It was still dark outside when Harry awoke. There was a looming murkiness to the whole house as it was, and lying in the semi-darkness wasn't helping. He pulled on his glasses and was surprised to find himself alone. He scrambled to get his jeans and a t-shirt on, only jolting a little when he heard snickering from the painting. No worse than your average Slytherin, Sirius had said, but to his knowledge, Harry'd never had a Slytherin watch him get dressed, so it was a little worse.

On the other side of the door, he could hear the low sounds of talking. With a flash of irritation, Harry wondered what else people weren't telling him. Even Sirius had seemed to decide he didn't need to know anything more than he'd already been told. He opened the door to find Ron, still in his pajamas and eyes half shut, and a fully dressed Hermione.

"You're up!" she said in a low voice.

"Yeah," Harry said, looking between the two of them and trying to keep the accusation out of his voice. "How come you are?"

"Must've left the door open last night," Ron mumbled, running his palm over his eyes in a seemingly vain attempt to wake himself up. "Sirius' mum kicked off again half an hour ago."

"I was already up," Hermione explained.

"Because she's nuts," Ron clarified through a yawn.

"Because it's OWL year, and I want to get in some studying before breakfast," Hermione raised her voice a little. "It wouldn't be the worst idea for you two to join me."

"No thanks," Ron said, sleepily looking at the door. "M'going back to bed."

Harry didn't want to go back to bed. The nightmares were persisting, so even resting felt uneasy, and there was something unsettling about a tittering Slytherin Headmaster watching him sleep. Ron didn't seem too bothered by it. There weren't a lot of things that could wake Ron up once he'd settled in, barring spiders. Still, Harry knew he wouldn't concentrate even if he did want to study (which he didn't). His hearing was three days away. If they decided he was expelled, what would have been the point of studying? He wouldn't be going back to Hogwarts with them. He crossed his arms against the chill that came over him.

Hermione seemed to sense the downturn in his mood as Ron shuffled back through the door. "Mrs. Weasley is looking downstairs if you want to get something."

Harry didn't really feel hungry, but knew he probably should. "Where are you going?"

"To study, I told you." Hermione said.

"There might not be much point," Harry replied.

"You're not going to get expelled. People don't get expelled for using underage magic in life or death situations." Hermione huffed at him. "I looked it up. There's a precedent."

Harry didn't feel convinced. "Why is Mrs. Weasley making breakfast now?" It was early, well before the usual time.

"Bill came in earlier," Hermione said, taking on the conspiratorial tone that meant it must have been something to do with the Order. "I think Sirius went to get him. That's what set the portrait off."

"How do you know?"

"The insults change," Hermione shrugged. "Lupin gets the half-breed ones, I get the filth ones, Mrs. Weasley usually gets something about blood-traitor, and this morning, it was familial ones, so it had to be Sirius. She won't acknowledge Tonks."

"But there are two of them," Harry said, thinking back to the brief encounter with Sirius's younger brother the day before.

"Oh, she doesn't scream with him," Hermione shrugged. "It's quite a well done bit of magic."

Harry didn't think anything that portrayed the clawing, elderly woman screaming through the window could be thought of as done well, but he could take a guess as to why she wouldn't scream. Sirius had taken him aside the night before and quietly explained the circumstances that had led to the Order of the Phoenix setting up its headquarters in the house. That his brother had joined the Death Eaters when he was Harry's age, but had backed out when he realised what it was really like and that you don't just leave the Death Eaters: you're there for life, or they'll kill you. The thought made him uneasy. He thought it might make the other members of the Order uneasy too, given that he didn't really see them interacting. Harry himself had been there two days with only a brief discussion with the man.

(The others didn't know. Sirius had asked in earnest that he not say anything yet because it was technically Order business, but he felt Harry had the right to know. That suited him, Harry had thought bitterly, he wasn't the only person keeping secrets around here.)

But the problem he had with this information was that he had no idea why a Death Eater would spend the majority of their time around the only muggle-born in the house. He was friends with Snape, which tracked, and the house definitely screamed Death Eater, but Sirius had grown up here too before he'd left to stay with Harry's own grandparents. He wondered if it was like Crouch, who'd taken a special interest in Neville even though he'd gone to Azkaban for torturing his parents. It was a disturbing thought, and one he wasn't sure was true. Crouch, as Moody, had acted bizarrely, and though Harry could understand he was just doing a good impression of Moody now that he'd met the real one, there were no signs of that Sirius' younger brother was similarly unhinged. Maybe he was just better at hiding it. Look at their mum.

Harry was greeted by the hushed tones of Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, Bill, and (to his lack of surprise, given Hermione's suspicions earlier) Sirius. He and Bill seemed to be in deep discussion about something that stopped abruptly when Harry came in.

"Hello, Harry dear," Molly said fussing over him. "You're up early." The statement was punctuated by Mr. Weasley's sluggish gulp of what looked like burning hot coffee. "Do you want some breakfast? We've got some eggs, toast, I can break out the bacon if you'd like some…"

"Toast is fine, thanks," Harry said, picking it off the plate. The room remained in a state of awkward stasis, since they clearly wanted to talk about something but wouldn't do it while Harry was in the room.

"Are you getting an early start on your OWL work too?" Molly asked. "I'm surprised we haven't had the letters yet, it's almost time."

Assuming the letter came for him at all. "Er, yeah," Harry said, distractedly.

He was broken out of it by Sirius snorting, and when he looked, Bill looked ready to laugh as well. Apparently the idea of him getting a headstart on his studies at sunrise was extremely funny. However, it was short-lived as the tension quickly returned.

"I'll take it up then," Harry said, wanting to get away from the stuffy air or secrecy.

"To study," Sirius asked, without asking.

"If Dumbledore goes to all the trouble of making sure I can go back to Hogwarts, it'd probably look bad if I failed everything." Harry replied snippily, though regretted it almost instantly. He hadn't been awake an hour, and he was already getting a throbbing headache.

For lack of anything else to do in a quiet, looming house, Harry traipsed up the stairs to the study. That was usually where he'd expect to find Hermione. He found Crookshanks outside the room and helpfully covered Harry's jeans with ginger cat hair by winding around them until Harry bent down to scratch him behind the ears.

"Your cat is trying to trip me up," Harry called in, trying to extricate himself and not drop his plate.

Except Hermione wasn't in the study.

Looking up from his book, Regulus saw Harry standing awkwardly in the doorway with the rather large ginger cat still winding affectionately. His morning thus far had been peaceful and solitary (save for the occasional visit by Crookshanks and Kreacher), but surprisingly enough, it seemed that even rising before the sun did not guarantee the morning would stay that way. A new guest had arrived not too long ago, from what he had gathered, though venturing downstairs was not tempting enough to pull him from the book when the noise level below was certain to be louder.

"I suppose you were expecting Hermione," he said as more of a statement than a question. "She hasn't been in here yet this morning."

"Uh, yeah." Harry replied eloquently, before trying to get an armful of Crookshanks to move the cat out of the way. He shifted beyond the boy's grasp with a low rumble. Harry added awkwardly, "She said she wanted to study. And this is the...study."

"It is," Regulus responded simply. Noticing that Harry was still struggling to juggle the plate and the cat, Regulus marked his place in his book and crossed the room to where the boy was standing. Without ceremony, he scooped up Crookshanks, shifting the massive cat in his arms as the bottle-brush tail swished freely. "Come along. He's trying to walk."

Harry nodded. He watched the cat for a minute, before reaching over to give a few light strokes. "Crookshanks doesn't usually like people," he said with a frown.

"We bonded," Regulus said, scratching the cat's head. Crookshanks hadn't struck him as particularly unfriendly, even in those initial days, but Regulus had always been quite fond of cats. Perhaps Crookshanks could sense it, or something silly like that.

Harry's frown lingered before he seemingly made up his mind. "Er...can I ask about the...staring, from yesterday?"

The staring, unlike the cat, was quite another point, and one that was rather more uncomfortable. There was no truly polite way to say 'you remind me of the person I hated most as a child,' true though it might be. He had told Sirius he was going to make every effort at civility, so to any degree he could, Regulus was going to try to find the closest approximation to politeness.

"You look quite a lot like your father," Regulus responded carefully. The ghost of childhood fury flickered at the edge of his mind, and pointedly he fought to calm his mind again, grasping for words. "So I expected a more… arrogant disposition. I was simply surprised."

Harry recoiled, letting his hand drop from the cat and responding with a half-hearted glare. "My father was not arrogant, and neither am I," he said, hotly.

"I never said you were arrogant," Regulus said pointedly, lifting his brow as he scratched the soft scruff beneath Crookshanks' chin. Shifting on his feet, Regulus turned to walk back to the chair he'd been settled in, reminding himself that there was nothing to gain from arguing with a teenager about his dead father, even if that father really was a twat. That argument was better served with Sirius, if he was going to exert the effort of a confrontation, and Regulus was not in the mood for a confrontation. "In fact, I was specifically implying the opposite."

Harry blinked a couple of times, perhaps unsure of what to say that. "Sorry, I didn't mean - It was just -" he started, but forcefully stopped himself mid-sentence. "You weren't what I expected either."

With a soft snort, Regulus lowered into his chair and loosened his grip on Crookshanks as the cat perched in his lap, tail swishing. "If Sirius was delivering the description, that does not surprise me," he responded wryly, though his tone was light and distinctly lacking in the bitterness that might have once prickled sharp in such a statement. Exasperating though his brother might be on a deep and defining level, Sirius had been almost complimentary at times, as of late, and even if a backhanded remark could round the corner at any moment, those complimentary moments stuck in his mind as firmly as their insulting counterparts so often did. ('It requires strength of character to face something you can ignore. Given the choice, most people are not you'...)

Harry made his way into the room properly, looking back at the door before lowering his voice to speak. "You don't remind me of a Death Eater at all," he admitted softly.

Immediately Regulus's mouth twitched in subtle discomfort, eyes flicking first to the door, then back to Harry, but again, the words were not jabbed forth with hostility. He'd even possessed the decency of lowering his voice, which was more than Regulus would have expected from a Gryffindor Potterspawn. As it turned out, Sirius had taken it upon himself to share that particular piece of information with Harry - but it had not been weaponised yet, so that, at least, was a small and tentative comfort.

"I'm not a Death Eater," Regulus replied with a quiet finality to his tone. "Seventeen was quite some time ago, and suffice to say I thought better of it."

"I just don't get it," Harry said, screwing his face up out of something like frustration. "With Snape, or Lucius Malfoy, you can tell. They're cruel and angry. You don't seem to have a problem with Hermione either. Were you that different?"

Regulus crinkled his nose, the fringes of a familiar burn crackling at the back of his mind. "I was an angry fifteen-year-old," he admitted, voice tightening a little. (And sixteen-year-old...and seventeen-year-old...) "I've never had a stomach for cruelty, but it was a very...complicated time, to say the least."

"But isn't that what a Death Eater is? Someone who tortures and kills people because they think they're better than them?" Harry seemed to mull his own question for a moment. "Or because they're told to by Voldemort and they think they have something to gain out of it."

In that moment, Regulus was grateful for the cat in his lap, providing a distraction for his hands and something reasonable to look at that wasn't another person. Such a view of the Death Eaters was a simplistic one, blunt and staggering in its matter-of-fact nature as it landed its blow. 'Someone who tortures and kills-' - even now, Regulus could feel Bella's expectant gaze burning into him: the derisive shame she wielded as a weapon when he hesitated, the freely-given praise upon compliance.

'You are a Black…' The words echoed hollow in his mind.

"It's not always that straightforward," Regulus responded without lifting his gaze from Crookshanks, who was getting a very dedicated scratch beneath his ears at the moment.

"Why did you?" Harry asked, bluntly.

A simple question - an expected question, even - yet Regulus could feel the words connect a dizzying blow. 'Why'...There were so many reasons why, muddled and crushed together, but it was in that moment that Regulus realised no one had ever asked him before. Everyone who had ever known he was a Death Eater had possessed the context to draw their own conclusions - Sirius included, it seemed, given his relative avoidance. To untangle and articulate that time in his life brought forth a flood of unsettling memories, and caution would warn any attempt to communicate candidly with these unknown and untested strangers - yet the urge to express it (even to Potter's surprisingly bearable son) was a spark flickering to life.

"There is not an easy answer… When Sirius left…" Regulus hesitated, trying to formulate the thoughts into something neutral enough to express to a Potter but true enough to ease that knotting frustration in his chest. "There was a sort of...shift. A blemish everyone could see, even if most knew better than to talk about it. His behavior was incendiary, even before he left, but he was the second in our generation to betray the family and flaunt all expectations. One is a shame - but two starts the suggestion of a pattern…"

Regulus shook his head, his posture tensing. Uncomfortably, he continued: "The balance had been upset, and it was my responsibility to restore the environment, mend the fractured family, meet extremes with extremes, I suppose… And honestly, I was angry at Sirius for abandoning me to frolic with his friends while I had to clean up his mess." Feeling the prick of the memory's bitter edge, he paused to take a centering breath and shook his head. "But there is no single answer, I'm afraid. Frustrations, expectations, responsibilities, restorations… I could not see past them for a long time. My understanding was naive, or idealistic, or misguided - however one wishes to phrase it, I suppose it comes down to that understanding being incomplete. In the end, I could not condone my situation as it was, much less sustain it. But that, too, is rather more complicated than any one factor can explain."

There was a moment of silence punctuated only by the crunch of toast and the low purr of the cat. Harry suddenly seemed terribly interested in the contents of his plate. "The weight of fixing everything on you when you don't know what you're doing, I wonder what that would feel like," he mumbled into his chest. He seemed to regain some of his voice after that. "But you did escape, didn't you?"

Sparing a glance to Harry, at last, Regulus offered a subtle tip of the head, though it did not seem the boy was looking anymore. "I did, when I was seventeen. I left the night I came home from my seventh year at Hogwarts, actually. Didn't say anything, just left while everyone was still at our graduation celebration." With a slight contortion of his face, Regulus shook his head and pressed his fingers firmly to his temple as a stab of guilt struck in his chest. "Not my most polite moment, but I am alive enough to feel guilty about it, so I suppose that is better than the alternative."

"Do you think it'd have been more polite to get murdered?" Harry asked.

"Mm...It probably would have been more polite, yes," Regulus said dryly, dropping his hand with a weighty sigh. Some murders might be messy, but he suspected his would have been relatively straightforward to minimize the burden on his remaining family. (Would it have been Bella? Would he have even known?) The thought hovered darkly in his mind, irreverent though his comment had been, and again he looked uncomfortably at the ginger cat in his lap. "Dissenters who have been eliminated are less argumentative, and by extension more polite," he added in sardonic tones, and a sharper stab of pain cut in his chest. (His family, certainly, would not have wanted him dead, and yet...)

Regulus thought of his mother's wailing shrieks, sick with a nagging feeling: "And a dead son is arguably preferable to a living traitor, I suppose." In ways, it was better not to know.

"It's not! It's not preferable!" Harry insisted sounding more than a little upset at the idea, dropping the plate to the table harshly enough that it clattered against it. "I don't believe that. Parents, they're supposed to do the best for you, and they love you. They don't want you dead. Why would anyone choose Voldemort over their own son?"

Jolting at the clanging plate, Regulus was uncomfortably quiet for a lingering moment - until again he spoke in mild, if strained, tones. "Some things are complicated beyond the matter of the Dark Lord and the Death Eaters..." Blood, legacy, appearances, expectations; he did not feel as though he was a true blood traitor, but would his family have been able to make such a subtle distinction between traitor to blood or traitor to the Cause? "I've wondered countless times if she would have forgiven me, but as it turns out, it's a moot point, and I will never know," he said, wrangling to make his voice more light than he felt - or at least less downtrodden.

"But it seems I have gotten away from myself - I did not intend to be quite so forward on the matter," Regulus added after a beat, though for every thing he'd said, there were several more he had withheld, for all the complications at play. "I suppose it is not very cheerful breakfast conversation."

"S'okay," Harry shrugged, before pressing at his forehead with a wince. "I don't blame you. I asked and I was in a lousy mood anyway."

"Headache?" Regulus asked probingly, eying Harry's forehead-soothing, "Or just the threat of expulsion? Though I suppose they don't have to be mutually exclusive."

"Yes," Harry said, then shook his head. before looking as if he really wished he hadn't. "Er, no. I mean, it's nothing new, just the scar, happens all the time now Voldemort's back."

Lifting his brow, Regulus made a soft 'hm' sound, tucking away the thought for later. Everyday pain from an everyday scar wasn't interesting, but anything related to the Dark Lord was. His own 'scar,' the Dark Mark still etched into his arm, had begun to burn every time it was activated for a call to meet or a call to arms. The Dark Mark had been a very intentional piece of magic, serving a very specific function, but he had not welcomed its return, all the same. "Sounds unpleasant."

"Yeah," Harry agreed distractedly, attempting to stifle a yawn and just deciding to give in. "I'm going to lie down again before someone leaves and wakes your mum up again."

"A wise course of action," Regulus granted, and as Harry shuffled out of the study, Regulus once again opened his book hoping - if only a little - to drown out his reeling thoughts.

With every fiber of his being, Regulus had despised James Potter, and between the unflattering Triwizard newspaper reporting, the shouting he'd heard floating up upon the boy's arrival, and his own preconceived notions about a spawn of Potter, Regulus's expectations had been thoroughly unmet. On more than one occasion during the two brief conversations he had experienced with Harry Potter, Regulus had expected that arrogance to surface - thought he could see it coming - but while the boy did seem to be a blustering and tactless Gryffindor, on the whole, it was not as terrible as he would have thought.

Somehow, it seemed a little bit like losing, to tolerate Potter's son, but with a degree of reframing, Regulus reminded himself that at least Potter wasn't managing to ruin his life from the grave, and small though the comfort was, it proved something to rest in. (Severus, regretfully, seemed to be having less luck on that front.) Regulus could not resolve his frustrations with the departed James Potter any more than he could his mother, and Harry was a poor substitute when he refused to be intolerable enough to hate.

The Dark Lord's return had locked in a more pressing grudge - and that return continued to pique his interest, the more Harry and the others described the events of that had occurred at Hogwarts in the last few years. The Chamber of Secrets and its monster (a basilisk, of all things), Death Eater professors, the philosopher's stone… Tom Riddle's diary, manifesting differently from the locket, yet seeming to serve the same function. It had even been destroyed in a manner that was not so unlike his own experiments. Harry's zigzag scar was yet another curious thing - and its recent painful spikes earned a notation amongst his other Information of Interest, shortly after their conversation had concluded.

Days had passed since then, and strangely, he thought he might almost be adjusting to the additional teenager running about the house. Regulus was uncertain if Harry had told the other kids about his prior allegiance, but their behavior towards him remained unchained, so he suspected Harry had not, at least for now. The degree to which Harry could keep a secret was yet untested, but he had not failed miserably in the first week, so that was another tentative point in his favor.

Preliminary investigations into Albania had failed to spark any connection, but if there was in fact anything of significance, it may only surface from interactions with relevant parties. Perhaps a visit would be enlightening, but without even a city to target, it was more likely to waste time than serve much benefit, if the Dark Lord had already returned to Britain. Locating the text on genealogies was the next step, locking in the connection between Slytherin and the Riddles. That particular book had been absent from the study recently - strange, when the subject did not seem to appeal as much to this crowd of individuals, but it was possible Kreacher had taken it for some reason or another… or perhaps it had been gone, some time before.

A great deal could happen in sixteen years, as he was learning quite thoroughly.

When at last Regulus did locate the missing book, he could not decide if the reader in question was the last person or the first person he ought to have suspected to be browsing a book about wizarding lineages. Curled up in the study was Hermione, her attention fixed intently on the page.

"Interested in genealogy, are you?" he asked.

Hermione looked up, startled. She looked a mix of embarrassed and proud and didn't seem to know which direction she ought to lean in. "It's really interesting," she admitted. "I've heard about some of it in passing, of course. Ron explained most magical families aren't pure-blood and of course, last week, when Sirius was explaining some of your family tapestry to Harry, he mentioned that most of the names had died out. According to this, they didn't really. Names simply changed because the last descendant was a girl who changed her name, so they're still around, just with a different name. It looks as if the Hufflepuffs became the Smiths, for example. We've one of those in our year."

"The bloodlines themselves have not necessarily died out, but the names have," Regulus corrected. The House of Black was dwindling dangerously, itself, with only himself and Sirius still possessing the name, throughout the entirety of their bloodline. Just thinking about it made him anxious, but he had aggressively avoided thinking about it for over a decade, and now was hardly the time to change that. While the war still raged, there was no feasible solution in sight, however upsetting the thought might be.

Her mention of Hufflepuff seemed a perfect opening to ask about Slytherin, or even about the Founders in general, but questions begot questions, and he was not certain he wanted to answer them just yet when the information was so accessible in his own library. Instead, he nodded with a genuine look of interest. "I don't like to see name after name dying out, but the bloodlines, at least, can live on. Lineage is a fascinating thing."

"Definitely, from an outsider's perspective." Hermione nodded in agreement. "There does seem to be some inconsistencies, but it's still interesting to consider all of these people who were students hundreds of years before us. I wonder if Hogwarts keeps a detailed student record."

"I don't know if Hogwarts is so committed to its record-keeping, but I would not be surprised if such a thing existed. There is a lot to learn from history - patterns, successes, mistakes, the people who made them. I had our entire family tapestry committed to memory by the time I started at Hogwarts," Regulus said thoughtfully as he folded his arms loosely.

"That probably depends on whether or not the information is accurate," Hermione mused, before picking up one of the other books to one side of her and showing it with a rueful smile. "This one seems to think I'm responsible for a squib. Of course, personally, I think it's far more likely that magic can be genetically recessive, only occurring when two people have the right set of inherited characteristics, so it's just far more commonly passed on if one or both parents are magical themselves. But arguing with books has gotten me into trouble before, and I just don't have the medical background. Did you want the book?"

Automatically, Regulus's nose crinkled, and he could feel an argument dancing on the tip of his tongue. Every well-rehearsed retort rose in his mind like air to his lungs, but debating the finer points of purist ideology would gain him nothing but suspicion in such company, and he had quite enough of that already. Instead, Regulus swallowed the words, trying to brush the subject of blood back to the dustier corners of his mind.

"I did, actually, if you are finished with it," he said instead.

"It's not important, I can read it another time." Hermione said, closing the book over and reaching it over to him. "There's always next summer."

Regulus took it in hand with a brief word of thanks, forcibly turning his mind back to the task at hand. There was a time when he could have rattled on for hours - or rather, when he would have, for her certainly still could - but it was strange, how uncomfortable it all felt, now. The only real security, now, was his research and their related goals, and it was that process that he knew he needed to focus on. With this book, he could trace the Dark Lord's - Riddle's - lineage. Perhaps it would be useless, extraneous knowledge; or perhaps it wouldn't be.

Some days later, Sirius was on his way down from feeding Buckbeak when something distinctly Hermione-shaped blurred up the stairs and bolted full speed into the study. If something was wrong, it was unlikely to be the study she would run into, so it must be something else.

Actually, knowing Hermione, a book would be exactly where she would run to in a time of crisis.

He poked his head into the room to find its usual resident in his usual position, except he had also clearly not expected Hermione to come bursting in there with Hedwig.

"Everything all right?" Sirius asked, given the frenzy.

"Oh, yes!" Hermione cried, smiling brightly and holding up a piece of paper that looked like a Hogwarts letter with a small red and gold badge. "The letters came, and I'm a prefect!"

Sirius wondered privately if there'd been any doubt she would be, but he didn't know who else she was in a dorm with, so maybe it wasn't a lock-in. "Congratulations," he said.

"Thank you!" Hermione beamed, before bending down over the paper on the table without sitting down. "I'm just writing to Mum and Dad to tell them. At least getting prefect is something they'll understand. Mrs. Weasley is so excited, Ron got one too!"

That had been a little surprising; he didn't know why he'd expected Harry to get it. Sirius himself hadn't been a prefect, and neither had James, and Harry was a lot like his father. Getting up to too much mischief to really worry about enforcing rules.

(Of course, Lily had been, so perhaps that's where he'd thought of it.)

"I'm sure she's thrilled." He had tried to bury the sour feeling he'd had towards her since her unwelcome commentary, but there was something about this house that made anger fester and linger beyond its due.

"They're going to make butterbeer, and a cake! You must come down," Hermione said. Nothing was going to dampen her enthusiasm in the slightest. She was practically vibrating from it. "We're celebrating! Harry's not expelled, we're prefects, and it looks like the Headmaster finally found a new Defense teacher!"

While all of that was good news, it also brought home the grim reality of the house emptying, save for the crossover of the Order. Molly and Arthur would return home, Remus was constantly on guard duty because he had some idiot idea that because he didn't have a job, then he should take more shifts, and for the first time in a very long time, both he and Regulus would be left in the house alone. He didn't know how well he would handle that. Left to their own devices, they had gotten on, but there were twenty years and too many things left unspoken, so there was a continuing awkwardness to their interactions that he didn't know what to do about. It made it easier, having everyone else around.

"Let's hope this one isn't a Death Eater too," Sirius said, finally.

"Along the current pattern, there is a fifty-percent chance," Regulus said wryly, looking up from his book.

Sirius bit back a comment about suggesting he try out for the role when this one ended up having to leave for one reason or another over the next year, but given that he was pretty sure Hermione didn't know about his illustrious past, he let it go. Besides, the only thing worse than being stuck here together was being stuck there alone.

"It'd be more surprising if they lasted past the year," Sirius shrugged.

"That would be a first. It was like that even when we were in school, a new professor every year," Regulus remarked with a shake off the head. "Terribly inconsistent from an educational perspective."

"We did clean up on the betting pool though," Sirius commented, losing himself to brief nostalgia. "I'm going to see if Harry's started packing."

Offering a nod to Sirius as he wandered out the door again, Regulus turned his glance to Hermione, who was folding up her letter over by the desk. He seemed to hesitate for a moment before settling to speak. "I did not wish to interrupt earlier, but congratulations, once again, on becoming a prefect. You seem to be the type who will wield it well."

"It's a lot of responsibility," Hermione agreed, nodding as she scribbled furiously. "And in OWL year too! With S.P.E.W. and studying, it's going to be a real challenge!" She looked absolutely thrilled at the prospect. "I'm glad I'm not much of a flyer. I enjoy watching Quidditch, of course, but I don't think I'd want anything else on my plate. I'd need another time turner!"

"I can speak as a former quidditch-playing prefect that it was quite a lot to juggle, particularly during exam years," Regulus remarked, though the remainder of her comment had been notably more curious.

"I suppose that does let Harry off the hook for that," Hermione commented distractedly, still writing at a fast pace.

Lifting his brow, Regulus continued in a leading tone, "When you said 'another' time turner…?"

"Oh, I would have thought Sirius would have said something considering. I was entrusted with a Ministry time-turner, so I could take all of the electives. It was quite helpful, but too much responsibility."

"The topics of our brotherly discussions vary quite considerably," he said wryly, "But to another point, I am admittedly also unfamiliar with 'spew' - is that a new club?"

"It's S.P.E.W, not spew. Society for the Protection Elvish Welfare, I started it last year after I saw Mr. Crouch's atrocious treatment of Winky. I was going to put Stop the Outrageous Abuse of Our Fellow Magical Creatures and Campaign for a Change in Their Legal Status, but it wouldn't fit on the badge." Her quill came to an abrupt stop, and she looked up finally.

A look of recognition dawned on Regulus's face as she spoke, and his mouth turned slightly downward at the mention of Winky, but he waited until she had quieted to remark: "The house-elf society - you mentioned that in a note awhile back, yes? How is she? Winky, that is."

Hermione looked pleased and nodded, before coaxing Hedwig over and giving him her letter. "She seems to be doing better," she said. "Dumbledore gave her job at Hogwarts."

Regulus lifted his brow and nodded thoughtfully - 'jobs' for house-elves were typically used in the looser sense of serving a family, but if he recalled Hermione's impassioned letter correctly, then she meant a literal job, wages and all. "I'm glad to hear she is doing well," he responded genuinely. "Mr. Crouch was an atrocious person, so I am not surprised he was atrocious to Winky, as well."

"It's a start," Hermione said, with a tone that indicated she felt this was only the beginning of things that should happen in regards to Wainky, or perhaps house elves in general. With that, she took a step back towards the door. "I really ought to let Hedwig go and make sure my own trunk is packed. Do join the celebration if you want to, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley really are lovely and the cakes are always wonderful."

Regulus did not expect himself to accept the celebration invitation - after all, civil though they all were, these people were not exactly his friends - but he found himself wandering downstairs in the general direction of the kitchen, nonetheless.

Over-earnest though Hermione seemed to be, and uncomfortably complicated though it was to have a non-antagonistic interaction with a muggle-born might be, her respect for house-elves was admittedly refreshing. He had only met Winky once on his single visit to the Crouch abode, but she had been a sweet elf, and though Barty had doubted the sincerity of Winky's devotion, Regulus liked to think it was true. The desire was rooted in some level of self-interest, perhaps, for it came down a deep need to believe Kreacher's devotion was as real as he thought it was, in turn. (Some would assert that it was not love freely given, but few had lived through the sort of shared experience he and his elf had endured.) With a creeping shiver, he waved the thought away.

Regulus was passing the drawing room when he heard a bone-chilling scream. There was a certain frantic devastation to it, jarringly different from the normal shouts hurtled about the house by living and dead alike, and though he thought he could hear what he assumed was the pattering of footsteps coming from the lower staircase, he opened the door to a barrage of wracking sobs and a floor of dead bodies with ginger hair and lifeless eyes.

For a horrible moment, panic thundered swift in his chest (had something happened? was there something that dangerous in the house? could they have-), but as he took a few hesitant steps forward, the bodies stirred with slow, almost convulsing movements, and all at once, their fair skin slacked and swelled like an over-soaked sponge - blazing red hair thinned and paled to sopping, stringy bunches - lifeless eyes sunk eerily into their skulls.

Molly Weasley's wails intensified, clanging relentlessly in his ears, but the dripping bodies had fixed their attention on Regulus, moving forward with a jagged, almost pulsing crawl.

(Inferi- they were inferi-)

Cold terror clenched in his chest, and Regulus's breath caught tight in his throat as he stumbled a step backwards again, head shaking with a slow steadiness that seemed almost independent of his control. He could feel the ghost of clawing fingernails at his throat and arms, but there was nothing touching him- only crawling-

"They will not come near Master Regulus!" Kreacher shrieked, his raspy voice thick with feeling as he bolted from the cabinet he had been rummaging through, "They will not lay a hand!"

The shake of Regulus's head was more purposeful as the elf swerved in near-reach of a flailing arm, and with his own arm sweeping out like a barrier, Regulus fell to his knees - as if by instinct - to re-route Kreacher's path. Without pause, the house-elf grasped at Regulus's arm, face contorted with despair as a loud crack pierced through Molly Weasley's sobs.

"R-r-riddikulus!"

The sound of Molly Weasley's shaking voice snapped Sirius out of his frozen stance. There was a crack and the creatures that had been pulling themselves along the floor changed again and the breath went out of him at the sight of James, no, Harry spread lifelessly on the ground. But he wasn't. Harry was two steps away from him, staring at his own corpse.

To his left, he heard Remus. ""Riddikulus!" Again, there was a crack and the body lifted into a silvery orb before vanishing.

It was a boggart, Sirius realised with his heart in his throat. They'd found it a couple of days ago, and he'd forgotten about it. Molly must have come to deal with it herself and gotten overwhelmed. That was the first rule of handling a boggart: You don't do it alone. He dragged his eyes from the spot on the floor where the body had lain to see Mrs. Weasley sobbingly asking them not to tell her husband, that she was being silly, and she was just having nightmares about what might happen to the children.

He could understand. He'd been having the same nightmare about Harry for a while now, but he hadn't encountered a boggart full on. There'd been one in the potting shed where he and Remus had been staying before this, but Remus had insisted he had it handled. Given his deft handling of this one, Sirius had no doubt that was true. He didn't want to know what his own was. Mrs. Weasley's had been hard enough to look at. Remus, to his side, was attempting to reassure her that they would be alright (which he didn't know), and even if they weren't, they took care of each other. Even if something awful happened. He felt a sudden upsurge of affection for his old friend.

"But what were those things?" Harry asked.

That, Sirius did not have an answer for. They'd piled into the room upon hearing the commotion to see some bloated, bony creatures clawing on the carpet for only a moment. By the time he'd registered his own surprise, Kreacher had blown out, grabbed his brother, and apparated. The more he thought about it, the more uncomfortable he was. Regulus had always been tightly wound but also forcibly controlled every emotion, and to see blind fear even for a few moments was jarring. But what the hell were they? Kreacher clearly knew; he knew enough to get him out of the room.

"If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say inferi." Remus answered for him, giving him a look of curiosity. "Childhood fear?"

Sirius shook his head in response. He had no memory of it ever coming up when they were little. It had been at least twenty years since he'd seen what his brother's boggart was, and it had not been inferi then. If he were to hazard a guess, he'd suggest this was more likely to be first hand experience. Perhaps he'd seen some during his Death Eater summer holidays, and they'd left an impression on him, but something itched at him that it looked more intense than a simple observation. While Regulus had always been a bit soft, he didn't think he was sensitive enough to have that intense a reaction to something without a good reason.

Sirius slipped out of the drawing room while Moody gave it the once over. He wanted to find where that damn house-elf had moved Regulus to, but he had a pretty good idea it was only as far as his own bedroom. It was just another piece of the puzzle, frustratingly incomplete and getting more worrying with every piece.

As he hit the top landing, he decided he needed to get to the bottom of this one way or another.