This was written for the Fairest of the Rare group on Facebook's fest, Sing Me A Rare. Thanks to my beta, Rachael, for looking over it and being generally great.
Some legends are told
Some turn to dust or to gold
But you will remember me
Remember me for centuries
Just one mistake
Is all it will take
Go down in history
Remember me for centuries
The moon is waxing in the sky, and the star of Sirius is ascending. That, to Regulus, makes it shortly before dawn. He knows the heavens as well as he knows his own family. The names and the stories meld into one, because his mother has always told him that the family and the cosmos are linked.
He shivers.
It is always darkest before dawn, he reminds himself, and coldest, too. And, besides, this was not unexpected. He has come here to die, perhaps, and if not then he has come here to do a dangerous, difficult task and then fade into obscurity. It is not a heroic act; he is no Sirius. He does not do this out of some desire to become famous, or to become a shining bastion of the cause of the light. No, he comes here to do this because it seems like the least terrible thing it is that he could do.
Regulus Black has never intended to live forever, no, but he had intended to live longer than this.
He steels himself. He adjusts the fall of his cloak and his hand touches the brooch he wears on it. A thestral, cut from onyx, chipped on the tail. It had originally belonged to his cousin Andromeda, being the only possession of hers that had survived Aunt Druella's wand. Auntie had always had a talent for blasting curses. He wears a pair of boots that had once belonged to his brother, and Andromeda's brooch, and somehow from these he hopes to gain a small amount of their courage. He has spoken as ill of them as any other, these past few years, but he hopes they will forgive him if they discover what he has done.
It is later, when he is drinking the potion, that he realises that they will not. They will never forgive him, for they cannot forgive what he has done. The Dark Mark on his arm pulsates, as if it knows what it is that he is trying. It screams and pulls.
The spectre of Sirius appears, and he's running. Regulus knows what this is.
Andromeda and Sirius will not forgive him, no. They cannot, because it is not just what he has done, but what he allowed to happen as well.
"Kreacher," he forces out, his throat dry and his arm shaking. But he is a Black, and he is not weak, and so he forces his arm to do as he bids. "Take the locket. Destroy it. Do not tell my family of this."
The small elf nods, and disappears, and Regulus is alone. This is how it will end.
As he rushes towards what he is certain of his death, Andromeda stands in front of him. She's dressed in plum coloured robes, he notes, although he is uncertain of why this detail is important. She's another vision, except this one he is not watching the fall-out of some family disagreement.
"I'm sorry," he says. "I'm sorry." He looks around for Sirius but cannot see him. Regulus tries to struggle to his feet; if he is to be given the chance to atone, he must do it for all of them. But he cannot, and the world goes dark, but at least he has done it. He has struck a blow against the Dark Lord, however small.
He smiles.
—
"Keep an eye out," says Hermione. "They could be anywhere."
"Obviously," says her companion. "I've not survived this long without looking where I'm going, you know."
She grabs his hand and squeezes it. "I know. Sorry."
He pokes her in the rib. "It's fair. I was an abysmal Keeper."
"Oh, come on Ron, you were better than Cormac McLaggen, weren't you?"
"A low bar if I ever saw one." Ron steps forward, cautiously, and frantically mimes at her to be quiet.
There's footsteps. The two of them stand in an alleyway between two high-rise buildings, blocks of flats on a London council estate known for being an easy place to score drugs. This isn't why they're here. Neither of them need anything to heighten their paranoia. But there's a rumour that one of the old Order is lying low here, and, with it just being the two of them left, this isn't a rumour they can pass up.
Of course, they're both entirely aware that this could be an elaborate trap, but they've decided it's worth the risk.
Hermione pulls her wand from her pocket, and, beside her, Ron mirrors her action. They share a look - they'll go down fighting if they go down at all, and they'll go down together. All they have is each other, and the cause, and if that isn't worth fighting for, they don't know what is.
The footsteps get closer. Together, Ron and Hermione shrink back into the shadows behind a large, garish blue wheelie bin, all the better for surprise. Ron reaches into his pocket and clicks off one, two streetlights in the alley. He leaves the third on.
It's not a moment too soon. A figure steps into the light of the streetlamp left on, and she's familiar. Tall, with a beautiful, sharp face, brown hair piled on her head in a severe style. She has the look of Bellatrix Lestrange before the dark magic got to her, Hermione thinks, and Ron's glance confirms that he thinks the same. Hermione raises an eyebrow, and Ron nods. They're ready to act.
They duel to kill, these days.
"Expelliarmus!"
But woman gets in first, and isn't the spell they expect. Ron keeps hold of his wand by his fingertips, leaning forwards to keep it; Hermione's sails out of view over the top of the wheelie bin. Ron roars and leaps out of their hiding place, and Hermione follows him, despite the lack of wand. They skid to a halt, Ron in a duelling pose, Hermione grasping at a piece of broken wood she's grabbed from the floor.
They're not under attack. The woman twiddles Hermione's wand in her fingers, watching them. Ron and Hermione both pause, side by side in the middle of the alley now, halfway between the woman and their hiding place.
"I am not my sister," she says. "If that's who you have mistaken me for."
And, much to her surprise, she throws Hermione's wand back.
"I'm trusting you," she says, "do not betray that bit of trust."
"Why?" asks Hermione. Ron's wand is still raised and he's standing entirely still. She grips hers tightly, but doesn't raise it. This could still be a trap, of course. But her reflexes are fast, these days, and Ron's are faster, and they're willing to take any chance that it might be something good.
"Because I'm on your side. Andromeda Tonks." She holds out her hand. "I may have the look of your enemy, and have the misfortune to be related to her, but I think it is time I stood against her for myself. Will you come with me?"
Ron looks over to Hermione. She's not sure. They've fought their way out of traps in the past, it's true, but they've lost good people in doing so. Percy and Arthur in Cornwall at the end of last year. Kingsley in January. Half of the rest of them in March, and Dean just weeks ago, the first anniversary of the Battle at Hogwarts. Ron's not sure either, the way he glances quickly from her to Andromeda and back again, but he's saying yes.
"Fine," says Hermione. "But prove it."
She rolls up her sleeve to show a bare left forearm.
"I can prove this much," she says. "And I can lead you to Minerva McGonagall. Perhaps then you will believe me?"
Ron nods, just slightly, and Hermione tightens her grip on her wand. She casts several quick spells, ones that'll reveal duplicity and throw off concealing enchantments. It could be Polyjuice, still, but it might be worth the risk.
"Okay," she says. She wonders if she'll regret it, but, somehow, she doesn't think so.
—
They're led through a blue front door into block of flats entirely indistinguishable from any other on the estate, and up two flights of stairs to the second floor. Andromeda pauses at the door of number 79, before removing a set of keys from her pocket and unlocking it. The stairwell smells of cigarette smoke and piss.
Inside, they're led into the kitchen, which looks as if it was last updated sometime in the 1960s. Andromeda gestures to them both to sit down.
"Keep a hand on your wands, if it makes you feel better. I won't be offended. Tea?"
They both nod, so Andromeda lights the ancient stove with a match and sets about boiling a kettle, and removing chipped teacups from a cupboard, and a teapot from another.
"Minerva will be back in just a second."
It's as Andromeda says this that there's the sound of another key in the lock. On instinct, Hermione and Ron leap to their feet, wands raised once more. Ron's chair clatters to the linoleum floor.
"It's me," says Minerva McGonagall, her face more lined than the last time they had seen her. "Weasley. What did I say the last time I saw you?"
"The Killing Curse," he says, his eyes wide with shock. "But anyone would know that. Everyone there that night saw you kill You-Know-Who. The last time you saw me, just the two of us, you said that you hoped my homework would come in on time more frequently in seventh year, else you'd be forced to play me as a Beater."
"And you told me," she says, with a small smile, "that the Captain makes the decision, and Harry wouldn't do that to you." The smile goes as soon as it arrived as she turns to Hermione. They swap questions, too, and then stare at one another. Hermione wants to hug her, but she still keeps one hand on her wand, just in case.
"Are you satisfied it is indeed I?"
"Yeah," says Ron. "Bloody hell."
"Indeed, Weasley. Bloody hell it is. I cannot say I'm pleased to see you, because that would imply that improve of the entire sorry situation, but I'm pleased you're alive, at any rate."
"And you, Professor."
"Minerva. And, now. Andromeda has something rather important for us all, supposedly."
"I have something," Andromeda says, passing out the cups of tea. "I don't know how much it will change, but there's a hope. A hope that we may yet defeat my sister."
Minerva is the only one to speak.
"After I killed You-Know-Who, I had thought that all of this would be over. I do not know why I was so naive to think that another Dark Lord may not rise in his place."
"I shall need to extract an oath," Andromeda says, once Minerva's words have settled, "that you shall not say anything of what you are to see until such time as I allow it."
"What is it?" asks Ron. "Some sort of weapon."
Andromeda's lips twist slightly, and Hermione's certain she sees almost a tear. "I don't think it would prefer to be described as such, but you're welcome to make of it what you like. Your oath, please."
They all give it. While she waits for her turn, Hermione isn't sure how she's here. How, mainly, she's gone from trusting nobody but Ron these last few weeks, precious few people since they were scattered after You-Know-Who's death and the rise of Bellatrix Lestrange, and now she's here, in a flat in Lewisham with little to no protection, walking into a darkened room with Andromeda Tonks. Or a person that claims to be her.
"And yours," Hermione says. Andromeda merely raises an eyebrow. "Your oath too. That you won't harm us."
"Certainly."
They've given their oaths, and, with all of that settled, Andromeda leaves.
—-
Hermione hadn't known what to expect, so she hadn't been not expecting this, but it wouldn't be what she would have predicted. Regulus Black, or that's who she'd guess at him being, from the photographs she saw in Grimmauld Place, follows Andromeda back into the kitchen. He looks as if this is an everyday occurrence, being introduced to people who think he's dead.
"How?" asks Ron, and, Hermione thinks, it's an entirely fair question.
"My cousin attempted to destroy a certain object belonging to He Who Must Not Be Named in 1979. He failed, but, rumour has it, you later managed to finish the task he had begun."
Ron grimaces. "Not my finest hour, all told."
"He didn't die," Andromeda continues. "Despite the rumour, once again, that he had."
"But that Black family tapestry says he's dead," says Hermione. "I'd read that it's enchanted to show births and deaths automatically."
"It was. But, like many other things in that place, the enchantment decayed and they refused to admit that they no longer knew how to cast it. And so Aunt Walburga entered them herself for years, keeping up the pretence that it could still do it by itself. She put Regulus' death on when she received news that he was dead, and I know that news to be false, because I sent the owl myself."
"Why?" Ron asks.
"Perhaps I should be allowed to answer that," says Regulus. "You are discussing me as if I am not here."
He assesses the room before he begins, and Hermione feels as if they are all sitting some kind of test. His eyes flit from one member of the room to another, barely sparing a glance for Andromeda but examining each of the rest of them.
"I'm Ron Weasley," says Ron, when it's his turn under Regulus' glare. "Pleased to meet you." His tone is polite but defiant.
"Yes. And I recall you, Professor McGonagall. And you must be Hermione Granger. Andromeda has told me of you, when she told me of what she wishes to accomplish."
His voice is impossibly posh, and he speaks with the confidence of someone who's used to getting what he wants. His posture reflects that, too. He wears Muggle clothing, which his hands are clearly itching to adjust, suggesting he isn't used to it. He looks like Sirius, or what he would have looked like at eighteen - ridiculously handsome, for a start. But Hermione doesn't have time to be getting distracted by things like that.
"I did not wish to die, when I walked to my death in the summer of 1979," Regulus begins, as if he was reciting it from memory. "But die I almost did. It was the interference of a house-elf, and my cousin, that enabled me to live today. But thankfully, Andromeda knew the dangers of my continued existence - if I had done what she thought I had done, then I would not be safe to live. For me, and certainly not for her. So I was placed within an enchanted sleep, and thus I have continued to the present day."
"I tried to get it back," Andromeda continues, taking over the story. "But I couldn't, and I couldn't manage for Nymphadora to. And for many years, I could not undo the enchantments I had placed on Regulus, either."
"Why now?"
"Because he is related to her. And you know who I speak of. We cannot bring her down without him."
"Family magics," says Minerva, with a dawning sense of comprehension.
"Mum says nobody uses them any more," Ron adds.
"No. They do not." Regulus looks almost sad as he looks over at his cousin. "And with good reason. To do so takes something from the one who casts it."
"I lost much of myself the day that my sister murdered my daughter." Andromeda draws herself up tall. "I lost some the day that my husband was murdered, and some the day that my family disowned me for what I chose. I cannot lose much more."
"I'm sorry," says Minerva. "You have seen too much."
"We have all seen too much." Andromeda draws her wand. "We cannot lose much more. Narcissa may be persuadable to act. If there is to be a time, it is now."
"Why us?" Ron asks.
"Two cannot stand against her, even three. Six may just be able to manage it."
"What do we intend to do?" Hermione asks. Once again she's missed something, something that these purebloods and Professor McGonagall seem to intrinsically know.
They explain.
"It's worth a try," she says, and perhaps that's all the others needed to hear.
—-
So they find themselves planning, sequestered around the kitchen table in the grotty little flat. The plan, such as it is, relies on Narcissa Malfoy.
"Never thought I'd see that day," says Ron.
Andromeda is certain it can be managed, Minerva is more reticent. In between planning, they run reconnaissance missions, try to pull together supplies, and they fret. All of this the majority of them are used to, having lived this war for the last two years. Regulus does not find it so easy.
Three of them are out, one day, and he sits in the sitting room. The only possessions he has from his past life, the one before he was sleeping, are his wand and the brooch that had originally belonged to Andromeda. He had suggested she keep it, but she had returned it to him. So he sits in the sitting room, turning the chipped thestral over and over in his hand, thinking of holes in their plan. There are many, but there is no other way.
"I'm sorry," says Hermione, standing in the doorway. "You're busy."
"No," he says, "I am not. I was merely thinking of what could go wrong."
"So many things," she says, and she comes into the room. "Do you mind?"
"Not at all."
They are all rather awkward with him, but then, perhaps that is a common side effect of having been presumed to be dead for almost twenty years. He ought to be a generation older than her, but the years he has lived, truly lived, are less. He has had to be told the history of their war. He feels the losses they have felt, but they are theoretical to him. He never knew who Harry Potter was to feel the intense sadness at his loss that the others feel. They do not seek to make him feel this way, but he is an outsider, nonetheless.
"How're you?" she asks. It feels like such an inane question, because of course there are a thousand things he is. And he barely knows her. It would be to bare his soul if he were to mention even the half of them. He has spoken to her only a handful of times alone, albeit more in a group, and he finds her interesting, intelligent and certainly worth talking with. But he does not know her, not in truth.
"Nervous." That is what he settles on.
"Yeah. It's easier when you're running into battle, I find. It's this bit before that's hard."
"I remember it. I remember the fear before I did what I had to do."
"You were incredibly brave."
He scoffs. "If I were brave, I would have taken my brother's path. I would never have taken the Mark."
"There doesn't have to be one brave one per family, you know. Ron had six siblings, and they were all as brave as one another."
"You and Ron," he says, and Regulus Black does not know why he hates Ron's name so. "You are close."
Hermione smiles. "There used to be three of us, as you know. Me and Ron and Harry. We were best friends, when Harry had to go and look for the things that you found one of, we knew Ron and I would go with him. And Harry died. And there was just the two of us left."
"That must have been difficult."
"Yes. I don't know how we survived this far, when so many others didn't. We weren't any better than any of the others."
For some reason he feels as if she is exceptional, but he has little to go on as proof of that except stories, so he does not say it.
"How do you think we will fare, in this next stage?" he asks, instead.
"I don't know," she sighs. "I've tried to understand the magic we're using, I think I'm almost there, but I'd never heard of it before the day I met you. I'm Muggleborn, you see, and they don't teach it in Hogwarts, and it isn't in any book I've ever read."
Muggleborn. Regulus wonders if that is a problem. She is waiting for his reaction, poised with the look of someone who had heard every slur about her birth that has ever been uttered.
"I see," he says. He has decided that it is not a problem. He stood against the man who ordered Muggleborns killed, he stands against the woman who does the same. "It must be interesting to discover new magics."
"Oh, it's like when I discovered about the Shellstrop Principle in Arithmancy," she says, and her face lights up. "It's just fascinating how there's this thing that I never knew anything about, and it could affect so much of the way we think about things, well, in this case, so much of what historians talk about in twenty, fifty years time! I'd love to have a book, but Andromeda says nothing's really written down on the subject. If we survive this, she'll have to write one, there's so much I want to know. I'm wondering if there could be applications other than simple warfare or family matters, perhaps in Healing? But, of course," she says, looking down at her feet, "you're not interested in all of that."
"On the contrary," he says, because he's seen something in the way she talks, and he wants nothing more than to listen. "Please, continue."
—
Hermione isn't sure why, but she goes from the occasional chat with Regulus to seeking him out almost every evening. Ron finds it amusing. Minerva looks as if she thinks she knows something they do not. Andromeda says and does nothing except frantic planning.
It's simply that they have things in common. For all of Ron's good points, of which there are many, Ron's never had an interest in magical theory, or history, or anything that requires research. It's nice to have someone to chat to about these things.
"Minerva likes books, too," says Ron, incredibly unhelpfully. Hermione shoves him, and he trips her. They stick their tongues out at one another, crumpled in a heap on the floor where she's taken him down with her. "I see, I see. You fancy him. Hermione's got a boyfriend!" he says, in a sing-song voice.
"Fuck off," she says, prodding him in the ribs. "You're irritating."
"And you're in love," he says, pulling a silly, kissing face.
They look up to a noise, half going for their wands, but it's only Regulus. He stands in the doorway, and as quickly as he arrived, leaves.
"I think he likes you back," says Ron, entirely seriously. "If you like him, you should go for it."
"Isn't it disrespectful to Harry's memory?"
"Course not. Do you think he died expecting you to stay unhappy forever, remembering him? Of course not. Harry was a noble twat. He'd want you to be happy."
"I hate how often you're right."
"I love it." She prods him again, and he sticks his middle finger up at her, and she's happy that she has his blessing. Even though she's not sure what, if anything, she's going to do about it.
—
Regulus does not know what has overcome him. He is certain that he is in love with her, and yet, he barely knows her at all. What gives it away in the end is the feeling of jealousy, when he sees her sprawled on the floor with the Weasley boy. It is entirely improper, and yet, they seem so close, it feels like it something that he wants to have. Whatever it is, it is nothing he could ever come between, and, nor would he want to. Not if it is what makes her truly happy. So he avoids her, and him, but they live in a two bedroomed flat with other people. It is less than easy to avoid any one of them, unless one possesses an Invisibility Cloak.
"How're you?" she asks, the night that Minerva and Andromeda are out to bring Narcissa Malfoy into their fold. Draco Malfoy, born after Regulus' death of sorts, is dead, has been dead for some months. Andromeda has slowly contacted her sister, but tonight is the dangerous one. Tonight they bring her back here. Ron paces the kitchen, on edge, and Regulus is little better, except that his breeding teaches him to remain still in times of crisis, because it suggests that one is strong.
"As well as I could be, perhaps." He has become no less avoidant about answering her question.
"Yeah." She sits down beside him at the kitchen table. "Ron, stop bloody pacing, won't you?"
"Whatever," says Ron, and leaves the room. Regulus does not know if he would rather he stayed.
"The brooch is beautiful," she says, indicating the item he once again twists in his fingers.
"It reminds me of what I am here to do," he says. "A thestral, a creature that can only be seen if one has seen Death with eyes that can comprehend it. I have seen Death, I have killed, and I comprehend the enormity of what it is that I did. I do not wish to remember the way that I have fractured my soul, or the way that I have taken lives that did not deserve to be taken. It was once all that I desired, to be seen as powerful, to be held high in the esteem of the Dark Lord, to be remembered for having done what was right. And now I am forced to live with my mistakes."
"We've all made mistakes," she says. She reaches out and puts her hand on his arm, patting softly. It's comforting. It's something else, too, but he cannot allow himself to hope for anything more than this. She must understand what it was that he did.
"It was not a mistake," he says, determined that she will indeed understand. "I walked to him knowing what it was that he did, that he would kill and torture and manipulate to achieve his goals. I knew, I was proud, that he was pushing the boundaries of dark magic further than it had been pushed in living memory, if not in history. I wanted to be a part of that. I wished to ride on his cloak to my own greatness, my own place in history. I wanted to be immortal, in name if not in body."
She listens, and it's the sort of silence that compels him to go on. The words fall out of him in a hurry, the brooch twisting and turning in his hand with increasing speed. He feels as if he is confessing, and perhaps he is.
"I wanted all of it, you see. I chose the darkness. I was not coerced or forced or led in under false pretences. I dreamt of it. It was my obsession."
"But something changed." Her hand remains on his arm; his confession and that are all he can think of.
"Yes. I discovered the existence of the object I stole. Andromeda says we cannot speak the name, for fear of the Taboo. And it had crossed a line, Hermione. I do not know why that, of all the things that I saw and did in my time in his employ. That, and the way that he treated my elf, that was the line that he crossed. And suddenly I wanted only to destroy him. My life, what little of an adult life I possessed, certainly, was based around him, and I wanted to destroy it."
He runs a hand through his hair, looks up at the ceiling, and sighs. He thinks he might love her, whatever little he knows of her, and she knows what he did.
"We discovered what you'd done," she says, slowly, calmly, highlighting just how frantic his speech had been. "We found out in the summer of '97, just as it was all going to pot. And Harry, he wanted to tell the world when the war was over. Regulus Black, the bravest Death Eater, the one who'd sacrificed himself for the chance to kill the Dark Lord. You'd have been a part of history then. Of course," she continues, removing her hand from his arm to gesture around the empty kitchen, and mercifully returning it, "that never happened. But you've got another chance, with this. You could go down in history for helping to bring down two dark powers."
"Can it atone for what I did, before?"
"I've always been a big believer in redemption," she says. "You were only a teenager."
"And I have heard your tale. You were a teenager when you did what you did. I ought have known my folly."
"I still think you're a good person."
That, somehow, makes him feel rather better. There's a feeling in his stomach that rises as she says that, a warm, twisty feeling. He wants more of it. He wants to hear her compliment him again. He wants to kiss her, if he is honest, but that would not be wise.
"Come on," she says, when they've sat in silence a while. "They'll be back soon. Cup of tea?"
—
His cousin Narcissa is as she ever was, overemotional. She has constructed a careful exterior, but perhaps they all have. Ron is not the fool he plays, Andromeda possesses more intelligence than she ever let on, Hermione is something Regulus may never unravel. But Narcissa cries the first night in the flat, and they all rally round, and then the next morning she is as cold as steel, and they plan in earnest. Andromeda, Regulus and Narcissa can summon Bellatrix to atone for her crimes, but they must learn the ritual.
"So it brings her to you?" Hermione asks, as Andromeda teaches Narcissa the wand movements Regulus has already perfected. He traces them along with the two witches, anyway. It does not do to be underprepared.
"Yes," Minerva answers, from her position behind a stack of parchment detailing Bellatrix's inner circle and their movements. "It calls her to account for what she has done. This would be a start, and perhaps enable us to kill, or else, imprison. But we think, Andromeda thinks, that she may be anchoring some of her power on the family magics. She killed Andromeda's daughter, as you will be aware. A sacrifice such as that can do powerful things. Perhaps even make her immortal."
Regulus shudders, involuntarily. He does not think anyone has noticed, until he realises that Hermione has. He finds her watching him more and more. Andromeda has implied she is interested in him; he does not see how that could be the case.
"We suspected immortality," Hermione says. "The Killing Curse had no effect when we tried it."
Andromeda puts down her wand and tunes into the conversation.
"It fits with everything," she says. "Logically. My sister was never prone to logic, mind you, but she would know these magics. She would see them as powerful, and she would have seen my daughter as expendable. She would know how to use the family to make herself immortal. And she would underestimate Narcissa and myself, too."
"We're going to bring her down," Ron promises.
"Together," says Narcissa, and as her eyes travel around the unlikely alliance, Regulus thinks that they might be able to do what it is they set out to do. His eyes meet Hermione's, and she gives him the smallest of smiles.
"Together," he says. He will do this. He will do this to live up to her expectations.
—
It's the night before they're due to act. Nobody can settle to an activity. Andromeda and Narcissa cluster over a battered, six day old newspaper in the small living room, alongside them, Minerva and Ron play chess. Hermione flits from the main bedroom, with the four beds conjured into the space to accommodate the four women, to the kitchen. She makes a sandwich and discards if after one bite. She makes toast, and drops it on the floor when Regulus enters.
"Sorry," she says, even though it hasn't affected him. He stoops to the floor and picks it up for her, replacing it onto the plate.
"Not that I expect you want to eat it, now," he says. "I can make you another slice."
She accepts, even though she doesn't really want to eat. She sits at the table as he cooks, and he's poached an egg, with toast and spinach and mushrooms.
"Vegetables are good for you," he says.
"I didn't know you could cook."
"I asked Kreacher to teach me, some years ago. I found it to be an escape from the rest of the house." He hands her the plate. "Do you mind if I join you?"
"Didn't you make some for yourself?"
"I do not find myself to be hungry. What happened to Kreacher, if I may ask?"
"Died," she says, and she can see the pang he feels. "In the Battle at Hogwarts. He led the Hogwarts elves into battle, telling them to fight in your name."
"I am sorry to hear that."
She thinks he looks like he's about to cry, but maybe he isn't.
"Thanks for the food," she says, and makes an effort to eat it. Nerves have always got the better of her, at times like this. She manages half the plate, and goes to put it in the sink. For some reason he follows her, even though there's barely six feet between the table and the sink.
"May I ask," he says, "what there is between you and Ron?"
Hermione's honestly surprised at the question. They've shared the same tiny living space for over a month, and, if there was anything going on, the entire place would know about it.
"He's my brother," she says.
"He is a pureblood, and you are a Muggleborn." He looks as if he feels the need to backtrack. "Not that I am concerned with the blood status of either one of you, but it makes your claim unlikely."
She holds up her hand. "Blood siblings," she says. "A year ago, after we lost Harry. It felt like the right thing to do." The dark, ugly scar still crosses the palm of her hand; all the books she was able to consult say that it will not fade unless he dies. She'll always know Ron's fate, this way, and he will always know hers. No uncertainty. Just a bond that reflects who they are to one another.
"Okay." The word sounds unfamiliar on his tongue, one influenced by her and Ron, no doubt. "I understand, now."
"Why do you ask?" she says, although she thinks she knows already.
"I find myself drawn to you," he says. "It is neither the time, nor the place, but I find myself entirely wishing to kiss you. To do something, to show how I feel, before whatever it is that tomorrow brings."
"It isn't," she says, all while her body is pulling herself towards him. "It isn't the right time at all." Fuck it, she thinks, and she kisses him herself.
It's everything the kisses she's had in the past never were; he feels as if his lips should be a part of her, as if they've always been meant to do this. His arms wrap around her body, pulling her into him so that their chests press into one another, one hand sliding up her back and into her hair. She reciprocates, feeling the softness of his short hair, the tightly wound muscles in his back. It's only as they break apart that she thinks of all the reasons this is a terrible idea.
"We're supposed to be fighting a war. We're supposed to be ending it."
"Yes." He keeps a hand on her arm. It's warm and comforting, she never wants him to let go. "But that does not mean we cannot also live, I suppose. That is what my brother would have said, were he alive."
"It doesn't feel like that. It feels like this is everything. It's taken my teenage years, it's taken my family, most of my bloody friends, it'll take this if I let it."
"Do not let it, in that case. I am not saying that I believe this to have a happy ending. I merely believe that we should take what we can, while we can take it."
"Okay. I can do that, I think."
"I do not wish to do anything that would cause you distress."
"No," she says, making a decision. "It's not distress. It's just, I don't know. I don't know who I am without a war on, without feeling like I'm fighting for something bigger than just me. I'm worried about tomorrow. Not just that we'll fail, but that we'll succeed, and that I won't be able to cope with this new world I'm trying so hard to give myself."
"I understand."
"Yes, you will," she says. He's seen different fights, different terrible things, but his life has been like hers, too.
"I wonder," he says, "if I should survive this. If I was not kept in that state by Andromeda all these years not because I deserve to live, but because that was not the time for my death."
"Or maybe there's no such thing as destiny," says Hermione. "Maybe we make our own futures. Mistakes and all."
"I have made enough mistakes for several lifetimes, perhaps."
"Don't," she says, because she doesn't want to hear him like this. Yes, she barely knows him, but already she knows that he isn't the man he'd make himself out to be. "We've all made mistakes. I ran, you know. I was out in the woods, with two of the other, well, you know the name I can't say. I thought I heard something, so I doubled back to check. They were captured. I could have tried to save them, but I thought I heard the Killing Curse used, so I Apparated away. I could have saved them, but I never tried. We found them dead the next day."
"You did what you could have done. They would have killed you too. Three people would have died, instead of two."
"But I abandoned them." She looks down at her shoes, battered trainers that have barely been off her feet since the Battle at Hogwarts. They sleep in their clothes, they put on their shoes on waking, they're always ready to run and to fight. "I don't want to run any more," she says. "I want to have something else."
He doesn't seem to know what to say, and, honestly, she doesn't either. Instead he kisses her again, and they kiss as if this is the last chance they have to show what they mean to one another. Perhaps it's nothing, or would be nothing, without the pressures of war. But she doesn't think so. Perhaps one of them will be dead tomorrow.
She stands up and pulls him with her.
"Bedroom," she says.
"Why?"
"I need to feel like I'll live," she says, because that's the only answer she has in response to that.
Once they're in some privacy, they pull at each other's clothes as if this is their last chance for anything like this. She's only ever done this with Harry, in a similar scenario, and she has no idea if he's done this before at all, but that doesn't matter. She doesn't think of anything but how beautiful he is, despite the Mark that he tries to cover, keeping his left forearm out of her line of sight.
"No," she says, thinking this is an absurd thing to be saying once they're almost naked, she in her bra and knickers and he in his pants. "Don't. I don't like what it stands for, but I don't care that you have it."
"I am ashamed of it."
"Mistakes," she says, popping her bra, "we've all made them. Come on."
It distracts him. They clatter onto the bed, a tangle of limbs in their urgency. This feels like it's perfect, despite everything, it feels like it's something that they need.
"You are amazing," he says, "the most beautiful girl I have ever seen."
"That can't be true," she pants, as he runs his hands along her body, up to her breasts, circling her nipples.
"It certainly is."
They collapse together afterwards, and he murmurs her name into her ear, and she can't think beyond this.
—-
She stands with Ron as they prepare the beginnings of the ritual to call Bellatrix Lestrange. Their part comes later, hers and Ron's and Minerva's, so they keep watch.
"Ready?" Ron asks her.
"Are we ever?"
"Nope. Here's to not dying," he says, and raises an imaginary glass.
"To not dying," she says.
Regulus approaches. He holds something in his hand, and, as he comes closer, reaches out. It's the onyx thestral, and he pins it to her jacket.
"For luck," he says.
"Don't you need luck?"
"I need to know that you are as safe as you can be," he says.
"I can fight my own battles," she says, determined to get that one across now, while Ron cackles behind her.
"Did tell you not to say that, mate," he says, and, grinning, walks off to find Minerva.
"We may lose," he says.
"We might win." She kisses him, in front of everyone else. "We might win."
He reaches into his pocket and removes Andromeda's brooch, reaching up to pin it to Hermione's jacket. The black thestral glimmers in the fading light.
"I would like you to wear it," he says. "It seems to have brought me luck, perhaps it will do so for you."
"Thanks." Her hand goes to it, feeling the chip on the tail. "Let's hope neither of us need luck."
—-
The battle, when it happens, is fierce. Regulus has no time for anything but keeping himself from dying. He sees her across the battlefield from time to time, and she can more than hold her own. She looks alive, he thinks. She's powerful and beautiful and perfect, and, if they survive this, he will ask her to be his.
But surviving this appears to be no small task. Bellatrix has been weakened by their ritual, she's mortal once more and her magic is lowered, but she's fighting on. And perhaps she is all the more dangerous, because she is angrier than Regulus has ever seen her before. She throws her spells with the force of knives, without care for where they hit. He sees at least three of her own followers go down at her wand, and she does not care.
And then she goes for Hermione.
Regulus cannot stand for that. He slashes at the wizard he duels, all his fury sent that way, and the wizard falls. He runs across the battlefield, because nothing will stop him from getting there. He ducks a curse, leaps another, falls and pulls himself up again. His body resists; it is not physically as strong as it should be, despite his exercises. But he will get there. He could not live with himself if he did not.
The two witches fight as if there is nobody else around. Hermione is quicker and with more power, after Bellatrix has been weakened, but Bellatrix is far more brutal. Hermione's wand arm bleeds, and she's casting with her wrong hand, her feet nimble on the ground as she attempts to best the other witch. But she stumbles, and Bellatrix cackles as she raises her wand.
"Avada Kedavra!" he shouts, aiming wildly. The spell misses, but it gets her attention.
"Oh, little cousin!" Bellatrix cackles, her mouth wide in glee. "She loves you! The Mudblood loves you! And she thinks you love her in return! You can join me, you know, join the winning side! Just kill her, and you'll be by my side."
"I do love her," he says, and he casts the Killing Curse again.
"Very well," says Bellatrix. "Then off to join your traitor brother you go!"
Her first spell binds him, and he's fighting to throw it off as she raises her wand once more. But Hermione is quicker. Bellatrix Lestrange falls to the ground, entirely dead, and Hermione stands there, ashen faced and staring at the tip of her own wand.
With Bellatrix dead, he's no longer bound, and he runs to Hermione. The battle may have ended with her death, or it may continue on, but he has something he needs to do.
They meld into one another there in the middle of the battlefield as he pulls her in, and they kiss, her lips salty and bloody on his, and this is something entirely worth all of what he has done.
—-
They find somewhere afterwards, quietly, just the two of them.
"It is a better thing to be remembered for," he says, "to have done this, than to have been the boy who betrayed the Dark Lord and died."
"Does it matter?" she asks. "Does it matter what we're remembered for? We'll go down in history for defeating her," and then Hermione remembers she can say her name, "for defeating Bellatrix Lestrange. They'll write books about us. The heroic man who came back from the dead, the girl who killed the trusted lieutenant. We'll be remembered in History of Magic exams. But they won't be about us. They'll be about what we did, not about the kind of people we were outside of that."
"I think I understand."
"You have to. Because I learnt this from Harry. The public will think of you how you like, but it's what we know that matters. Me and you, and Ron and Andromeda, and anyone else we choose to let into our lives. We can be whoever we want to be."
"We no longer have to be the people who are damaged by what it is they have done."
"No."
"We can do what it is that we desire."
"Yeah. You understand."
"I do. I may not be sure what that is yet, and it may seem presumptuous, but I would very much like to do whatever it is that we do, together."
"Are you asking me out?"
"If that is the modern parlance of it, yes. I am."
The dawn rises, and above them Regulus knows that Sirius the star is disappearing. His brother deserves to be remembered. Regulus will make certain of that.
"I love you," she says, nestling into him. "I wanted to say so. Just in case you didn't know."
"I love you too," he says. Whatever is in store for them, they will do it together.