A/N: Some nondescript/fade-to-black child abuse in the July section.

Chapter Twenty: Can't Be Saved

June

When the Hogwarts Express pulls into the station, Sirius has to force himself to get off. He hasn't seen his parents or had a civil conversation with his brother since August, and now he's supposed to spend the next two and a half months exclusively in their company—basically forbidden to leave the house and visit any of the people in his support network. He stands there, rooted to the spot with his trunk and his wince and his fears, and Peter has to physically take him by the arm and start pulling him off the train.

"Sirius, it's time to go," he says gently. "You can't avoid it any longer. Come on, I'll help you."

"You shouldn't," says Sirius weakly. "If my parents see me with you—"

Marlene, Mary, and Emmeline are in the compartment with them, their gazes darting from Peter to Sirius and back again, until Marlene steps up and locks her free arm around his. "Well, I'm a pureblood, and they won't say anything about you walking out with me. Let's go."

Her arm is steady as she guides him out, but Sirius doesn't feel steady. Sirius feels the furthest thing from steady. His heart is racing again, like usual, and he vaguely wonders whether the frequency of that happening is going to mess up his body—give him, like, heart disease or something. Good thing he's a wizard: Madam Pomfrey probably has a remedy for that. He has a fleeting mental image of lying next to Moony's in the Hospital Wing the morning after a full moon—Pomfrey yelling at him for sneaking out of his cot and into Moony's—and he laughs a little hysterically.

He catches sight of Regulus first. Their eyes lock, but Regulus doesn't start insulting him or take out his wand—he just stops walking and waits. "Well, this is me," Sirius tells Marlene.

She wraps him in a quick, tight hug. "You're going to be okay. We'll all write to you, and you'll sneak away to Potter's house whenever you can, right?"

"Right," says Sirius dully. "Don't put anything sensitive in your letters—Mum might read them."

And then, just like that, she's gone. When he finds his parents, Mum doesn't touch him—she only ever touches him to hit him—but Dad gives him a bracing hug that feels cold and distant and dishonest, totally unlike the one Sirius just got from Marlene. Again, he looks at Regulus, who twists his lips and glances down.

On the walk home, Sirius lags a couple steps behind his parents, next to Regulus. Frankly, he doesn't know what the hell he's supposed to say to his brother. They've spent the last nine and a half months getting into fights every time they made contact, but they obviously can't do that in front of Mum—and even if they could, how could Sirius live like that? How are they going to share a house, eat every meal together?

Will Regulus still spend his days under Sirius's bed in an uneasy peace, both of them knowing that they're going to go back to being enemies the second September first rolls around? Or will they stick to their separate rooms, testing how long they can go between being forced by Mum and Dad to acknowledge each other?

God, Sirius doesn't know if he can handle a whole summer cooped up in his room with nobody to talk to. He thinks he might crack up. He thinks he might already have.

When they get to Grimmauld Place, Dad tells them that dinner will be at seven o'clock sharp and then takes off for the living room with Mum. Sirius hovers in the doorway for a second, not sure what to expect, then heaves his trunk over the threshold and starts to make for the staircase.

His and Regulus's rooms sit opposite each other, and the moment of truth arrives when they get up to the fourth floor. Sirius heads straight for his room, not looking behind him to see what Regulus does—but he leave the door wide open behind him. Don't look back, he tells himself as he drags in his trunk and opens it to unpack. Don't look back—

He hears the snap of a door. He turns around: Sirius's own door is still open, while Regulus has disappeared into his own room.

So it's like that, then. Well, that's fine: Sirius can occupy himself.

He hadn't been sure whether he'd wanted to put them up, but Regulus has just sealed Sirius's decision for him—so he busies himself for the next ten minutes replacing his black bedding with red and affixing Gryffindor pennants to the walls with Permanent Sticking Charms, next to the picture he put up last year of himself with Peter, James, and Moony. Satisfied, he falls back and looks at his handiwork. Mum is going to throw a fit and probably Cruciate the hell out of him for this, but in that moment, Sirius doesn't care. Let her do what she wants to him: he's going to abuse him no matter what he does, and if he can't get support from seeing his friends, he may as well help get himself through it by setting up reminders of the life that will be waiting for him in September.

He's been in there for another hour, sitting on the bed reading Quidditch Through the Ages for the dozenth time, when there's a knock at the door. Sirius's back stiffens. Just as he'd been starting to relax…

"Come in," he says listlessly.

It's Regulus. Sirius doesn't know whether to be surprised or not.

"Hi," says his brother.

"Couldn't stay away, could you? One hour in this bloody house, and you're crawling back to me to protect you, are you? Is that how it is?"

"Shut the bloody hell up."

"I detest you, you know that?" says Sirius, and his voice is quiet and lethal. "I can't stand you. You were my best friend in the world, and I would have done anything for you, and you…"

"Then tell me to go, if you hate me so much."

Sirius does not tell him to go. He wants to scream, but he doesn't tell him to go. "How do you live with yourself?"

Regulus doesn't answer.

"Just—this doesn't make us friends, Regulus."

"No, it doesn't."

"Well, get in and close the door behind you, then," he relents, and for the tiny bit of relief that sweeps over him, in that moment, Sirius hates himself even more than he hates Regulus.

xx

July

It's dinnertime, and it's Regulus's turn to take the brunt of Mum's anger. This doesn't happen as often anymore as it did before Sirius went to Hogwarts and became a Gryffindor, but it still happens, and it's still hard to watch. It shouldn't be: Sirius hates his brother, and he ought not to give a shit whether Regulus gets a little bloodied up over the occasional misstep. But he gives a shit—a lot of shits, in fact.

Regulus is tough, but he's not tough like Sirius. When Mum goes after Regulus, he doesn't just stand there and zone out and take it: he blubbers and cries and apologizes in the hopes of finding the thing that will get Mum to back off. Mum never does back off, of course. It's pathetic, and it's heart-wrenching, and it's more than Sirius can bear.

When she takes out her wand, Regulus starts to scream, and that's the moment Sirius snaps. "Hey, old hag—don't you ever pick on anybody your own size, or does it get your rocks off to go after teenage kids?"

Mum rounds on him instead, and Regulus takes the opportunity to scurry from the room. Sirius doesn't see him again until it's over thirty minutes later, returning to his room to find Regulus—three guesses where.

"One of these days," says Sirius as casually as he can muster, "you're going to find that you're too big to fit under there. I mean, you're still a short-arse and a pipsqueak, but you are fourteen, and there's not a lot of room down there."

Regulus crawls out. He doesn't help Sirius to the bed, but he sits down next to him when Sirius gets there, and Regulus remarks, "You're limping."

"Well, yeah."

"But—the Cruciatus Curse doesn't leave any lasting pain."

Sirius waves this off with one hand. "It doesn't hurt. Just feeling a little weak, that's all."

"I shouldn't have bailed on you."

"It's fine. We shouldn't both have to suffer."

"Exactly. We shouldn't. You shouldn't keep saving me, Sirius; you don't owe me anything."

"Sure I do. You're my punk kid brother, and I'm never going to be done rescuing your arse."

"But—I've been horrible to you. The things I said—"

And Regulus is completely right: there's no rational reason for Sirius to try to protect him after everything that's gone down between them over the last year—but he hasn't seen another even remotely friendly face in almost a month, and here, his brother is the closest thing Sirius has to an ally. He's a shit one, but he's all Sirius has got. "Yeah, well, I can get you back when we get back to school and start cursing each other again."

Is this what it's going to be like for the next few years? Are they going to remain at each other's throats at Hogwarts while ducking behind each other here at Grimmauld Place? And what happens when Sirius graduates and leaves Grimmauld Place forever? Sometimes, at Hogwarts, Sirius thinks the only reason he can stand the way he and Regulus treat each other is because he's still got a shred of hope that things between them will get better, if even a little, over the summer. When they don't have to keep going back to each other every June—are they just going to be done with each other? Is Sirius even going to see his brother again?

"We can't keep living like this," Regulus insists. "I'm going mental, Sirius. I don't know what to do."

"Just keep right on hating me," says Sirius coolly. "That guilty feeling you get every time you curse me? Just keep telling yourself there's no reason for it. It'll get easier."

"But—"

"When are you going to get it? I don't care if you're ungrateful. I don't care if you hate me. I hate you, too, you know. I hate you more than anyone in this world, and that includes Mum."

"But if you really hated me, you wouldn't—"

"Don't pretend to know me, Regulus. You don't know a damn thing about me, not anymore. Just—get under the covers, okay? I don't want to sleep alone tonight."

"Sirius, it's, like, eight o'clock."

"Yeah, and we both just got a heavy dose of the Cruciatus Curse. Tends to wear you out fast, doesn't it?"

They get themselves settled underneath the blankets. They're not touching, but they're facing each other; they've both got their hands resting in front of their chests, and Sirius can feel the heat of Regulus's skin there on his own. They don't sleep. Not yet.

xx

August

It's weird and wonderful seeing James again the first time that summer that Mum and Dad leave Sirius alone for a few hours. The only contact they've had since mid-June has been weekly letters, and even though he knows that James would have seen Sirius every day of break if he could have—that it's a reflection of Sirius's parents' rules and not the way James feels about him—James and the other Gryffindors have still felt so far away. The words on parchment haven't been enough: he misses James's smiles and jokes and hugs, the way his voice sounds when he gets excited, the way his eyebrows furrow when he doesn't get a Transfiguration spell right on the first try.

Alice and Peter are there, too, and they drop everything they're doing to ask him how he's holding up. "I thought your parents didn't let you get away from them during the summers," Sirius tells Alice, grinning.

"Well, I'm fourteen now, aren't I? They've loosened up a little. But yours haven't, have they?"

"No, they… it's not good. I don't really want to talk about it."

"Fair enough," says Peter. "How are things with your brother?"

"Awful, weird, kind of codependent. I hate him, but I can't seem to… every time Mum goes after him, I insert myself in between them. It's dumb."

"It's not dumb," James insists. "He was your best friend for, what, ten years? That doesn't just go away."

"And you don't hate him," Peter adds. "I know you don't hate him, Sirius."

Peter's wrong—Sirius does hate his brother—but it's more complicated than just that, and he knows it. Is it possible to love and hate somebody at the same time?—to fiercely defend them in one setting, to break when they break, only to be the one breaking them in another? When he sees Regulus at Hogwarts, he just wants to shatter him—to wipe the sneer off his mouth and replace it with blood—but at home, Mum slaps Regulus 'til the blood rises in his cheeks, and Sirius couldn't stop himself from intervening even if he wanted to.

And it's not like Sirius even knows what he wants. He wants to put Regulus in his place—to ravage him—to make him pay for every last slur he's ever made against not only Sirius, but any Muggle-born in the whole school, too. They sit on Sirius's bed every day, and Sirius stares at him and fumes and fantasizes about decimating him—but he can't stand to see Mum do the same thing.

It's not like he wants… the only reason, he thinks, that he wants to see Regulus destroyed is because he thinks Regulus can't be saved. That's what it boils down to, isn't it? If Regulus isn't ever going to change—if he isn't ever going to see the people Sirius loves as human, equal, vulnerable, good—then Sirius would rather take him out than have to watch the boy he adores sully himself beyond recognition.

And yet—it's not beyond recognition, not really. Regulus has always been this way: he's always seen Muggles as blind and stupid and dominant, and he's never had a whit of sympathy for any opposing viewpoints. He's not the one who's changed. Sirius is.

On nights that Regulus curls up to sleep in Sirius's room, Sirius tries to inhale every time Regulus exhales, as if Regulus's air will carry over to Sirius some explanation—some reconciliation. If Regulus refuses to share the life Sirius has made for himself, then at least, for the fleeting minutes before Sirius falls asleep one night a week (or two, if he's lucky), they can share air. He keeps his eyes open until he hears Regulus start to snore, until he knows it's safe to put a hand on his brother's waist and appreciate that he isn't gone, isn't hateful—or, at least, isn't as hateful as he acts at Hogwarts. The resentment strips away when Regulus is sleeping, and Sirius keeps his eyes open as long as he can, knowing that he'll hate Regulus again in the morning, that he'll hate himself again in the morning, that the night is the only time that love is simple.

"Well, I wish I hated him," he tells Peter now, and his voice carries no forgiveness. "It would make everything so much easier."

This time, Regulus doesn't follow him to the Potters' manor. This time, Sirius knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that Regulus is never coming back.

xx

September

It's one in the morning by the time Regulus goes to sleep, even though most nights he's out like a light by eleven. Sirius never teases him for staying up, never suggests that they turn in, because if he does, the spell will be broken, and he'll lose his last precious seconds in his brother's presence. He wonders if Regulus is feeling what he's feeling—dread for what's going to happen tomorrow, when they get back on that train and everything they've avoided comes flooding back in. How soon is Regulus going to hex him next? Will it happen in the first week of school? On the first day? Or will he get his wand out ten minutes after they board the train?

Sirius doesn't dare reach out and touch him: his breathing is too even, too quiet, for him to really be asleep. Most nights they do this, Regulus keeps up a steady stream of mumbling until he passes flat out, and if Sirius didn't know better, he'd almost think that Regulus were trying to fake sleep for some reason—but that wouldn't make any sense. If Regulus didn't want Sirius talking to him, he'd just go back to his own room.

The only possible explanation Sirius can think of—but there's no way in hell Regulus is lying awake waiting for Sirius to lay his hand on Regulus's side. Regulus hates him too much to be the pathetic sap that Sirius is.

"Sirius?"

Oh—so Regulus is up for talking. "Yeah?"

"When we go back tomorrow, I don't want us to fight anymore."

"You don't?"

Sirius's chest starts to swell, at least until Regulus says, "I don't. I don't want you in my life at all. When I pass you in the corridors, I want it to be like you don't even exist."

Oh. "Well, tough. You think you can just ask me for things and I'll give you them? It doesn't work that way, arsehole. I'm going to dog you. You're going to wish you've never had a brother."

"No, I'm not," he mumbles. "Just because it's over doesn't mean it wasn't…"

Yeah. Yeah, Sirius can understand that, not that he's ever going to admit it. "I wish I'd never known you," he says smoothly, "but I can't take it back, and if I can't take it back, I might as well punish you. Over and over and over and—"

Without opening his eyes, Regulus reaches forward and smacks Sirius limply in the chest. Sirius can't help but choke out a laugh.

"Hate you."

"Hate you more. Go to sleep, little bro."

And Sirius is plenty acquainted with how it feels to fail to interrupt the passage of time, but that's not going to stop him from trying. He waits until Regulus has been snoring for twenty minutes before laying a hand on him, but he gets a little greedy—scoots in a little too close—and Regulus snorts and groans and curls right up against Sirius's chest.

The night of September first is a full moon, which means that thirty hours later, Sirius is curled up resting in a cot in the Hospital Wing. Usually, he likes to sleep on full moon mornings. He never goes all the way out, but it's the best feeling in the world to doze off with Moony, remembering between snatches of dreams that he's got a warm boy in his arms.

But that morning, he forces himself to stay awake. For a second, he tries to pretend that Moony is Regulus, but he gives it up pretty quick when the thought of it makes him feel sick to his stomach, for some reason. Summers with Regulus, school years with Moony; his brother and his… whatever Moony is—he's always having to choose between lives. Why has it got to be a choice in the first place? Why can't Sirius love his brother but love Muggle-borns and werewolves, too?

He doesn't love Regulus, he reminds himself. He hates Regulus. Maybe, if he tells it to himself enough times, it'll come true.

xx

END OF PART THREE