Hi!

This is the first chapter I´ve written from Regulus´s point of view. Writing it was kind of tricky but interesting also. I really, would like to hear, what kind of thoughts it rises in a reader...

-everyJohn

/

Regulus´s interview was held in his father´s office in the Grimmauld place 12. Mr. Robards, the auror responsible for the procedure was a middle aged wizard, who sat straight on his chair. His thin, dark hair was parted in two perfectly equal portions on the both sides of his head and every time he tried to smile he managed to look a bit forced. His way of asking questions was, however, pleasantly straightforward and polite.

The mood in the start of the interviewing was strictly official but after almost two hours of asking and answering questions even the atmosphere began to slowly ease. In the end of the session Mr. Robards and Mr. Black already exchanged old memories of their common times in Hogwarts. From Mr. Robards hints, Regulus understood that his father had been quite a headache to him during their last years, when Mr. Robards had been one of the prefects of Ravenclaw. His father didn´t take badly to be reminded of his rebellious past. He laughed boisterously and even asked Kreacher to bring some pumpkin juice for his old friend.

Mr. Robards and the Blacks had already exchanged the necessary pleasantries preparing for goodbyes. Suddenly, Severus lunged in the room. Mr. Robards who had been about to reach for the navy blue cloak that he had lain on an empty armchair stopped in the middle of the action. The young tutor looked startledly around. His blinking eyes stopped briefly at the glass on the desk that was still half-way full of juice. He cast a sharp look to Mr. Robards, but didn´t say anything. Regulus noticed how his bony shoulders rose and lowered from his wheezy breaths and that his black robes had gotten dirty. There was even a small bruise forming on his face next to his left eye.

Mr. Robards stared Severus long with an unreadable expression. Then he, however, ripped his gaze off, grabbed the cloak and walked straight past the boy. He turned shortly around at the door to give Mr. Black and his son a polite bow before disappariting.

/

"Did he do something to you?" Severus asked quickly.

"N-No." Regulus denied. He shared a confused look with his father, before looking back to his tutor. "He just asked some questions and did the priori incantatem... I think that it is... a routine thing. He even apologized for the inconvenience. Why do you ask? "

"Nothing."

"Severus?"
"Forget it!"

With those words Severus turned away. His angry steps banged loudly in the stairs, which told Regulus that he had headed to his room.

/

Regulus rapped his knuckles gently against the wooden door. He didn´t get an answer and tried the handle. To his surprise the latch clicked and the door gave a quiet squeak as it opened.

Despite the fact that the room no longer belonged to his older brother, surprisingly little had changed in there. Walls were still decked out in Gryffindor colors and banners. That was likely due to the permanent sticking charm Sirius had left behind on his last day there. Quite surprisingly the charm had held on and even Severus had to give up on its removal. The tutor had swallowed his disgust in silence and slept surrounded by posters of half naked Muggle biker girls without complaining. His brother would have been proud, if he knew, Regulus thought to himself. Sometimes, he found himself thinking that maybe his brother had just wanted to leave some kind of a permanent mark in the house, so that the memory of him would remain there.

Then Regulus noticed a small lump against the wall on the bed in the furthermost corner of the room. He approached it tentatively.

"Severus? Are you alright?"

When he didn´t get an answer, he sat down next to the boy. The bed creaked. Regulus kept waiting, but the older boy was stubborn. When Regulus realized how much time it would take to get anything out of him, he picked up one of the potions books laying around and began to read to keep himself occupied.

Finally some half swallowed angry words began to drop out from Severus´s mouth. "Those... Those scumbags! They are not better than Deatheaters! Ha! ...they think that they can do whatever they want because they are on the 'light' side. They think that they can meddle with other people´s minds without consequences! Just get away with it! If I could... If only I could, I would..."

"What happened, Severus?" Regulus asked softly.

His tutor´s head moved. Severus turned to look at Regulus with mulish expression on his gloomy face. "What happened?" He mimicked Regulus´s words. "Nothing."

But his black eyes flamed with pure anger.

"They just asked me some questions, just like you said. Isn´t that what aurors do?", he continued imitating Regulus´s earlier answer and rose up to a sitting position. " ...With me they just didn´t bother with the politeness."

He shook his head, a sardonic grin on his face.

"Yes. No-one offered any pumpkin juice. We had completely different kinds of bewearages there."

He grimaced uglily.

Then he continued with lower voice, but equally bitter tone: "Ha! They had a ready script, which they wanted me to follow. When I refused to play the part... they simply decided to drug me docile."

Regulus frowned. "They drugged you?"

"Veritaserum!" Severus hissed it like a swear word.

"The-they wouldn´t!" Regulus denied sceptically.

Severus snorted. "Do you dare to claim that I, of all people, don´t recognize a truth potion when fed it, Black?"

"But that is ministry controlled! It should be illegal to use it without proper procedures..."

"You can be god damn sure it is! And that´s why they obliviated me after everything was over. To hide their tracks."

For a moment Regulus didn´t know, what to say.

"If... If they obliviated you... How could you remember all of that?"

Severus turned away from him, towards the wall.

"Severus?"

"...Ever heard of occlumency, Black?"

"I´ve... I´ve heard of it. It´s something some old wizards do, isn´t it?"

Severus rolled his eyes. "And beside hearing the word, have you any clue what it actually means?"

"It means mind arts, right?"

"Yes, mind arts. Freaking bloody MIND ARTS!" Severus shouted and hit his fist to the wall.

"Blocking ones mind from... intrusions", Regulus recalled. He slowly shook his head. "Don´t say you actually can do it? I mean... Isn´t that supposed to take like... lifetime of practice, or something?"

"I´m a half blood, as everyone in this bloody house reminds me all the time. Do you know, who are my wizard relatives from my mother´s side? Your mother and father at least surely know after the background check they did."

When Regulus looked just confused, Severus answered to his own guestion.

"Princes."

"Princes? But they were left out from sacred twenty-eight because they didn´t have a living heir or any known direct descendants... weren´t they?"

"My mother, Eileen Prince, was disowned and burned out from family tree after escaping from the house to marry my muggle father. After she dared to conceive a half blood offspring, it didn´t come as a surprise that she got her name many times crossed over in anything associated with the Prince family. But she or her parents, none of them could do a thing to change the blood in her veins. And neither can I!"

After calming down a little Severus continued: "Princes were once almost royalty among wizards. That was long before anyone had even heard of your family. So tell me, Black... Why were Princes considered powerful? And why were they once horribly feared by everyone?"

Regulus gulped. "Be-because of m-mind arts?"

Severus smirked and clapped his hands without any true amusement. "Ten points to Slytherin. The house of Prince was once known as the Evil Eye of the Great Britain."

Regulus noticed that his pale face had almost haunted look on it. Severus shook his head and looked away.

"That grace had been long lost already in my mother´s times, but because of her heritage I have some aptitude to mind arts. I was trained by my mother since I was six."

Regulus gasped. "S-since you were six?"

"Quite young, isn´t it? And I can tell you, it wasn´t fun."

/

Severus had began to look greenish as he talked. Now he suddenly stood up and rushed past surprised Regulus to the bathroom. From the sound of it he was throwing over. After some sounds of flushing and rinsing, he staggered back to the room.

"Are you sick, Severus?" Regulus asked worriedly.

"It´s the damned veritaserum. Still rejecting it", his tutor answered curtly as he sat back on the bed next to Regulus.

"I still can´t understand... Why would they want to use that on you?"

"They asked if I had killed Mr. Potter or if I knew who did it. I didn´t. I repeated that under veritaserum and they weren´t pleased by the truth... After that, they simply asked if there were any other things I was hiding."

"Surely not!" That slipped from Regulus´s mouth before he could stop himself. Severus angry but strangely evasive stance made him, however, realize something that left a bad taste in his mouth. Something about Severus reminded him of ten years old Sirius who had been found out in sneaking out to play with some muggle children and had to suffer through Walburga´s harsh punishment. That was the same shame and helpless frustration and anger of a person beaten by someone much stronger.

Suddenly, Regulus felt cold anger towards the aurors that had done this.

"That has nothing to do with the case! They can only ask questions that directly focus on the case. Asking a question braced with those kind of words from someone under veritaserum is illegal. It´s a serious preach of wizarding rights. And... And you are even underage!" He yelled. His own words made him realize that Severus´s claim of memory manipulation might as well be true.

"They really tried to erase your memory?" he confirmed.

"You believe me now, Black?"

Regulus nodded. "But I have never heard of anyone resisting obliviate. Is occlumency really that strong?"

"Occlumency can be strong or weak depending on its user. It´s basically an enhanced mind wall. Everyone has some kind of mind wall. That ensures that their inner thoughts don´t just slip out. Most just aren´t very aware of it and those, who can even slightly manipulate it, are even rarer", Severus explained.

He looked relieved that Regulus finally believed him and was beginning to slowly calm down.

Regulus pondered on everything that Severus had told him.

"Could I learn it too? That occlumency?"

"Probably, but it takes time. That´s why most of the master´s of occlumency are old wizards. And I can assure you that the learning process... isn´t pleasant."

Regulus nodded.

"But why are you sick, Severus. Is veritaserum supposed to have such an after effect?" He then asked.

"Nope", Severus shook his head, "but blocking both it and the memory altering spell simultaneously is exhausting. It doesn´t help that it feels..." Severus swallowed the end of the sentence. He looked down, gritting his teeth. "...disgusting. Humiliating." He spit that out, but the rest came out as mumbling. "Thoughts are... very private. It´s like... like someone forces you to stand naked in front of a leering audience and you have nowhere to hide and just try to keep your dignity intact in any way possible."

A silence followed Severus´s words. The image that his words painted, brought to Regulus´s mind the spring in Hogwarts a year ago. Marauders had been insufferable to Severus for the whole year. Only couple of days before summer holiday, he had seen Marauders and a crowd of other people at the lakeside. After walking closer he had seen that James Potter had his tutor under a spell. Others laughed at that. His tutor was brought in the air upside down so that his underpants were revealed to the public. Then Lily Evans had stormed out and soon after that the situation had dissipated. Afterwards he had been very mad at Sirius. That had lead to one of their biggest fights ever.

"Tell me about veritaserum. How does it work?" Regulus prompted. He hoped that concentrating on something else would help Severus to get rid of the feeling of humiliation. Severus knew potions inside out and Regulus had learned to appreciate his insight descriptions.

"Veritaserum, like almost all other mind altering potions and spells, aims to penetrate target´s mind wall. That is usually achieved by confusing the mind wall of the direction of outside and inside thoughts. Inside thoughts are thoughts that root from the person´s own consciousness. They are thoughts that determine people´s actions, their inner voice. The outside thoughts are what comes from outside, namely suggestions, orders or pleas. Mind alterants make it so that the outside thoughts are disguised as inside thoughts to make the mind wall accept them without resistance. For example in case of love potion, brewers wish for the target to fall in love with them becomes something that the target thinks is arising from his own thoughts and feelings."

"Are there also spells or potions that do the opposite. Make the target think that his inside thoughts are outside thoughts?"

Severus laughed hollowly."That´s quite a sinister thought, Regulus. There are numerous dark potions... Who knows, but I have never heard about something like that. It would be very difficult to feed at least. If it existed it would basically cause one to fall into some kind of psychosis. The case would remind that of a schizophrenic. Sometimes, when occlumency training goes wrong there are results like that. The whole point of the training is to make one detect and reject outside thoughts. That is usually achieved through physical and emotional pain. Sometimes people become... hyper-aware of their thoughts. Then they may start to reject both inside thoughts and outside thoughts. If that happens they eventually completely close up. There are some cases like that in St. Mungos."

Regulus had listened quietly his every word.

"And your mother... began to teach that to you when you were six?"