365 Days of Regulus
Jessica Dawn
June 1 - What is a recent promise you made that you have difficulty upholding?
Regulus Black did not make promises that he wasn't sure he could keep. He could count the number of times the words 'I promise,' had passed his lips on one hand. Sirius had impressed upon him as a small child just how important it was to keep your promises. A man was nothing if he wasn't of his word. Of course there had been silly promises as a child that hardly counted. Promises to their mother not to fly their brooms where muggles could see them, and not to play with the bludgers in the park.
He remembered Sirius promising to be on his very best behaviour when he left for school, and now that Sirius had left it it was clear that that had not been a promise that he could keep. But now that Sirius was gone it was becoming clear to Regulus that he had made his brother one promise before he'd graduated that he wasn't entirely sure he was able to keep, and he wasn't even sure that it was his own fault.
He was a blood supremacist. He knew that. He genuinely believed that to come from one of the Sacred families meant that you were better than the rest, and that mudbloods had stolen their magic from pureblooded squibs. He believed that they needed to be stopped at all costs, in order to preserve what little truly pure blood there was left.
That didn't mean that he believed in the tactics employed by the Death Eaters. At all costs to him was certainly a very different concept than it was to others, because they didn't deserve to be tortured and killed, but they had to find a way to keep the magic in magical families.
He hadn't been thrilled when his cousin had come to him and told him that the Dark Lord had requested a meeting with the Heir Black. He knew what it meant, and he knew what pride it would bring to his parents, but he knew too that he had made a promise never to go down that road.
Sirius had also made a promise once that he would never leave him and that they would always be brothers, but then he'd gone and broken that promise as well, and when it came down to it that meant more to him than anything. Sirius couldn't keep his own promise, so what duty did Regulus have to keep one that he'd made with him?
It wasn't as though taking the mark was entirely voluntary. He'd never heard of anyone that had refused it and survived. He didn't want harm to come down on his family should he refuse, and he certainly had more self preservation than to allow himself to die simply because he dared say no. Did it truly mean that he was on their side simply because he took the mark?
He had to consider that. He also had to reconsider the value of a promise made with someone who had been known to break theirs.