Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or anything you can recognise from any books or TV series or movies. I do however take liberties with the plots or mentions provided by JKR or other writers. The only profit I'm getting out of it is improving my English.

Title: Secrets & Keepers – Keep Us

Rating/Warnings: R/M [AU; Manipulative Dumbledore (therefore not Dumbledore friendly); profanity; canon-typical violence; frank discussion of past child abuse (Harry but not only) and of past child abuse of sexual nature (not Harry); not very detailed descriptions of torture (not Harry); Black family feels.

Additional warnings: Death Eater's being Death Eaters and everything that falls under that umbrella (murder, torture, general mayhem); descriptions of panic attacks; mild blasphemy; religious undertones; references to past child abuse; references to mental illnesses.

Chapter summary: Regulus in the present and in the past.

Word count: Around 22 200 words.

Author's note/personal ramble: This chapter is very introspective while at the same time moving in the present (at a snail pace). There's a blink and you will miss it mention how Regulus managed to evade Dumbledore for so long. He doesn't clarify how it works for him, not in this chapter, he'll explain how it works in the next chapter when he'll discover it himself and he'll theorise how he managed to acquire it. What you need to know is that I covered my bases, I know how it works, how it worked in the past and how it will work for him in the future. And to think that in the beginning, it was nothing more than a passing comment... I'm very proud of that idea and I hope that sceptics will try and wait for the detailed explanation from him. As for religious undertones, well I wanted to explore Regulus' redemption, the changing point of his life and having a chance to do so through faith and atonement (written from point of vision of a pure-blood wizard). Personally, I never saw that before in a HP fiction and it's not as if that part of him will start affecting everyone around him. It's just him, at this point in his life, taking comfort from what once brought him comfort.

And if the chapter feels incomplete? Well, it is incomplete. Originally, it was supposed to be posted in its entirety but as you can see at this point I'm at 22 000 words and the issue of length of the chapters had been raised multiple times by now. Plus I wanted to post this chapter before Christmas so I divided one enormous chapter into smaller parts that can stand on their own. Plus, this chapter ends in an appropriate and symbolically fitting place

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Beta read by Goddess of IT and maeveiluka88

Dedicated to all of my readers who stuck with me for so long. Thank You, I hope that You will find this story enjoyable. I would be the most grateful for constructive criticism.

Sorry for trouble but going through last chapter I realised that I messed up the dates so I went back and fixed that. But chapter 5 was just recently finished and sent to my beta so it might appear here soon (hopefully).


There is no refuge from memory and remorse in this world.

The spirits of our foolish deeds haunt us, with or without repentance.

~Gilbert Parker.

Secrets & Keepers – Keep Us

Chapter four: Mea Maxima Culpa, The Fall of Regulus Black.

Regulus Black, 12 Grimmauld Place, London, 7th August, noonish

As soon as the realisation that while the Aurors, Ministry of Magic, and Albus Dumbledore himself wouldn't be able to trace him and Sirius to 12 Grimmauld Place but one very determined Severus Snape could trace Harry there hit him he could feel the first tale-tell signs of an impending panic attack. A chill ran down his spine, his fingers started tingling.

Not now. Not now. Not now went through his head like a mantra. He could have a full blown panic attack later on but for now, he needed to fix the issue. It was rather easy. Why didn't he think of it sooner?

He squelched his frantic thoughts, while at the same time trying to calm his racing heart, in order to ask Harry for his blood. As soon as he had it, he fled from the kitchen into the hall. Nearly tripping over his own feet, as he stumbled to the wall that separated the doors into the dining room and ground floor bathroom. Still holding the vial of Harry's blood in his right hand he placed both his hands on the wall and pushed his magic into it.

The wards hummed and flared under his touch recognising the blood of a Black.

They were strong.

Layers upon layers of old magic, old blood within walls and that was without the stuff his father had added which was nasty and fancy. He didn't stop to ponder, what his father had done, because he was already pouring Harry's blood on his left hand. Dropping the vial to the floor, he started to draw runes on the wall with it.

First, tiwaz, for authority.

Othala, for home, second.

Third, was sowulo for strength.

Fourth, nauthiz for need.

Fifth, algiz, for protection.

Finally, sixth, inguz, for growth.

All six main layers.

Thank fuck that, by family standards, Harry as a grandson of Dorea Black counted as a Black. He might have been only one-quarter Black and Dorea wasn't winning mother of the year awards, but blood was blood and Harry's own blood would be what would keep him safe here. Both from outside intrusion, as well as, the house itself.

When he brought Sirius and Harry here, he checked the state of the wards immediately after making sure that they were alone and that no one save his somewhat recently deceased family members hadn't been through the door. He feared that the Aurors had, but blessedly he hadn't found any signs of intrusion within wards. There were plenty signs of an attempt to get in on the door, but the door held against the intrusion.

Grandpa Arcturus had to seal them at some point after Mother died. While some members of the family outlived Grandpa and Mother none of them was interested in the old town-house in London.

Cygnus and Druella, up until they died lived in one of the Rosier family summer manors in Cornwall. Aunt Lucretia lived with her husband in Devon. Grandaunt Cassiopeia hadn't set a foot on English soil ever since she retired from her position at the Ministry of Magic day after her sixtieth birthday with firm plans to travel the world. The last Regulus himself heard of her was a small postcard from Bulgaria, which she wrote to his mother, claiming that the weather was marvellous; Bulgarian wines delicious; and that young desperate men looking for a company of an old wealthy witch were simply lining up to accompany her everywhere.

The only other surviving member of the Black family were Sirius, currently unconscious and for over eleven years a prisoner of Azkaban. Bellatrix, who was also a prisoner of Azkaban, and hopefully a permanent one that wouldn't be inspired by Sirius's escape.

Andromeda with her progeny Nymphadora, the former hadn't been here since she announced, during the last Sunday family dinner of the summer of 1972, that she had recently eloped with her Muggle-born boyfriend Edward Tonks, a Hufflepuff, and was currently expecting his baby, before she high-tailed out of the house altogether. She has never set a foot inside the house since then. Neither did her daughter.

Narcissa who had married a Malfoy and was currently living in Malfoy Manor. Even if she didn't want to live there she had plenty of other properties to choose from, both from her marriage as well as her Rosier family side.

And finally himself, who was busy with activating the wards that will prevent the portraits from leaving their frames or coming back to their frames inside the house. Later with Sirius and even later with Harry, much later with Harry, Sirius and Kreacher together he never had a chance to take more than cursory look at anything that wasn't the kitchen, his old bedroom, Sirius's old bedroom and his parents' old bedroom. Judging by the amount of dust and cobwebs the house hadn't been inhabited by anyone since Mother died.

Well, there was Kreacher but Kreacher was single-minded in his pursuit to fulfil Regulus's last wish to destroy the Horcrux and didn't give a flying fuck about the state of the house. For whom he should care for it anymore anyway. Regulus was supposedly dead, and Sirius locked up in Azkaban; the house could be only passed on their children and seeing that Sirius had none, was in his mid-twenties when mother died and, as a wizard, he could live past one hundred years, no one was going to live there for a very long time.

Sure, Sirius might die in Azkaban at any point but then seeing that there was no male Black heir the house would be passed over to Bellatrix, who was also in Azkaban, and the same conditions that applied to Sirius would be applied to her.

The next in line to inherit the house was Andromeda and her descendants; she might have been officially disowned but that didn't change that she was Black by blood and providing that both Sirius and Bellatrix would predecease her, she stood a chance to inherit the town-house. Provided that latent blood magic within the wards wouldn't choose Narcissa's only son as an heir.

Really, from Kreacher's standpoint, 12 Grimmauld Place was going to be empty for many decades, maybe even over one hundred years, so why bother with cleaning something that no one was going to use for many years to come. He might even die before that happened.

That was going to change soon, hopefully, Kreacher, and Una, once Kreacher would locate her would take care of the house and make it more inhabitable. Boggarts and doxies could be marvellous training exercises for Harry, and if something worse lived here, there was him and Sirius and they will take care of it.

Everything was under control.

Except for his breathing, and his racing heart, and his trembling hands. He needed to get himself under control. It wouldn't do him any good if he passed out in the hall. Not when he had a job to do and precious little time before it would occur to someone to place a guard in the neighbourhood to watch the front door for Sirius.

He tried to take a breath through his nose and he practically snorted dust because it was so thick in the air. He opened his mouth and gasped for breath, but it was a shallow one and it simply wouldn't do.

Think, idiot, think and calm the fuck down.

Mirzam's face swam in front of his eyes. Full of compassion and radiant with calmness but still with slight worry in her hazel green eyes.

"Ansuz," he could practically hear her whisper into his ear, voice soft and full of warmth.

Ansuz, he repeated after her in his head as he took in another shallow breath and let it out through his nose.

"Berkana," she continued.

Berkana. Another breath. In and out.

"Kenaz."

Kenaz. Yet another breath. In and out. Still shallow.

"Dagaz."

Dagaz. Once again.

"Ehwaz."

Ehwaz. Repeat.

"Fehu."

Fehu. Slightly deeper this time.

"Gebo."

Gebo. Just as deep as the last one.

"Hagalaz."

Hagalaz. Hailstorm. Loss. Destruction. Change. Slightly more deeper, with a painful squeeze around his heart. She wasn't there anymore. Bellatrix ripped her away from life, from Sirius, from him.

"Isa."

Isa. Ice. Standstill. Block. Challenge. Still not deep enough but his heart was slowing down

"Jera."

Jera. Year. Harvest. Peace. Rewards. The warmth of her embrace, the weight of her arms around his shoulders. The smell of her cinnamon shampoo wafting from her long, curly black hair. The comfort he never found in his mother arms.

"Kenaz."

Kenaz. Again. A little deeper. Torch. Revelation. Knowledge. Creativity. Inspiration. He came to her practically on his knees; strike that he came to Sirius but hadn't found him in his flat. He found Mirzam instead and he fell apart in front of her.

"Laguz."

Laguz. A little more deeper, a little while longer. Water. Sea. Lake. Flow. Renewal. Rebirth. He was born again in front of her. She calmed him down, talked him through his panic attack.

"Mannaz."

Mannaz. Deeper still. Self. Mankind. Culture. Friends. Gospel of Luke, chapter 22. Morbid for a first contact ever with a Bible, not as morbid as the one that followed but still enough for him to wonder how people could draw strength from that.

"Nauthiz."

Nauthiz. Even deeper. Need. Necessity. Hardship. Delays. That one he should have tattooed on his forehead. Along with mea culpa. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

"Inguz."

Inguz. Deep. Fertility. Growth. Common sense. Running away. It can't be me, it just can't. I'm not strong enough. I'm not brave enough. I can't. I won't.

"Othala."

Othala. Deep again. Goddess. Property. Home. Plenty. The woman in front of him, with her face full of not disdain but understanding. You can always come to us. Don't object. He might be full of doubts but he won't turn you away. Not after I will tell him not to. You're family.

"Pertho."

Pertho. Deep again. Pawn. Magic. Mystery. Feminine. Bloody Dark Lord. Bloody Cassandra. Bloody prophecy. Blood shelf. The bloody head that struck that blood shelf. And on that note bloody Sybill that just had to be a bloody parrot, no originality whatsoever. May she rot in hell for opening her bloody mouth in front of those bloody idiots, both of them.

"Inguz."

Inguz again. Deep still. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

"Raido."

Raido. Wagon. Travel. Journey. Destiny. Deep.

The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives. The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies.

"Sowulo."

Sowulo. Deep. Sun. Strength. Energy. Health. Success. I will carry on. I will end it. Harry needs to be aware of why the Dark Lord wanted to kill him. Why the Dark Lord will pursue him but defeating him once and for all won't become Harry's destiny. He won't be sacrificed at the altar of greater good like a lamb. He won't be torn away from us. He is the Boy Who Lived, he will become the Boy Who Will Live but he won't become the Man Who Defeated. That wasn't his destiny, it shouldn't have been his destiny in the first place like it shouldn't have been that poor Longbottom's boy.

He should have been more active. Sure, he had a pretty good excuse for three years, being first in a coma and then later recovering from one surgery after another. He could even swing in an additional three years spend on getting familiar with the world he didn't know but was his now. Even Christ himself didn't start teaching until He was thirty, until He lived in the world of man and grew to love it and people in it enough to die for them in the end. Blasphemous, his Mum would hit him over his head with a kitchen towel if she heard him say it but… That was the truth and the nature of ultimate sacrifice, one had to know what one was giving up and for whom.

Thy will be done. With his right hand, he reached for the chain around his neck and pulled it over his shirt, grabbing what hung on it, all of them together. Sirius's and Mirzam's Auror dog tags, which Mirzam, sweet, understanding Mirzam misplaced and reported as lost after she handed them over to him, to have something to hold on to in the hour of doubt.

His own Naming Day medallion, a plain platinum oval with an R etched on its front and his official birthday written on the back. Sirius's Naming Day medallion, same shape, same metal, same concept but with a different letter and different date. Mirzam's Naming Day medallion, at least the one she should receive if Solomon Babbling was a responsible man, he had it commissioned by a jeweller after he found her grave, same shape, same metal and concept, but hers unlike his and Sirius had two dates on the back, that of her birth and that of her death.

Harry's Naming Day medallion, not the original one, the original one still should have been in Godric's Hallow and because it was a Potter one, it should be done in gold rather than platinum, but he had it commissioned by the same jeweller after other three. Finally, tiny, thin silver cross which belonged to his Mum's grandmother, a gift she has given him when he first accompanied her to church.

The silver medallion of Saint Martin of Tours was hanging on its own chain.

Thy will be done. Well, not that way, not at the expense of other people's lives. He ran away from it when he first heard it but when the push came to shove, he went to that cave, alone except for Kreacher, ready to give up his life for people he loved and cared for. For Sirius, for Mirzam, who one day would become his sister, for the children the two of them would have one day. He didn't exactly succeed. Thy will be done. But it will be done his way, no one else will end up being caught up in his own destiny. Especially not Harry and not Sirius, they had suffered enough.

He shouldn't linger, shouldn't waste precious time on another existential crisis. He had a job to do and he needed to do it fast. But it wouldn't do him any good if he showed his own face back in Little Whinging, someone could recognise him.

The solution immediately presented itself to him. It had been there by his side, counting runes with him. He hardly used this one, there were others which he used more often but this one he always chose when he needed comfort and he needed it now. Mirzam was long gone but her warmth, her comfort and solace she offered him lived on, in his memory, embedded into his skin, always there under the surface.

He closed his eyes and summoned to the forefront of his memory the image of her face. Long, curly, jet-black hair; thin, slightly slanted at the end eyebrows over almond-shaped hazel green eyes; straight nose with a little turned-up tip; thin lips; heart-shaped face.

She would be coming up to his nose and wizard or not he didn't have time to adjust his clothing, so he kept his height and pushed his magic where it was needed, not too much just to have something there rather than nothing. He didn't have time to go all the way since going all the way was insanely time consuming and required a lot of concentration. He never went all the way anyway if he wasn't in the mood for female sex and he never used that particular form for sex. He had limits, he could use his almost sister in law's face to head out and walk around or to just stare at her reflection in the mirror taking comfort from his reflection as her but having sex as her was off limits, there were other faces for that.

He quickly willed his prick to shorten enough to not be visible through his jeans. Female face and a pair of breasts wouldn't fool anyone who would look lower and see a clear outline of a male prick. He had enough of close calls in the past and had been called a freak enough times to mind his dangling manhood when he was wearing female face.

He glanced down for a moment at his left hand, noting that all of Harry's blood on it seeped into the wards. Good, he smiled softly to himself. Got to love magic. He turned around to take a good look into the tiny mirror hanging on the opposite wall. He saw in it Mirzam's hair, eyes and face and he smiled to himself. Not bad for someone who recently had a panic attack.

Suddenly he heard Sirius's voice coming out of the kitchen, calling out, "Reg! Come back down here!"

Fuck, no. Not in this form. Granted two solid meals gave Sirius some strength but seeing Mirzam's face again after burying her and mourning her for years might give him a heart-attack and Regulus, definitely didn't want that.

So, he quietly tiptoed through the hall, summoning his jeans jacket from upstairs wordlessly and reached for the doorknob just as his right hand closed on the material of his jacket, the door opened under his touch with a quiet click and he stepped outside. Equally quietly he closed it behind himself and put his hand on the handle, willing his magic to close all the locks shut. Once he could feel the last of the locks clicking into its place, he finally dared to peel himself from the door and put his jacket on.

He walked down the stairs and stepped onto the pavement, taking a quick but careful look around. Nothing seemed out of place. The small, gated playground in the middle of the place was full of neighbourhood children, children of children he once used to spy on through the window of his childhood bedroom or children of the new occupants of neighbouring houses. There was also a very determined game of tag going on around the gates.

Muggle cars, mostly clean and polished were shinning under the rays of noon sunlight. A radio was playing from one of the upper windows of number eight and Freddie Mercury was singing that he wanted to break free. Kind of appropriate. Mrs 9 Grimmauld Place was gossiping with Mrs 5 Grimmauld Place, her bored daughter or granddaughter was looking longingly at the playground but dutifully holding on her mother's or grandmother's hand. Boringly normal, just another day at Grimmauld Place.

Nothing was out of place, everything was as if he just stepped out of the house into sunbathed street fifteen years ago. Except fifteen years ago, he found all of this annoying, irritatingly Muggle and he questioned the lack or loss of marbles of that one of his ancestors who decided that a town-house in the middle of London was exactly what the Black family needed. Now he only found it comforting.

Nothing to see here. No weird looking or very overdressed people wandering around the place. Just your neighbour girl you never have seen before taking a stroll through the place. Relatively calmly he passed through the place and walked to a kiosk, he quickly took a look at the news-stand. Plain old news, nothing important, same old violence, same old scandals, literally not a single sign that would proclaim that a Harry Potter, 13, went missing from his relatives in Surrey. Good.

He rummaged through his pocket and found some coins and rolled up pounds. Enough for a train journey both ways and a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

"Afternoon. Pack of Silk Cuts, menthol and a lighter," he told the salesman.

He paid the man, picked his purchases and wished him a good day. Just as he stepped into painfully short Grimmauld Street he lit a cigarette and took a deep breath. Merlin, he missed that, why did he quit smoking? Oh, that's right because Dad smoked and after his heart-attack the whole family in order to support him quit smoking, cut down drinking and changed their diet.

Now he had plenty of reasons to start smoking again. Did Sirius smoke? He couldn't remember. Mirzam used to keep a pack of cigarettes around but he never has seen her smoke. She must be having a field day in afterlife right now. Not for the first time he wondered what she would say about him wearing her face. She would probably laugh and call him pretty before she would tell him to take care of them. Merlin, how much he missed her. He could use to have her around. She would ground Sirius, calm him down and she would take care of Harry, the same way she took care of him. Quietly, without fanfare, just by being there. She would be their rock.

What did she once said? It was a Mexican proverb: 'the house does not rest on the ground, but upon a woman'. Granted extremely patriarchal and chauvinistic but true as he found out when he moved with Mum and Dad. Dad could physically take care of the house and he could fend for himself but the one who made a house a home was Mum with her calming presence, gentle smile and a stray hand ruffling his hair. She was the one to whom Dad and Regulus flocked like chickens to a mother hen when they were troubled by something.

Fuck. What he would do about his parents? He couldn't simply disappear without a single word. It would break their hearts, Mum's especially. For now, they were in Spain and during the last phone call they mentioned something about heading to Portugal. They would be gone at least for the rest of the month and if the weather and finances permitted maybe even until mid-September. Speaking of September, what he should do about his job?

There was no way that he was going to return to teaching now. Not with a looming hunt for the Dark Lord's Horcruxes and Sirius and Harry at home. Then there was the matter of Harry's status. If he went missing at any other time the Dursleys wouldn't bother to report him as missing. But before he went missing Harry blew up Marge Dursley, it was an admirable inflating charm that would make both of his parents proud. It might have been accidental but for Improper Use of Magic Office there was accidental magic and there was accidental magic. No one would receive a fine or a warning for a shattered glass or plate or for flickering lights or door or windows closing itself shut but an inflating charm? That would require a visit from Accidental Magic Reversal Squad and a warning from Improper Use of Magic Office. Adding to that the fact that it was a second warning… surely shortly after they left Little Whinging an Auror was dispatched to snap Harry's wand in two and when they didn't find him there….

If only he could get his hands on a Daily Prophet, he would know where they stood. Expelled from Hogwarts or not Harry Potter was officially missing in wizarding world, which meant that the Aurors, Ministry of Magic and Dumbledore himself would be looking for him. Quite diligently, maybe even more diligently than they were looking for Sirius. It was only a matter of time before someone would add two and two together and get four. Fudge and Dumbledore might not entertain that idea right away but Severus Snape…

Severus Snape, like Sirius would say, was another bowl of kibble. The man was a Potions genius; if he hadn't gotten himself caught up with the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters he would have gone very far in the field. With some little effort, he could've started his own Potions making company and he would sweep the competition away pretty quickly. Or he could have turned into research and would become the Head of Potions Department at St Mungo's in a matter of maybe five years since receiving his First Class Mastery in Potions. He had clout, charisma and natural talent. It was a pity that it all got wasted on the Dark Lord.

Snape was a Death Eater, just like him and just like him, he had seen the light too late to take back the decision to become a Death Eater. Just like him, Snape had a vested interest in seeing the Dark Lord's fall, at least, as long as Lily Evans lived.

He wouldn't really put it past Snape to convince the Dark Lord that he was spying on Dumdledore, who he had convince that he had changed his allegiance. He could easily convince both maniacs that he was going to spy on the other for their own benefit. It would have been insanely dangerous, and Snape would be walking the very fine line between life and death constantly but if there was someone who could play double agent and remain loyal to his own cause it was Severus Snape.

Then there was also the matter of the cause itself. He wasn't entirely truthful when he told Sirius and Harry that he didn't get the name of the other listener. He chose to tell the partial truth, that the magical signature of the listeners recorded as the very last thing of the prophecy because it did record as the very last thing of the prophecy. But it didn't change the fact that the initials of the listeners, as well as the speaker, had been seen when the prophecy was being recorded. An S. T. S. had been floating along A. P. W. B. D. and S. P. T. until right before the part about the Dark Lord marking the chosen one as his equal it disappeared and didn't return. Hence the reason why the magic recording the magical signature recorded only Dumbledore's name along with Trelawney's.

Snape didn't attend that meeting on 1st November 1979, for reasons that weren't disclosed at the time or perhaps he had, and Regulus just hadn't see him. He should have, it was one of those grand meetings, when every Death Eater was present, as well as few unmarked supporters that were on their way to officially join the ranks. They were all unmasked. Meetings like these made him feel quite unsettled for a variety of reasons.

He was a good Occlumenist, not an excellent one, he wasn't born with a natural talent like some rare individuals were but he learned, the very hard way, that in order to protect himself and Sirius he needed to be a master of his thoughts and feelings, that he needed to maintain the strongest of facades that everything was fine when it really wasn't.

That particular skill became handy when he realised what a colossal mistake he had made by joining the Dark Lord. It came handier still as the hours trickled into days and then into months and he still lived even though, while still serving the Dark Lord, he no longer served the Dark Lord.

He knew how long it took him to change sides. How long had it taken Snape to realise the enormity of his mistake? To recognise the fact that he painted a bull's eye on the back of the only person he really cared for? It had to have come at some point after Regulus officially died. Or did it come before? It was hard to gauge. Snape was a secretive bastard to begin with. Brilliant, talented, impudent. Oh, he could show some respect when and where respect was due but to someone who truly knew him, who paid him an insane amount of attention it was evident when it was a true respect and when it was a simple placating.

Potions weren't the only area in which Snape was gifted. Fascinated by the Dark Arts he took to curses, hexes and their counters like a duck to water. Through first year and a half he struggled with Transfiguration; he was nowhere near as lousy as Pettigrew had always been, but it didn't come to him as naturally as it came to Sirius or Potter. Snape needed to study hard to receive good grades.

But then halfway through his second year he stumbled into Arithmancy which provided him with a better understanding of the limitations of pretty much everything. Regulus himself had seen it and followed in Snape footsteps, because he had fascinated him from the very beginning.

How come that so much, raw talent and power, could manifest itself in a half-blood, and not even a proper magical half-blood, but an offspring of a witch and a muggle.

It was the fascination with the older boy that led Regulus into challenging Snape that while brilliant at Potions and reasonably well versed in Dark Arts – which earned him in rapid succession a glare, a snort and a very powerful stinging hex into his ribs – he couldn't be good in one of the more subtle and delicate arts of Mencymagic, Legilimency or Occlumency.

After that Regulus, a reasonably practised Occlumenist himself by then– if he wasn't, he would have been flayed for some of the thoughts that went through his head – had been reminded of one of the simplest truths of life. You can't put in front a stubborn and confident arsehole a challenge and tell him that he won't succeed. Really, he should have remembered that after growing up with one.

Few weeks after that one-sided conversation chess games had begun. At first, Snape accosted him whenever he saw that Regulus had nothing to do, then a little while later he started finding notes in his school-bag with time and place written on it in Snape's tiny and cramped handwriting. In the very beginning, thanks to Grandpa Arcturus's tutoring in chess and playing for ages against Sirius, Regulus was winning. Snape himself was playing pretty unevenly; clearly, he knew the theory but wasn't very well practised, though he had few lucky shots.

Once they removed themselves and their games into one of their private rooms however the conversations had started. At first inconsequential: weather, what the house-elves would prepare for dinner, what are the chances of Slytherin Quidditch team smearing Gryffindor Quidditch team into the pitch.

Easy stuff.

Impersonal stuff.

But conversations required eye contact, it was a behaviour deeply ingrained into young Regulus. When you're talking with someone you should at least try to look at their face if not into their eyes. And Snape's eyes were fascinating, brown like his own but far more darker, so dark that they were nearly black.

So, he looked and that was how he got caught. It didn't occur to him for few months that the bastard was using their games to practice Legilimency on him. Not a Legilimenist himself Regulus couldn't read him but as reasonably practised Occlumenist, he could try and fool Snape into believing that what Snape was seeing was what he was playing. That of course lasted for few matches and few weeks before Snape realised what he was doing. Regulus in the meantime tried to work upon his Legilimency. However once Snape realised what Regulus was doing all bets were off, the games became fast-paced and brutal, each trying to fool the other into believing that they were playing one way while they were really playing the other. They kept playing each other for years, each trying to show the other that he had an upper hand.

Constrained by his upbringing, raised by a supposedly once open homosexual Father until he married his Mother which put him back in the closet, he missed all the signs of budging attraction towards the older boy. Sirius? It was clear to anyone with eyes and a brain that Sirius was as hung up on James Potter as James Potter was on Lily Evans. Snape was just as bad as Potter, if not worse when it came to Evans. It was obvious to practically everyone that all of this Black-Potter-Snape drama steamed from unresolved feelings and sexual tensions that begged to be released.

But then fourth year happened, Regulus' fourth year and their fifth year. Snape opened his bloody mouth after theoretical DADA O.W.L.s exam, Evans took offence, Potter took offence for Evans and Sirius for some reason tried to kill Snape. Regulus suspected why, granted Sirius would never tell it to Harry because he wouldn't want to besmirch Potter's memory, but Regulus was ninety-nine percent sure that the idea to somehow, some way, get rid of Snape, occurred first, not in Sirius's head, but in James Potter's.

It might have been nothing more than a passing thought like, wouldn't our lives be better if someone got rid of Snivellus, but Potter wore his heart on his sleeve and what was in his head ninety-nine percent of the time ended on his tongue, especially when Evans or Snape were involved. All Potter needed was to voice that sentiment to Sirius just once and Sirius, the idiot, would remember and because there was nothing which Sirius would do for James Potter…

Following his escape from 12 Grimmauld Place after his fifth year, Sirius went to the Potters and stayed there for the entire summer. Then nearly immediately after the school year had started, Potter publicly divorced himself from Sirius and took Lupin and Pettigrew in the divorce. Granted, in retrospect, Lupin had a very good reason to not want anything to do with Sirius but Potter… Potter was the instigator of that divorce. Potter had to have a reason of his own to avoid Sirius like a plague…

Like being made aware that the entire incident happened because of something he said?

Like realising that his best friend's devotion wasn't as platonic as it seemed?

Like discovering that Sirius would literally do anything for Potter to for once in his god-damn life have Potter look at him the same way Sirius looked at him? What Sirius had told him for Potter to fold like a chair under Lupin's suggestion that he didn't want anything to do with Sirius Black?

It was a good thing, for Sirius, that his illusions were shattered in that incident. He fell out of love with Potter, matured, concentrated on his studies, started hanging around sensible people who had a good influence over him. And he had fallen in love once more with someone who was worthy of his love and devotion, granted like with Potter it had taken time for the idiot to, actually say something, and not pine for Mirzam from so close and yet so afar.

In the meantime, Regulus, still unaware of why it was so damn important to him to have the older boy's attention focused on him, worked on Snape. Granted it had taken him nearly an entire year to convince Snape that while hanging around induced Death Eaters was helping him to advance his status in Slytherin, being an actual Death Eater would advance his status even more. What kind of a fool he had been? Not only he signed his name on a dotted line, but he also dragged in another, maybe not so innocent soul, but certainly, one that would have held up longer without his involvement.

Induced and branded Snape was still hung up on Evans and it didn't sit well with his own peers, nor with Bella. So, it was almost immediately suggested to Regulus that he should keep a very close eye on his friend and he had. He pulled the Dark Lord's wish card with his parents and he practically moved into Spinner's End.

The first time he turned up there for a while he thought that he got to a wrong house. He walked around, checked the address he had been given. 113 Spinner's End, Cokeworth. He always felt self-conscious about living in the town-house in the middle of London while majority of his friends (some friends they were) and acquaintances lived in mansions in the country and compared to some of their houses 12 Grimmauld Place seemed tiny and cramped. But Snape's house? It was a tiny one storey house, bracketed from the sides by similar tiny houses. The only difference between Snape's house and the neighbouring houses, at least three on its left and four on its right was that it had an air of being lived in, the windows in there weren't broken, just opened slightly and there was some music coming from inside it.

Snape hadn't expected to see him but after some hesitation, he let him inside. He didn't say a single word when Regulus curiously looked around. From his spot by the door, he could see on narrow stairs leading upstairs, they were littered with bottles filled to a different degree with some liquor that looked much like Firewhiskey except far cheaper. To the left, there was a living room, with a dingy looking fireplace, a couch which seemed to long since seen better days, a rickety table with two chairs. Once he stepped a little to the left through the open door from the living-room he could see small, dingy kitchen, which like the couch, had seen better days.

"I messed up my Potions O.W.L.s and my parents aren't pleased with me," he said the first thing that came to his mind, it was a lie, he did get an Exceed Expectation and his parents were pleased just about right with it but he needed an excuse to spend his time with Snape.

"And what I'm supposed to do about that?" Snape asked sourly. "You had five years of Potions to prepare yourself for it, Black."

"I had," he admitted. "Speaking of preparing, didn't you spend the last six years lending your skills in different areas for a right price? I'm quite sure that in your year you're the only Slytherin that actually passed Potions with a grade higher than Acceptable."

He passed it with a well-earned Outstanding, and he was the only Slytherin in his year that didn't have to bribe Slughorn into letting him into Advanced Potions.

"What you're offering?" asked Snape sceptically.

So, he told him, the wage of a living in tutor, paid at the end of each day. He knew that in that moment he had Snape because Snape's finances had always been limited, his spending frugal. For Merlin's sake, he used to complete homework for his classmates and lower and sometimes higher forms, for a price, not to mention occasional tutoring occasional dunderhead as long as they were paying.

Blessedly he hadn't met Tobias Snape that day, since the old scumbag had been, at the moment, employed and after work he had been out drinking with his mates from work. He hadn't met the older man the next day or the day after. But that meeting eventually came and it wasn't pleasant. The only thing that saved him from being chucked out of the house altogether was Snape's quick comment that his friend was paying for his help with his studies. Tobias, while mindless drunkard, didn't have his brain totally consumed by alcohol, could put two and two together. More money meant more alcohol and more alcohol meant getting sloshed easier or at least on better alcohol.

Regulus also started bringing around food from home, which made Snape scoff at him but after first three tries to turn the food away followed by scoffing that he wasn't anyone's charity case, he relented when Regulus started eating there too. Granted, he had a hearty breakfast in the morning but eating with Snape was the only way for the bastard to accept food. Tobias also accepted free food, didn't matter that it came from the magical house, it was free food and free food meant more money for alcohol.

In the end, it was Snape Senior's messed up thought process that got him in trouble. Because while Regulus was watching Severus, Snape Senior was watching Regulus watching his son, and he was thinking, pretty heavily for someone so brain addled. He somehow got into his head that Regulus's attention wasn't as platonic as it was supposed to be.

Never mind that he was somewhat right, but at the time Regulus was so far in the closet that he was practically prancing in Narnia – an expression he learned much later when he was at university. All that mattered to him was that he could spend a lot of time with the older boy, he could listen to his ideas, theorise with him, after some time and a lot of prodding also laugh with him over stupid things. He wanted to spend his time around Snape, so he continued to ignore Tobias's snipping and had been at his most polite. If anyone ever heard him speak to the man one would think that Tobias Snape was a Dark Lord himself masquerading as a Muggle.

August of that year was unbelievably hot, so hot that one could scramble an egg on the pavement and with Snape Senior's blanket ban on any magic in the house they weren't allowed to use cooling charms and with no air-conditioning in the house they had to substitute one the Muggle way. A wet towel was hung by the window providing some little degree of comforting coolness. Nevertheless, the heat made them lose layers of clothing pretty quickly, to the point of just hanging around in their underwear and under-shirts. They always dressed up when they heard Tobias returning, Regulus's doing, Snape himself couldn't be bothered but by then Snape Senior's comments started getting to Regulus, and he really didn't want to jeopardise his time there.

Maybe if he was less focused on Snape Junior, he would have noticed sooner that Snape Senior was coming back to the house at odd hours, too short to be at work. Maybe if he paid more attention to that scumbag and actually followed him once or twice, he would have realised that Snape Senior once again was unemployed. As it was, he didn't notice until it was too late.

Until one day, at noon, Tobias screamed at Severus from the kitchen that the bread knife was dull and that he should get his arse down there and sharpen it. Too focused on his book, Snape ignored the call; too focused on carefully watching Snape from his vantage point which allowed him unobstructed view of the older boy, Regulus did too and stayed put, just in their underwear, forgetting to dress up.

Being ignored made Snape Senior climb up the stairs, with the bread knife still in his hand and intent to scream at that lazy bastard he called his son in his heart. He was suspiciously quiet for someone so drunk and they didn't hear him until the door to Severus's room opened and Snape Senior stopped in the doorway.

The very moment he saw them on Severus's bed, just in their underwear, innocently reading their books Snape Senior lunged at them, with a knife raised in his right hand, ready to strike. Regulus's Quidditch reflex kicked in immediately, he was jumping from the bed, ready to wrestle the knife from the older man's hand before he even realised what he was doing. Blessedly, he was left-handed while Snape Senior was right-handed. Blessedly, he managed to grab Snape's wrist before the knife had done any more damage to him than simply sliding over his right forearm.

Unfortunately, he was too small, too scrawny and too weak to hold his own against a bigger opponent and he didn't manage to get Snape Senior to drop the knife to the floor. Maybe if he did…

As it was the knife was still in Snape's hand and he even managed to raise it to strike with more fervour. Led by instinct Regulus let him, turning his right side away just enough to not get hit again while dropping down his left arm and when Snape Senior struck again, he was ready. The knife swished through the air and when it found itself on the level of Regulus's waist Regulus grabbed Snape's right hand with his own, twisted it around and pushed it forward with all the strength he had in him.

Snape Senior fell back to the floor with a grunt, and a loud thud, with a bread knife sticking out from his chest like a mast. Regulus froze in shock. He was hoping to incapacitate the man, maybe grizzle him a little, just enough for him to back the fuck off but he wasn't hoping for that. He was planning to defend himself and Severus, not to kill a man, and not just any man, but Snape's father. Tobias was a bastard, drunken skunk and all-around scumbag but for Merlin's sake, he was still Severus's father.

Back then he didn't really understand it, granted at times he felt so bloody angry with his own father that he wouldn't help him if the man was drowning but he wasn't angry enough to shove him under the wheels of the oncoming car, that feeling came to him years later, after…

He didn't know for how long he stood there, with his right arm out, still frozen in the position he shoved Tobias until a gentle hand wrapped itself over his wrist and a gentle, calm voice said, "You're bleeding. Come with me."

It was then when he looked at Snape, in shock, with a whisper that he didn't mean it on the tip of his tongue, but the look in Snape's eyes stopped him from uttering it. Snape's eyes were shining but not with tears, and there was something in them which Regulus didn't understand until much later on. Relief, naked, unbounded relief. He had seen it many years later when helping Child Protective Services he came to the first house from which they were supposed to remove an abused pair of siblings, four and seven respectively.

Snape patched him up, with a healing spell of his own making, but he didn't have any dittany there to finish it, so he reminded Regulus to use it once he returned home. Then, unbothered by the fact that he just seen his friend kill his own father, he proceed to plan what to do with Tobias' corpse. Reporting the incident to Muggle police was out of the question, same with the Aurors, they were both branded Death Eaters and one good look at their forearms, would land both of them in Azkaban just for being Death Eaters. Granted, Regulus could swing self-defence, but it still was a Death Eater attack on an innocent Muggle.

So, Tobias Snape simply disappeared.

Then and there.

If anyone asked (no one did) he didn't return home from one of his drinking binges. He had done it before after all.

Snape transfigured his corpse into a log before he promptly threw it into the fire. Then he sat in front of the fireplace, till the wee hours of the morning, in sweltering heat, until the log burned down to ash. Regulus stayed by his side until Snape sent him back home and told him that for his own safety he should never come back there.

And he didn't. Perhaps it was shock which made him listen or perhaps was it guilt.

He killed a man.

True it was in self-defence, but it really couldn't have happened to a better man.

But facts didn't change, he killed a man.

Someone's father.

Granted, all around bastard but he still killed him. Still pushed a knife right through his heart… Snape had every right to hate him even if he pretended not to.

Tobias Snape wasn't the only man he killed. He was only the first. But that came later, when there was no hiding behind being underage, when recruiting stopped being enough for the Dark Lord. When Bellatrix stood by his side, goading him, that he was as weak and useless as his brother. When Rabastan wrapped his arm around his shoulders and told her that ickle Reggie could do it.

He could do it. There was enough rage inside him to inflict pain and death on people who didn't do him any harm. He couldn't cast Unforgivables, not at first, but he knew a lot of dark curses to substitute for them and in the middle of a frenzied raid not many paid attention to him, too busy with their own conquests.

But then that small derelict farm in Ireland happened and Bellatrix who was leading the raid forbid their companions from doing anything until Regulus proved once and for all that he wasn't a wimp.

Maybe if Fiona Roberts had been a blue-eyed blonde, he would never leave that farm alive. But she wasn't. She was brown-eyed, black-haired and even at a wand-point, she had enough spite left in her to physically fight against her captors, to goad them and call them worthless cowards.

Coward.

Worthless.

Useless.

Shame of my flesh.

A foul by-product of my blood.

Good for nothing weakling.

Gryffindor masquerading for Slytherin.

You're going to get yourself sorted in Gryffindor too, aren't you wimp? Answer me when I'm talking to you! Fine, if you don't want to talk, I'll make you talk.

Thin, long-fingered hands wrapped around his neck, choking him. The world greying around the edges. The burn in his lungs. The smell of urine. The feel of the wet material on his skin.

Sirius! Save me! Please!

But he wasn't coming because he couldn't hear him. Because he was miles and miles away and he was safe. No one was threatening to kill him.

The look on his father's when finally returned home and found him passed out in the pool of his own piss. No concern, just this dispassionate look on his face and this daunting question, "So what did you tell her?"

A new regiment of potions.

None of them worked.

Waking up to his mother's face over his, with her hands wrapped around his throat. Who are you? What have you done with my son?

Sleeping in closets or empty trunks in the attic. Praying for Sirius to come back home and save him from this madness that their family home became.

Begging Grandma Melania to stay with them after Christmas because there was something wrong with mum. The look on his father's face when Grandpa Arcturus told him that until he won't manage to get his wife under control until then Regulus would be staying with them.

Peace and bliss, being pampered by his grandparents. Flying around the countryside on his broom. Being finally free. Having that freedom yanked away one day when his parents turned up for lunch. His mother all smiles again, so happy to see him, his father telling him that he would be returning home with them.

The canning he received next day when his father left for work and the elves were busy with what elves were usually busy with after breakfast.

"You will never run away again. Because if you do, I'll find you and I'll kill you dead. Do you understand? Nod if you understand. Why aren't you nodding?"

Nodding. Waking at the crack of dawn to make sure that mother took her potions. Wearing long-sleeved and highly collared shirts to cover up bruises. Telling Grandma Melania that everything was fine when it really wasn't. Sirius returning, being told to stay and watch when their mother beat him. Sirius edging her, even after Regulus begged him not too. Following mother around, dosing her with sleeping draughts so she wouldn't wake in the middle of the night and try to kill Sirius.

Learning how to ward his own bedroom, Sirius's too. Wards against harmful intent and anti-apparation ones. Like a mantra, like a prayer.

Finally leaving for Hogwarts. Getting sorted into Slytherin because he wouldn't dare to end in any other house. Deliberately messing up his potion to land in the hospital wing with third-degree burns just to stay at Hogwarts during Christmas break. Swimming in the Great Lake during the night so he could develop pneumonia just to not come back home for Easter break.

Convincing his father during the summer to send mother to a very private clinic in Italy that specialised in mind healing where they could fine tune her potions. The blessed school year of peace without needing to return home for either of the breaks.

More wards. More potions. More choking. Shielding Sirius from everything he could shield him. Being furious with him for edging mother, for causing him more pain. Not knowing back then that while Regulus was trying to shield him from their mother Sirius was shielding him from their father.

Avada Kedavra.

Fiona Roberts fell dead on the floor.

It got easier after that. All he had to do was see his mother's face. He was good enough Occlumenist to swing that. More faces. Adults. Children. Men and women. It didn't matter because he found the key to survive. That's what always mattered.

His survival.

Until one day in June of his seventh year when ashen-faced Mirzam Verascez came to Hogwarts and pulled him out of Transfiguration class. She told him that she and Sirius were ambushed by the Death Eaters, ten against two. They managed to take down five of them, but the others overpowered Sirius while she was trying to shield their victims from their curses. How they disappeared laughing when Sirius fell down. How Sirius might not make it until next morning.

He was there that night. Keeping vigil, along with the others. Hidden under Verascez's Auror issued invisibility cloak. He had every right to be there because it was his fucking brother, but he just couldn't stand the idea of being seen by those people whom his brother called family.

Witnessing Sirius's delirious confession of his feelings towards Mirzam while the rest of them headed to the teashop to have a coffee and a pastry. Mirzam admitting to feverish Sirius that she returned his feelings, before soothing him enough for Sirius to fall asleep again.

Revealing himself to Mirzam after Sirius had fallen asleep, giving her the cloak back. Telling her to take good care of that idiot. Running away so he wouldn't be seen by the others. Sneaking into Hogwarts, not sleeping for two days straight. Reading letters from Mirzam that updated him on Sirius's progress. He was expected to make a full recovery.

Next raid. Another farm in rural Ireland, near a small village he never got the name of. This time a family of six, young parents of three and a mother of one of them. Avery, Rabastan, Rodolphus, Bellatrix and Lucius. Each of them hounding their own victim. Bellatrix, Lucius and Rodolphus the adults. Rabastan, Avery and him the children. Shrieks of the older girls when those bastards raped them mingled with cries for help and begging for mercy from their parents and grandmother.

And the cot in a tiny bedroom just big enough to fit it and a changing table. The boy inside the cot. Couldn't be more than a year old. Curly blonde hair and blue eyes. Quiet, curious, so innocent. Just watching the man who came to kill him.

Regulus knew that none of them would leave that farm alive. They will be tortured until they won't have the strength to scream anymore and maybe if one of his companions would be feeling merciful enough, they will finally find themselves on the receiving end of a Killing Curse. If Bellatrix won't bring the whole place down, that's it.

It should have been simple. His job was the easiest job of all. But he couldn't find it in himself to cause the baby any harm even though he needed to kill him. He had to kill him, or Bellatrix would kill him.

He looked around the room searching for something that could help him kill the baby in any other way than by magic when his gaze had fallen on the wall above the cot on which smeared in a multitude of colours was MARTIN, R and N were written in reverse, M was slightly loopy and T and I were almost the same letter and there were colourful handprints around it.

That's when it hit him. He was about to murder a baby in its very own cot. He couldn't even do it by magic which meant that he will have to use his own hands to wrap one around baby Martin's neck while he would place the other over his mouth.

Thin, long-fingered hands wrapped around his neck, choking him. The world greying around the edges. The burn in his lungs. The smell of urine. The feel of the wet material on his skin.

Sirius! Save me! Please!

But Sirius wasn't there. He was still recovering from the attack, during which he had saved another family like that. There was no one in there but him and his bloody comrades and their victims. Even if he somehow managed to get the word out and call for Aurors it would be too late for the rest of the family to be saved.

But Martin? Martin, he could save. He just needed… A pillow on the windowsill, just as big as the baby and while he was nowhere near as good as Sirius at Transfiguration, he was quite skilled at transfiguring stuff into dead things. Stupid teenage pranks that kept going around Halloween that made the girls, and some boys, scream in shock and disgust upon finding one.

How hard could it be to transfigure a pillow into a dead baby? Animals were easy but human transfiguration required human particles infused into transfigured objects. Would spit do or would he need blood? How he was supposed to draw blood from a baby without attracting attention?

As it turned out spit would do, and pillow Martin was just as creepy, alright creepier, than a dead rat. Sirius would have been proud if he saw it, for about two seconds before he would arrest him and drag his arse to Azkaban.

Getting away from that farm was a bloody horror. He couldn't use the stairs because he would have run into the others, so he had to climb out through the window. With a baby in his arms, blessedly placed under silencing charm for the duration of the neck-breaking trek. As he was hurrying away from the farm, he conjured a basket and just enough blankets to wrap the baby inside them under heavy duty warming charms.

He couldn't risk getting away completely. For a moment he entertained that thought but he knew Bellatrix, he could swing getting lost for few minutes but if she or any other of his companions found him running away with a baby both of their fates would have been forfeited.

So, he only got as far as he could to maintain a safe distance just in case Bellatrix decided to burn the farm down to the very ground. He placed the baby inside the basket and put around it the strongest wards he could before he hurried back to the farm where he pretended that he lost himself in the outer buildings after he killed the baby.

He was dead right about the need to hurry away and having a good distance between the farm and the baby because Bellatrix did burn the place down once she and the rest were finished with the rest of the family.

Congratulating themselves on a job well done, each of them disappeared in their own direction. Suspecting that he might be followed Regulus apparated back to Hogsmeade and pretended to make his way back to the castle but as soon as he made sure that he wasn't followed by anyone he disapparated and apparated back to the field where he left little Martin.

He almost cried in relief when he found the boy sleeping soundly in the basket. Unaware that his family was dead, uncaring about the blaze that was consuming the house in which he lived.

Then Regulus cried for real, out of sheer bloody terror. What the fuck he had done? Okay, he saved a baby. A completely Muggle baby he couldn't bring home even if he wanted and he didn't want to. The house was barely safe for him and he was a bloody adult. He couldn't take him back to Hogwarts either. Maybe he should have left him with the rest of the family. That would have been easy and in fact, he could still swing it. He just needed to turn around and get within just enough range to levitate the baby back into….

NO! He didn't save the kid, at the expense of his own skin, just to kill him. That wouldn't do. But what to do? Sirius would know, Sirius could advise him… He just needed a bloody good excuse for how he happened to acquire a Muggle baby, on Friday, during a school year, while he should be at Hogwarts and freaking out about his N.E.W.T.s results.

Oh, well, he made his bed and he should sleep in it. No lies, just the truth and whatever Sirius would do with him after it would be nothing he didn't deserve. So, he disapparated and apparated into Sirius's building. As quietly as he could he hurried upstairs and knocked on Sirius's door, uncaring about the hour or the consequences of his actions.

But he didn't find Sirius inside it. The one who opened the door for him was a bleary-eyed Mirzam. She took one good look at him and his sleeping cargo before she dragged him inside, took the basket away from him, placed it on the table and proceed to cast diagnostic spells on the sleeping baby. Only once she was pleased with the state of the baby, she turned to him, pointed at the chair and said firmly, "Sit and explain yourself."

And he did. He sang everything like a bloody canary. From the very beginning. From induction into Death Eaters – he showed her his left arm – through Snape-sitting and killing Tobias Snape, through the names of people he recruited for the Dark Lord, each raid he participated in. He spoke of killing his mother, no, of imagining he was while he killed Fiona Roberts, her unfortunate resemblance to the witch who raised him doing her no favours. By the time he got into describing the last raid, he was a sobbing, snivelling mess that long since abandoned his chair and was on his knees before the witch in front of him, holding on her dressing-gown to keep himself relatively upright.

Once he was done, he waited for his sentence, with his head hung low, unable to look into her eyes. How could he? He just told her how many people he killed, the atrocities he had done for the Dark Lord and in the Dark Lord's name.

He waited for what felt like hours, still not daring to raise his head. How could he?

Until finally she said quietly, "Repeat after me."

He nodded into her dressing-gown.

"Confiteor Deo omnipotenti."

"Confiteor Deo omnipotenti," he repeated.

"Et vobis fratres."

"Et vobis fratres."

"Quia peccavi nimis."

"Quia peccavi nimis."

"Cogitatione, verbo."

"Cogitatione, verbo."

"Opere et omissione."

"Opere et omissione."

"Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa."

"Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa."

"Ideo precor beatam Mariam semper Virginem."

"Ideo precor beatam Mariam semper Virginem."

"Omnes Angelos et Sanctos."

"Omnes Angelos et Sanctos."

"Et vos, fratres."

"Et vos, fratres."

"Orare pro me ad Dominum Deum nostrum."

"Orare pro me ad Dominum Deum nostrum."

"Again," she said softly. "Until you can say it on your own without my help. Until you can feel it."

So, he did, stumbling for words, forgetting parts and twisting them around, repeating after her when he got them wrong until the words etched into his brain and he could keep going on his own. Until his voice was nothing but a whisper. With each repetition, he grew calmer, more at peace with himself. Whatever would come, would come and he would bear it.

"Confiteor Deo omnipotenti et vobis, fratres, quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo, opere, et omissióne: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Ideo precor beatam Mariam semper Vírginem, omnes Angelos et Sanctos, et vos, fratres, orare pro me ad Dominum Deum nostrum," he said for the last time, his voice barely a whisper.

He tried again but couldn't get his voice to work properly. So, he sighed and finally sat down on his hunches.

"Feeling better?" she asked gently.

He cleared his throat before he managed to whisper, "I wouldn't call it better, calmer maybe, more peaceful."

"Good," she sighed making him finally look at her face.

To his shock, he found no disdain or disgust in there. Just this weird, serene soft look. It baffled him.

"You're forgiven," she said softly.

"But..." he tried to protest.

"Forgiven," she interrupted him gently. "You're forgiven, Regulus."

"How can you even say that?" he mumbled. "You know what I did!"

"I do," she sighed. "Believe me, I do."

"But..." he started.

"No buts," she shook her head. "Am I supposed to apply the same measure to the man who realised the wrongness of things he had done and was supposed to do and didn't do them as I would to a man who knows that what he does is wrong and still does them?"

"You're bloody weird," he muttered.

"Five years in Catholic school. It gets under your skin even if you don't want to," she shrugged. "Especially if you don't want to," she grimaced. "I didn't want to, so I learned the hard way. That confession always made me feel at peace and unlike sister Constance, for most of the time I had a clean conscience."

"Not following," he sighed. "Wizard, pure-blood," he added.

"Witch, Muggle-raised half-blood, nice to met you," she said.

"Half-blood?" he asked curiously. "But aren't you..." he started and stopped himself.

"Heard of Solomon Babbling and that he can't keep his prick in his pants?" she asked pointedly. "I'm one of these things that happen when a man can't keep it in his pants. Funnier still, I'm older than his actual daughter."

"And she used to be your best friend," he finished.

"Still is," she nodded. "And believe me the irony of him renouncing her too is not lost on me," she grimaced. "But enough about me. What about you?"

"What you mean by that?" he asked suspiciously. "What about me? Aren't you supposed to be a bloody Auror or something? I've seen your badge, you showed it to me a few days ago."

"So?" she shrugged.

"Death Eater," he wriggled his left arm before he pointed his left hand at her and said, "Auror."

"Me Tarzan, you Jane," she muttered.

"What?" he mumbled.

"Nothing," she smiled. "It's just Sirius," she sighed before she narrowed her eyes as she looked at him, "But if you say something about a banana, I will smack you."

"Okay," he sighed. "No to these yellow fruity thingies, I get it," he added and shrugged, "But still?"

"Are you really that eager to go to Azkaban?" she asked pointedly. "I can get you there without a problem. You have a one-way ticket on you. But do you really want to go there?"

"I have a choice?" he asked sceptically.

"Of course, you do," she said simply. "You had a choice back at the farm. You had a choice of running away with the baby. You had a choice when you came in here. You could have gone straight to the Ministry and could have gotten whichever Auror is on duty. But you came here."

"Because I wanted to come clean to Sirius," he admitted with a sigh. "It wouldn't make it any different in the end but..." he paused. "I wanted to have him hear it from me rather than from official interrogation transcripts."

"He's still in St Mungo's," she sighed. "The healers are worried about his heart."

"Didn't you take care of that already?" he asked pointedly.

"I did," she smiled fondly. "But I mean it literally. The damage to his heart was quite extensive and while restorative potions are working, they aren't working as well as they should. So, he's one very bored and very unhappy camper on a very strict bed rest."

"He has to be thoroughly miserable," he sighed.

"You can go and cheer him up," she shrugged.

"Reckon at which point I should mention that I'm going to Azkaban?" he asked pointedly.

"None of it since you're not going," she said simply.

"Didn't you swear to protect and serve?" he muttered.

"I did," she nodded.

"So?" he threw his hands in the air. "Serve and protect. You have a Death Eater confessing to his sins in front of you. I can even provide you with a location of the farm."

"And what good it would do?" she asked simply.

"There will be one Death Eater less on the streets," he pointed out.

"And in about a week or two there will be about ten or more back on it, pull the other leg," she snorted.

"You're missing a point," he protested as he tried to get up.

"No, Regulus, it's you who are missing a point," she shook her head before she offered him her hand and helped him onto his feet. "Your arrest is not going to change anything. Literally, nothing will change. You'll spend the rest of your life in prison. It'll destroy your family..."

"Some family it is," he snorted.

"Some of that family still cares for you deeply," she said pointedly. "You don't even have an idea how much," she sighed. "You might not have spoken to each other in years but for Merlin's sake, you're his younger brother. Him running away from home didn't change that. He's been worrying himself sick that you would join Death Eaters, granted it didn't occur to him that you might have already joined but he's been ridiculously optimistic about the Dark Lord's recruiting practices."

"And you weren't?" he asked.

"Aidan Hopkins was in our year," she grimaced. "That's how he was planning to pick up pure-blood girls. By bloody showing off his Dark Mark. He made a tactical mistake by picking up Bathsheda literally the very moment he stepped onto the train. She reported him to Auror Office before the train even properly left England," she shrugged.

"So, he wasn't killed by Death Eaters," he murmured.

"No, he was picked up by the Aurors from the train and his mates had their memories modified. Bathsheda got away by promising that she won't mention it to anyone," she explained.

"Except you," he smirked.

"I don't count as anyone," she shrugged. "I'm her sister," she added. "There were very little things we didn't share. She always looked out for me just like I always looked out for her. Just like you and Sirius."

"He doesn't know," he whispered. "He couldn't have known," he mumbled.

"He didn't," she admitted. "Otherwise he would never leave you behind. You know that. If he ever had an inkling of suspicions that things in that house were as bad for you as they were for him, he would never leave you behind."

"He couldn't know," he sighed. "I couldn't let him know how bad it was. There was nothing he could do to stop it. How could he stop it? He was just a kid like me."

"The same way he broke the circle in the first place," she answered. "Granted the system here is rigged against the victims but it still works, Reg. If I could fool it for years without really knowing how it works what makes you think that he wouldn't? He would look out for you, he will look out for you. Always."

"Always?" he whispered. "Even with this?" he asked as he rolled up his sleeve.

"Always," she said softly as she placed her right hand over the mark. "You're his brother and you'll always remain his brother. There's nothing he wouldn't do for you, just like there's nothing you wouldn't do for him."

"This," he mumbled as he placed his right hand over hers, "is a sign of lifelong servitude. There's no way out, no quitting, no I'm done with it. I made a horrible mistake and I'll pay for it dearly. I can't change that."

"But you can, don't you understand it?" she said softly. "What you've done tonight speaks more of you than the mark you carry on your arm. You could have killed this little boy. Or you might have simply put a silencing charm on him and do nothing in hope that Bellatrix would bring the whole place down around him. But you didn't. You saved him. You carried him away to safety…."

"I left his family to die..." he whispered.

"Yes," she whispered. "But could you honestly take down Avery, Lestranges and Malfoy single-handedly?"

"Avery maybe," he sighed. "For all of his posturing, he isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer," he grimaced. "If I caught them at the right moment, I could take down Rabastan and Rodolphus but Bella and Lucius..." he shook his head.

"You did the best you could do with what you had," she sighed. "You saved an innocent life tonight. Take some comfort in that."

"I killed more than that," he grumbled.

"Yes," she nodded.

"And?" he asked expectantly. "You don't even want to arrest me. Why? I know faces, names, places. What's stopping you from taking advantage of that?"

"The fact that their victims are mostly dead," she said simply. "I won't deny that your testimony would have brought down quite a lot of interesting people. But here's the thing. We aren't talking about a smuggling ring or a simple criminal activity. We are talking about a full-on war. Everything wizarding society stands for against one megalomaniac with an army of supporters. And how that ended in the past?"

"Not very well," he sighed.

"Exactly," she nodded. "Ministry knows that, they need a regular police force as much as they need soldiers. Sadly, the wizarding world isn't as organised as Muggle world where you get a clear distinction between one and the other. That's why the training had been cut down from three years to six months of solid theory and then apprenticing under trained Aurors until trainees are capable of handling themselves mostly on their own. Because they need police as much as they need an army. And that army wasn't big to begin with. Still isn't. We learn stuff too late to make a difference."

"You need an insider, someone who knows about attacks beforehand," he pointed out. "A spy."

"Exactly," she smiled at him.

Then it hit him with the force of a well-hit bludger, straight into solar plexus. How fast she figured that one out? Not right away, that was certain, but perhaps when he was praying in front of her… She had plenty of time to figure out what to do with what he presented her.

"I'll be lucky if I survive a week," he snorted.

"If you're going to be stupid about it, you won't even last a weekend," she said simply. "So, for your sake, just as much as Sirius's, don't be stupid about it. In fact, if you don't feel like it, the very moment you walk out of this place you can forget that this conversation even happened."

"I can do that?" he asked sceptically.

"Can you?" she asked pointedly. "Think about it. Think about what you did tonight. Think hard if you can handle it."

"And if I can't?" he sighed.

"Then no hard feelings," she shrugged. "If we ever met again, I promise to give you a chance to get yourself caught so you can confess what you just told me on record. But if you can, you know where to find me."

"What will become of Martin?" he changed the subject.

"I know a good place," she sighed. "They will take care of him and he's a baby so there's a chance that he will get adopted quickly by people who don't have children of their own."

"Thank you," he whispered. "I promise to think about it."

"Okay," she smiled at him and suddenly she hugged him tightly. "Take care of yourself, Reggie," she whispered.

So, he did. He took care of himself. He allowed himself to take comfort in saving an innocent child from a premature death. Luckily, he didn't have to participate in any raids for the next two weeks. The Dark Lord didn't want those who had a chance to infiltrate the Ministry to get caught before applying for their jobs. Especially those who stood a chance to get into Department of Mysteries. Rookwood was already in but due to his outgoing and friendly personality, he was elected by the Head of the Department to collaborate with the French Ministry of Magic on a very secret project. The Dark Lord, while not very pleased with losing his spy in Department of Mysteries decided that losing him for six months, from June to November, was worth gaining more contacts abroad. So, to France Rookwood headed.

Blessedly.

As a freshly induced Death Eater Regulus had no hard feelings towards Rookwood. He even liked the man, Augustus was intelligent and resourceful, very charming to a certain extent. Blessedly by then, Regulus learned from his mistake with Snape that while some people might be interested in what he had to say on an academic level their interest in his knowledge didn't mean that they were interested in him beyond having an intellectual conversation with him.

Rookwood was an asset for the Dark Lord, so he didn't participate in many raids, much like Snape, who was quickly pulled from what Bella called fun into research. In fact, Regulus was sure that those two collaborated on certain projects for the Dark Lord. And if Regulus had something to say about it, he had none at the moment, he was very interested in joining them. He just needed to prove his worth elsewhere rather than during the raids. Preferably without Rookwood hanging over his shoulder.

He didn't intend to wind up in Hall of Prophecy, he was aiming to end up in Brain Room seeing that he was far more interested in Mencymagic than Prophecies and he would have gotten in there if it wasn't for the fact that one of the Unspeakables working in Hall of Prophecy had gone into an early labour, other two caught some very mysterious disease and finally the fourth one decided to quit his job altogether. That made the Hall of Prophecy severely understaffed and the Head of the Department of the Mysteries, Edmund Pickle, decided that Regulus, while still training to be a full-on Unspeakable, could start working in Hall of Prophecy, like a full time Unspeakable.

It didn't sit well with Regulus, but he gritted his teeth and accepted the assignment. Unlike the work in other rooms work in Hall of Prophecy was rather easy. All he had to do was read old books, old diaries and old papers while keeping an eye and ear on the alarm, which might or might not sound, one never knew.

It was a tediously boring job. He loved research, but he loved research that led to some sort of an effect and what he was doing was playing a guessing game with help of history books. He loved history on its own; in fact, he was one of those sacred few who achieved an Outstanding in History of Magic on both O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s because he was interested in the history of wizarding world beyond of the dribble which Binns taught in his classes. But these two together while what he really wanted, no needed, to do was just a few rooms away? It was pure torture.

In the end that was what got him into trouble. Sheer boredom with his research and internal struggle with his life choices. While he didn't outright say no to Mirzam's offer he didn't say yes either. Luckily the Dark Lord, believing that he needed some time to adjust and gain enough footing and connections in the Department of Mysteries left him in peace for the first two weeks of his new job.

If only he chose to question his life choices at his desk rather than while walking around the room to shake off slight sleepiness at three o'clock in the morning. He sat ten N.E.W.T.s for Merlin's sake and got Outstanding in most of them. He had Third Class Masteries in Defence Against the Dark Arts and Arithmancy and instead of doing something meaningful he was stuck in Hall of Prophecy as a glorified night guard. On top of that, he was a Death Eater questioning his place at the side of a megalomaniac.

Maybe he could convince the Dark Lord that the Department of Mysteries wasn't for him. Rookwood thrived in there, but Regulus just could see himself ageing as a glorified night guard. But if not Department of Mysteries then what else he could do? He flunked Herbology and he was a Death Eater, so he couldn't get into Aurors. He could go and work for Gringotts as a Curse-breaker, Goblins didn't care much about the Dark Lord, as long as he wasn't doing anything to them, and it would be good to have a spy inside the bank.

If only he didn't bang his head against that blood shelf. But he had, hard enough, for nearly all of the prophecies gathered on the shelf to rattle slightly from the force, except one that simply rolled down the shelf and hit the floor before he had a chance to catch it out of pure Quidditch reflex even though somewhere deep inside he knew that he shouldn't touch it.

Before his eyes swam an image of a pearly-white figure with long and curly hair falling around her face.

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches, born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives. The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies," the figure had spoken.

He stared at the shattered glass on the floor then at the shelf at the label that read:

31st October 1960

C. S. T.

Dark Lord and?

The next thought that passed through his head was that he was lucky to be alone, so no one saw him destroying the department's property. With a flick of his wand he reassembled the glass orb but even though whole again it didn't look right. For a few minutes he toyed with it enough to foggy its insides and coat it with dust before he put it back on the shelf. Once there he poured into the orb the nastiest curses and hexes he knew. Just to fool anyone who would be stupid enough to catch it.

Once done with it, he returned to his desk, found 'The Small Book of Known Seers', ironically named because it was quite thick and written in a bloody tiny cursive and gone for letter T. He skimmed through short biographies of all seers whose last name started with a letter T looking for a T, C. S. He found quite a lot of T, C's, about thirty of them and six times he even found a T, C. S. but after checking the dates he discarded their identities seeing that they were either long dead or not yet born or at the very least incapable of saying anything at the time. Like Charlotte Serenity Thaw, his Ravenclaw classmate, who was born on 1st October 1960 and at the time prophecy was made was far more interested in soiling her diapers than in becoming a renown seer. Even once she became aware of her gift it seemed that her inner eye had a great perchance for predicting the weather and her prophecies always concerned local natural disasters. It was an interesting bit of information but hardly useful, other than knowing for certain that Lottie Thaw was the weather-forecaster one should listen too.

He struck gold with the seventh name.

Trelawney, Cassandra Sybill, (1st January 1861 – 1st January 1961).

Aided many Ministry of Magic offices as well as Gringotts and a number of law firms. Specialised in uncovering the unknown, helped explain a number of suspicious disappearances, helped in settling inheritance disputes. Ironically estranged with her own son Perseus, grandson Killian and great-grandson Patrick for leading Trelawney's Travelling Carnival (the worst established carnival that ever existed) upon her death she passed her fortune to numerous charities.

Under the biography was a list of prophecies she made listing the numbers of rows and shelves. He skimmed down to the number that interested him. Row seventy-seven, shelf twenty-first, seventh orb. He glanced back at the shelf, the numbers matched so it had to be Trelawney.

Except, why that bloody thing dislodged itself from the shelf and decided to fall down on the floor in front of him while the other prophecies did not?

He spent the rest of his shift researching that. He knew that only Keeper of the Prophecies or someone to whom the prophecy referred could remove it from the shelf without dire consequences. But he didn't remove it and he wasn't the Keeper of the Prophecies, technically he wasn't even a fully trained Unspeakable. Only someone who heard the original prophecy being made could be a Keeper of one and he wasn't even born when it was made.

Then his shift had ended, and he returned home, locked himself up in his room, for the first time in a long time not bothering to take care about what his mother and father were doing. They could kill each other for all he cared for.

He managed to get few hours of uneasy sleep before he returned to work for another night-shift and he spent it at going through the department's employment records from the year of 1960 intent to find the probable name of the actual Keeper of that bloody prophecy. He found his initial suspects at around four o'clock in the morning and once he did, so he consulted employment records once again only to discover that both of his suspects were dead, for at least few years. One lost a battle with Dragon Pox while the other committed a suicide via walking through the Veil of Death.

Once he exhausted that avenue he threw himself further into the research to find the answer to that burning question. Why that bloody thing had fallen from the shelf right in front of him? The simplest and most obvious answer was that he met the requirement which Cassandra set upon that poor unfortunate soul that was supposed to bring down the Dark Lord but that thought seemed ridiculous the very moment it passed through his head.

But it passed through his head and like a stone thrown into calm water left a ripple in his mind. He tried to ignore it at first, by burring himself further in the books but words on the page didn't make the echo of what he heard and what he knew go away.

The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches, born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives. The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies.

It couldn't have been him. Granted, his parents haven't been marked Death Eaters, but they did sympathise with the cause and did nothing to stop him from joining, in fact, they encouraged it.

His father was a politician, he was both a member of the Wizengamot and Head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation, a position which he gained after spending ten years in International Magical Office of Law. He would have made a good Death Eater; not only he was well-versed in Dark Arts and was ruthless and cruel enough to use them when a fancy struck him, but he was also a seemingly very amenable and well-connected gentleman, who might have been regarded as a tad conservative fellow. He also knew very well how to use his public image. That public image was everything to him and it infuriated Bella who believed that the family's lack of open support in the Dark Lord was a treachery. Oh, he supported him from the sidelines, mostly financially and by sending his way far more open individuals that were actually inclined to join the Dark Lord but he never took the mark himself.

And the Dark Lord let him. Apparently, the Head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation and prior to that a member of International Magical Office of Law left unmarked but still supporting the Dark Lord's cause was worth more to the Dark Lord politically than a marked Death Eater. He even once confirmed, in a private conversation with Uncle Cygnus, away from Bellatrix, that he defied the Dark Lord's invitation not just once but three times before he and Sirius were even born. How he managed to walk away from each of these conversations with the Dark Lord alive was a mystery.

The same happened with his mother. The invitation had been issued at least once before she left Hogwarts and had to be repeated again at some point before she married father. And when it came to inviting her to join him, the Dark Lord suffered from the worst case of a bad timing known to a man. Once it happened when Phineas Nigellus, was visiting her and regarding her with his tales as the Headmaster of Hogwarts.

Obviously, after realising that there was no one there and that Headmaster Phineas Nigellus Black had been long dead and that Walburga Black was in fact talking to an empty armchair, the Dark Lord took his answer and took his leave. At least that was what she claimed happened. When he heard it for the first time Regulus didn't believe it but the older he grew the more he realised that mother's hallucinations always made sense to her even if they didn't make sense to anyone , after realising that there was no one there and that Headmaster Phineas Nigellus Black had been long dead and that Walburga Black was in fact talking to an empty armchair, the Dark Lord took his answer and took his leave. At least that was what she claimed happened. When he heard it for the first time Regulus didn't believe it but the older he grew the more he realised that mother's hallucinations always made sense to her even if they didn't make sense to anyone else.

Curiously enough the Dark Lord came back again, a few years later after she and his father got married and were already expecting Sirius's arrival sometime in the fall. By that point, she was, finally, diagnosed with a Permanent Confusion Disorder, a rare mental infirmity and not a very well documented one, therefore untreatable.

Only many years later, when he described her symptoms to a Muggle psychiatrist, after removing anything magical from the story, he learned that she might have been suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. It explained why her potions regime for years had been touch and go, some worked splendidly for a while before they stopped working, some didn't work at all.

On the top of that, when she was pregnant first with Sirius and then later with Regulus, she couldn't take anything other than calming draughts and not very often on that. So, when the Dark Lord returned, he found her quite heavily pregnant and at her most lunatic, talking to both Phineas Nigellus and his wife Ursula, both long dead by that time and partly arguing with father that she was caring a dog, not a child.

She hadn't directly said no, but father had. He explained the condition to the Dark Lord and the tentative prognosis the healers presented him with. Granted the only thing that actually prevented her from joining at that very moment was her pregnancy, but father implied that rather than a sound follower she would always be a liability. So, the Dark Lord walked away with another no for an answer and he didn't return for her.

The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches, born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives. The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies.

Although his birth certificate claimed that he was born on 1st August 1961, at 12:02 AM he knew that it was only official record. Lola was present during the delivery, hovering at the sidelines, ready to take care of the baby from the very first moments after his birth. Unlike the healer she knew the little quirks of the house, like the fact that the clock in his parents' bedroom, in which he was born, was running three minutes ahead of the normal time.

So even though his birthday had always been publicly celebrated by the family on 1st August, Lola always had a small gift for him placed in his bedroom on 31st July.

Once Sirius was old enough to question her about it, she told him why she did it and from next year on for as long as Sirius still lived with the family his gift for Regulus was always given to him on the day of his actual birthday.

It was hard to tell whatever or not his parents knew or bothered to care about the actual date since the party was always on 1st August, but Sirius and Lola always did. They always remembered that he was born literally as the seventh month died.

The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches, born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives. The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies.

And the Dark Lord would mark him as his equal. What a load of bollocks. He might have been induced while believing that his supporters were equal to the Dark Lord himself, but he was quickly disabused from that notion. The Dark Lord had no equals, there was only him and what he wanted, if someone disagreed, well, it was nice knowing you.

Arrangements were made pretty quickly, to disabuse said idiot from that notion and he was either handed a task that would eventually see him tying the rope around his neck or he would be simply killed for disobedience.

So what if his parents defied the Dark Lord thrice already before he even was born?

So what if he was born in the very last minute of July?

So what if he was marked by the Dark Lord, supposedly as his equal in beliefs?

What about this power that the Dark Lord knows not?

He was a fairly talented wizard, but he was hardly more powerful than his peers, certainly far more meticulous than most of them. Even though he was recognised as an adult he had yet to reach his magical maturity but even if he had he would be a no match for the Dark Lord himself.

What sort of power it was?

Conscience?

Remorse?

Some basic human decency?

Access to the same knowledge as the Dark Lord?

Some power it was. Granted he figured out pretty easily the Dark Lord's subtle hints about the Horcruxes and just not them. He didn't spend the entire summer of 1977 sitting on Snape just to improve his Potions, while pinning from afar, that was a side effect. He was there to keep an eye on Snape and while he had an eye on Snape, he also had another at what Snape was researching on the Dark Lord's orders.

Vile stuff, truly vile stuff.

The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches, born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives. The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies.

It couldn't be him.

It just couldn't.

He wasn't even eighteen years old, there was no telling when he will reach his magical maturity but the average age for majority of wizards was between twenty-five and thirty. Granted in some, extreme, cases it could happen as soon as a witch or wizard had gone through their puberty or it could have happened at eighty. Just as in some rare cases, it simply didn't happen at all for various reasons.

So, if he was lucky he had about seven years before his magic would go through maturity and he had to survive up until that point. With Bella constantly questioning the depth of his loyalty to the Dark Lord, with the Dark Lord himself….

It couldn't be him.

That god-damned prophecy had to refer to someone else!

Surely, he wasn't the only wizard born on 31st July 1961. There had to someone else.

He didn't remember hours that followed his discovery. On a subconscious level, he knew that they had to pass, seeing that he was still there when Urquhart came to relieve him at six. He didn't remember leaving the Ministry, although he was certain that he didn't apparate.

What he did know however was the door in front of which he found himself standing. Sirius's flat. Sirius would know what to do. Sirius would…

The door opened without him knocking on it and he found himself staring at Mirzam. He only managed to register that this time she was wide awake and properly dressed before she pulled him by the hand inside. The door barely closed and locked itself behind his back when the dam broke.

He didn't know how he got from the door to the couch. He barely registered sitting down on it and holding on Mirzam's hand so tightly that even though she tried to move away from the couch, probably to get a calming draught, she had no other choice than to sit down by his side, wrapping her free arm around his shoulders and murmuring runes.

He had no clear recollection of minutes that followed. Subconsciously he knew that she went through the whole runic alphabet. She most certainly started it as an alphabet, so it stood to reason that she finished it as an alphabet. He didn't feel any magic working, so it wasn't a spell.

His breathing was all over the place. His heart tried to beat its way out of his chest. He couldn't feel his fingers and alternatively, he felt chilled and too hot. He tried to fight it, tried to even out his breathing but only when he tried to match his breathing with Mirzam's he managed to get his breathing under enough control that he didn't feel like he was going to pass out from lack of oxygen.

He didn't know how much time had passed before he finally calmed down. It could be minutes, or it could be hours.

What he did know was that the arm over his shoulders didn't move and that the hand he was clutching on wasn't yanked away from his grasp. He could feel the warmth emanating from her body just like he could smell the scent of her cinnamon shampoo and underneath it the more diluted scent of an apple soap.

"You smell like an apple pie," was the first thing that managed to get out of his mouth.

"Gee, thanks," she muttered.

"Did I say that I hate apple pie?" he said weakly.

"Point," she agreed. "So, what happened?"

He didn't know how to answer that.

I discovered that I'm even more screwed than I already was?

Perhaps.

But could he really place the weight of that on her, on Sirius? They both had enough on their plates already.

Either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives.

He looked at Mirzam, and things flew through his head.

I don't want to die.

I don't want to die.

I don't want to die.

I want to live and die of old age.

I want to stand by Sirius's side at your wedding.

I want to be there when your children are born, every single one of them, no matter how many you will end up having.

I want to be a godfather of one, no matter if it will be a boy or girl.

I want to cherish them and show them love we never found in our parents.

I want to get married one day, I probably won't have children of my own but yours would be enough.

Mirzam's face blurred before his eyes.

He never told her about the prophecy. Part of him wished to tell her, wished to share the burden with someone who cared for him, and Mirzam did care for him, for a reason he couldn't understand. Even back at Hogwarts when he was still unmarked but already a Death Eater in beliefs and behaviour, she never treated him with disdain. Probably because of Sirius.

It wasn't a matter of lack of trust. He trusted her with Sirius, with keeping him safe. He trusted her when she told him that she would find a way for him to contact the Aurors, if he would ever have a chance to forewarn the office about the attack. And she did find it. She taught him how to use it. She supplied ideas how to make it work even though he believed himself to be a lost cause.

In the meantime, there were other raids. Mostly on Muggles, Muggle-borns and their families. On farms, in town-houses, apartments. He implied to the Dark Lord and his merry bunch of fuckwits who revealed in it that they were his preferred targets. Luckily for himself, not every time he was accompanied by Bella or Lucius or someone who possessed half a brain to realise that something was wrong, and whenever he had a chance to do so he Martined a kid or more out of the house.

And when he couldn't do it, he kept a record of who did what and to whom. He didn't keep himself out of the records. He owed it to those people, to all people he killed in Dark Lord's name in the past and all people he will have to kill in the future.

I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do, through my fault.

Through my fault. Through my most grievous fault; therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin, all the Angels and Saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God.

The Confiteor became his mantra. It was the first thing he thought of when waking up and the last when he was falling asleep. And when he didn't think about it, he thought of Sirius, back in the field and fighting, the two brothers seemingly on the opposite sides. Of Mirzam, who saved his soul from himself, who a time or two risked her own position in the Aurors, by letting him get away from the chase because she had faith in him.

That's why, even though he couldn't bring himself to ever tell her or Sirius about the prophecy, when he got an inkling of suspicions what his father was up to, he went straight to her rather than to someone more experienced or more politically connected or even Sirius. He entertained the idea of sharing his suspicions with Sirius, but he quickly discarded the idea. Not when it was nothing but suspicions and not when their father was involved.

So, to Mirzam he went and he shared with her his doubts and suspicions. She listened to him and promised to take care of it, with or without his help. And he wanted to help her, if what he suspected was true, he wanted to help her bring the bastard down with the passion of ten thousand burning suns.

But then Bellatrix got in the way, he tried to be careful, but Bella was smart and suspicious, very suspicious. So, she implied that he would prove himself once and for all if he took care of Sirius. September blended into October and subtle hints became full on call outs, private at first but they quickly turned more and more public. He pretended to ignore her and when that wasn't enough he called her a coward and a hypocrite. Told her that maybe she was fine with killing her own blood but out of pure respect for Sirius for raising him he wasn't going to make it happen, unless it was a direct order and not from her, but the Dark Lord himself.

At the time the Dark Lord was slightly occupied with issues on the continent and handling them, so he was safe for a while but by then he knew that his time was running out faster than he anticipated.

Strangely he found it okay.

He was still terrified of dying without having a chance to live, without a chance to see Mother's fury upon discovering that her older, good for nothing son made a known Muggle-born, though technically a half-blood for those who knew the truth of her parentage, a Mrs Black. He would never see his nephews and nieces, he will never have a chance to hold them. Never have a chance to tell them how much he loved their parents.

Because he did love them. Sirius always, even in the darkest most terrifying hours of his childhood but even during those hours, he knew that Sirius used to love him just as much. He was his older brother, his hero, his rock, his strength.

And Mirzam?

She sneaked in somehow, when his defences were down. Maybe it started that day when she pulled him out of the classroom to tell him that Sirius was on death's door. Maybe it started earlier, back during their sixth year when she stood by Sirius when Sirius had no one. Or maybe it started when he knelt in front of her and rather than punishment and execution, he found solace and forgiveness. It didn't matter when or how anyway. All that matter was that it did, and it wasn't this all-consuming obsessive love both Potter and Snape showed, in regards to Evans. No, it was the other kind of love, the same he felt for Sirius.

He told her as much. He couldn't tell Sirius because Sirius tangled himself with something in the Order at the time and couldn't be located easily and quite frankly Regulus didn't know how much time he was going to have before his name would be signed on a dotted line.

And Mirzam somehow knew because when he told her that he wished that in another life she would be his sister she asked him if he was planning to do something stupid.

"Probably," he answered with a smile. "Just do me a small favour, when you and Sirius have kids one day could you name your second son after me and make sure that he won't copy my mistakes."

"You're being strangely specific," she muttered. "You didn't have to hide at Madame Tea's again, did you? Because she says the strangest things, even for a fraud seer."

"No," he smiled. "It's just my wishful thinking. What did she tell you?" he asked curiously.

"Stuff that doesn't deserve repeating," she snorted. "But okay," she sighed. "I'll give you Regulus Arcturus Black the Second if you promise me one thing."

"Okay," he nodded. "But I'm not taking you with me. I won't have Sirius grieving for both of us if something goes wrong."

"I know that," she sighed. "As much as I'm not okay with that and convinced that you're better with someone watching your back…" she shrugged. "I guess, what I'm trying to say is: try to survive."

"That I can promise," he sighed. "I'll try."

They fell silent for a moment, just standing there on the street, silence stretching between them.

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself," she said suddenly.

"Who said that?" he asked curiously.

"Nietzsche," she answered. "Remember that underneath all your mistakes, all your guilt and all your grief you are a good man, Reg. Please don't die if you have another choice."

"You are fond of me," he said cheekily, feeling strangely happy about it.

"You and Sirius are like a very persistent mould, you grow on people without realising how did this happen," she snorted. "Take care of yourself."

"You too," he smiled. "And of Sirius. And father."

"I'll take care of both," she said quickly. "Just one more thing."

He nodded slowly.

She pulled something from the pocket of her jacket and stepped closer to him as she held it up. It was a tiny silver medallion on a thin silver chain.

"No matter what happens, never remove it until I'm there to remove it from your neck myself," she said solemnly. "It's Saint Martin of Tours," she said as she unclasped the chain. "So, you will always remember whom did you save and, who in return saved you."

He bowed his head allowing her to place the chain around his neck.

"I can't convince you to take someone with you, can I?" she sighed as she stepped away.

"I'll take someone with me if I must," he answered. "Probably not in a good way."

"I suspected as much," she said quietly.

"Stay safe," he said softly. "Take care of Sirius," he added before he gave her a quick hug. "And bring that bastard down for me if you can."

"I can, and I will," she said vehemently. "Good luck."

It was the last time he saw her. A day later at a night duty, for the first time since he started working in Hall of Prophecies, in Department of Mysteries, his tentative plans how to handle the Dark Lord's Horcrux without having him notice that someone was tampering with it was interrupted by the alarm. It was an alarm like a no other. Not loud and obnoxious like some alarms but persistent and urging, probably keyed into the wards.

He wasn't sure what he expected but he knew that he most certainly didn't expect a figure draped in shawls with her eyes magnified by enormous glasses repeating word after word his own death sentence.

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches, born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives. The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies," the figure said.

He didn't notice the initials back then. He was too stunned to pay attention to it. Too mortified that someone dared to repeat Cassandra's words and place the weight of the Dark Lord's defeat on someone else's shoulders. And not just anyone but a baby that hadn't been born yet. Just like him nineteen years earlier.

He didn't sleep through the rest of the day. He tried to nap, but after an hour of tossing and turning in his bed, he gave up trying and focused on making preparations for his disappearance. Money wasn't an issue, as the right son, he had unlimited access to all Black family vaults, not just his trust vault of which the contents he liquidated and turned into Muggle currency after his second meeting with Mirzam. He instructed her to set up a trust fund for little Martin to make sure that no matter who would adopt him if someone would adopt him, he would have some money at the start of his adult life. Quite frankly he would rather give him his family back but that was beyond his reach.

The rest of the money he steadily removed through the summer. Not a lot of it but enough to get by if he needed to go Muggle at some point. With Mirzam's help, he organised a small bolthole at the outskirts of London. The place was tiny as fuck, but it was big enough for him. He removed the memory of it from Mirzam's mind with great reluctance, but he recognised that she was right in her assessment that he had to do it to ensure his protection.

The rest of the money, along with a spare wand and an additional set of spare clothing which he didn't stash in his bolthole he stashed in a hiding spot at Uncle Alphard's farm. Sirius's and Mirzam's Auror dogtags, as well as his and Sirius naming day medallions, were supposed to end there too. He was reluctant to part with them but for Sirius's and Mirzam's safety he needed to leave them behind.

The summons to the meeting on 1st November caught him of guard, but not for long and the reasons for it mortified him even more. The Dark Lord knew about the prophecy that foretold his defeat. He spent a better part of that meeting, ignoring murder or torture of several idiots, pondering on how the Dark Lord could find about it. The only good thing was that as far as he could ascertain, the Dark Lord didn't know the whole contents of prophecy. He only knew that it concerned a child born at the end of July to parents who thrice defied him.

Then giddy Bellatrix issued her desire to have Sirius's head delivered on a silver goblin-made plater by Sirius's twentieth birthday, with a desire to ensure that he won't live to that day and pointed at Regulus as the candidate for the errant, one that could prove his loyalty to the Dark Lord, and his cause by doing so.

He knew better than denying the Dark Lord and Bella on the spot even though part of him was tempted to do so. Luckily for him, that part was safely hidden behind his Occlumency shields, so he walked out of that meeting still breathing, with Dark Lord most probably unsuspecting that he wasn't planning to carry out the order.

Between the meeting and going into the cave, he managed to examine his memory of the recording of the prophecy, as well as the identities, of each individual involved. A. P. W. B. D. was pretty easy to figure out, as was S. P. T. strangely because Sybill Patricia Trelawney, Cassandra's great-great-granddaughter at the tender age of five foretold her grandfather's pretty gruesome demise. It was the S. T. S. that proved to be a problem, it could be Severus Tobias Snape, but it could be someone else. Who said that Sebastian Stebbins's middle name wasn't Thomas or Terrence? Or that there wasn't another S. T. S. in the Dark Lord's circle. The possibilities were endless.

But Snape wasn't at the meeting and Snape attended every meeting in the past.

At least the Dark Lord didn't know the whole contents of the prophecy, so there was some comfort in that. But he would feel much better about what he was planning to do to give it rest.

So, he tracked down Wendell Turnip, Hogsmeade's biggest drunkard, who made his second home in Hog's Head. Using some investigation techniques which he learned from observing Mirzam he got out of him that on Halloween night Albus Dumbledore came to Hog's Head to interview a lass named Trelawney for vacating position of Divination Professor, and that he was followed into the room by some grim looking lad, ugly as night who used to supply local apothecary with more complicated potions before the lad was marched down and unceremoniously thrown out of the pub, by Aberforth Dumbledore himself. Pouring some more Firewhiskey into Turnip's glass got him a more detailed description of the lad, and unless Severus Snape had a long lost, separated at birth and raised in different countries twin brother running around, then it had to be him and no one else.

Leaving Hog's Head, he discovered to his great dismay that he was being followed, by Nott Senior and some chap named Frederick, very blond, very bland Hufflepuff that graduated from Hogwarts two years ahead of him. Frederick alone he could shake off pretty easily, but Nott Senior? Granted Nott wasn't one of the smartest Death Eaters, but he wasn't a complete idiot like Crabbe and Goyle. If he tried to shake them off, Nott would know that Regulus was up to something not good, and he wouldn't hesitate to inform the Dark Lord about it.

So, he gritted his teeth and led the pair of them around Hogsmeade for a few hours. He stopped at every single shop, bought quite a good selection of trinkets, claimed quite loudly that it was never too early to stack up on Christmas presents, actually purchased some Christmas presents and ordered to have them appropriately sent to all the recipients in due time.

It annoyed him that with his entourage, he couldn't send something to Sirius and Mirzam, to not endanger them but he took comfort in the fact that Mirzam, would deliver Sirius's actual birthday present from him on his birthday, a set of finest goblin-made knives differing in lengths and uses with pretty neat goblin enchantments. When he first saw them, he was so captivated by them and their enchantments that without considering their astronomical price he immediately bought three sets of them. One he considered as a birthday present for himself from himself. The second set he immediately decided was going to be Sirius's birthday or Christmas present and the third set he gave to Mirzam on her birthday.

Once done with Hogsmeade and Christmas shopping he came back to London and loitered around Diagon Alley and their neighbour alleys. He had a pint in the Leaky Cauldron, he went to a theatre and saw a play, even led Nott and Frederick into a bar which catered to social needs of homosexual witches and wizards and while he was having another pint there he watched with increasing amusement how his entourage tried to kindly dissuade the folk interested in them, and they had to be kind enough to not attract too much attention to themselves.

Finally, when he was sure that they were properly annoyed with him he left the area, hitched a train ride to Beaconsfield where one of the many summer houses of the Black family was located. That particular one, had fallen out of use because it was too small even for a small family with house-elves entourage, but it occasionally served as a place for various romantic trysts for various individuals through the entirety of the twentieth century. But it was recluse enough to commit a murder in there. His very own murder or one on Nott and Frederick or preferably both.

It ended the only way it could have ended, with Frederick wounded and under Auror variation of Polyjuice, which he borrowed from Mirzam, just in case he would ever need it. It was an amazing work, strong enough to last three hours rather than one and undetectable to standard scanning spells. One of the side effects of the potion was that if someone died under its effects their body wouldn't revert to the original form of the drinker like with normal Polyjuice but rather will continue to work until someone with inside knowledge of the potion would use the counter-spell to revert the corpse into its original form. It was used quite extensively by Hit Wizards and some senior Aurors, and was graciously given to Mirzam to help her pin down Orion Black.

So, for all intents and purposes, Frederick died as Regulus Black and no one was any wiser. Nott and Regulus as Frederick returned to the Dark Lord's side and gave a report that Regulus Black defected, failed his task and was killed while he was trying to kill them.

Once free of Nott, Regulus came back to 12 Grimmauld Place, blessedly empty since his father was busy with his own criminal activity, while his mother was visiting her parents in their country house. That only left the elves and he extracted from all three of them a promise to never reveal his return into the house unless the one questioning them about it was Sirius, and just Sirius.

He spent the rest of the day, mindful that at any given moment either his mother or his father might barge inside the house, at writing letters. To the Dark Lord, he wrote at least seven different versions of the letter, before he settled on a final remotely polite, very terse and painfully short 'fuck you Dark Lord, I got your Horcrux and intent to destroy it'.

To Sirius he wrote:

My Dearest Brother,

The contents of this letter are enchanted so only you can see it and when you will receive this letter odds are that you will already know that I died and how I died. I'm sorry. If you're learning the news of my demise from this very letter, I'm sorry too. I'm also sorry, that it has to be a letter, and that I didn't get a chance to talk with you face to face. I'm also sorry that I wasn't the best of brothers and that I failed to see the reason, and quite literally the light until it was too late.

But I want you to know that regardless of our differences over the years I never stopped loving you.

How could I?

You were my hero.

My best friend growing up, my rock and the light in the darkness.

You always shielded me, always protected me, always knew how to get out from the tightest spots.

From this one, I can't get out. I hazard a guess that you know who I am, what I did and probably to whom. I regret it, every single one of them. I wish that I could take it all back. All of it, not just the stuff I've done but also stuff I said, especially to you.

I wish that I could tell you more, but I don't have enough time left to do so and I'm worried that even this channel of communication isn't safe enough. And if there's something I simply cannot risk is your safety. You're in enough danger already, and I simply cannot bring myself to put you in even bigger danger.

There's however one thing I want you to know. The Dark Lord is an abomination of the worst kind. Always had been, and always will be, unless someone tries to stop him. Hopefully one day someone will. Hopefully soon.

Now I'm heading to my death, with a lighter heart because someone whose opinion I greatly value told me once that no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. And for the first time in a very long time, I'm finally my own master.

With all my love, farewell, Sirius.

Always your brother,

Regulus Arcturus Black

He left specific instructions with Kreacher to deliver this letter after Kreacher returned from his errand with him, because he didn't want to risk taking it into the cave with him.

Then he headed to the cave. Ordered Kreacher to switch the lockets once the basin was empty, and to come back home without him, to never reveal Mother and Father his true fate and to destroy the locket.

And he willingly drunk the potion, on his own, without Kreacher's assistance. He knew what it was. He knew its name and its effects. It was one of Ekrizdis' creations, a potion which he used in the creation of Dementors, when he was experimenting on poor unfortunate souls he managed to capture and trap on his island.

Ekrizdis' recipe, its variations, as well as several samples of it was seized by one of the first investigators of Azkaban, Regulus Black, a many great-great-great-great something granduncle of his.

In theory, at least that was the family legend, the idiot in question planned to research it, to somehow backward engineer the creation of Dementor to find a way to destroy them. But what he didn't know at the time was that his supposed partner, Edmund Avery managed to duplicate Ekrizdis' research journals, for his own purposes. The only thing which both agreed on was that no one was supposed to know what they found inside Azkaban.

Several years had passed before Avery realised his mistake of allowing his partner to leave Azkaban alive when the tentative rumours of Regulus's research had reached him. Finding his own plans, whatever they were, endangered by his research Avery decided to remove Regulus and his research. Unfortunately for himself, he had done so several years too late and while Regulus Black lost his life, and the world lost his research on Dementors in the process the Black family didn't lose the original copy of Ekrizdis' recipes, which Regulus placed in Gringotts as soon as he managed to copy the recipes. Regulus's surviving older brother, Alphard, called the potion Liquid Dementor and strictly forbade removal of the recipe from Gringotts as well as sharing the knowledge of its existence with anyone who wasn't a member of the Black family.

But as the time passed, and while the original recipe hadn't been removed from Gringotts it didn't stop several idiots from copying it, and adding those copies into family libraries under very heavy enchantments. However, two copies of it were stolen at some point, carried away literally two weeks apart, one after the other by runaway brides eager to buy their way into the families they were eloping into. One of them married another Avery, while the other married a Rowle. After that furious Head of the Black family, Sirius Arcturus Black, ordered return of all copies to the main library of the Black family, in order to place better and stronger enchantments on them. He then issued a warning that anyone who would be found in possession of not an additionally enchanted copy, will be subjected to a complete magical disowning from the family. This included being stripped from name, possessions and magic and was usually deadly to any unfortunate individual.

In theory it was a very good idea. Even though destroying the copies and restricting the use of original only to the Head of the House, only at Gringotts and under very strong enchantments that prevented the recipe from being ever again copied, would have been a better one, because enchantments placed on the copies were simply ridiculous.

Under new enchantments, the copies couldn't be traded in any shape and form for anything. Couldn't be passed, as an inheritance to anyone else but a male heir, and if there was no male heir the copy was enchanted to disintegrate. The text of both copies and the original was enchanted to appear gibberish to all females of any age and any Black males under the age of fifteen.

After few decades, and few attempts to counter the enchantments, Sirius's great-grandson, Phineas, grew thoroughly annoyed by several idiotic relatives when he became the Head of the House and decided that enough was enough. He finally destroyed all but one copy of the recipe, and left the one surviving copy with the main line of Black family after strengthening existing enchantments, and adding some of his own creations, on the top of it.

It annoyed the ever-loving fuck out of Bella, that she couldn't even touch the booklet with the recipe, without being severely hexed by the various enchantments. When she finally managed to crack it open, in spite of suffering through various effects of the protective enchantments she couldn't even read it. Even more, she couldn't even understand a single word of the recipe when Regulus read it to her when she finally figured out that he could read it just fine.

It was bloody ironic, that the potion which in a way took his namesake's life, in the end, could also be his own undoing.

In retrospect, he should have been a little bit more intelligent, since he knew from Kreacher's tale what the potion did. What it made him do. He should have a plan for that, after all, by that time he was well acquainted with the concept of bottled water. He could have brought several bottles of it with him to the cave.

But for all intents and purposes, he wanted the world to believe that he was dead. To have more time to locate other Horcruxes, because he knew instinctively that the locket wasn't the only one. And for that, he needed Kreacher, and the rest of the world to believe that Regulus Arcturus Black died on 2nd November 1979.

He nearly had. He lost his wand pretty quickly, before he saw Kreacher disappear with the Horcrux and he was dragged under, deeper and deeper. He felt the pressure of water on his lungs, the beginning of a splitting headache while he tried to fight his body to not let any water in. The silence around him was deafening, and probably due to the effects of the potion he was hallucinating.

Sirius's face swam before his eyes, he could hear the Sorting Hate yelling 'Gryffindor' and Mirzam's whisper 'try to survive'. Absent-mindedly he reached for the medallion thinking of Sirius, who was about to discover who his brother was. A brother who was fighting against the Dark Lord and he didn't know that, just like he didn't know that as long as the Dark Lord's Horcruxes remained in the world, nothing could beat him. Nothing and no one could stop him.

He couldn't leave him alone. Granted, Sirius had Mirzam and his entourage in Potter, Lupin and Pettigrew but no one of them knew the truth. No one of them could stop the Dark Lord, not without him.

When his back hit the bottom of the lake, he could no longer stop himself from opening his mouth and letting the water in. So, he gathered all of his magic, and wished with all of his might to just not be there in that cave and just…

It was his last conscious memory for a very long time.


Food for thought: How do you think Regulus managed to acquire his ability? What about the medallion? The prophecy itself?

Confiteor in latin and english translation:

"Confiteor Deo omnipotenti et vobis, fratres,quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo, opere, et omissióne:mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Ideo precor beatam Mariam semper Vírginem,omnes Angelos et Sanctos,et vos, fratres, orare pro me ad Dominum Deum nostrum."

"I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault; therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin, all the Angels and Saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God."