chapter one: regressus
The ballerina kept waving as the heavy velvet curtain fell for the final time, an enormous bouquet in her arms and yet more flowers strewn at the floor around her feet. Clementine, on her feet still clapping with the majority of the audience, turned to her companion with shining eyes and flushed cheeks.
"What did you think, then?" he asked, grinning.
"Marvellous," she breathed. "I refuse to ever sit up in that box again. You can see everything from down here! Every muscle, every bead of sweat; you can hear them breathe. I never realised ballet was so athletic!"
"I told you you'd enjoy it more down here in the stalls."
Clementine finally stopped her applause as the house lights came up, and she stood on her tiptoes to kiss Remus's cheek. "Thank you. This was truly an unforgettable night."
"You are more than welcome, love. But let's get on home now; I'll make us some hot chocolate when we get in. If Sirius is out we can sneak some of his whisky in."
She clung to his arm as they navigated their way out of the theatre, weaving through groups of excitable chattering muggles all heading towards the same exit as they were. They joined the crowd spilling out of the warm lamplit foyer and onto the busy London street: neon signs advertising all-you-can-eat buffets (Sirius's restaurant of choice, to Clementine's distaste), souvenir shops and yet more theatres; bright red buses and black taxis and cars in all colours revving their engines and honking their horns; more chatter from pedestrians rushing by, and shrieks from half-drunk patrons tumbling out of pubs and bars.
It was raining, too. Pouring. Cats and dogs, the muggles called it, though what resemblance rain held to cats or dogs Clementine had no idea. Perhaps it looked different to them. The uneven pavement was covered in puddles and as she looked around Clementine noticed many of their fellow theatre-goers huddling together beneath umbrellas or holding their coats over their heads as they debated whether to splash out on a taxi or make a run for the nearest tube station. At least they wouldn't have that problem.
"Here, get yourself under this," Remus said in his soft lilting voice, pressing the handle of an opened umbrella into her hands.
"What about you?" she asked, moving closer and holding the umbrella up higher so it might cover him as well. It didn't work all that well, seeing as he was considerably taller than her and the rain appeared to be falling sideways as if they were in Scotland or something.
Remus chuckled and ducked out from beneath the umbrella, moving her hand back down to make sure it protected her as much as possible from the heavy rain. "Don't worry about me, you're much more precious."
"Don't call me that, I hate it," she complained.
Remus chucked again. "But you are, dear. Carina would hex me to the high heavens if I let you catch so much as a cold. Come on, now, there's an alley just around this corner we can use to apparate from."
He took her hand as they hurried along the street, avoiding puddles and splashes from the traffic wherever they could. The alley wasn't far away, and was thankfully deserted when they reached it. Remus pulled Clementine into a space between two heaving industrial bins and beneath a small striped awning that offered a little protection from the rain, as she tucked the umbrella away again.
"Ready?" he asked. She nodded and wrapped her hands around his arm again. They turned together and the alleyway disappeared, reforming a moment later as a far more familiar street on the other side of London. Home.
The smart black-painted door creaked open of its own accord as they jogged up the stone steps, and closed itself behind them again. They stepped into a gloomy hallway, lit by candlelight. Clementine shrieked as Remus shook the raindrops from his sandy-brown hair, and she swatted at his arm.
"You are a pest, Remus Lupin!"
He laughed at her, but conjured a soft towel to dry his hair properly. She deposited their umbrella in its stand by the front door — a much more tasteful one than the hideous troll's leg that had been there previously, honestly the Blacks were just too macabre for their own good at times — and shrugged off her raincoat. It was only when Remus reminded her again of the hot chocolate he'd promised and she turned to descend into the basement kitchen that she noticed Sirius loitering halfway down the hallway.
"Oh, hello darling! We weren't sure if you'd be in tonight!" she said with delight, darting along the corridor to greet him with a kiss on the cheek. "Are you alright? You look dreadfully pale."
"Clemmie," he said, his voice and his jaw unusually tight with emotion. "There's someone here."
"Excuse me?" she said, non-plussed.
"Who?" asked Remus, wand drawn and arm wrapped protectively around Clementine's shoulders, pushing himself in front of her.
Sirius stepped to the side, out of the doorway of the ground floor sitting room. What had once been the Blacks' formal receiving-room had since become the 'comfy room', as the children liked to call it; all squishy sofas and soft cushions and even a television that Carina could happily spend all day sat in front of if they let her. And out of the shadows of that room, and into the wedge of light that the open door let in, stepped a man.
Not a man. A ghost.
Clementine gasped and stumbled backwards as Remus gripped her upper arm, his wand still raised. It couldn't be. He was dead. But he wasn't, he was there, flesh and bone and all. She was trembling, she realised, and his hands were shaking too though he was clasping them tightly in front of him. She raised her eyes to meet his, ocean blue meeting stone grey. Tears prickled. He took a step towards her. She felt as though she might burst into a thousand speckles of stardust and return to the heavens from whence she came if her body shook any more.
"What is the meaning of this?" demanded Remus, his Welsh accent always coming out stronger when he was angry.
"He's back," Sirius said simply. Stupidly.
He couldn't be back. He was dead. He'd been dead for almost thirteen years.
"How could you?" Clementine whispered, though to which Black brother she was speaking it was impossible to tell. She drew a deep shuddering breath before untangling herself from Remus's arm and she fled that dark, oppressive hallway. She needed air, she needed to breathe, she needed to get the hell away from whatever was in that room. Three voices called after her as she stumbled down the steps of 12, Grimmauld Place and out into the damp and gloomy night. Footsteps followed her but she turned and apparated before they could reach her.
Regulus took one last look around the small cottage that had been his home for the past decade and wondered, yet again, if he was doing the right thing in returning home. He could stay here in this tiny Italian village where nobody knew his real name and nobody had ever seen the terrible dark stain on his forearm. Where nobody knew the price he had paid for his freedom.
But she was in danger, again. He had failed her. Again.
He turned to the worn table beneath the window and picked up the scrap of parchment that lay there, the only thing left in the room. The rumours are true it read. Four simple words that had sent his world spinning into freefall once more. The Dark Lord was not dead. He was barely living, so far, but he was not dead. It was horrific to believe, but believe it he must: Voldemort had made more than one horcrux.
Regulus fingered the outline of the twisted and broken locket in his breast pocket and set the scrap of parchment aflame.
He didn't know why he had kept the locket. As a trophy, perhaps. A reminder of his duty and the sacrifice he had made, the life he had left behind. The love he had left behind. He pulled it out of his pocket by its chain and regarded its blackened, charred appearance. He wondered, for perhaps the thousandth time, if the Dark Lord had known when a part of his soul had been destroyed. Whether he knew that it was he, Regulus, who had done it.
With a sigh, he replaced Slytherin's locket and picked up his suitcase. It contained only the essentials: some change of clothes, some gold, and, most importantly, a half-empty vial of basilisk venom and his hastily-continued research. Disguised, of course, as some rather boring treatises on Quidditch formations.
He apparated directly out of the cottage and to a spot in the hillside, pausing a moment or two before disappearing and emerging again on the coast. He continued this method of staggered apparition, leaving a trail of magic behind, but hoping it would be enough to throw any would-be followers off the scent. He imagined himself to be the beacon fires in Aeschylus's Agamemnon, lighting up a trail across thousands of miles to herald the return of the warrior-King. Of course, King Agamemnon ended up slaughtered by his own wife once he reached home. Regulus deserved the same fate; he could only hope Clementine would be more forgiving than Clytaemnestra.
It was dusk by the time he reached London. Grimmauld Place looked much the same as it ever had — cleaner, if anything, than he remembered. There were no lamps lit in the windows of his childhood home, but something about it felt off. The front door looked freshly painted. There were window boxes filled with plants and they were blooming. His mother had never kept plants. Had she taken up gardening in her old age? He supposed she must do something to occupy her time. But where was she?
Regulus disillusioned himself before approaching the steps to 12, Grimmauld Place. The smart black door opened automatically to allow him entry and he stepped inside, as silently as he could manage. It was different inside, too. The troll's foot was gone for a start. And he realised, as he peered up the gloomy hallway, Elladora's decapitated house-elves were gone too. Though that wasn't a great loss.
He crept along the corridor and cast a silent homenum revelio. Shit. Someone was in the receiving room. He paused and weighed up his options: leave immediately, and return tomorrow when the house would hopefully be empty; creep upstairs and hope his journals were still in his room; creep downstairs and hope Kreacher was still amenable to helping him; approach the unknown human and hope they were… well, he couldn't think of anyone that wouldn't want to kill him on sight. Even his mother would.
With a soft sigh, Regulus headed towards the staircase. He wouldn't make much progress without his journals, and time was of the essence. Hopefully Clementine would have had the foresight to keep them safe in his writing-desk, in case they were ever needed again. In case he was ever needed again.
He hadn't even made it to the second stair when he felt the point of a wand digging into the back of his neck. He groaned inwardly at his idiocy, and stiffened at the sound of a gruff voice.
"Drop your wand," the voice said. "Now."
Regulus complied, his wand clattering with an echo on the staircase and rolling to a halt somewhere behind him.
"Reveal yourself," the voice commanded. "And turn around. Slowly."
Regulus removed the disillusionment charm and turned to face his adversary, hands in the air as a sign of his compliance. How could this have gone so wrong so quickly?
"Reg?"
Regulus looked up, and couldn't have been more surprised to see Merlin himself stood in the hallway of his childhood home.
"Sirius?"
"You're… alive?"
"You're… home?"
The two brothers eyed each other suspiciously but before Regulus could react Sirius's wand was pointing at him again, this time directly at his chest.
"What did I give you for your ninth birthday?"
"What?"
"Answer me," Sirius growled.
"A real frog disguised as a chocolate one. It was hideous, you oaf. I was sick for a week."
Sirius slowly lowered his wand but still looked mightily conflicted. "Get in there," he ordered, pointing with his wand to the door that had been left ajar. Regulus entered what had once been his mother's formal receiving room and was now… well, not.
"You've redecorated," he said lightly, and took a seat on a rather plump couch.
"We made it more of a home than a mausoleum, yes," Sirius replied, and sat himself on the couch opposite.
"What do you mean, we?"
"Remus and Clementine are living here too."
Regulus's heart stopped. Surely not. Here. With him? "Clementine? My Clementine?"
"I think you gave up any right to call her your Clementine in 1979."
"What the hell is she doing here with you?"
Sirius put up a hand to hush him as the front door opened and closed once more. Regulus heard shrieks of laughter and then his blood ran cold as he heard her voice. Her voice. The first time he had heard her voice in twelve long years and it was teasing Remus bloody Lupin. He stood and made to move back into the hallway but Sirius pushed him back, shaking his head. Regulus watched his older brother stand in the doorway, watched as the love of his life called his brother darling and kissed his cheek. He hadn't realised how cruel life could be until this very moment.
Scrap that. This moment.
The werewolf was holding her arm, holding her back, as if he, Regulus, was the one more likely to harm her. His Clementine. His good, sweet, angelic Clementine couldn't even bring herself to look at him without shaking and oh god, she was going to be sick and he deserved this he deserved worse than this but truly he would prefer it if she would shout at him and curse him and hex him and bloody anything but turn and flee.
"Clementine!" he shouted after her, brushing Sirius's arm aside as he chased after her but he was too late, she was gone. Disapparated right in front of him.
"Where is she?" he demanded, turning to face his brother and the werewolf. "Where has my wife gone?"
"I'll go after her," the werewolf said in that irritatingly calm voice of his, and patted Sirius on the arm. "You get him under control."
"I am under control!" Regulus yelled. "Where is she?"
