The doors slammed shut with a satisfying crash behind him as Sirius stormed out of the Infirmary. His thoughts were jumbled, a confusing mélange of anger, guilt, worry, despair, all sloshing together. Though the one thought that pulsed clearly above the rest, as if written in a blaring neon sign in his mind, was "Regulus."

Regulus.

His little brother who was dragged down this dark path by their wretched family who were surely boasting about his future with pride over their obnoxious dinner parties by now. His little brother who he had grown up with, side by side, for years. That is, until Hogwarts, where they were placed in separate houses and everything spiraled down into this mess. All because Sirius chose Gryffindor. All because he wasn't there for Reg as the example for what could be. What could have been.

Though that's not fair, he realized. Sirius didn't have an example constantly whispering in his ear what to do, how to escape. He had to figure it out on his own and here he was, almost a graduated Gryffindor, preparing to fight for all that was good in the world.

Whereas Regulus was off with the wanna-be Death Eaters, preparing to join the Dark Lord's ranks. Regulus was learning to curse and torture innocent people just because they came from a different background. Regulus was on the other side, with those who pass out falsehoods of power and superiority as blindfolds for their new participants, smothering and blinding them from any hint of morals they might have once held.

And Regulus fell for it.

He fell for it and now he was hurting innocent students. Not just innocent students though, he was hurting his friends. His own family.

Without realizing it, Sirius had made it back to the Gryffindor Common Room where the last few students were hurrying out the door, swarming around him as they ran to class, pulling on their robes or bags at the last minute. Sirius slipped inside and with a newfound vigor, sprinted up the steps, two at a time, before tearing through their dorm to find the Marauder's Map which he spread out on the nearest bed. Frantically, his heart pumped a rapid rhythm, pushing him to find the name faster. Faster. Faster.

There!

Without bothering to wipe the map, Sirius bolted back down the steps and ran out of the Gryffindor Common Room, barely dodging a few second years who were mingling just outside the portrait hole. In record time, Sirius skidded to a stop in the Transfiguration Corridor, his chest heaving and with a glare already shooting daggers as he waited for Regulus to round the bend.

BREAKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

With a plastered-on smile, Regulus laughed alongside the rest of the throng of Slytherin fifth years, painfully aware of the new sense of awe they bestowed upon him. The Chosen One of the group. The only one so far to secure himself a place among the Dark Lord's circle. The only one to earn the praise of established Death Eaters like Macnair and Avery.

And yet, how were they to know the nagging sense of doubt eating away at his every decision? How were they to know that he self-consciously rubbed his still pale forearm, somewhat dreading when the time would come to mar his skin with that dark tattoo? He shook his head, clearing away those cobwebs of thoughts and simply smirked arrogantly like he had seen the other selected few do.

As they rounded the last corridor on their way to class, he was glad that he had already constructed this expression so that when they saw his disgraced brother waiting for them, arms crossing and eyes as narrow as slits, he appeared unfazed to any of his friends who glanced his way.

Regulus sighed dramatically and rolled his eyes. "Just go on in, I'll be there in a minute. Save me a seat while I deal with this, though." He gestured vaguely at Sirius who had pushed himself off the railing he was leaning against and was viciously eyeing each of his retinue as they passed by.

"Sirius, whatever this is can wait," Regulus said heavily. "I have class." He turned towards the door, but didn't get very far.

He felt his back slam into the wall and he was lifted onto the tips of his toes. Sirius's face was almost touching his own and he could see, clear as day, anger lining every inch of it.

"Did you do it?" Sirius demanded, shaking the front of Regulus' robes slightly.

Regulus' heart skipped a beat as he instantly realized what the 'it' was. But still, he remained silent and tried to appear confused. "What?"

"Was it you? Did you torture her?"

Regulus blinked and gave a pitying smirk. "What are you talking about?"

"Was it you that cut Lily Evans up like that?" Sirius demanded, his voice low and dangerous.

"No, I didn't cut up your little mudblood friend," Regulus said with a slight laugh in his voice, as if Sirius was losing his mind.

"But it was you that tortured her, then?"

Regulus scoffed, though something about his carefully constructed veneer betrayed him–maybe his fear of discovery showed or maybe it was some instinct between brothers. Something must have given him away because Sirius instantly dropped him back to the ground with a hiss of disgust.

A heavy stone fell into the pit of Sirius' stomach. "You filthy piece of…," Sirius muttered, walking in the opposite direction and shaking his head. Then he rounded again and stormed up to Regulus, eyes ablaze. "How could you?"

Regulus frowned and furrowed his brows.

"How can you live with yourself after torturing someone just for fun? Just for laughs?"

Sirius continued to stare furiously at Regulus, his gaze cutting deep and finally, Regulus just couldn't hold it any longer. He looked down at his feet, feeling his brother's heavy breaths on his forehead.

"It wasn't just for fun," he muttered.

Sirius gaped in surprise–surprise at getting a response, and an honest one at that. "What?" he demanded.

"It wasn't… I had to!" Regulus said instead. "I had no other choice, you wouldn't understand."

He scoffed. "No. I wouldn't understand why you would choose to do that to anyone, let alone an innocent student, especially after all we've seen. All we've been through."

Regulus scowled and looked up, meeting his gaze once more. "Oh please, don't play that card! I didn't ask you to always step in like some hero and take the fall for me! I didn't ask for you to always be the one to take her wrath! That's on you!"

"You think I don't know that?" Sirius said loudly. "You think I don't replay every decision I ever made when it comes to you and wonder where it all went wrong? But you know what?"

Regulus' chest heaved with adrenaline and he glared back defiantly, yet he remained silent.

"You know what?" Sirius demanded once more. "I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Every curse and hex that evil woman threw my way meant it was one less curse that hit you. I protected you, thinking it would set you on a different path, but apparently it just made you weak. A coward."

"Don't call me that," Regulus whispered, hating the fact that he could feel tears stinging at the corners of his eyes.

"Why? Are you denying it? Are you denying that you don't have the guts to disagree when they tell you to torture someone?"

Regulus' eyes widened in panic, the blood draining from his face.

"'Cause that's what happened, isn't it? Some hot-shot Seventh Year told you to go curse a muggle-born and you just happily skipped along because it meant someone was telling you what to do. You were probably so happy that you didn't have to think for yourself," Sirius finished with a vindictive grin, taking selfish pleasure from the pain etched in Regulus' expression.

"It wasn't like that," Regulus whispered stubbornly.

"Then WHAT!?" Sirius screamed, suddenly unable to control the volume of his anguish.

"I had to!" Regulus insisted, his eyes gleaming with tears.

"There is ALWAYS a choice, Regulus. A choice between right and wrong and you chose wrong. Again and again, you've always chosen wrong."

"You don't understand, I HAD to!"

"WHY?"

"HE WOULD HAVE HURT YOU!"

Silence stretched between them, as taut as a bowstring, and Sirius took a step back in surprise.

"Or me," Regulus added lamely. "But… probably you."

"Who's he?" Sirius asked quietly, already dreading the answer.

"I was gaining the trust of the Death Eater students here and they kept on passing my name up as someone to keep an eye on. Eventually, they started training me, prepping me, taking me under their wing without ever asking me. Before I knew it, they said that the Dark Lord said I was ready. Ready to help lead the next wave of his loyal students since his current student supporters are graduating. He said it was time for me to show my own loyalty before I could officially join the ranks. Don't you see?" he pleaded. "I had to do what they said. Otherwise they would have just gotten rid of me or gone after you."

Sirius shook his head and gave a mirthless bark of laughter. "No, Regulus. Don't pretend you tortured Lily Evans for some selfless reason. You don't get to play the victim here. This wasn't to protect me. This–"

"If I had said no they would have–"

"Come after you?" Sirius filled in, his eyebrow raised questioningly. "Probably. You were saving your own skin, but even so, you could have said no. You could have gone for help, turned them in, come to me even. But you didn't. You chose the easy way out–to just blindly follow along like the good little puppy that you are."

"Oh sure, so you want me to believe that I'm just a loyal little puppy and you're, what? A lion? Some sort of…of great–"

"Decent human being?" Sirius filled in, his voice devoid of any emotion, contrasting starkly to Regulus' which was rising frantically.

Regulus scoffed, but insisted, "It wasn't up to me! They–"

"Did they put you under the Imperius Curse?" Sirius asked, crossing his arms lazily.

Regulus sat with his mouth open, gaping.

"Did they? No? Well then it was up to you. It is always up to you. You are the only one that can control your own future, Regulus. It's time you learn that."

"WELL, I'M NOT YOU, OKAY!" Reglus screamed, tears now freely streaming down his face. "I'm not you! I can't walk out on everything I've ever known and feel nothing. I can't stand up to people who have endless power over me and not be terrified. I can't–"

"You think I didn't feel anything when I left for good? Before that even, when I left tradition and was placed in Gryffindor? You think I'm not terrified every day? Because I am. I am terrified that someone is going to hurt my new family. Turns out that someone did, but it was you." Sirius looked at Regulus in disgust, his nose wrinkled in genuine horror that they were related.

Regulus huffed and glared across the hallway, letting the silence eat away a few more seconds before responding. "Maybe I am a coward, then. But, if I'm a coward, at least I'll be alive at the end of this."

"You are a disgusting, selfish, self-entitled git, you know that? And you are certainly no brother of mine if you can torture someone, let alone torture someone with no remorse."

"I'm sorry that it had to be her, okay?"

"Wow, how heartfelt. I'm getting teary-eyed over here." Sirius rolled his eyes.

"But I'm not sorry that I did it. I did what I had to do to survive. You have to understand that."

Sirius shook his head. "There's a big difference between surviving and thriving. Thriving is doing the right thing, no matter the cost, even if it's worse for you. Surviving is just scraping by, all alone, with no true friends or family."

Regulus gave a sadistic smile, swiping at his eyes. "What happened to you'll always be there for me? That we'll always be brothers, even if we're in different houses? Finally lost all your cheerful optimism, have you?"

"I'll be here when you're ready to admit you're wrong and you want to get out. Then I'll help you. Until then, I have a new family so don't talk to me."

Regulus scoffed and hefted his bag back onto his shoulder as it had fallen to the floor at some point in the fight. "Right. Well see you around."

"No. You won't," Sirius said, shaking his head. "I don't know you, remember?"

The two wizards stared at each other, Sirius with a blank and numb expression covering the pain he knew he would feel when the adrenaline wore off, and Regulus showing all the pain he felt as he realized that Sirius meant it. After years of threats of giving up on him, of losing all hope of turning him around, Regulus had run out of rope and lost his only defender.

"Fine," Regulus whispered. He turned on his heel and stomped back down the hall. There was no way he was going to class right now.

As his cloak swished out of sight, Sirius turned in the opposite direction as the door to the nearest classroom flung open.

"What is all that racket!?" McGonagall asked from the doorway, one hand on the handle the other on her hips.

Sirius gave a small, emotionless smile. "Sorry, Professor. Just a family reunion, but I can assure you, it won't happen again."

With that, he marched past her and the world suddenly slipped into oblivion, his surroundings paled and every line Regulus had said was spun like a record on repeat. The adrenaline waned with each step until every ounce of pain ached in his bones. The reality of what had happened in the darkness of last night and everything it meant seeped through his skin, bleeding into every nook and cranny of his mind, all the way until the Infirmary.

He found himself relieved to see Lily awake and sitting up in her bed, idly reading a book in the silent ward. She looked up as he approached and smiled wanly. Some of the color had returned to her skin, though her eyes were still red and the bandages gave away any semblance of health.

"Sirius!" she called, a hint of pleasant surprise underlying the greeting. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be in class?"

Sirius walked over, his footsteps falling heavy against the stone and he collapsed into the chair beside her bed.

"Sirius?" she asked tentatively, carefully setting down her book on the bedside table.

He let his head fall back and he slumped further into the chair, his legs sprawled and his arms dangling loosely towards the floor. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

Lily rolled her eyes. "I'm growing to hate those two words, you know. Everyone keeps saying that and it doesn't solve anything."

"I'm sorry for lashing out earlier because when you think about it, I'm the only one who can really understand you," he said, staring up at the ceiling lights.

"What do you mean?"

"I know what it's like to lose your family because they don't understand you. I know what it's like to hang on too tightly to a lost cause and feel like you could've–should have done more, even if part of you knows it's not your fault. I know what it's like to feel so completely alone, even when you're surrounded by friends," Sirius said blankly, his voice as even and monotonous as a desert.

Lily brushed some hair out of her face and frowned, staring at Sirius bewilderedly. "What happened, Sirius?" she asked softly.

He breathed deeply and pushed himself into a normal sitting position, leaning forward so that his arms rested on his knees. "It was them–Regulus and Snape. Regulus was the one who tortured you. Snape must have done the rest."

"What?" Lily asked, eyes widening. "How do you know? I mean we were all guessing before, but–"

"I asked him. Just now," he said in the same dull tone. "He all but admitted to it. He made it out to be some kind of gross initiation."

"Initiation? As in…," her voice trailed off, not wanting to fill it in with the inevitable, but Sirius did for her.

"They are now officially chosen to be Death Eaters."

Lily let out a small gasp.

Sirius responded with a heavy sigh. "I know. I'm not exactly surprised, but it still hurts."

"He really is gone," Lily whispered. But a fleeting moment later, her gaze hardened. "I should have ditched him earlier, he was never going to change."

"We had no way to know for sure. We just hoped they'd come around," Sirius replied, his voice catching.

"I can't believe I was friends with him! I was so naive! So stupid!" Lily said angrily.

"Yeah well, I can't blame you for trying. Look at how long I held on to Regulus."

"He's your brother. It's only natural for you–"

"And he was your friend," Sirius cut in simply, not wanting to hear the excuses he had made a thousand times before.

A well of sadness filled her chest and she tried to force it down. She had already shed too many tears over Severus Snape and the friendship that might have been. "He was my friend," she repeated under her breath.

The pair fell silent, both lost in their own thoughts and memories. The pale morning light cut stark angles through the windows, casting dancing patterns on the floor which Lily stared at, entranced. How was it that the sun could continue to rise as if nothing had changed? How could her fellow students get out of bed and go to class, not knowing that everything had changed?

The war that they heard about from family or Professors, that they read about in the papers, had finally shown itself at Hogwarts, its hydra head finally unveiled.

"How are you, by the way?" Sirius asked softly.

"Hmm?" Lily asked, blinking herself back into the present.

Sirius repeated himself and Lily frowned, considering the question. "It still hurts, but the cuts certainly feel better than this morning."

"But how are you with your sister's letter and the stress of the Order and all of that?"

Lily pursed her lips and her shoulders went up in a slight shrug. "Not great. It's all kind of piling on top of each other, you know? I always knew the Order was dangerous, but now it feels so real. And then that plus losing the only family I had left… It's–It…"

"It sucks." Sirius released a heavy breath.

"Yeah."

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After Madame Gibson practically force-fed a slightly nauseous, determinedly not-hungry Lily a light breakfast, scolded Sirius for skipping class, and the pair wiled away an hour or so talking, the doors to the Infirmary were thrown up with gusto once more, letting in the rest of the typical group.

"Oh my God!" Dorcas squealed, running forward and her book bag slipped off her shoulder, down her arm.

"They told us what happened, are you okay?" Marlene asked loudly, barely a step behind Dorcas.

Bringing up the rear were the rest of the Marauders, all of whom instantly converged on Sirius in huddled whispers. Lily answered her friends' questions and blushed profusely under their concern while watching Sirius's expression turn dark–ostensibly reliving the fight with his brother. Remus let loose an impressive string of curses and their heads bent together once more, but her attention was snapped back by the thud of something on her bed, sending the mattress rocking.

Dorcas swiped a curl behind one ear and pressed her palms against the stack of books and parchment that she had slammed down. "Knowing you, we figured you would be bored out of your mind by now and worried about missing class, so we brought class to you!"

"Though I'm not sure why anyone who literally just got tortured would want to torutre themselves more with this rubbish, but that's just me," Marlene added with a pointedly raised eyebrow.

Lily winced. "Don't say that. But thank you, I appreciate it."

"Anyways, at least you got to miss History of Magic this morning. Somehow it was even more boring than ever," Marlene added on, dragging a chair over from a nearby bed.

Soon, the rest of the group followed suit until there was a small half circle of friends arranged around her, filling the stale and deathly quiet wing with conversation steering clear of anything heavy. Though as the hour neared their next class, they regretfully stood, one by one, stretching their limbs tight from sitting in wooden chairs for far too long.

"We'll be back after class, Lily," Dorcas assured with a pitying smile.

"Don't worry about me," Lily said, smiling.

"I always do," James murmured as he kissed her forehead. She smiled as he walked away, trailing behind the group. But he stopped before he reached the door, turning to stare at Sirius who had yet to move from his seat.

"Padfoot?" he called.

"You go on," he responded. "Tell the Professors I'm not feeling well."

James nodded, confusion evident even from this distance, but still, he left and gently shut the door on his way out.

Sirius sighed and readjusted in his chair, catching sight of Lily's equally confused expression. "What?" he demanded, somewhat harshly.

"Why are you skipping class?"

"Don't you want some company?"

"Sure, but that doesn't answer my question," Lily replied, sending him a pointed look.

He shrugged. "I wouldn't be able to focus in class right now anyways. Besides, it was nice talking to you earlier about something real. I think I needed that and–" he shrugged again "-I don't know, you get it. The boys all say that they understand and they do their best to–I know that–but you're living a parallel life in some ways. I could use that kind of company right about now."

Lily gave a small smile. "I could too if I'm being honest."

Sirius grinned, a glimmer of his cocky self shining below the surface, "You're not going to report me Head Girl, are you?"

"Depends: what's in it for me?"

"I'll buy you a Honeydukes chocolate bar at our next Hogsmeade trip. Remus says chocolate is the cure for all ailments."

Lily laughed. "Deal."