I've been told in no uncertain terms that I am not to smoke anywhere under any circumstances in St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. This warning occurred when I first stepped in from the Muggle London street, shaking off the remnants of the mid-morning drizzle and ever-present smog, unlit cigarette dangling from my lips. I hadn't even got a chance to light it before it was Vanished right out of my mouth (much to my chagrin) by an irate and harried-looking mediwitch, who was apparently not too busy to stop and lecture me for ten minutes about why smoking was an evil competing with the Dark Lord himself. Of course, when she finished and I asked her where I could find the Spell Damage ward, she just humphed and told me to read the sign, before bustling off.

Subsequently, I've decided that I will be utilising every possible opportunity to smoke in St Mungo's.

Luckily, Spell Damage is not particularly hard to find: There is, in fact, an abundance of posters notifying one of its location, with helpful arrows pointing in the direction of the lift, though I am very reluctant to ride it alongside the slew of bottom-feeding mouth-breathers who seem to wander around the hospital with little purpose.

Locating Evan is slightly less easily accomplished. There are several rooms on the floor whose doors are flanked by Magical Law Enforcement officers, some looking attentive and worried, others "vigilant", and still others nothing more than terminally bored. I make the rounds, trying to casually peek into the rooms and ascertain the identity of the occupant, which is more difficult than it sounds. Many of the patients are obscured from view to disguise their disfiguring wounds, and some are wrapped head to foot in gauze like gruesome living mummies. I ignore the rooms outside of which the guards converse in low, concerned tones with Healers. These are obviously the rooms of Good Guys, injured by Evil in the line of duty, and the guards are there to keep people like me out. I wonder briefly which of these houses Alastor Moody, but upon closer consideration, determine that I care very little.

I finally find Evan's room after covering three-quarters of the floor. The door is closed, but the guard outside - one of the bored-looking ones, incidentally - is chatting with a tray-bearing Trainee Healer, and I overhear his name come up.

"...Doesn't have much time left, now."

"Well, Rosier will be no loss. He's better off dead, anyway."

"Still, he's so young," the Trainee Healer says, biting her lip. She is obviously young herself. She doesn't understand that age and impressionability have nothing to do with it. The phrase "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" has seemed terribly apt recently.

The guard smiles. He knows the real story.

The Trainee Healer enters the room, then, and the guard goes back to reading the Prophet. I don't fail to notice the cover story: AURORS VS DEATH EATERS: LATEST BATTLE SHOCKS SHOPPERS IN KNOCKTURN ALLEY.

"Battle" is hardly the word for it, I think. It's always a "battle" when the Aurors kill Death Eaters, and a "massacre" when the tables are turned, but it's not as though I'm going to write a letter to the editor. Instead, I turn and quickly conjure a ridiculous bouquet of daylilies. I feel it will make my visit seem more innocent. Flowers give me an excuse to be here.

With this in mind, I approach the door, trying to hide the fact that the guard puts me ill at ease indeed.

He looks up from his paper and eyes me with clinical disinterest. I feel absolutely ludicrous holding a bouquet of daylilies, but if the guard finds anything odd about it, he generously spares my dignity by keeping his thoughts to himself. He does make me hand them over for inspection, however, and spends the better part of five minutes checking them for god knows what. I don't know what he's expecting to find; if what I've heard is accurate, I would have to do what all of St Mungo's has failed to and save Evan from certain death in order to rescue him. Of course, maybe the concern is that I will try to silence him permanently before he starts naming names.

Finally, the guard finishes with the thoroughly innocent daylilies and says, "You understand I have to check you for dangerous objects on your person before I can let you in. And you'll have to leave your wand at the door."

I nod, and notice the Trainee Healer exit the room, looking wide-eyed and pale.

The guard then points his wand at me and starts rattling off various incantations to detect Dark and dangerous artefacts. I find myself curling my fingers into a fist to prevent a family heirloom ring from leaving my finger. It's an awkward few minutes I stand there with this strange tickling sensation running all over my body, but the detectors turn up nothing, and after I hand over my wand, the guard nods for me to go in and returns to reading his paper before I've even stepped over the threshold.

The room is stark and white and looks nothing so much as dead. I begin to think maybe the daylilies weren't such a stupid idea after all as I cross the cold linoleum floor. It could certainly use a spot of colour.

Evan doesn't seem to have noticed me. His eyes are open, if barely, and the dark circles under them indicate they have been for some time. They're moving, too, back and forth across the room, and watching them I feel the hair rise on the back of my neck.

"Hi, Evan."

I half-expect him to ignore me, or for his head to loll off to the side and stare at me, open-mouthed and white-eyed, like something out of a horror film, but he is startlingly lucid. "Hi, Reg," he says in a voice that sounds as though it hasn't been used in years. It reminds me of an out-of-tune piano. "You brought me flowers."

"Oh, these aren't for you. They're for that pretty Trainee Healer." I toss the bouquet at his feet and sit down on the chair at his beside.

"Isn't she charming, in a daft way? She's a Mudblood, and I've had the most fun making entirely inappropriate and ill-mannered passes at her," he says, his voice slowly reverting back to the one I'm familiar with and his expression blank in a very strained way that suggests to me he means to be smiling.

"Now I know why she was white as a sheet when I saw her. You look like a zombie," I tell him.

His expression doesn't change. "And you look like a fairy princess."

"Where's your family?"

He shrugs. "I told them to go away. You know I'd never seen my mum cry before? Made me feel awful. They'll be back tomorrow, I suppose. Can't say for sure if I will, or not."

"Want a cigarette?"

"They took your wand at the door, didn't they?"

"Yes, but I've got a Muggle lighter."

"Blasphemer."

I smile, producing both packet of cigarettes and lighter from my pockets. "So, do you want one?" I'm talking around the cigarette I'm in the process of lighting, now.

"Very much so," he says, and raises his hand, an act that seems to cause him no little amount of effort. I cock my eyebrow and put the cigarette between his fingers.

"Do you need me to hold it to your mouth, as well?"

He laughs, or rather, expels air from his mouth in a crude imitation of a laugh.

I light my own cigarette and lean back in the chair. "So. I've heard the phrases 'irreversible spell damage' and 'deteriorating and terminal condition' thrown about. Grim diagnoses, mate."

"You're telling me." He rolls his eyes. "Let's not talk about that any more. Any news on Moody?"

"Not any you're going to like. He hasn't dropped dead yet. In fact, he's in a room on this very floor."

"I know." He rolls his eyes again, and I begin to think it's involuntary. "I've had to hear about his heroism all morning from those idiot Ministry hangers-on who congregate whenever there's an injured do-gooder they can gush over. Fucking Aurors."

I shrug noncommitally, but am loath to say a negative word about the Aurors, in case someone overhears. It's only Evan's "deteriorating and terminal condition" that allows him to get away with it.

"Tell me about his injuries," Evan says wistfully.

"Well, they're not as bad as yours."

"Reg. I'm dying. Could you at least humour me?"

"I don't have the energy to make up phony curse damage. You did take a chunk of his nose out, though. Something to be proud of."

"I suppose I'll have to take what I can get." He sighs melancholically. "You know, it would have been much more romantic of them to let me die on the battlefield." I snort derisively. "I could have died a martyr for the cause, you know."

"As opposed to dying a slack-jawed potato in a hospital bed."

"We're so in sync now, we're finishing each other's sentences."

"What a pity you won't be around long enough for us to show our new trick off at dinner parties."

"Oh, you'll come along soon, Reg, and I'm sure there will be plenty of dinner parties in Hell."

"You're probably right. Lucius Malfoy's society evenings every night of the year, and-" I start to finish off with jokes about the intolerable Death Eater company at these events, but remember I should avoid incriminating myself within earshot of a Magical Law Enforcement officer, no matter how oblivious he may appear. I bring the cigarette to my lips again.

Evan sighs. "Well, at least I have something to look forward to."

I watch him. He looks miserable. Not that there's any wonder why. "I should probably be trying to comfort you now, but I honestly can't think of anything positive to say."

"Oh, no, don't feel obligated to be a good friend, your charming presence is quite delightful enough on its own."

"I brought you flowers, didn't I?"

"I thought those were for the Trainee Healer."

"Nah, I already tried her. She wasn't interested."

"It's cos she's in love with me."

"I think it's because she's a lesbian."

"Even better."

I take the last drag off my cigarette and drop the end, smashing it under the toe of my boot. I'm busy admiring the black ashy spot it leaves on the sterile linoleum when he speaks again.

"Remember when we were in... I think first or second year, and we talked about what we were going to be when we grew up?"

I nod. "You were going to travel the countryside with a troupe of performing nifflers, if I remember correctly."

"I was," he says.

"And I was going to sail the seven seas as a mermaid hunter. Such noble dreams."

He ignores my irreverence. "I think the hardest thing to get over is that I'm not going to get to grow up and beanything."

"Consider yourself lucky; I'm sure there's nothing good about growing up. All you get is wrinkles and gray pubic hair."

He sighs. "I just never thought it'd end so quick. I mean, if, when we were twelve, I knew I only had seven years left to live, what would I have done?"

"You still don't believe you're going to die, now," I point out. "You still think you're immortal. Otherwise you'd be a fucking basket case right now."

"I know, I know." He sounds angry, for the first time. "Is it so wrong to keep hoping for some sort of miracle cure?"

"Well," I begin, leaning back in my seat. "Would a cure really make anything better? If you recover, all you have to look forward to is a lifetime in Azkaban. Is that really preferable to dying?"

Evan looks indecisive. It's not often than he ever has trouble leaping straight to a conclusion. When he answers, he sounds as tired as a very old man. "If Moody had just killed me outright, then I would be fine with that; to go down fighting would be better than Azkaban anyday, but I don't think I can say, now, sitting in this fucking hospital bed and not being able to do anything but wait, that I'd rather die."

"You're afraid."

"You're damn fucking right I'm afraid, Regulus. You think you wouldn't be?"

I don't answer him, and he throws the smouldering end of his cigarette at my feet. I grind it out absently. Under normal circumstances he would've put it out on my face if he were angry with me, and it seems to me a profitable venture to take the piss out of him while he's on his death bed if it means he can't retaliate effectively.

"So, how d'ya suppose the Aurors managed to find you?" I ask genially, lighting another cigarette.

"How should I know?" He gestures at it, and I grudgingly hand it to him and light another for me. "I was just minding my own business; I'd just got a bite at that Knockturn Alley pub, you know the one... Hippogriff heads mounted on the wall."

"Lancaster's."

"Right."

"You're eating in Knockturn Alley pubs now? How seedy."

"I was in a hurry; I had places to go, okay? Anyway, I just had a bite, and I walk outside, and there's Moody, and he's walking toward me, and I turn around thinking I can go back into the pub and disappear out the back, you know, and there's another one standing in front of the door. So I try to Disapparate, but can't, and that's when I realise that I'm not getting out without a fight. So I look at Moody, and I say something stupid, I don't even remember what it was. And then he calls me a son-of-a-bitch, and by this time he's right up in my face, and he tells me I'm under arrest, and I laugh at him and really there was no opportunity for me to go for my wand cos he had his out from the beginning. So I try now, and I'm quick enough to shout out some curses at random before he and the other Auror knock me out." His breath rattles as he exhales a long train of smoke. "It's in the Prophet, you know?"

"Not your finest moment to be captured on film."

He looks at me with those insomniac eyes, and all that follows is silence. It's surreal to see him like this, and while I can do so much to drown out the real gravity of the situation, it's there, buzzing in the background, and I'm suddenly cold. "Remember when we first met?" I ask suddenly.

Evan nods slowly. "Our mothers' socialising."

"We were five."

"You hid behind your mum's robes."

"I thought you were mad because you kept speaking in French."

"Didn't your mum make you start taking lessons after that?"

"Yes, she thought she'd fallen behind in 'culturing' me. I blame you for the stressful turn my childhood took after that."

"She didn't realise most of my French was what my father shouted at the house-elves when he was drunk."

"I doubt that would've changed anything; drunken shouting at house-elves is very much en vogue in the House of Black."

"Still, beginning of a beautiful friendship, right?" He smiles and his eyes glaze slightly.

"After you deigned to speak English to me, anyway."

"At least I made the effort. You never did master French."

"Sirius and I chased off five separate tutors. That's a much more worthwhile talent, anyway."

His cigarette is burning close to the filter, and he hasn't taken a drag in a long time.

"We've been good friends, haven't we?" he asks, and I notice his eyelids appear heavier than before.

"It's not as though we've had anyone else," I tell him.

He looks distinctly forlorn and I frown. I don't like the expression on him. "Reg, I-" he pauses, jaw working up and down like a fish, and drops the end of his cigarette on the floor. He holds his hand out to me, and I take it to mean he'd like another one, so I start to fish out the packet again, but he shakes his head. "I... This is stupid, but I..." He looks horribly desperate and a cold pit forms in my stomach. His hand is still held out, visibly trembling.

I reach out and take it. It's clammy and shaking, no matter how hard I squeeze his fingers to try to steady it. He pulls my hand to his side. "Thanks," he says, closing his eyes for the first I've seen since I came in.

"Well, I suppose no one will see, anyway."

Our first day of school I remember sitting under the Sorting Hat thinking of Sirius and praying I wasn't a freak like he was. I got my wish, and some minutes later I watched Evan emerge triumphant and take his seat between Rabastan Lestrange and me, as though there were nowhere else in the world he belonged. The Hat hadn't taken two seconds to Sort him, and I was inordinately jealous. I'd sat squirming under it for half a minute before it finally relieved my anxiety.

"What was that about?" he'd asked me later. "As if you could go anywhere but Slytherin."

When we learned how to fly, all Evan wanted to do was go out over the Forbidden Forest and try to spot things Dark and Dangerous. Hooch told him again and again that this was absolutely Not Allowed, but he woke me up in the middle of the night to sneak into the supply shed and explore the air. We never saw anything exciting, perhaps on account of it being so dark, and I was so consumed with being scared shitless of falling off my broom (though I'd never admit it) but Evan swore there were skeletal horses flying with us.

I first found out his boggart was a snake in third year, and I thought it was hilarious. It was one of the few times I ever saw him truly embarrassed, and he insisted it was not funny. There were snakes everywhere in his house, he said. Snakes on the candelabra, snakes wrapping around the stems of the goblets they used at dinner, snakes carved into his headboard and watching him while he slept, and it never bothered him until he was four and he picked up a tiny little garter snake in the back garden one day, thinking it was a stick. When it began to writhe in his grip he screamed and his father shouted at him and slapped him across the face, and when he started having nightmares, he didn't dare say a word.

When I was little I used to go crawl in my brother's bed when I had a bad dream. At school, all I could do was huddle under my blanket all night, wide awake and imagining every little noise was some monster from the darkest depths of the Black family library. The shadows started morphing into wraiths with dripping fangs and advancing on me in my bed, and I didn't even realise I was asleep until I heard a voice by my ear.

"Wake up."

I opened my eyes with a start and there in the darkness I could barely make out Evan's face, hovering inches above mine. "You better be quiet," he said in a low whisper, lifting the covers as he did. "You'll wake up Rabastan if you keep shouting like that, and he'll hex you cross-eyed." He climbed into bed and settled the covers over him.

"What're you doing?" I asked, still shaking from my dream.

"I'm going to sleep with you so you won't be scared," he said matter-of-factly. "Whenever I have a bad dream at home, my big sister comes and sleeps in my bed." He put his head on the pillow next to mine and closed his eyes.

"I used to go to my brother's room," I admitted.

"I know. You said his name in your sleep," he said, and then yawned, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. I, on the other hand, froze with embarrassment, but he didn't notice and continued, blithely, "You're lucky to have a brother. All I've got is sisters, and they're all stupid. One of them was a Hufflepuff. Father doesn't like me to tell anyone, but you won't say anything, will you?"

"No." I shook my head, even though his eyes were still closed.

"We're best friends, aren't we, Regulus?" he asked suddenly.

"Yeah, 'course."

"Good. Good night." And with that he went to sleep.

Summer was always long. Between fifth and sixth year was the first time I really realised how big and empty the house was, without Sirius crashing around with rage or sheer pent up energy. I knew Mother felt it too, though she would never admit it. It was as though she had something to prove: Bellatrix and Narcissa, and their mother, Druella, were invited over on a regular basis to fill the house, and it seemed like I spent the better part of my holiday holed up in the attic, hiding from Bellatrix. The worst was when Rodolphus and Lucius came with them, and Mother made me socialise (she always had to look proper for them; I got the feeling that secretly she'd have preferred having one of them, Rodolphus especially, as a son). I had to sit drinking tea with them while Lucius glared at me pointedly across the table, and Rodolphus and Bellatrix leaned back and forth, whispering to each other in a sinister way that made the goose flesh on my arms rise, and Mother and Aunt Druella chatted on about people they insisted I'd met, but whom I had no memory of.

I took to retiring to the attic as soon as I got up in the morning so that Kreacher would not be able to find me when Mother sent him calling. As uncomfortable and cramped as the Black family attic was, it beat the hell out of tea and scones with darling cousins Bellatrix and Lucius, especially when one had the foresight and cunning to stockpile liquor from the pantry, bottle by bottle, for months, so that it went unnoticed by one's parents. I had learned my lesson from Sirius's blunders: He taught me that stealing more than a bottle at once would inevitably get one caught. And one as clever and pragmatic as Regulus Black took these sorts of lessons to heart, and therefore had a very large supply of various whiskeys, vodkas, and the occasional scotch waiting for him every morning.

Though, god knows I worked through them pretty quick. In fact, it was one morning when I had just begun to work on getting pissed for the day and was eyeing the steadily diminishing row of bottles lined up against the rafters concernedly that I heard the trapdoor clunk out of place. Around the stack of old photo albums and trunks of moth-eaten robes, I saw the dust billow up and settle and I heard a slightly strangled cough.

I clutched the bottle of vodka close to my side and held my breath. Go away go away goawaygoawaygoaway.

But instead of retreating, whoever it was pulled the trapdoor back up behind him and stepped with loud and echoing soles into the attic proper.

"Reg?" a disembodied voice called tentatively.

I sat upright. "Evan?"

A familiar head peeked over a dilapidated leather trunk. "Reg!" He cracked a grin. "I thought you might be up here."

"What are you doing here?" I asked, slightly worried that I was hallucinating and even more worried as to why I was hallucinating Evan Rosier.

"Spending quality time with my dear Aunt Druella, you twit," he said genially, though he was obviously distracted by the bottles he'd just spotted. "Oh wow, you're well-stocked, aren't you?"

"Half of them are empty. Are you really here, or am I imagining you?" I squinted appraisingly at him.

"I'm almost positive I'm really here." He sat down beside me and took a bottle of firewhisky from its spot in the line-up.

That, if anything convinced me that he was not a figment of my imagination: I was not so masochistic that any figure my subconscious conjured would take to stealing my alcohol. "Get your own," I reprimanded sharply.

"Look, if you're drinking and I'm not, I'm not going to be any sort of good company. I have to catch up," he said, and took a sizeable gulp.

"How'd you find me?" I said suddenly, my tone accusatory.

"You forget that I, too, am Bellatrix's cousin. I have experience in hiding."

"They're here, aren't they?"

He nodded grimly.

"Can't fucking stand them."

"It's okay, they're not going to find us."

I was about to ask how he could be so sure when I noticed that his fingers were combing through my hair.

"Evan-" I started, but before I could get anything else out, his mouth was covering mine.

"Wait," I said breathlessly, pushing him away.

"I missed you," he replied.

Within minutes we were undressed and dressed again, and the dust we'd stirred up was hanging in thick clouds in the air, ready to settle back into its resting place, where it had remained so long undisturbed.

"Evan, I have something to confess," I say, my chin resting on the edge of his mattress.

"You've never had sex with a girl?" he ventures. His composure seems to have returned, but he speaks quietly and his eyes remain closed.

"I find that suggestion highly offensive," I say. "No, it's something else."

"Well, are you going to tell me?"

"I can't decide."

It was all okay when we were fucking in the attic and swapping blowjobs in abandoned classrooms, but I noticed something was very definitely wrong with our relationship the day I found myself sitting near the edges of the Forbidden Forest with his head in my lap. And I was stroking his hair.

I had a book (stolen from the Black family library that used to give me those nightmares) in one hand and was reading about some obscure, primitive Dark Arts, and he was lying perfectly still, occasionally making some low-voiced remark that I didn't really hear at all, while my other hand was running through his fine, dark hair.

The book was written in Middle English and it was very slow-going. I was muddling through a particularly long and convoluted sentence, brow creased and lips moving wordlessly, when my mind lost its focus for approximately the fifteenth time on that sentence alone and gave up, wandering off to think about something else. It was then that I realised just how insane what we were doing was.

We weren't likely to get caught. We should have been in class, after all, and no one was out on the grounds, plus we were hidden by the trees around us, but what the hell did we think we were doing?

I closed my book abruptly and pulled my hand away from his hair.

He lifted his head and looked at me, eyes glazed. "What?"

"How the bloody hell did this happen?" I asked indignantly.

He looked confused, and brought the joint he was smoking (and didn't he think he was cool for it) back up to his lips. "What?" he repeated.

I pushed him off my lap. "Carrying on like this," I said. "It's ridiculous. We've got to stop it."

"Reg..." He propped himself up on the grass, eyeing me warily.

"We're friends, we're not..." I shook my head, unable to describe exactly what it was we weren't. "It's not like we're together."

"No... I reckon it's not like that." He rolled over onto his back and cushioned his head instead with his hands, and after a time I stopped staring at him and started reading again.

"What's it about?" he asks. His fingers are colder than they ought to be in my hand. "Is it about me?"

"No, conceited."

"Well, this is my death bed, you know."

He was initiated into the Death Eaters before Rabastan and I. I used to wonder why Mr Rosier wanted him in so quickly, when Rabastan, whose brother had been a Death Eater since before Rabastan even started school, waited until he came of age just like everyone else. It wasn't as though Evan were any more keen on it than the rest of us, and for a while it seemed frankly odd to me that his father was so eager for him to be doing something that was very dangerous even for an experienced wizard before he was even fully-qualified. But that was all before I met the elder Rosier.

He was big and dark and talked with a heavy accent, and the few times I heard him speak to Evan, I didn't understand it because it was in French, but I saw the way Evan's face crumpled (though he tried to hide it) enough to know that he pushed himself into it so hard because he was a disappointment.

I never asked why, though I wondered about it a lot, and formed several guesses as to what his shameful fault could be. I knew that Evan was an intelligent boy, and he asked questions, something I doubt that Mr Rosier ever appreciated. I knew plenty about pure-blood superiority complexes, and even the innocent questions of small boys and girls were not looked upon kindly - things like, "But why can't I play with the Mudblood children?" were near heresy. I'd learned from Sirius not to ask those things, but Evan's sisters were never quite as clever as he was, never as curious. It must have displeased Mr Rosier indeed that his first and only son was the only one of his children who was ever anything but quietly dutiful. I remember a day in the Rosiers' sitting room soon after we left Hogwarts.

We were sitting at his family's grand piano, and he was playing and singing, while I drank dark red wine and laughed at him. His voice had the tendency to crack as if he were going through puberty all over again, and I thought he sounded especially ridiculous singing a French nursery rhyme about a family of manticores (whose lyrics he'd translated into very clunky English for my benefit), but I marveled at the effortless way his fingers moved across the keys. Neither Sirius nor I had been gifted with any sort of musical ability (we blamed it on inbreeding), and he was so pleased that the talent impressed me that he told he was going to teach me how to play right then and there.

Futile as I knew it would be, I couldn't help but try. He wouldn't have listened if I said no, anyway; by the time I gave my consent he had already grabbed my hands and was arranging my fingers on the keys. It turned out that his method of teaching was really just pulling my fingers around the piano, pushing them to play the right notes, which really didn't bother me all that much. After a very few minutes, he gave up his perfunctory verbal instructions and started singing to the new song.

"Alouette, gentille Alouette," he voiced loudly, "Alouette, je te plumerai."

I laughed as he pushed and pulled my fingers onto the proper keys, missing the mark more often than not, but still singing with the tune in his head as though nothing were wrong.

He was on the third verse ("Je te plumerai les yeux") when a voice not as loud as his, but much deeper and more resounding rolled into the room like thunder.

"Tais-toi."

Evan jumped like someone had lit a fire under his seat, in an instant removing himself completely from my side, and as the last notes of the piano keys decayed, we turned around to see his father glowering from the doorway. I had no reason, really, to be scared of him, but all the same I remember going as still as a rabbit right before it bolts, the hairs on my arm prickling, and was quite relieved when, after a few moments in which he spoke again to Evan in his heavy French, he turned and disappeared down the hallway. I exhaled the breath I hadn't realised I'd been holding, and the hair on my arm was just beginning to flatten when Evan jumped up and followed his father without a word to me.

He caught up with Mr Rosier halfway down the hall, and I could hear them arguing in the eerie stillness of the house. Evan was quiet, his voice was rushed, as if he were trying to explain something, and I could not make out his words, but Mr Rosier's voice carried quite clearly, and even though I couldn't understand him, I knew his tone was dangerous. Their bitter fighting seemed to drag on for hours, though it must have only been a minute or two, until it stopped rather abruptly. I may not have known any French, but even I could hear the tell-tale tension that hung in the air, that there was one word uttered that stopped the argument dead in its tracks: an accusation.

Whatever Mr Rosier disliked about his son, it always seemed to give Evan something to prove. Rodolphus told Rabastan and me about Evan's initiation, because he himself never would.

In order to show his allegiance to the Dark Lord, he was ordered to kill a family of Mudbloods other Death Eaters had captured.

Rodolphus said that the father of the family groveled at Evan's feet, pleaded with him to spare his family, and that he didn't hesitate before casting the Imperius Curse on the man and forcing him to kill his wife in front of his two small children. Rodolphus said we should aspire to impress the Dark Lord as well as Evan had. I always wondered if Mr Rosier had been pleased, finally.

"That's right, it is your death bed," I say, reworking my grip on his hand. "Which is why I'm not afraid to tell you this."

"Reg, don't say anything stupid," he says. I wonder if I should heed him. I don't know if it's the right thing to tell him or not. He might appreciate it, or I might send him to his death knowing a horrible truth and not being able to do anything about it. It all depends on with whom his loyalties lie strongest, but I have to tell someone.

"You know about Horcruxes, right?"

I haven't planned on saying as much as I do, but once I start, I can't stop. I tell him everything, starting from that day in sixth year when I happened across the idea of Horcruxes in Ye Olde Mothe-Eaten Booke, to when I discovered that the Dark Lord was making one, to my plans for stopping him, and when I was done, he looked as wan as a candlestick.

"I hope you know what you're doing, Regulus," he says.

"I know."

"I hope..." he hesitates as if gathering his thoughts. "I hope this won't make you too good to go where I go... After we're dead."

"I wouldn't worry about it," I say. This is a lie, because it's all I'm ever worried about, recently. When one is preparing to become a martyr, the destination of one's immortal soul tends to become the focus of much attention. I desperately hope I'm not headed the same place as Evan, but I can't tell him that, especially as it's hitting me that if everything goes as planned, this will be the last time I'll ever see him, for the rest of eternity.

I squeeze his hand, and he squeezes mine back. I'm glad he still can. It doesn't seem fair that if I manage to save my soul, I have to give up my best friend.

There's not a lot left to say. Nothing that we're capable of saying, anyway. I hold his hand as he gets paler and colder and his pulse and breathing slow, and I hope it's enough.

It's as though my heart picks up the slack from his, and my pulse quickens until I can hardly swallow. I need a drink. Or two, or ten. I stand up, disentangling my fingers from his before they start to stiffen, and bend down to press a kiss against his lips.

"He's dead," I tell the guard as I collect my wand from him. I'm already leaving when I hear him mutter, "Finally," as he folds up his newspaper.

I ignore it, fishing the last cigarette out of my pocket. The way that mediwitch made it sound, maybe smoking in St Mungo's will be enough to incur the wrath of God, and I'll see Evan again after I die. I'm willing to risk it.