At the Beginning

By: Hyuuga Ayame

Summary[AU DH spoilers What would happen if someone was given the chance to change EVERYTHING? He could stop the traitor from ever becoming friends with them …He could save them all…He knew he could. A time travel fic.

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"Talking"

'Thinking'

"YELLING"

Writing

(POV change)

//Flashback//

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Chapter 2: Of Purebloods and Brothers

When Sirius entered the dinning room, both of his parents were sitting in their proper places with his father at the head of table and his mother on the other end which was 8 seats away from his father. If hadn't already mental prepared himself before walking into the room he would have gone into shock. The biggest shock was his mother. After looking at that bloody portrait for 2 years, Sirius couldn't remember her ever being classified as "pretty." Unlike the hag that sat in the portrait of 12 Grimmauld Place in 1995, Walburga Black still had sleek black hair and a petite pale face. Her eyes where not wild and crazed but calm and cold, a pitch black that seemed to be made out of actual stone. His father on the other hand was a lot less of a shock. Orion Black hadn't changed at all from Sirius' memory. He still had slightly long black hair, although it was shorter, with ice blue eyes that seemed slightly warmer, though not by much, than he remembered. He had died shortly after Sirius left school and Sirius hadn't seen him, portrait or otherwise, since he was 16. Sirius let out an almost inaudible sigh. 'This is going to be a very long few weeks.' He silently walked towards the seat on his father's right.

As Sirius pulled out the chair, his younger brother Regulus walked into the room. Regulus had a small smile and a slight bounce in his step. As the second son, his actions weren't as controlled as Sirius' had been when he was younger. Regulus looked so young and innocent as his eyes lit up upon seeing his elder brother that Sirius almost wanted to cry. Sirius remembered that before starting Hogwarts, he and Regulus had been very close, though that changed as soon as they were sorted into different houses. It was also the first time he had seen Regulus since learning the true reason for his death.

"Sirius," came his father's sharp voice, snapping Sirius out of his trance. Sirius quickly looked to his father's face and saw that he was looking sternly at him. A quick peek at his father's plate showed that the food had arrived and that Sirius was spacing out. Not showing any embarrassment, 'I don't care what they think of me', Sirius began eating. Silence descended on the table, though that was a common occurrence.

When Sirius was almost done eating, his father spoke once more. "As you know, my father is coming later today. Sirius," he said looking directly at his son, "you will be spending the day with him going over spells. You are going to Hogwarts soon and will be representing the Black family. Do not embarrass our noble family."

Sirius could remember the first time that he heard this little speech from his father and remembered sitting taller, trying to impress him and take pride in the family. But now he just gazed at his father, taking in the veiled threat that simmered just beneath the surface of his cool tone and realizing, not for the first time, how much of a fool he was when he was younger. 'They really never did love me did they?' Though he knew that he hated his family and everything they stood for, there had always been the lingering question within the back of his mind whether they had ever cared about him at all.

After a few seconds of staring at one another Sirius finally turned adverted his eyes and replied with an almost dismissive, "Yes, father." The table once more descended into silence with only the sounds of silverware knocking slightly against the china plates.

When the silence was beginning to drive Sirius mad, he quickly excused himself and hightailed it up to his room. 'This is going to be a long, long month.' Sirius thought again with a sigh. He sat down on the edge of his bed then laid back, putting his arms behind his head. The world of his childhood had been one that Sirius had no desire to relive yet here he was, once again sitting in the very house that he hated more than any other place that he had been forced to stay, bar only Azkaban.

As he lay there on his childhood bed, looking at the ceiling that he had memorized before second year (he hadn't wanted to leave his room and face his parents' wrath at him being in Gryffindor), Sirius' mind began to wander. He began think of the last year that he had spent in this horrid place in order to avoid the Ministry, of Harry, Remus, and the time that could have been spent with them. Just thinking about his godson and his dead friend made him want to cry. He could see Remus' death playing over and over in his mind, and a small tear escaped his eye. He could feel it sliding down his face as another one formed in his other eye but he made no move to remove it.

Just as Sirius closed his eyes in resignation, there was a quiet knock on the door. Sirius cracked one eye open, thinking that he might have imagined the sound.'Can't be father because he wouldn't knock that quietly, mother would have had Kretcher bring me to her, so that would leave…' Before he could finish that particular thought, the door cracked open slightly and a head of black hair stuck itself through the door.

Regulus looked around Sirius' room before spotting Sirius on the bed looking at him. His blue-grey eyes lit up as he noticed his brother and bounded into the room over to where Sirius was now sitting up. "Sirius!" Regulus said, barely containing his happiness at seeing his older brother. Sirius had been busy with their parents ever since getting his Hogwarts letter and Regulus missed the time that they had spent together. After all they were all each other had. Their mother had decided that no one outside of the Black family was considered acceptable playmates for her "perfect sons." The only possible playmates were Bella, Nari, and Andy but they were all girls, and he didn't want to play with them. While it made Regulus very happy that his mother was so proud of him and not just of Sirius, it also lead him to rely on the very brother that he had come to envy.

Regulus snapped out of his thoughts after a couple of seconds only to see Sirius staring at him with a strange emotion within his eyes. Sirius had never looked at him like that before. 'He almost looks sad…or afraid…'the thought came unbidden to Regulus' mind. "Sirius…?" Regulus asked hesitantly, suddenly fearing the emotions that he could see swirling within the depths of Sirius' blue eyes.

Sirius had been sitting frozen looking at his brother ever since he had opened the door and stepped into his room. His mind had blanked. It was really the first time he had truly looked at his brother since coming back to the past. He drank in the smile that Regulus' face and the look of happiness with buried envy that shown through Reg's eyes like a man drowning. While on the outside Sirius had never really shown that his brother's death had bothered him all that much, it had really hurt him. Standing in front of him wasn't the boy that Sirius' own mother had poisoned with lies against him, but the boy who looked up to him, that hung off of Sirius' every little word like it was a god speaking. 'This is my brother…the one who I missed so much at Hogwarts…the one that used to be my only friend in the world.' Sirius asked himself how he had ever left Regulus here, in this house, in this cold hatred that his parents preached. 'Why didn't I take you with me…'

// His room looked like a disaster zone. Everything was lying around over the ground. Sirius pushed everything that he could find in his room that he even remotely cared about into his trunk. He could hear his mother screaming downstairs through his door. He wiped away a stray tear and continued to stuff things into his school trunk.

Once everything was inside, he grabbed his cloak and wand off of his bed. He quickly tried to bust the locks on his window that his mother had put there in order to prevent Sirius from writing his "filthy half-breed and blood traitor friends". When that didn't work, he pointed his wand at the door, cast a silencing charm, turned back to the window and shouted "REDUCTO". The window shattered and Sirius pushed away the rest of the remains of the window and dragged his trunk over to it.

At the sound of the door opening, he whipped around and pointed his wand straight at the intruder, there was no way that he wasn't going to get out of this house tonight, no matter what. Standing there was Regulus with an unreadable look on his face as he surveyed the destroyed room. His eyes finally traveled back to Sirius who was still standing there with his wand raised.

"You're leaving then?" Regulus asked without any inflection in his voice. The brothers stood there looking at one another before Sirius turned away without answering. He quickly pushed his trunk out of the window where it hit the hedges below. He then turned back and looked at his brother.

The two looked at each other for a few minutes, their eyes fighting some unspoken battle. Regulus was the first to break the intense gaze and his eyes drifted to the floor and his body took the stance of someone defeated. He let out a sigh. "You're choosing them then? Those friends of yours? What about me?" His voice was starting to let anger show through, "I'm your brother! Why are you leaving?!" The unspoken question of "why are you abandoning me?" rang throughout the room.

Sirius stared at Regulus for a moment. He sighed and looked back towards the window. He needed to get out of here fast or his mother would find out he was running away which would ruin his plans completely. "I can't stay here Regulus. I just can't stay in this house any longer" he whispered softly but there was such silence in the room that there was no mistaking what he said.

"Fine" Regulus said, his tone completely cold, bitter, and biting. Regulus' body was shaking with the pain that he felt in his heart as he watched his brother hoist himself up onto the window seal. In a voice that was laced with pain, longing, hatred, and anger he said the last words that Sirius ever heard from him before he died. "Go to run to your NEW family."

Sirius froze for a split second before speaking, "Good bye Regulus." With that he jumped out of the window into the bushes below where he had hid his broom the day before. He never looked back and flew full speed towards James' house.//

Sirius asked himself for the first time ever whether Regulus might have gone with him that night if had asked. 'This time I'm getting you out of here…I won't abandon you this time…' The pain of that night and the fear of losing his younger again if he didn't do something to change what happened tore at Sirius' heart. It was only Regulus calling his name that snapped him out of his memories.

Sirius blinked the memory away and focused on the 10 year old Regulus that stood in front of him. When he saw the slightly frightened look that was on his face, Sirius quickly brushed all of the painful feelings that were left over from the memories away and grinned broadly at his younger brother. Regulus seemed to relax slightly, though you could tell by his eyes that he was confused. 'And he should be…he's never seen me act like this before…' Sirius berated himself, 'I almost just blew my cover…if I start acting weird he's bound to tell that banshee and I don't need her hovering right now.' Resisting the urge to shake those thoughts out of his head, he cocked his head slightly and asked, "What is it Reg?"

After studying his brother for a few more seconds, Regulus gave a small mental shrug and bounded up to his older brother, jumping up onto the bed beside him only to bombard Sirius with questions. "You'll write me right? Oh, I wish I could go to Hogwarts too!! I can't wait to go!!!! Do you think that the teachers are like what Cissa and Bella told us?" Sirius noticed that he hadn't mentioned Andromeda who had run off just last year to marry Ted Tonks. 'I really need to get him away from our parents' influence…' Sirius snapped out of his thoughts when he heard Regulus ask him about Quidditch. "You'll get on the house team right? I can't wait to see the Gryffindor's faces when you guys put them in their places!" Regulus took a quick breath and was about to start talking again when Sirius quickly interrupted him.

"I'm not going to be in Slytherin, Reg," Sirius made sure he wasn't looking at Regulus at all as he said this. His eyes stared straight ahead and his voice didn't have any emotion in it at all.

Regulus' head snapped around to stare at his brother so fast that Sirius could swear that he heard Reg's neck pop.

After a few tense seconds in which Regulus only stared at Sirius' face in total shock, he managed to choke out a strangled "What?!"

In any other situation, Sirius would have thought that Regulus' state of shock was amusing but he couldn't bring himself to smile right now. He let out a quite breath. 'Well that's a better reaction to what I was expecting…' he thought cynically. He didn't dare even to glace in Regulus' direction. "I'm not going to be in Slytherin. I don't want to be. I can't follow a family that would abandon their own flesh and blood just for the person that she married." His was still as flat and even as it was when he first spoke.

"But…she…She married a mudblood!!!!" Even though he heard the words out of Regulus' mouth, he could tell from Regulus' eyes that he only said the words because their parents had.

"Would you abandon me if I did the same?"

Regulus just stared. Sirius sighed again. 'This isn't going very well, is it? Then again it wasn't ever my strong point, Remus was so much better at this…' He quickly stopped that train of thought. 'Ok let's try this again.'

"Look Reg, I've…been sneaking out of the house for the past year…and going into the muggle town." Sirius admitted softly. Regulus blinked, the only sign that he had heard Sirius at all. "And the people there, they're really nice. Sure they don't have wands and stuff but…they're still people just like you and me. And…" Sirius paused slightly, "they don't…look at me like they expect something great from me." The last part was said so quietly that Regulus could barely make it out.

Regulus opened his mouth to say something but seemed to rethink the idea and closed it without saying anything.

"I'm tired of father looking at me like nothing I do will ever be enough…I'm tired of mother's preaching…I'm tired of Grandfather and his twice damned training sessions. I'll never be the perfect heir that they've always wanted so why bother to try?" Sirius said, the bitterness in his voice almost tangible.

Regulus looked at his brother in total confusion, something that Sirius quickly picked up on. "You're not the heir, Reg." was all that Sirius said, as though it explained everything. 'And really it does…' Regulus might have become their mother's favorite in the future, Regulus never had to go through the horrors that Sirius had gone through with their grandfather. The hours of endless dark spells and curses that Sirius had to learn and was subjected to was probably the initial reason he wanted to be nothing like his family, though he didn't realize it until his time in Azkaban.

"What does that have to do with anything?" Regulus asked, sounding somewhere between curious and affronted. Sirius knew that Regulus had always been slightly jealous of the fact that their parents paid more attention to Sirius because he was the first born, but then again Sirius was jealous of Regulus' status of second born and the freedom that came with it.

So instead of saying a biting comment like he wanted to, Sirius just sighed. "Just forget that I said anything about it Regulus." He was too tired to try to continue this discussion with his brother. Regulus looked at him for a split second longer before he got up and started to walk toward the door. He paused at the door, looking back at his brother in one last attempt to understand. When he didn't find the answer that he was looking for, he turned back and continued on through the door, shutting it behind him.

Sirius watched the door for a few seconds longer before he went to pull out his new notebook. He then sat on his bed and began to plan out how to pull the visit with his grandfather off.

That evening, right before dinner, a musical chime flowed through the house which alerted the residents of the house that their guest had arrived. As the rest of the family went into the living room, Sirius hung back slightly. Before walking out of the room, Regulus looked back at his brother in confusion but Sirius just shook his head at him. After studying his brother for a few seconds, Regulus continued out the door into the living room.

Sirius on the other hand had lowered his head and was trying to get his emotions under control. He hadn't seen his grandfather for years but that man left a long lasting impression on Sirius when he was young Sirius wasn't sure he really wanted to walk through that door and see that man again. "Do it for Prongs, Moony and Lily, Padfoot...", he muttered under his breath. Raising his head once more, Sirius took a deep breath to clear away his thoughts before he too stepped into the living room where his grandfather waited.

Arcturus Black was an imposing man with long black hair that was tied at the nape of his neck. His thin eyebrows were slanting over grey eyes that looked like circular pieces of slate. Sirius felt his body unconsciously stiffen in response to seeing his grandfather. He was the true power within the Black family and Sirius had learned at a young age not to displease the man if he didn't want to be punished. He quickly forced his body to relax and took a deep breath, 'Prongs and Moony need me', before striding straight to his grandfather. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Regulus giving him a weird look. 'I suppose it's because Reg had never seen me walk towards grandfather with any real confidence.' Normally, there was always something about his walk that was stiff and gave off a slightly intimidated countenance, though he always did try to put on a brave face.

At first his grandfather ignored his approach as he addressed Sirius's father, though Sirius could tell from the slight flick of the cold grey eyes towards him that his grandfather knew he was there. "Orion, you seem well." Polite, detached. Sirius' father tilted his head just slightly in acknowledgement, enough to signal his father to continue. "Walburga, as beautiful as ever." Not a compliment, a formality. His mother smiled back, though the smile was cold and the ice of her eyes never melted. "Regulus." Overlooked as always. He wasn't the heir so he didn't matter, not to his grandfather at least. Then his eyes drifted over to Sirius, the reason for his visit. "Sirius." Sirius hesitated one second before he looked up at his grandfather, staring straight into his eyes. Sirius had always hated looking at them. The first time they had reminded him too much of the training that he had to endure underneath the man but now…with the new memories of another life, they reminded him too much of Azkaban, of the cold stone walls and the lifeless eyes of the prisoners who had received the Kiss.

But no matter how much he hated those eyes, he refused to turn away.

"You will have a practice session with me after the meal. After all, you must be prepared so that you do not bring shame to this family." That said, Arcturus turned back to his son, effectively ending the discussion with his grandson. Sirius breathed a silent sigh of relief as those hated eyes turned away from him. His relief was short lived.

"Come" was all that was said as his grandfather turned towards the door that lead to the basement. Sirius gulped silently. 'Relax…all you need to do is walk towards that door, endure a couple of dark spells then start the plan.' He finished steeling his will and marched through the door.

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Mmk there's the second chapter! Sorry it took so long to update... Finals here at GA Tech were on Dec 10 – 14 so I was studying like mad for weeks. glares at evil tests Then I got dragged on family vacation time…sighs Didn't really get a chance to start writing until the January 5th… T-T This was originally going to be longer but it's been forever since I updated so I worked to a good stopping point and decided to give you guys the 8 pages that I had done…

Anyway, tell me what you guys think, kk? The first part of it was pretty hard to write 'cause I had no clue how Sirius would interact with his father. I pictured his mother as the more dominate person (and thus the one Sirius hated more) within the Black's relationship, though normally it's the other way around in old fashion families. Kinda like Walburga was the real power though Orion was the actual head of the family.

Also, I've decided that purebloods are bloody hard to write because they're so stiff and formal and…GAH!