a future and you do not. You have a death sentence hanging over your head and the only thing missing is the date. The weight on your shoulders is both heavier and lighter, because you're certain that you won't get old enough to be worried about having a heir. You decide once and for all to choose your soulmate over blood.
Evans no longer sits next to you during the Slug Club. You see her and James in the corridors sometimes and they look happy together. Your heart clench because you want that, but it has finally healed and you only envy their happiness, not that she has James and you do not. You have Barty and that is all that matters. He is your sun and you are his stars, and the rest of the world can fall apart around you.
You can't meet your brother's eyes when you next see him, and you feel his eyes linger at your marked forearm even if it's covered. You know that he doesn't pity you, but you hope that he doesn't hate you either. You don't hate him even if you sometimes wish that you could.
Barty, studies and Quidditch is everything you know until the year is suddenly over. You celebrated your birthday drowning in Barty's love and your tears, because you know what's waiting for you when you get back to London. War is waiting, and war is not kind.
You spend the summer proving yourself to the Dark Lord, and to yourself. Your letters to Barty are fewer and fewer, because you have nothing to tell him. You wish that you could tell him everything, but you don't trust his father to not read the letters.
There's only a week left before you're going back for your last year of Hogwarts when the Dark Lord asks to borrow Kreacher. You can't deny him, but you know that your house elf is unlikely to come back alive.
You get proven right when you call Kreacher back in the early hours of the morning and he's close to death. You nurse your house elf back to life and come to a decision. You will do what you can to stop the Dark Lord before the world go down in flames, not for your sake but for Barty's and for your brother's and perhaps for James' and Evans' sake too.
When you get back to Hogwarts, it's with the knowledge of Horcruxes weighing down your shoulders and a lump in your throat. Your hands are shaking all the time and you can't get them to stop. Barty takes your hands in his when he sees you and kisses your fingertips. You put on a mask of happiness even if you know that he can see through it, and pretend that everything is okay.
"I want to join you." he tells you as you sit next to each other in a locked compartment, and you wish he would take the words back but he doesn't.
"Why?" you ask, your voice no louder than a whisper. He kisses your brow.
"To protect you."
"During winter break." you say with a heavy sigh. You wish that he wouldn't, but you know that you can't stop him. You have never been able to. Barty is too much of a Hufflepuff for his own good.
Winter break comes far too quickly and you can't watch as Barty gets marked. You lay next to him in bed later and kiss his mark and his knuckles and his eyelids and his lips and you wish you could turn back time and stop the war from ever happening. You can't, so you have to try to save Barty instead. You don't tell him about Horcruxes, instead you kiss him and kiss him and kiss him until he only knows your love and not the pain from his mark.
The time for N.E.W.T's comes far too soon, and they're over even sooner. You don't know how you'll survive when Barty is at Hogwarts without you next year, if you live that long. Your hands are shaking worse now, and you lose your ability to breathe more often. Sometimes you wonder if the war is only in your head, because you dream of fire and ashes and of meeting your brother on the battlefield. You dream of Barty dying to protect you, and you wake up not knowing if he's alive.
Suddenly you're graduating and the train is leaving from Hogsmeade and you're crying into Barty's chest as he whispers words of reassurement into your hair. You wish you could tell him why you're crying, but you can't. You wonder if he doesn't know anyway.
Barty is away on a mission, and you know that you need to do this now. You got the location that you apparate to from Snape together with a picture to focus on. It's with shaking hands and a lump in your throat that you knock on the door.
Evans is the one that opens and she seems torn between inviting you in and calling for help. She settles on inviting you in, and you know that it's your shaking hands and red rimmed eyes that convinced her. James comes out behind her and he looks surprised to see you but he says nothing. The three of you sit down in their living room.
"I'm sorry," you begin. "For disturbing. For fighting against the light. For not being like my brother."
"Regulus," James interrupts you. "Stop. No one has ever asked you to be like Sirius. There's a reason that you're my soulmate and he's not."
You can't help but give a dry laugh at that.
"James is right." Evans says. You give her a grimace of a smile.
"I'm sorry," you offer again. "I just wanted to say goodbye. Say that I'm happy for the two of you." You stand up and start to walk towards the door.
"Are you happy?" James asks. "With your other soulmate?"
"I am." you answer, and the words have never sounded so true to your ears as they do now. You are happy with Barty, more so than you expect that you can ever have gotten with James. It just makes what you're planning to do all that more horrible.
"Goodbye." you say once more and then you leave.
There's a letter hidden in the pocket of your robes as you make love to Barty that night. You hold him close and whisper sweet nothings into his hair. You hope that he'll forgive you for what you're going to do. He's going back to Hogwarts tomorrow, so hopefully he won't do anything stupid when he finds out. You've written him a letter as well, and you have asked Kreacher to give it to him if you don't come back.
You stay awake that night, watching as Barty sleeps. You love him, and that's why you're doing this - that's what you tell yourself to get your chest to stop hurting. You love him, and that's why you want him to have a good future even if it's without you.
Kreacher takes you to the cave. You have a copy of Slytherin's locket with you, and there's a letter to the Dark Lord hidden inside of it. The reality that you won't survive comes clearer and clearer, because you refuse to use Kreacher as the Dark Lord did. This is your mission, and you're only going to risk your own life.
You order Kreacher to feed you the potion no matter what you say to him, and you order him to exchange the lockets. After that, your mind only knows two things - that you want to stop and that you need water.
"It's done, young master." Kreacher says an unknown amount of time later. You only know pain and thirst.
"Go home." you manage to get out, because you know that there's nothing that can save you. You see that he wants to protest, but he can't go against your order. When he's gone, you dive towards the inferi-infested water to drink. You know that you'll die, that your thirst is just a minor matter, but you try to do something about it anyway.
As the inferi latches onto you with cold clammy hands, you only have one thought, one thing that matter. The whole reason that you did this, the whole reason that you betrayed the Dark Lord.
Barty.
I hope you enjoyed it, I know that I did! Please review x