AN: Just thought I'd separate the one-shot into two chapters to ease the reading (it was bugging me for the last few days!)
1
He comes out of the black lake quite mad, very much his mother's son.
They try to stop him screaming but he doesn't think they understand. He didn't think he could understand. How could they understand. Their rotten teeth had bitten into his skin- their gnarled nails into his flesh- their cold hands pulled his mind apart.
He vaguely sees the floor and wonders why it's not water and why he isn't drowning- then he remembers that he still is and he suffocates, lungs full with water, and coughs it all out on the floor.
He vaguely sees the Headmaster- vaguely sees McGonagall- but screams when Pomfrey comes at him in her white, white gown and a bottle of white, white draught.
He thinks they lock him up (he would certainly lock himself up, like an animal, unstable, quite mad) but he vaguely sees mouths talking and words being said. He tries to tell them that he's drowning and there are corpses- white, white corpses- pulling him to the ground.
"You're safe," says Dumbledore but Regulus always thought him daft anyway.
Pomfrey comes in with another sleeping draught but he can't swallow water. He has swallowed enough and his lungs are now saturated. He coughs it all out on the floor and drowns all over again.
It's only when he finds his face on a mirror that he sucks in a breath and realizes there's no water- no cave. He looks gnarled and dead and he tries to gouge his eyes out to stop seeing corpses. Pomfrey catches him in the act and tries to hold him but he stains her gown with blood.
She shushes him and coos and rocks him and he thinks of his mother with her yellowing eyes and gaunt skin and grating, gritting screech. He pulls away and clamps on his ears and screams; he's drowning in a lake of corpses and the walls as black as the walls of that house and there's nowhere to escape.
He teaches Charms when he's twenty because Dumbledore is daft and Regulus has nowhere to go.
(He has Grimmauld Place but it's drowning in the stench of his dead mother. He has Azkaban but it's occupied with his savage cousin and a brother he couldn't understand.
Then again, there was a lot he didn't understand: the Dark Lord dead, a Boy Who Lived and a Charms classroom on the sixth floor).
But he teaches Charms anyway: because Dumbledore is daft and Regulus has nowhere to go and he'd much rather think of floating feathers than drowning. And then, when the lesson is over and the seventh year girls giggle as they pass him by, he takes calming draught after calming draught to stop the corpses in his eyes and the water on his hands.
"I'm no Potions Master but I know there's only so much calming draught a person can take," says Minerva and he feels like he's thirteen and caught after curfew.
He sneers and walks past her but the calming draught he holds slips from his hand and he watches the water splatter across the floor. He almost screams- but he doesn't- but he cries instead- even worse- and she takes him to her office and offers him a biscuit.
"It will take time," she says sternly.
He tries to explain that he's still drowning- can't she see?- but he sounds mad even to his own ears so his bites his tongue and says nothing more.
He didn't think he'd care about the year Harry Potter started, but he can't help it when he sees James Potter sitting in his classroom without Sirius by his side. It makes him so sick he forgets the pain pulsing down his arm or the bruises shackled around his ribs. He takes five points from Gryffindor- he can't remember why, his mood is too foul- and he hears the class grumble about Slytherin teachers and prejudice.
(Apparently Severus has noticed Harry Potter as well and took off a good ten points. Regulus doesn't speak to Severus. Corpses and water are enough. He doesn't think his mind can take schoolboy memories of a bitter brother and red-haired mudbloods).
He goes to Hagrids for tea and watches Potter and Weasley walk down the grounds. Hagrid pours him a bowl beside a rock cake and gives him a dollop of firewhiskey.
(Eleven years ago, Hagrid did the same and gave him a wink: you're allowed it now since yer a member o' staff. Regulus had laughed and then cried and felt pathetic all over again: to think that a Black would accept the comfort of a gamekeeper. He felt a flush of shame at the thought and accepted the tea and sympathy.)
"You dun happen to have a few pictures of James and Lily do you?" asks Hagrid, looking out the small window. "Poor kid dun know anything about 'em."
Regulus almost says no, scathingly, because he remembers James Potter with Sirius beside him and it makes a jealous knot in his stomach. He also remembers Sirius in Azkaban, surrounded by Bella's cackles, whispering that it was 'all his fault' over and over again.
But he says, "I'll look around," instead because he's too tired to be scathing and it's not that that kid's fault Regulus' own life is hell.
(Severus, it becomes apparent, thinks otherwise.)
Regulus doesn't mind Lockhart's incompetent appearance. For the first time, he is more annoyed at someone's idiocy than he is afraid of his own shadow. It is welcoming- even if the man is infuriating- and he even lets himself crack a smile at Minerva's exasperated expression and Severus' hostile one.
All until students are petrified and there is blood on the walls and poor parseltongued Harry Potter become all the school can talk about. He doesn't stay for Christmas because he can't stop trembling, so he stays in Grimmauld Place with Kreacher and ends up cleaning and cleaning and cleaning- the walls, the floors, the tables, the stairs, his hands, his hands, his hands, his hands.
They're red and raw and he sits in front of the fire, half wondering if swallowing coal would dry out the water in his lungs. Kreacher stops him from reaching out and gives him a mug of tea. He smiles at the elf and thanks him. Kreacher gives him a low bow and then a loving pat on his knee.
His mother's portrait screams from behind the curtain and Regulus has half the mind to scream with her.
When he goes back to Hogwarts after winter, it's to a missing student and a secret chamber and a giant basilisk snaking through the pipes. He also comes back to Cissa's son who has Lucius' mouth and almost hits him on the back of the head when he hears him hissing slurs. Instead, Regulus grabs him by the scruff of his neck and tells him to keep his mouth shut.
Draco is unhappy and so, of course, Cissa is unhappy which, in turn, makes Lucius unhappy. Regulus burns the letter feeling very happy indeed. He also feels very scared: because Draco is a little jerk but he is also a child and, in their world, children are in danger and the words they say can bite them in the back when they grow old.
Lockhart is pulled out of the chamber, his memory completely wiped, and, for a moment, Regulus feels almost jealous: because there are words he wishes he can take back, actions he wishes he can erase and memories he wishes he can forget. He thinks of explaining that to Draco but the boy is too much like his father and too little like his mother that Regulus can't stand him.
He doesn't recognize Lupin when he sees him at the high table but Lupin recognizes him. He gives him a tired smile and a tired wave and Regulus can only imagine what twelve years of estranged loneliness can do to a person.
"You look awful," he says.
Lupin laughs pleasantly. "It's good to see you."
Yeah right, thinks Regulus, but says nothing. Instead, he looks at the picture of Sirius laughing on the front page of the Daily Prophet and begins a ritual of washing his hands and tracing the scars that run up his arms and all across his chest and legs. He feels flesh underneath his nails and wakes up thinking his teeth are rotten and have fallen out. He dunks his head in a bucket of cold water to wake up and, for a second, he thinks he's a corpse in the black lake.
He drinks calming draught after calming draught until he's sure he can't breathe- but that doesn't matter since corpses don't need to breathe anyway.
Pomfrey finds him on the floor in a heap of sweat and blood and she hugs him, like she did all those years ago, but he pulls away, like he did all those years ago, because there is blood all over her gown.
Then, he overhears them walking outside his empty classroom.
"I think it's not a bad idea to ask him, Harry," says Hermione.
"Are you mad?" says Ron, "Professor Black will bite your head off before you get a word in!"
"Really, Ronald?"
"Is it okay if I ask you about this insane relative of yours who I think is out to kill me?" says Ronald in a mockingly, shrill voice. "Sounds great, doesn't it?"
Harry says nothing. Then: "The Prophet said it's his brother."
"Can see the resemblance," snorts Ron. "They both look a bit unhinged."
Hermione reprimands him but Harry says nothing again.
There's a boggart in the staff room and it turns into leeching corpses. They burst out of the closet with white, white arms and black, black nails, covered in cold, cold water and doused in thick, thick rot. He can't speak because he's drowning again and he can't breathe because of the water in his lungs. It's dark because he's in a cave again and there's no way out.
But the corpses become a full moon before it becomes a balloon that hides back in the closet. Lupin is in front of him, looking very sympathetic, and Regulus leaves without another word.
His thinks his nails are black and rotten so he pulls them off and douses his hand in water.
He finds out about Severus and Augusta Longbottom's medieval wardrobe when he's teaching sixth years. A gaggle of girls come up to him after class and giggle about it before cheekily ask him to Hogsmeade with them.
"You can say you're supervising, sir," she insists and he looks at her like she has three heads.
"Get out," he says and he pushes them through the door.
"Please, professor!"
He closes the door and shakes his head because he never really understood sixteen-year-old girls when he was sixteen let alone thirty-two. He sees a picture of Sirius snarling on the front page of the Prophet and thinks that he never really understood much of anything: his family, his brother, the Dark Lord, the war, the water, the corpses, the cave.
He sets the paper on fire and lets smoke fill up the room.
He sees Potter wandering about at night with a peculiar parchment and demands the boy turn out his pockets.
"Just a spare piece of parchment," says Harry, aggravated.
Regulus doesn't like the attitude. Harry's face reminds him too much of James Potter which reminds him of Sirius which makes everything angrily confusing. He touches the parchment with his wand and watches the ink appear.
Mr Padfoot would like to register his surprise… a soft idiot… ever became a professor!
Mr Moony would like to add…
Mr Prongs can't believe…
Mr Wormtail bids his goodnight to the soft idiot…
Before he could do something insanely impulsive- take a thousand points off Gryffindor, scream into an abyss, shatter, break- Lupin appears and takes the parchment from Regulus' pale and trembling hands.
"I'm just going to take Harry here… a quick word… essay that's due," says Lupin, "if you'll excuse us… Goodnight."
Regulus stands in the dark, his wand long gone out, trying to undo the thoughts racing through his head.
"Are you daft?" says the portrait of a little wizard in a pointy, yellow hat. "Put that light out!"
Regulus sneer and keeps an orb of light glowing in corridor.
The story is longwinded but, from what he gathered, Lupin had a rough night and Severus was going to be awarded an Order of Merlin, Second Class, for catching a notorious mass murderer. It is like a school prank gone wrong with no one left laughing.
Sirius is locked in a tower and Dementors are crowding in for their Kiss. Regulus thinks of aiming a killing curse at a smug Severus just to get arrested. Maybe, that way, the Dememtors will suck out his soul too and it'd all be over. He doesn't mind dying beside his estranged brother, on dry ground, away from all things cold and wet.
He sneaks up to the tower and finds Sirius huddled behind bars. They look at each other and say nothing. He almost walks away but his knees weaken and he kneels next to the bars and reaches out with his scarred, scarred hands. Sirius takes it, his hand bony and his skin filthy, and they hold each other for a moment, for two, before Regulus has to stand up and pull himself away.
And then he finds out that Sirius broke out and that Harry Potter gets a new firebolt and that Lupin is a werewolf who is about to get the sack.
"I'm sure we'll see each other again," says Remus politely.
"Sure," says Regulus, "we'll grab a few pints but you'll be paying. That way, we'll both be sure we're never seeing each other again."
Remus laughs, his face all scarred up, and Regulus wonders how he does it. Remus gives him a pat on the shoulder as he walks out and Regulus remembers the sandy-haired boy who walked beside James Potter, smiling, scarred face not as scarred, sad eyes not as sad.
"All you have, Moony, is a furry little problem," James Potter had said. "Nothing more, nothing less!"
"Half the school is under the impression I've got a badly behaved rabbit."
"Rabbits are cuter than wolves. That can score you points with the ladies."
"Merlin, do you even hear yourself?"
"He's really innocent?" swallows Regulus., thinking of his brother.
Remus smiles sadly.
The Quidditch World Cup is around the corner and Regulus can't bring himself to go. He locks himself in his house and cleans the house: the floors, the walls, the windows, the furnaces, the banisters and the stairs. Then, he fills a bathtub with boiling water and almost cleans off his skin. Kreacher finds him and stops him and shrieks.
The water will hurt Master- Master mustn't wash himself with that water- please Master- Master mustn't- it's dangerous-
He snaps out of his nightmare and apologizes and says that it was a spell gone wrong. That he hadn't meant it. That he wasn't aware. He didn't think he was. He didn't know if he was.
He puts on the wireless while Kreacher cooks and hears about the disaster at the World Cup. His arm burns when he sees the picture of the mark hanging above the Prophet and his stomach twists when he gets a letter from Dumbledore, warning. He goes back to Hogwarts in time for the school year and almost vomits onto the high table when he sees Mad-Eye Moody stalk into the Great Hall at the welcoming feast.
He suddenly remembers Evan Rosier, with his blonde hair and raucous laugh, before he had been blown to bits. He remembers Rosier's mother pulling out her hair in the funeral.
Moody stares at Regulus and Regulus stifles a shudder.
It comes as no surprise that Harry Potter is the fourth champion. That boy has as much as luck as his parents did before they were murdered.
He is surprised, however, when he hears Diggory's name being called. He's a talented boy but Regulus doesn't like him much. He never did like Hufflepuffs. He catches sight of Draco leering and thinks he doesn't like Slytherins either.
"Poor boy," says Minerva beside him, watching fourteen-year-old Harry Potter standing next to the other three champions.
Regulus hums.
Sirius writes to him that night. The words don't make any sense not because they are badly written, but because Regulus finds it hard to concentrate. He can grade papers and write on blackboards and skim through essays but letters from his brother are too nonsensical. They didn't fit into the timeline of his brain. The timeline that states that he was ripped apart, in a cave, surrounded by water, surrounded by the dead. He shouldn't be reading letters. He shouldn't be grading papers. He shouldn't be breathing with lungs saturated with water.
Regulus almost ignores the letter but can't. He writes back and says he'll try to protect the boy, if that's what his brother meant.
Sirius writes back. Of course that's what I mean, bloody idiot. With a head like that on your shoulders, are you even supposed to be teaching…?
Regulus scoffs and keeps the letter in his pocket, closest to his heart. For a moment, everything feels normal. Then, he takes some calming draught to stop his hands from trembling.
The dragon is too ostentatious and the gillyweed is impressively ingenious but it is the maze that is crowned victor of creativity. He stands beside Dumbledore as Potter bleeds onto the floor and Mad-Eye Moody turns into a ragged version of his old friend.
"They'll come for you, Reg!" laughs Barty, "He'll rip you apart when He finds out you're alive!"
And Regulus can only stare at the shadow of his old friend and think of when Barty used to fall asleep and drool all over the textbooks in the common room.
Severus stays behind, Dumbledore drags Harry up to his office and Regulus doesn't know where he is anymore. He helps Pomfrey clean Cedric Diggory in the Hospital Wing. For once, a dead body doesn't unnerve him. He doesn't know why. Maybe because the body is still warm and not yet cold. It still had a remnant of life. It made Mr Diggory's howls all the more painful.
It reminded him of when his mother had howled the night Sirius had run away.
He finds Sirius outside Dumbledore's office, ready to alert an Order Regulus doesn't want to remember. They are not separated by prison bars but they are separated by time.
"He saw James and Lily," says Sirius quietly, referring to what Potter had seen in the graveyard.
Regulus almost sneers. Of course that's what Sirius thinks of. He almost says that aloud, rather scathingly, but it's not worth it. At the rate his mark is burning he was going to die soon and Sirius looks not too far from death's door himself.
"That's good," he says heavily instead.
Sirius nods vacantly. Then, he cracks a grin, "Guess we're on the same side of the war this time."
Regulus doesn't understand how that's a cause to grin but he grins anyway. He clasps Sirius' bony hand with his scarred one. Sirius looks at the scars and then pulls up Regulus' sleeve. He frowns. It's not the mark, but it's a lot of mangled skin.
"I'll see you around," says Regulus, pulling back his hand.
Sirius lets go, as he usually does. Regulus isn't surprised. Sirius wouldn't have let go if Regulus had been James.
"See you around," says Sirius.