A/N: This chapter is dedicated to new reader, xenocanaan. Hope you continue to enjoy the story! Thanks so much for your support!
-C
As the end of the school year drew closer, life felt like more and more of a burden for Jade Alexander. At the beginning of the year, she couldn't wait for it to be over. No more Sirius Black and his friends complicating things. Just Regulus to attend to, and her studies, graduating and attempting to make her parents proud. It had all seemed so simple.
She walked through the grounds, feeling the May sunshine on the back of her neck like a kiss. So many students, even those who had yet to finish their exams, were smiling, laughing, enjoying themselves. Jade should have been enjoying herself. She finally had things to enjoy. She should have been looking for Regulus, joining him and his friends, trying to smile.
Instead, she sat at the edge of the lake and looked out over the water. She saw Lily Evans try to catch her eye as she went past with her friends, but the Gryffindor didn't stop. She couldn't stop. The girls couldn't be seen together, not for social reasons, but for everyone's safety.
The one Gryffindor she could speak to, Sirius, sat down beside Jade, pulling his knees to his chest, she presumed to keep from touching her.
"Exam done, then?" he asked lightly.
"Yes."
"So, you're not going to smile again this year, are you?"
Jade looked up at him, puzzled. Had it really been so long since she last smiled? But then, what did she have to smile about.
"You're not going to kill yourself, are you?" he asked softly. "I mean, I know you said, but…"
She sighed, pulling up a handful of grass and squeezing the spongey greenery in her hands.
"We will still see each other, when you graduate," she said. "I won't have much choice in the matter. Sirius, I don't really know what to do. I don't know what to ask of you. I'm not sure if I even have a right to ask anything of you at this point."
Sirius said nothing, although she knew he had many things he wanted to say. They were still just children, but they were already in this war so deep that if any of them made it out alive, it would be a miracle.
"The thing is," she said softly, "I don't matter. You, Regulus, you can make a difference. You can accomplish things, save people, fight for what you believe, whatever that is. But I'm just a pawn, and I can't be any more. I don't want to be any more, because that would be worse than where I'm at. If I die, it won't matter as much. I don't matter."
"You matter to me," he said stuffily. "You matter to Regulus. You've always been in my life, Jade. I can't imagine a world without you. I don't want to imagine a world without you."
Jade stretched out her legs, tossing the grass to the side, seeing the indents on her palms from holding on so tightly. She wanted to be able to tell him she wasn't going anywhere, just because he was so pained and she didn't want to feel like it was her fault.
It was better not to say anything, she decided. Better not to worry him, or to lie. She was so exhausted by the lying she'd had to do lately, and she didn't want to feel like that was the only thing left in her life.
"If it came down to it," she whispered, "what would you do?"
"Came down to what?"
She rubbed her hands on the grass. How did she say it? She didn't even want to think of it.
"Jade, came down to what?" he repeated more forcefully, and she looked up at him, feeling suddenly small. It was as though she'd been transported to being a child again, and he'd teased her for tripping in her first pair of heels all over again.
Finally, he seemed to understand.
"I would have to talk to Regulus," he said. "And I would have to talk to Dumbledore. Nothing is more important to me than your life, Jade."
She said nothing. He wasn't lying, not really. In that moment, he fully believed what he was saying. In that moment, nothing was more important. But when Regulus was pulled into the picture, or Dumbledore, or the actual realization what he was being asked to do…. Would he still feel the same? And could she live with the choices her life was forcing him to make?
"I should go," she said vaguely after they sat together, silently, for almost an hour. She didn't know where she was going, but she couldn't stand sitting beside him and feeling angry. Jade had to remind herself that she wasn't mad at Sirius. This wasn't his fault.
Sirius didn't say anything as she went away, going back to bed, although it was only late afternoon. Her roommates said nothing when she didn't leave bed for dinner, and Jade spent the time alone staring in a mirror.
Regulus and Sirius both said they needed her, that she was important. But if she was gone, apart from a note in pureblood record books that her family line died out with her, there would be no mention of her. Even if Sirius and Regulus weren't Blacks, the things they were doing before she came into the picture in any permanent way had already made them important.
But in spite of the clarity she thought she had, the knowledge that her death would set everyone free to make the choices they needed to make, Jade sat in front of that mirror with no plans, no immediate intent to kill herself. She wasn't sure if it was guilt, or Sirius's pleas, promises she'd made, or just her instinctive desire to survive. Whatever the reason, the night went on with no event, and May slipped into June seamlessly.
On the train ride home, Jade sat with Regulus and his friends, as was expected. She sat behind her book, and nothing controversial was discussed. Regulus kept his hand in hers the whole ride, but he made no attempt to draw her into the conversation. Either he knew she didn't want to speak, or he didn't want to see where the conversation went if she was brought in. By the time they arrived at King's Cross, Jade had said a totally of three words since breakfast, and said nothing further when her parents greeted her coldly.
She saw Sirius passing with James Potter and she let her eyes follow him, just as his eyes were glued on her. For a brief moment she felt she should said goodbye, that they weren't supposed to see each other ever again.
But she knew they would, if she didn't do something. She knew they would have to.
"Sir," Regulus said, walking up beside her, bowing his head slightly to her father. "Madam Alexander. My father wondered if it would be possible for you to join us for tea."
"That would be agreeable," Jade's father said, and Jade took Regulus's arm. "I will see to your things and meet you all shortly."
When they arrived at Grimmauld Place, Kreacher had tea prepared quickly, set up in the second floor sitting room. Jade sat between Regulus and her mother, smiling as best she could at Walburga Black as the woman gave her a compliment, telling her she looked well. It was a lie. Of all the compliments she might have paid, it was the one most easily distinguished as a lie.
Her father arrived less than three minutes later, and was ushered into the room, where he took his place beside his wife and paid some meaningless compliment to the lady of the house.
Tea went on for some time quietly, politely. Jade was not asked any direct questions, and the adults held most of the conversation. Her mind was miles away, back at Hogwarts, on the lawn beside the lake with Sirius telling her that before anything was done, he would talk to Regulus and he would talk to Dumbledore. A chill ran down her spine.
She must have shivered visibly, because Walburga asked her if she was quite well.
"What?" Jade said, hearing but not understanding the words.
"You look as though you've had a chill, my dear," Walburga said, her nasal voice sounding insincere, as usual, although her dark eyes suggested to Jade that the concern was genuine. "Are you quite well?"
"I, I think I just need a moment," she said. "Excuse me."
Jade left the sitting room without a glance backward, crossing to the library and almost immediately pulling a pureblood genealogy off the shelf. The one Walburga had added to the collection upon Regulus's birth, as it happened.
Jade flipped through the pages, seeing her own name in the Alexander section, with her date of birth and a blank space after the little line. This would be her only legacy, a name with two dates and a connective line. No matter how long she lived, this would be her only legacy. Perhaps children, perhaps marriage. But in the end, what she left on these pages, this was all she would be. The shiver ran through her again.
She flipped ahead to the Blacks, "The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black," it said at the top of their section, and then their French motto, always pure.
Always pure. Sirius would always have been such a disappointment.
With a snap, she shut the book and set it down on the table across from her, staring out into the little street below. Grimmauld Place was such a funny place for an old, noble, and incredibly elitist family to have a family home, right in the middle of Muggle London. Once, when she was at an event at Malfoy Manor, she overheard Sirius explaining to one of the Nott sisters that there were two reasons his family lived in that home. The first was that one of his ancestors wanted to be close to the Ministry to keep an eye on family interests, which meant living in London. The second was that this ancestor saw the house, liked the house, and used some convenient magic to get the Muggles who owned it to leave it with him and never return.
Nothing too sinister, but still, not the sort of thing it would be easy to get away with these days.
Then again, Jade thought, watching a woman push a buggy down the street, with the war on, anything could happen. She'd never really thought about it before, but the Dark Lord and his followers, they weren't fighting for their right to convenient magic to take what they wanted. They were fighting for their right to subjugate and kill to take what they wanted. She wondered what Bellatrix Lestrange thought of her ancestor's actions regarding number twelve.
Kreacher moved past the room, his step more of a shuffle. Jade watched him pass her door, respectfully not saying anything to her. He was probably relieved she said nothing about seeing him. He wasn't supposed to be seen unless Jade wanted something from him.
He was old, she knew, although she didn't know much about the life span of house-elves. For the first time in her life, she found herself wondering. How much longer would he live? How long had he lived already? Had the Blacks tried to breed him? Had they been successful? As soon as he was out of her line of sight, he was not forgotten, and she looked back at the book on the table.
Volumes of these books could be written of the house-elves of noble families. Either no one had ever thought to do it, or no one had considered it important. She felt a strange sensation in her stomach as she realized that yesterday, she wouldn't have thought it important, or even remotely interesting.
Before she heard someone approach, there was a knock on the door. Jade looked up to see Regulus watching her with sad, thoughtful eyes, and she folded her hands in her lap. He seemed to take this as a sign, and he closed the door, locking it slowly behind him. She expected him to cross the room, but he simply stared at her.
"You're not ill," he finally said.
"I'm not?" she said. "I suppose not. But I feel it."
He tilted his head questioningly.
"Do you know why I don't have politics, Regulus?" He said nothing, so she continued, "Politics make you think that things are wrong in the world. But there's nothing wrong in the world, you see? Things just are. Because if things were wrong, we could all agree they were wrong, but we'd argue over how to fix them. But we can't even agree on what the problems are. If you're not political, your life is fine. You don't have problems. You have life." She looked up at him again and suddenly he was standing over her, still watching her with that same expression. Jade looked back down at her hands and said, "I don't want to be sucked into people's politics, Regulus. I don't want to have problems."
He sat down, pulling the chair closer to her instead of across from her, and he pulled her hands from her lap and into his hands. Jade pursed her lips, feeling the warmth that radiated from his fingers and covered her cold hands.
"You don't have to do this," he said softly. "You're suffering, and I don't want you to suffer. You don't have to do any of this."
She wasn't sure what he meant, but she was afraid to ask. She didn't want to know if he was telling her that she didn't have to marry him.
"Sirius told me," she said softly, "that if it came down to it, before he would do anything, he would talk to you and he would talk to Dumbledore."
"That sounds reasonable," he said slowly.
She closed her eyes and almost laughed. He didn't see it. He didn't understand.
Because Regulus wouldn't be able to make the choice any better than Sirius. Allow his wife to be unfaithful, or watch her die? No, that was not a question he could ever answer. And Dumbledore, he would tell Sirius to think of the greater good, no doubt. He would tell him that neither he nor Jade could do any good dead, and that by sleeping with Jade, by pretending to join the Death Eaters, he would be able to give the other side valuable insights, and he would be keeping Jade alive.
No one would be willing to let her die, and she wasn't sure if she could live with herself, choosing the option of becoming that deep in the game.
"I love you," she whispered, eyes still shut.
She expected him to parrot the words, but instead he leaned in and kissed her lips, gently, unassuming. Jade kissed him back instantly, craving this closeness. How long had it been since they had just kissed, just been alone in a room and kissed? A strong desire to cry washed over her, but she pushed it away expertly and deepened the kiss.
Sirius and Regulus would never choose. The Dark Lord would want Sirius to join. Dumbledore would want Sirius to pretend to join. And Jade would spend every day of her life wanting to die.
She thought she ought to have had clarity, but it still eluded her as she pulled Regulus closer, to which he eagerly obliged. His fingers traced her torso over the fabric covering in, and when she pulled away from his lips finally, his mouth moved to her jaw, her neck, until he rested his forehead on her shoulder.
"We should go back," he said. "Our parents will be missing us."
"No," she said. "But they will make suppositions as to what we're up to, and we can't have that. Not with Lucius being the way he is."
Regulus tensed at the mention of Lucius Malfoy. Jade hardly blamed him. The thought of what they had already been through was enough to make things difficult, but she knew that Lucius Malfoy would not give up so easily. There was more to come.
"We should go back," Regulus said again. "C'mon, love."
Jade stood, and followed Regulus out of the library, across the corridor, back into the sitting room, where their parents were getting on fine without them.
"Feeling better?" Walburga said, her eyes scanning Jade as though looking for something wrong with her.
"She's fine," Regulus said, pulling out her chair. "We don't often get as much sleep as we should once exams start, and Jade needed a few moments to gather herself. Perfectly natural."
"Indeed," his mother said, but she still looked Jade over as though trying to figure out what was wrong with her. Jade felt her neck stiffen, but she said nothing. There was no managing the expectations of Walburga Black, something Jade had learned as a child, so you simply had to prove her wrong.
"Darling, your tea must be cold," her mother said eagerly, and Jade picked up the teacup, sipping the tepid fluid.
"Only a bit," she said, smiling a forced smile.
"Here," Regulus said, picking up the teakettle himself, ignoring the slightly scandalized clicking of his mother's tongue as he topped up Jade's cup and stirred the tea for her. "That should be better, shouldn't it, darling?"
He seemed surprised that the endearment snuck out of his mouth in front of their parents, but the way their mothers looked at them changed in that moment, as though this was what Sunday brunches would be like between the three sets of husband and wife, once Jade and Regulus were finally married. They were considering Regulus as the attentive husband, perhaps wondering how neither of their husbands was such a man, perhaps wondering how long it would last.
Jade drank her tea silently, wishing everyone would stop looking at her, but knowing it was no use wishing.
A/N: Review Prompt: If you were Jade, what option would look best to you?
-C