Sirius placed his hands on his brother's shoulders and firmly turned him back in the direction of the house as Remus disapparated with a satisfying pop! Regulus tried to shake him off but Sirius tightened his grip and marched his brother up the steps and through the hallway and back into the sitting room.
"Right," he said, running a hand over his face. "Right."
"Give me my wand," Regulus demanded, hand outstretched.
"Not until you calm down."
"I am calm!"
"You're not calm, you're shouting!"
"WHAT DO YOU EXPECT, MY WIFE JUST RAN AWAY FROM ME!"
"OH, LIKE HOW YOU RAN AWAY FROM HER TWELVE YEARS AGO?"
Regulus sat down, fuming. Sirius had a point. He hated when Sirius had a point. This was awful. This was going far worse than he had ever expected. Why the hell were they all living in his house? Why wasn't Sirius still living in that shack they called a flat in Camden? Why wasn't Clementine in that beautiful place in the countryside with her parents? He was deliriously happy that she apparently hadn't remarried but… why hadn't she? She was beautiful, intelligent, pureblooded; they must have been lining up for her. Unless… no. Gods, no. That surely wasn't why the werewolf was here? What on earth had he missed? Where the bloody hell was his house-elf?
"Where are mother and Kreacher?" he asked, finally.
"Mother is dead and Kreacher is at Hogwarts," Sirius sighed.
"Hogwarts?"
The news about his mother wasn't all that surprising really; the Blacks had never seemed to live particularly long lives, Aunt Cassiopeia excluded, and his mother had always been a bit… off. But Kreacher, in Hogwarts… that was unexpected.
"Kreacher stayed and helped with… stuff, for a bit, but he was really distressed around Clem so she thought it would be better for him to be at Hogwarts with the other elves," he shrugged. "She really likes him for some reason."
"Yes, well," huffed Regulus. "My wife always did have more sense than you."
"She didn't have the sense to not get married to an idiot," Sirius muttered.
"What are you doing here?"
"What are you doing here?!"
Regulus folded his arms and fixed Sirius with the unwavering gaze that he'd learned from their father. Sirius fidgeted for a few uncomfortable minutes before he threw his hands up in surrender and huffed loudly. "Fine. Fine. But I'm just giving you the basics because this is Clem's story to tell."
Regulus acknowledged this with a tip of his head.
"After you… whatever. After everyone thought you were dead. Mother made Clem move back here. She went a bit… a bit more mad. Clemmie had to do everything, organise your funeral and all that nonsense. And deal with all the stuff you two had been plotting."
Regulus swallowed. He hadn't given a single thought to his funeral. Why would he? He hadn't died, merely faked a death. But of course there would need to be a funeral… and of course it would have fallen to his apparent widow to organise it. He wondered what words she had spoken at the service. She would have looked beautiful in a black veil, her golden hair left long and loose, a single tear on her porcelain cheek. How long had she worn her mourning clothes?
Fuck — the Death Eaters would have been there. Her occlumency shields had always been weak. Fuck. What a mess he had left her in. He was the biggest fool in England.
"She found me. I don't know how, she would never say, but she found me. I didn't want to hear her at first, but she persisted. She told me everything, showed me all your journals, all the spells she'd been working on. She's an extraordinary woman."
"I am well aware of that," Regulus said fondly.
"You don't deserve her."
"I am aware of that too."
"Anyway, she told me what you'd done and then the war got worse. I protected her as much as I could, Remus was away a lot but he helped too, and James and Lily… Lily was great with her. But there was only so much we could give her. She insisted on staying here, with mother. On keeping up appearances. Then… Voldemort fell. Mother died. And we moved in."
"I still don't really understand why you chose to move here, of all places —"
"I'm not telling you any more. That's for Clem to talk about, if she wants to," Sirius said firmly. "Now, Reg, why are you here?"
"That is something I also feel that I should discuss with Clementine first."
"Really?" Sirius sighed.
"Yes."
"Fine," he huffed, throwing his hands up once more. "I'm going to make sure she's alright. Don't blow the house up while I'm gone."
"That's hardly likely without my wand," muttered Regulus as he watched his brother stalk out of the room. The front door slammed, setting the portraits to muttering.
Regulus rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and groaned loudly. What a bloody mess he'd made of this. His brother still thought he was an idiot, his wife couldn't stand the sight of him, and there was a bloody werewolf living in his house. By Salazar, it was a good job his mother was dead. He'd be blasted off the tapestry before he — the tapestry!
He stood, straightened his shirt, and took a deep breath. He wondered if there had been any new additions. Had Cissy finally produced an heir for Malfoy? What about Bella? No, that was rather unlikely. Would Clementine still be linked to his name…?
Regulus marched up the staircase, ignoring the questions and muttering from the portraits that lined the walls, and headed straight for the drawing room which had always been home to that sacred tapestry. He recalled the first time he had shown it to Clementine, the day before Cissy's wedding, how enchanted she had been by it. Exquisite, she had called it. She alone had truly understood how important it was to him, to his ancestors. That was the day that he realised his heart was no longer his own.
He opened the door to the drawing room and took a step back in shock. If the receiving room had been redecorated, this had been… he wasn't sure if there were words enough to accurately describe it. The room was no longer dark and dreary, but full of light even though it was now dark outside. Wall sconces and an enormous golden chandelier had burst into light as soon as he had entered the room. The dark heavy curtains had been removed from the windows, and replaced with sheer drapes shimmering with golden thread. All traces of dark artefacts had gone (he did hope they hadn't been sold; some of them had been in the family for centuries) to be replaced with… trophies? Photographs? Child's drawings?
Regulus walked to the large fireplace — its dark green tiles and ebony wood replaced with lighter tones and golden hardware — and found its mantlepiece covered with framed photographs. Some of them, he noticed to his slight discomfort, were muggle and unmoving. There was a large one in the centre of the mantlepiece that he found himself drawn to and he picked it up, turning it over to see if there was an inscription somewhere. It was lacking. He looked again at the image: a boy and a girl dressed in casual muggle clothing, but standing on what was unmistakably Platform 9 3/4. The Hogwarts Express was behind them, bright red and freshly-polished, and there were children and parents bustling all around them in various states of wizarding and muggle dress. Their first day of school, perhaps?
He peered closer at the children. The boy had messy dark hair and glasses that reminded him horribly of Potter. But the girl… she looked just as Clementine had on her first day of school. He remembered. He'd been in the same boat as her as they crossed the Lake. This child had the same pale skin, the same long blonde hair tied back with a ribbon. The same bony wrists and wide, unfiltered smile. Surely… surely not. Regulus looked again at the boy. He could certainly pass for Sirius's son: dark hair, unkempt appearance, hideous muggle fashion. Surely not.
The two children were of the same height, the same build. Not identical, but twins, perhaps… surely not.
Clementine had thought herself a widow. Did Sirius not just say that she went to him for help? For protection? For comfort? Did he not just say that he gave her as much as he could? Had she… had she traded one Black brother in for the other?
Clementine stumbled into the parlour of her parents' old country house, her father's warnings to never apparate while under emotional stress echoing in her ears, and collapsed into a heap on the floor. Her head fell onto the cushion of a dusty old armchair and she sobbed, uncomprehending. Deep, racking sobs that shook her very core.
How? How could it be him? Standing there, in her sitting room (his sitting room), bold as anything. He was supposed to be dead. He was supposed to have been dead for over twelve years. She'd written his obituary. She'd organised his funeral. She'd chosen the fucking words to be engraved on his headstone and watched his so-called friends lower his empty casket into the ground. She had mourned him for longer than she had ever known him.
How could he have done it? How could he have been alive all this time without her knowing? Were they not supposed to share some kind of sacred magical bond? He had never even tried to contact her. Did she not mean anything to him? Did their child not mean anything to him? How foolish she had been! She had cried herself to sleep every single night since that most terrible of days when Kreacher had come home alone. She thought about him every day. She dreamed about him every night. She still wore his ring. She still surrounded herself with his belongings. She had always told her daughter what a brave, noble, good man he had been. Why would he do this?
They had done it all together. She had believed him and she had trusted him, despite her friends' warnings. Despite her parents' misgivings about his family. She had convinced them all, because he had convinced her. They had plotted and schemed together, they had worked together to destroy the Dark Lord, to end the war, to live together happily and in safety and in peace. He couldn't have just disappeared. He must have planned this. Why hadn't he told her? Why hadn't he taken her with him? Why had he abandoned her?
Strong arms pulled her into a hug and she sobbed harder, her hot wet tears soaking through his shirt. He didn't speak to her, didn't try to talk her out of her crying, didn't give her false platitudes or pretend that it would all be okay. Remus just held her close, like he had done so many times over the years. Like he had done years before that. He rubbed her back and stroked her hair until her tears finally subsided into hiccups.
"How could he?" she mumbled into his chest, her voice cracking.
"I don't know, love. He must have had a very good reason."
"Did Sirius know? All this time?"
"No. He couldn't have — wouldn't have — kept that a secret from either of us."
Clementine supposed that was true, at least. Sirius was a terrible liar. Especially to Remus. He couldn't even lie about using the last of the milk whenever Remus was around. Which was always, the soppy thing.
"What am I going to tell Carina?"
"The truth. Just as you always have."
Her daughter was barely twelve years old yet Clementine had never once kept the truth from her. She didn't believe in babying children, in hiding things from them. If her parents and teachers hadn't kept things hidden, she might have made wiser decisions in her youth. So when Carina had asked how Remus got his scars, they told her the truth. When she had asked why Sirius sometimes locked himself in his room with a bottle of whisky, they told her the truth. When she had asked why her mother's hands kept shaking when she was upset, they told her the truth.
But this… this was bigger than all of those things. This had the potential to hurt Carina far more than anything else that had happened in her young life. If she told her that her father was alive, was in their house… what if he disappeared again? Clementine knew the pain of that heartache all too well. Could she subject her daughter to the possibility of that same pain?
"Clemmie!" yelled Sirius as he darted into the room, falling to his knees on the dusty floorboards and pulling her out of Remus's embrace. "I'm so sorry! I didn't know, I swear I didn't know, he just turned up and I didn't know what to do, I nearly hexed him but I thought you might want to do that, I'm so sorry! Please don't cry!"
Clementine couldn't help but give a hoarse laugh as Sirius pawed at her face in an attempt to wipe away the mixture of tears and raindrops with his clumsy calloused thumbs.
"How are you feeling about this?" Remus asked him.
Sirius shrugged and settled down on the floor, leaning back against the armchair. He pulled Clementine's head to his shoulder and gripped her hand tightly. "I dunno. We weren't exactly speaking when he… well, he apparently didn't die, but… whatever he did. I dunno."
"Abandoned us?" suggested Clementine.
"Oh Clemmie," Sirius sighed, and knocked his head against hers.
"Did Regulus know? About Carina?" asked Remus, and took her other hand.
Clementine shook her head. "I didn't even know at that point. We'd been married barely a month. It took the Malfoys years, I expected us to have to wait just as long."
"Oh my sweet innocent pureblood princess, the men of the House of Black are very virile," announced Sirius, waggling his eyebrows over her head at Remus. Who rolled his eyes. "Reg wouldn't have just upped and left if he'd known you were preggers. He'd have loved parading a kid around, rubbing it in old Lucy's face."
"Not literally, I hope," said Remus.
Clementine frowned, not sure how she felt about that. Her hand drifted to her stomach, to the memory of the baby that had been there all those years ago. She sometimes still fancied that she could feel Carina kicking around inside there. She'd liked watching her stomach swell with each passing day, knowing there was a piece of Regulus growing inside her, comparing her bump to Cissy's. She had often dreamed about the other children that might have been: a boy, perhaps, or more girls, she didn't care as long as they were healthy and happy and his. Would Regulus have stayed, if he'd known she was carrying his child? A potential heir for his precious family line? A wife alone hadn't been enough, apparently. But a baby might have been, and that felt about as good as a wand to the eye.
"Do you want to come back home? Or stay here? We'll stay here with you if you want to stay here. It's a bit dusty but Remus is good at that stuff."
"I'm not sure if it's wise to leave him in that house on his own, Sirius," she sniffed.
"What do you mean? You don't think he'll… do anything?"
"I don't know. Apparently I never knew him at all."
Clementine stood up, pulling the two men with her, and took a deep breath. She had to do this. She had to face him, she had to talk to him, and she had to be strong. If not for herself then for her daughter, who needed to know that she did have a father, after all. And that he might not be as wonderful as Clementine had painted him to be, but he was real. Carina deserved to know him. All of him.
