A/N: Hello again! I'm sorry for the lack of update schedule for this fic, but I hope you enjoy this chapter. C:

To TheAngelicPyro: I'm glad that you're excited for what comes next! Thank you for reading!


October 31st, 1981

"Kreacher," the toddler sobbed out as he popped into the nursery with a soft crack. "Kreacher!"

The house-elf scowled but gathered the wailing child in his arms. "Bratling?"

Kreacher was a good elf. He listened to his Master's orders without questioning them- Master always knew best- despite how… unrefined the object of his current orders happened to be.

If Master commanded that Bratling be cared for, even if the child happened to be a horrid halfling- a mix of Pureblood and something lesser- Kreacher would obey. Kreacher would always obey Master, not only because it was his duty- but because Master was Kreacher's friend.

Kreacher used his magic to create orbs of multicolored light that danced around them. This, out of all the things Kreacher had tried to calm down the child under his care, was the only thing that seemed to bring peace to the sobbing toddler choking out the words, "I remember-"

The door to the nursery creaked open and Kreacher turned to his Master as he entered the room. "Kreacher? The wards went off," Master questioned with a concerned frown on his face, "Is everything alright?"

Kreacher straightened his back and wiped the child's face clean of tears and snot. Even a child had to be presentable when faced with the Master of the House. "Bratling had a nightmare. Kreacher will take care of it. Nothing for Master to waste his time on!"

"You are holding my heir, Kreacher. It's not a waste of time if it has to do with this."

If he were not the most dignified house-elf of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, then the look on Kreacher's face would be affronted. "Master," He gasped in horror, "Bratling is not the permanent heir!"

"I've told you before Kreacher, her name isn't Bratling." Master laughed and Bratling perked up at the sound from Kreacher's arms. "It's Canopa."

Hearing his Master say the Bratling's name so fondly made Kreacher squirm in guilt. He had despised the child at first. It's where the nickname Bratling came from, to begin with.

Master was right about the Bratling's real name but Bratling would always be Bratling to Kreacher. Perhaps that's why his Master didn't bother too hard to enforce the name switch- since Kreacher didn't truly have any ill will towards the girl any longer.

Master probably thought it was funny to hear the girl be called that.

The child squirmed in Kreacher's hold and reached out to Master, who watched the girl with a bemused and melancholic expression before gently removing her from Kreacher's grasp.

"What's wrong, little one?" Master murmured to Bratling as the girl clutched him tightly and buried her face in his neck. "You had a nightmare too? Oh, don't cry, it was just a dream."

Bratling shook her head. The thick black curls bounced on her head as she did so. "No."

"No?" Master repeated with minor confusion, "No what?"

"Not just a dream," Bratling clarified with a watery sniffle, "I remember now."

Kreacher cocked his head. "What does Bratling remember?"

Bratling started crying again and Master's face flipped from concerned to panicked. For all that Master had been helping Kreacher raise the Bratling for the last year, Master was still clueless when it came to a crying Bratling. It was no surprise. Master was still a child himself when he decided to take in Bratling. Master was truly the kindest man Kreacher had the honor of serving.

Even if he had no idea how to rear a child.

Luckily for Master, Kreacher had raised both Master and-

Luckily for Master, Kreacher knew how to deal with young children and the care they needed in order for them to grow healthy, strong, and respectable members of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.

Bratling's next words stopped any humor that Kreacher may have felt at the sight of his normally poised Master out of his depth:

"I remember being someone else," Bratling said in a weary voice that Kreacher had never heard Bratling use before. Both Kreacher and Master froze at her words.

"What," Master asked, face locked on hysteria unbecoming of the Lord of the House of Black.

Kreacher had seen Master panic enough times to recognize the signs by now. This was his Master, terrified over what the Bratling had said.

"What did you just say?"


Regulus tucked the sleeping child back into her crib with trembling hands. She had fallen asleep after speaking for nearly an hour. He had sent Kreacher to get water for her raspy throat but she had fallen asleep before the elf could return. There was much that she didn't remember, much that Canopa held herself back from telling him. He was a Slytherin and noticing the tells of a lying child was simple.

He tried to ignore the ache in his heart that only yesterday Canopa had never spoken a single dishonest word towards him; or how the aged look in her eyes made her look like an entirely different child than the one he had grown to love.

(("Reg, look," Ester smiled, the dimple on her left cheek deepening. She took him by the hand and led him to the crib, both of them looking down at the sleeping infant below. "She's so tiny isn't she?"))

Regulus wasn't naive. He knew reincarnation was rare even if not entirely unheard of in the Magical Community. But a part of him had hoped that perhaps Canopa hadn't truly meant what she had said. That she had simply been caught in the throes a bad dream and was simply saying the first things that came to mind. The amount of maturity present in her now in contrast to yesterday evening was enough to put that hope to sleep.

That wasn't the awareness of a two-year-old girl; that was a bastardized mix of adult and child that resulted in something between the two- something not quite the woman she had been in her past life but not wholly the toddler he had watched grow little by little.

(("I think I died, Papa," Canopa whispered into his neck, "I think I remember dying."

There was a lump in his throat at the thought of her having the knowledge of something so dreadful, so terrible, so horrifying. He tightened his arms around her and breathed in the scent of baby powder and shampoo. His heart was caught in his throat.

She pulled away enough to meet his eyes.

"It hurt, Papa," She told him somberly, something aged and dark flashing across her eyes so like his own. "They say it doesn't but really does." Besides the crib, Regulus could see Kreacher staring at Canopa with nothing but the truest form of horror in his wide bulbous eyes.

"It was scary-" Her voice cracked and she was the child he knew weeping in his arms once more. "It was scary and I was alone and it hurt so so so much-" ))

He left the room in silence and closed the door behind him. His back was pressed against the sturdy wood of the door as his knees gave up under him. He slid down onto the ground with a gasp of air that was nearly impossible to draw into his lungs.

He didn't know how long he sat there, vacantly gazing at the end of the hall with his fingers pressed against his face but when he came to there was a glass of water beside him and a worried Kreacher wringing his hands in front of him.

"Is Master feeling better now?"

Regulus took a deep breath and exhaled softly. He nodded and took a sip of the water Kreacher had brought him. "It's just… a lot to take in."

The house-elf nodded in understanding, his ears drooping. "Kreacher does not think there has been an old soul born into Master's Noble House since before Kreacher's great-great-grandfather was born."

A part of Regulus perked up at the information. Despite how long ago that had been, the fact that someone of his family had been a reincarnated soul meant that some form of record about the person in question existed. He opened his mouth to ask Kreacher for more information about this ancestor of his when the tattoo on his left forearm started to burn.

He hissed a curse, quickly pressing down on the mark with a gasp of pain. Kreacher noticed the action immediately. His eyes went wide. "He calls?"

Regulus muttered an affirmation and dragged himself upright, gritting his teeth. This was the pain that came from refusing the summons of Lord Voldemort, from turning away from the unkillable wizard who feared death more than anything.

"Kreacher," He rasped, fighting back a groan of pain at the pain erupting from the Dark Mark. "My room. Now!" The elf didn't question the command for a second. He snapped his fingers and suddenly Regulus was in his room, swaying on his feet and barely managing to reach the bed before collapsing.

He was growing used to the Dark Mark's agonizing pain. Fighting off the Dark Lord's summons had painful repercussions even though since that first time- the first time he turned his back on what his family wanted him to do and refused to serve Voldemort any longer- it had gotten easier to do so.

The pain remained the same. It was his conviction that had grown stronger.

(( Ester looked up at their arrival, Kreacher more frantic than Regulus had ever seen him and Ester quickly growing pale at the elf's words. Words that sounded like they were coming from a great distance and left ringing in his ears. She shot up from her porch chair and was beside him in the span of a blink to the next. She dropped to her knees beside him- when had Kreacher laid him down?- and waved her wand over him.

She barked commands at Kreacher at whatever the diagnostic spell had told her and the elf only hesitated for a moment before obeying. Wasn't that funny, Regulus thought, even as his body convulsed from the pain in his arm once more, Kreacher only listened to Purebloods.

Ester must have made a good impression on him in the few times they'd met or perhaps the potion he had drunk had left him looking worse than he thought. At least he had gotten water at last. He had thought that the thirst would never end and still he ached for more.

He didn't know if he was screaming with every surge of agony that the Dark Mark sent through his nerves, but there was the taste of blood in his mouth so he might have been.

Ester's hands were cool as they brushed the hair from his face. Regulus leaned into the touch. He felt hot, too hot as if he were burning from the inside out starting with his arm. He must have blacked out because next time he woke he was laying on Ester's bed with a damp cloth on his brow.

Kreacher sat on a small rocking chair with an infant in his arms, looking tense and concerned but thoroughly distracted by the child. Ester herself had been holding his hand, red-rimmed eyes and thumb sweeping over the back of his hand gently. Her room smelled of flowers.

'Kreacher, did you destroy it?' He wanted to ask. 'What happened while I was asleep?'

"You've been crying," He murmured instead, words hurting as they came out of his throat but too quiet to be clearly made out.

The sound caught the attention of the woman and the elf. Both of their heads shot up to look at him, twin expressions of relief washing over their faces at seeing him awake. Kreacher jumped up from his chair and bolted to his bedside, the Half-Blooded child in his arms seemingly forgotten for the moment.

"Master! Master is finally awake!"

"Regulus," Ester said in a softer voice and her dark eyes meeting his. She twined her fingers into his own. There was an odd look on her face with a multitude of emotions mixed into it that Regulus could not decipher all of them. "Kreacher told me that you've defected."

The smile that broke across her face rivaled the sun, "I'm glad you're okay."))


Regulus opened his eyes.

The room spun into focus after a moment, breaking him out of the memory of a time long past and back into the present- into a place where Ester was dead and Canopa was the only thing that remained of her.

At some point Kreacher must have changed him out of pajamas he had worn into the nursery- there was a chance he had thrown up dinner onto them- and into a different set of nightclothes. There was a damp cloth on his forehead and a glass of cold water on the nightstand beside him.

Kreacher always nursed him through these incidents with nothing but gentleness and devotion. Despite this, Regulus selfishly wished that it was someone else that would be here with him; the same person that hummed as she dabbed at his face with a wet washcloth and that poked his cheek when he tried to sit up too soon after an attack.

His wand was beside the glass of water and he flicked the wood until a glow of magic burst from the end and twisted into the current time. His eyebrows rose. It had been less than an hour. Usually, the backlash from not answering the summons lasted for three if not more, depending on how vengeful Lord Voldemort was feeling that particular day.

Regulus turned his eyes to his left forearm and felt his breath stutter in his throat.

"KREACHER!"

The elf appeared almost immediately. His eyes were wide and his ears perked up in alertness. "Master?"

"The mark," Regulus whispered, unable to tear his eyes from the faded tattoo, "There's something wrong with the mark." The elf leaned in to peer at the mark closely and rocked back on his heels in shock.

"The magic almost is gone." Kreacher whispered reverently, looking as if someone had struck him upside the head with a frying pan. "Master! The mark is almost gone!"

"That means someone has nearly killed the Dark Lord." Regulus laughed hysterically.

He wanted to weep. His eyes were damp but were lit with a manic mix of hope and grief. Of course, by the time someone defeated Voldemort, it would be after it was too late to save the life of Ester Marino. "This gives us what we needed most, Kreacher! Time to figure out how to destroy the Horcrux!"

Outside, all over the streets of London- while Regulus mourned in the solitude of his bedchamber and Canopa slept on with memories of another life fluttering into her mind- the name Harry Potter was whispered, revered, and became a thing of legend, all overnight.


November 1st, 1981

"This has to be some kind of sick prank," Master whispered, face pale and hands clenched tightly around the copy of the Daily Prophet. "Sirius-" His voice cracked as the man in the photograph snarled at the ones taking the picture and he squeezed his eyes shut. "Sirius would never-"

Kreacher wrung a dishrag in his long-fingered hands. His eyes were incredibly wide, flicking his gaze between his Master and the newspaper in Master's hands.

"They're saying he killed thirteen people," Master said and set the newspaper down beside this untouched breakfast. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. "They're saying Sirius is a Death Eater and that he sold Potter out to the Dark Lord."

"Is Master talking about the blood traitor?" Kreacher asked anxiously. "Mistress Black's traitorous son?"

Master's hand dropped away from his eyes and they fluttered shut. "Kreacher," Master said quietly, in a voice that left no room for argument. "Please. Not now."

Kreacher yanked at his right ear at the mild reprimand. "Kreacher is sorry."

"Papa?" Bratling's voice cuts in from the other end of the table.

Kreacher jerked and turned to stare at Bratling in shock. Bratling stared at Master with grey eyes that looked much older than they ever had before. Kreacher was starkly reminded of the events of last night.

"Canopa," Master began weakly, not raising his eyes from where they had dropped to the freshly polished cutlery beside the newspaper. His shoulders were stiff and he seemed frozen in place. "I've told you before that you shouldn't call me that."

Bratling glanced at the newspaper on the table and back up at Master with an unreadable expression on her face. "Papa," She repeated as if Master hadn't been trying to dissuade her from calling him that since she first spoke the word nearly a year ago. "Who's Sirius?"

Master's breath hitched at the question and Kreacher had to hold back the urge to send Bratling to her room with a snap of his fingers. Master had ordered him to treat Bratling well, and sending Bratling away whenever the urge struck him wasn't something Master approved of. No matter how her questions were opening wounds in Master's heart that hadn't had the chance to ever fully heal.

"Sirius…" Master whispered, choking out the name of the blood traitor as if it hurt him to say it, "Sirius is my older brother." Master's hands had curled around the edge of the dark wood of the table. His fingers were white-knuckled and nearly bloodless. "We haven't spoken in a very long time."

"I don't like Uncle Sirius," Bratling declared suddenly, making Master's head snap up to look at her in shock and Kreacher feel a kernel of pride at Bratling's opinion on the traitor. "Talking about him makes you sad, Papa, so I don't like him at all."

At Bratling's words, Master flinched hard.

"Master?" Kreacher asked in concern, seeing how pale Master had gone at Bratling's words. The flicker of satisfaction he felt at Bratling rejecting her relation with the blood traitor as gone now, drowned by worry for his Master.

Anything that had to do with the blood traitor always affected Master, so it was no surprise that Bratling's ignorant statement had struck Master right in the place he was most sensitive about. Especially since it had to do with Bratling, and that Mudblood mother of hers, and Master's blood traitor brother, and Master himself.

Master stood up from the table, dragging his eyes away from the Bratling with some effort and drawing in a shuddering breath. "I'm not feeling very well, I'll be in my chambers."

"Papa?" Bratling questioned and squirmed against the high chair she was seated in. She reached out for Master with short pudgy arms and called for him again, her voice tinged with a trace of panic this time. "Papa?"

"Kreacher, I need you to do something for me," Master said, eyes intense and filled with swirling grief. "I've tried so many times but I've never been able to bring myself to do it."

Kreacher's eyes widened and the dishrag slipped out of his grip. "Master can't mean-"

"Kreacher," Master murmured, his fingers twitching towards the now crying Bratling- as if he wanted to scoop her up and ease her weeping. "Show her the tapestry."

Kreacher hesitated, thinking about how much this decision could alter the sense of home Master had found after his Mudblood sweetheart had been killed. But Kreacher was a good elf, he had always been a good elf, and so he bowed his head and whispered, "Yes Master."

"Papa, I'm sorry," Bratling sobbed and clawed at the latches of the chair.

Master nodded silently as he walked away from the dining room.

"I didn't mean to make you sad, Papa, I'm sorry."

The words followed Master out as he fled.


The ceiling hadn't changed from the last time Regulus had traced it with his eyes, although the ache in his heart had a different cause this time. Last time it was the mother and now it was the daughter. What a horrid thing to inherit, he mused even as he let out a bitter laugh- the ability to break his heart with little effort.

Distantly he wondered if Kreacher had shown Canopa the tapestry if she had seen the secret he hadn't been able to bring up from the moment she first called him, 'Papa'.

He wondered if she would be able to understand what it all meant.

(("Papa, do you promise that you won't ever hate me?" Canopa asked, after the admission that she remembered dying still hung in the air the nursery and Regulus had remembered how to breathe once more.

"Even if I'm not normal like everyone else?" She whispered, gray eyes wide and shiny with tears, "Even if I remember being someone else besides Canopa?" She was so small in his arms- the little girl, the dead woman, the twisted combination of the two. She felt like the child he had taken in, the child he had sworn to protect with his life no matter what.

Regulus hadn't hesitated. "I could never hate you, little one. Never, ever."

"I promised your mother I would always take care of you," Regulus continued, rubbing soothing circles on her small back as she wept. "I promised that I would always think of you as my own no matter what."

The small lights that Kreacher had summoned earlier danced around the room, softly illuminating the messily painted trees and flowers decorating the bedroom wall. If Regulus closed his eyes and thought back, he could almost remember the exact way the sun had hit Ester's smile as she painted the bright red apples into the branches of the trees.

"Do you promise that you won't ever hate me either?" Regulus asked in a whisper, the weight and guilt of what he had hidden way striking him once again, in the way it tended to whenever he saw Canopa.

The girl had wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her white nightgown and had given him a bright smile.

"Silly Papa," she had said, "I could never hate you either."))

Regulus wondered if that would be true even after she saw the tapestry.


"It's so pretty," Canopa whispered as she drank in the sight of the tapestry depicting the lineage of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black for centuries after centuries. Kreacher was somber by her side, levitating her up with magic after she asked him to let her see the family tree from the very top but saying little else. It wasn't until her chubby fingers had reached the near bottom of the tapestry that she paused and stared blankly at her Mother's name- at the name it was connected to before dropping off to her own.

"Does Bratling see now? What Master did not say before?" Kreacher asked, only after he saw that Canopa had paused on the three names. "Does Bratling see now why Master despairs?"

"Oh," She whispered, tracing the line of her Papa's name with a finger; tracing the line of her Mother's name with another, and not moving her eyes away from the burnt spot in the fabric that was nestled between the two. "I do."

She needed no further explanation to see that there were no lines connecting the name Canopa Black to Regulus Black, or that the name of her father, right above her own, was burnt away.


Back when they were still young boys, Sirius and Regulus, had been inseparable.

Everything had begun with the two of them, the two brothers of the House Black.

Sirius, the perfect heir, and Regulus, the perfect spare. Sirius, who would always walk ahead, look ahead; come, see and conquer first. Regulus, who would always carefully step where his brother had stepped fist, who would never look beyond his brother; who would arrive, examine and leave places untouched.

There it began with the heir and the spare and the bond the two shared.

Then for the heir came: Hogwarts and Gryffindor; James Potter, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew; the disownment, the banishment from the family tapestry, the screaming match in the kitchen.

Then for the spare came: Regulus alone; Slytherin and their parent's expectations; being shunned by his brother; Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters; family duty and being branded and wanting to run but being unable to do so.

Then for the heir came: Freedom, choices, friends, and a taste of paradise.

Then for the spare came: The servitude, the gritting his teeth in silence; salvation, and damnation, and Ester Marino.

Then for the heir and the spare came: Canopa Black and the title of father that could only belong to a single man- one who had no clue that the title was meant to be his and the other wanting nothing more than for it to belong to him.

Everything began with the two of them, the once inseparable brothers of the House Black.

And so at last, it came down to the two of them once more, Sirius and Regulus- the dishonored heir and the crowned spare.


A/N: Don't forget to tell me what you think! I hope you enjoyed this chapter lol. C:

See you next time!