I do not own Harry Potter.
Seventh year began with a rapid pace. Due to our incident last year, neither Barty nor I was even considered for Head Boy. It was given to a Muggle-born Ravenclaw boy whom we both knew from Herbology.
"The most honorable post of one's schooldays desecrated by impure filth," I wrote to the Daily Prophet. I was put in the editorial section by the fruits of Lucius Malfoy's blackmail. "Clearly our wizard society is becoming weakened, allowing such backgroundless scum to take the helm, the leadership positions in our community. If it starts now, in school, at Hogwarts, it will surely start-- and has started-- in the positions of higher authority. Rue the day that we shall have a Muggle-born Minister of Magic."
None of the teachers could do anything about my opinions. The Head Boy, however, avoided me, and refused to give me detentions even when I deserved them for fear of confrontation. It was a very easy year.
Barty continued his vigilante acts of terror. He was bored, he said, with the simplicity of school life; he wanted out, where he could murder and plunder and torture. I had laughed at him, but he pointed out how much Bellatrix valued action. I too wanted out; I felt too young, once again, all of my cousins out of school. I had not seen Sirius in a year, and Andromeda in two.
One day, I was shocked to come back from NEWT History of Magic-- during which Barty had a free period-- to find, in our very dormitory room, a girl tied to a chair dragged in from the common room.
The girl could only have been in about third year. She had strawberry blond hair that was tousled with her struggle. She was thin, but her face was round and smooth, the type that would have dimpled should she have chosen to smile. She was a cute little girl, and terrified. Yet I knew there had to be something wrong with her, something despicable. There was an air of newness, innocence, misunderstanding about her, as if she did not yet quite feel she fit in here. Also, after all, Barty was incrimating her.
"Impure whelp," Barty had snapped. "She was saying something to some of her friends about how she's a pureblood and disagrees with the Dark Lord. That if one pureblood can, everyone shoud. Little Hufflepuff's been playing off she's pure; she's got a pure surname, Vance, but she's been hiding the other side of her story, hasn't she?"
He snarled at her, forcing his wand at the girl's temple. "Tell him, are you a pureblood?"
She flinched and whimpered. "My dad's a wizard! He's pure!" she insisted.
"But your mum?"
The girl kicked her heels against the chair. Her head fell back away from the wand, but Barty forced it back into the side of her face. "Well?" he continued to demand.
"She's a Muggle-born!" she wailed. "I'm a half-blood!"
"And your grandparents are Muggles?" Barty pressed on, nearly foaming at the mouth. It was a refined form of torture, this interrogation.
"Yes, but I've never met them," the girl sniffed, tears running down her round, young face. "I've been raised wizard. And I don't agree with You-Know-Who, and my dad said I ought to be proud to stand up and say I'm a pure witch who's got morals!"
"Vance is a foul bloodtraitor name, anyway. Is it your mum who's in the Order? We know there's a Vance in the Order."
"My . . . sister," she choked.
"Well, she's down to be killed. You ought to know. Maybe you can try to save her and go down with her, and end the half-blooded Vance line forever. It turned worthless once it got your foul Mum in it. Your father had to be a sick-minded Muggle-lover, too, to--"
"She was a witch!" the girl cried. "My mum was a witch! She was just born to Muggle parents!"
"Muggle-borns are as good as Muggles. They don't know anything. They don't understand anything and they don't fit in. They're dirty," he pressed in further his wand; the skin was pulling around it and I could tell there was going to be a bruise on her face.
"I thought I was considered pure!" she moaned. "How many . . . how many steps does it take to get away from Muggles?" she breathed.
"Three, by law," I said automatically. "Five for good measure. Yet if you don't have the surname, you don't have the bloodline."
The girl's eyes fixed on me, noticing me for the first time. The blue irises swirled piteously; her eyes reminded me a bit of Dumbledore's. "But didn't even the purest bloodlines start out as a fluke at some point?"
"How dare you!" Barty snapped, raising his left hand and cuffing her across the side of her face. She gasped raggedly and began whimpering again.
Yet I thought about it, turning it over in my rational mind. Of course, my first reaction had been to shout and lash out at her, but Father's teachings stemmed my temper and passion. She spoke the truth; what had been a fluke had only extended itself into a line. One day, even the Muggle-borns lines would be considered fully pure. It was an odd sort of paradox.
It was so much easier just to deny it.
Before I could add in my two cents, however, Barty tapped the bindings holding the girl in and shook her free, seizing her bodily around the shoulders.
"What do you reckon, Regulus? What fate does this scheming little Mudblood spy deserve?"
"I'm not a Mudblood!" she shrieked.
"Let her off," I said coldly. What did he want us to do? We couldn't very well kill her. She wasn't pureblood, so Barty had no excuse to rape her. "She's little."
Barty's face screwed up, confused. "Doesn't make her pure. Damn, Regulus, she's got dirty blood."
Half of my mind was still stuck on the contemplation of this paradox of pure blood. It was taking over. It stopped my concentration, this disillusionment, doubt, thought that possibly I might have been wrong all along. She had not had a choice, after all. I pitied her less than bloodtraitors, and, yet, bloodtraitors were what they were by choice. She had had no say.
Barty stared at me. "Regulus . . . " he said, trying to break my trance of thought. "Regulus, what's going on?"
The girl's eyes were still on me, piteously, pleading, begging, submitting to the fact that she was in my hands.
The thoughts brewing made me feel as if I held some sort of justice in my hands. "Let her go," I said again. "The Dark Lord will never know."
Then I felt the pain.
The spot on my arm where I knew to be the Dark Mark had erupted in pain so much different and more intense than the subtle warning used to call us to the Dark Lord's side. I cried out with the shock of it, seeing nothing but the blue of the girl's eyes and feeling nothing but pain, pain pain.
It grew more intense, growing, building, spreading, surging outward from the point of origin, all over my body. I screamed, so loudly that I felt as if I would cough up my very lungs, my entire soul, even. I wanted to die, never feel again, just as long as I would never have to feel this . . .
I felt myself hit the floor-- or, rather, felt the upset of my overbalance the effects of gravity take its toll, for there was little sensation within my body aside from the sheer pain. It was ten million times worse than the simple skin-burning charm Father had used on me, but it had the same effect.
"Please!" I screamed. "Please, stop! I'm sorry, master! I'm sorry! I shall not again!"
The Mark still burned.
I forced my eyes open again and could see the girl's eyes. She deserved this, not me. She was the dirty-blooded one, the impure one, the desecration, sacrilege, abomination, shame of the wizard flesh. I raised my wand, unsure of how I was even able to force my limbs to move, and shouted:
"CRUCIO!!!"
Instantly, she screamed. Her eyes popped, but I kept staring into them. Her skin was pulled taught as her mouth flew open to scream out her very soul. As the pain poured into her, I felt it slowly washing away from me, ebbing to my victim through my wand. You deserve this, I thought. You deserve this more than me!
Then pain stopped. There was nothing left. I let my wand fall, and the girl was silenced. There was a wash of quiet over me suddenly; I lied on my back on the floor, my chest heaving up and down, cold sweat broken out all over my skin.
I saw Barty, standing off away from me, staring at me as if I were a leper. The girl was passed out, her head lolling against her shoulder in the chair.
"Merlin, Regulus . . . that must have been bad, for him to actually do that do you himself," Barty whispered.
It was true; our orders were given to us through Bellatrix or Lucius, never the Dark Lord himself. We were not high enough up yet. I had only assumed punishments would be done in the same way. It frightened me very badly that he had been able to see that.
"And that was just a warning," I gasped, stroking my burning skin upon my now-faded Dark Mark. The point still stung.
"You shouldn't have said he wouldn't know. Of course he knows," Barty shuddered. "He knows everything."