"Are you all right, Reggie?" Sirius asked, reaching out to grab his brother's shoulder.
"Sirius, we just got off of that damn hippogriff, and you know I'm not good with heights. Of course I don't look all right," Regulus answered, feigning exasperation to cover the white lie. His hand still drifted up to his glasses. "Add that to the fact that you woke me up about this time yesterday morning and neither of us have slept since. . . ."
Sirius grabbed his wrist and dragged it back down. "You've been a bit quiet."
"You expect me to be fluent several hundred feet in the air?"
"In profanity, yes." Sirius crossed his arms over his chest and glared at his brother.
Regulus sighed. The two were in a small copse of trees outside of Lincolnshire, not that far from where Remus Lupin was currently living. It was an ideal place to leave Buckbeak for the next fifteen minutes and, unfortunately, an ideal place to hold this conversation. "Really, Sirius. . . ."
The elder brother shook his head and, a moment later, his eyes widened as he realized what caused this. "What happened when you disappeared?" he demanded.
"When I disappeared?"
"Out of the hospital wing," Sirius persisted, not about to be deterred by feigned puzzlement. "When you came back, you were shaking. I thought at the time it was just you panting, but now I'm pretty sure it was more."
"That." Regulus sighed and reached up to his glasses once again. Sirius watched him fiddle with the lens, but this time he didn't drag it back down. "I knew there wasn't going to be a guard on Crouch and just wanted to see if he was one of the ones I might recognize."
Sirius bit his lip. "Was he?"
"Sort of. He used to tag along behind Rabastan. I guess, in a way, he was Rabastan's as assuredly as I was Bella's; he just . . . stayed that way."
Sirius shook his head, but before he could say something along the lines of "idiot," Regulus continued.
"And then of course I didn't see him until after he's been kissed by a dementor, and. . . ." He faded off, shuddering.
Sirius reached out, then let his hand drop. "I know that's awful."
"Blonde little kid . . . how old . . . thirty-two? Looked like Cissy's boy might, some years down the road," Regulus muttered. "Odd, how that happens . . . the Rosier's are pretty closely tied in with the Crouch's though, aren't they, and that's where Cissy got her looks from. But there was nothing there, and yet he was still breathing. . . ." He shuddered yet again. "And that's not even the worst bit."
Sirius raised an eyebrow. "Than what was that, then?"
"It could have been either of us," Regulus murmured. "Me if I'd stuck with Bella . . . if I'd let her turn me into what he let the Lestranges turn him into. You . . . well, anytime last year, really. All it would have taken was one more careless move . . . or Dumbledore not believing you when you told him your story, and you'd be gone. . . ."
Sirius shook his head. "Reggie. . . ."
Regulus shuddered but didn't reply.
"Reggie," Sirius repeated with a little more urgency. "It didn't happen."
"It could have."
"But it didn't. You were bright enough to change your mind and had the guts to tell Bella to stuff it, and Dumbledore must have known somewhere that I'd never do that to Lily and James. It didn't happen."
"Still. . . ." Regulus faded off and shuddered again.
"It didn't happen," Sirius repeated. "That's what's important. Neither of us is Crouch, even if we could have been. We're us."
Regulus shook his head. "Damn," he mumbled.
"Really, if we spent much time over what-could-have-beens, we'd be worse off than we are," Sirius muttered. He put a hand on Regulus's shoulder and squeezed a little. "What's important's what actually happened, who we actually are. Now let's get to Remus's."
Remus Lupin had been hopefully skimming the "Help Wanted" ads of several Muggle publications over a cup of coffee when the doorbell rang. Ever the prudent one, he slid the Daily Prophet— currently bearing a glossy and angrily gesturing photograph of Fudge and a headline about the "senility" of Albus Dumbledore, whose days at Hogwarts could be numbered— between two of the sofa cushions, and turned the two moving photographs onto the wall— one of the Marauders and Lily in their seventh year of school and another of his parents— so that their brightly painted backs showed before he went to answer the door.
He was greeted by a short, skinny, and bespectacled man holding back a monstrously large black dog. The animal immediately wrenched out of the man's grip and bounded inside, plumed tail waving. The man watched it go with an irritated sigh, fiddled with his glasses for a moment, and looked up at Remus. "Hullo, Lupin."
"Regulus," Remus greeted him, nodding. "Why are you still in this country?"
"Well, 'still' is a bit of a misnomer," Regulus answered with a shrug. "I'm sure you get the papers, so you read in the Daily Prophet that Harry was entered in the Triwizard Tournament, right?"
"Accompanied by a miniature biography that made me doubt the articles reliability, yes."
"Well, do you honestly think Sirius would have remained the good, quiet house pet in France while his godson was over here and in that kind of danger?"
"No, I s'pose not," Remus replied. He stepped back from the door so Regulus could come in, closed it, and turned back in the direction of his living room. "Sirius?" he called. "What are you into now?"
"How old is this picture of your parents?" Sirius called back in turn.
"Just under thirty years, I think. Long before I knew you. So yes, that really is my dad under all that hair," Remus replied. He glanced at Regulus, who was looking bemused. "My father was going bald by the time your brother met him," he explained. Raising his voice slightly again, he added, "If the two of you wouldn't mind coming into the kitchen, I'll make breakfast and you can explain what you're doing here."
Without waiting for Sirius to furnish an answer, Remus ambled towards the kitchen, Regulus at his heels. Sirius was already seated at the kitchen table by the time they came in and Remus turned to coffee maker back on. "So . . . the Triwizard Tournament is over, Harry won, Cedric Diggory died in a tragic accident, and the paper was being suddenly very discreet. What actually happened? I assume that's what you came to talk to me about."
Sirius and Regulus exchanged an odd look that probably spoke volumes to each other about whatever had happened but didn't tell Remus a thing. He only knew that it was serious and much bigger than Harry. It had to be, to scare the both of them this badly.
Still, he forced himself not to simply stare at them while they formulated an answer and to go about the normal task of making breakfast. He went to the pantry to see what he could serve. "Well . . . I've got cornflakes," he announced after a moment.
"The guests aren't going to be picky," Sirius replied.
"And as for what brought us here," Regulus added softly as Remus brought the cereal box to the table, "well . . . that would be this." He pulled his sleeve up to his elbow, revealing an ugly red scar on his forearm.
Remus leaned over to see exactly what it was. "The Dark Mark?" he asked.
Regulus nodded. "He branded it into all of us, to call us when it burned black. It faded after he disappeared. Now that he's back, so is it."
Remus took a moment or two to reassess the situation now that Voldemort had returned and looked up into Regulus's gray eyes. The only thing he could make out on his face was a little pain.
It was amazing, really, he reflected, how alike the two Blacks really were. Sirius hid his vulnerability under a tough exterior it was nearly impossible to break through and always had. Regulus seemed timid and compliant at first, but somewhere under that were a pair of steel doors— Remus had seen that much when he'd confronted Peter last year. But behind the doors he was even easier to scare than Sirius.
"So it is far bigger than Harry," he mumbled.
"Much," Regulus agreed quietly.
Sirius absently batted the box of cornflakes, and both of the other two glanced over at him. He stared back, only slightly guilty. "What? I'm hungry."
Remus chuckled and went to the cupboard and fridge to get bowls and milk. Sirius filled two of the bowls, since Regulus turned the cornflakes down but readily took the coffee when it was offered to him, muttering something about caffeine and having really gone native in France when it came to sources for it.
"Well, to completely tell you what happened," Sirius started once everyone was sitting down and eating, "Harry and Diggory apparently got to the cup at the same time, and were transported to the graveyard, where Diggory was killed and Harry was used to help Voldemort rise again. Then Harry fought off the Death Eaters and got Diggory's body back to Hogwarts. The whole thing was planned from the beginning by Barty Crouch's son, who escaped Azkaban with his dad's help and had been impersonating Mad-Eye Moody the entire year."
"We'll fill in the details better later," Regulus mumbled.
"Anyway, Dumbledore told me to get together the old crowd and lie low here for a little while," Sirius added. "You're the first place we stopped. Buckbeak's round back and about five minutes into the woods."
"All right," Remus said slowly. "Have you told anyone else in the old crowd? Mundungus Fletcher? Dedalus Diggle? Arabella Figg?"
Regulus put down his coffee cup with a slight smile. "Well," he answered dryly, "we decided that a homicidal maniac and a dead man weren't going to carry much weight with the latter two, although there's still a chance that Fletcher would buy our story. You're in a better position to pass the information on."
"The werewolf sacked from Hogwarts for trying to eat his students?" Remus asked, his voice equally dry. "Because, really, if we're going to shove everyone into a category. . . ."
"You weren't sacked," Sirius growled.
"Only because I had the grace to resign before Dumbledore had to," Remus pointed out. "But otherwise, you have a point. I'll send owls out right after breakfast."
"Excellent," Sirius answered.
"Any idea what Dumbledore's going to do after resurrecting the Order?" Remus added curiously.
"Not a blessed clue," Regulus answered promptly.
"I don't even know that we have a base of Operations yet," Sirius added, shrugging. "Although, when we do, I will necessarily be stuck at it since the entirety of the wizarding world would like to have my head. . . . Perhaps I'll come up with one, as the last useful thing I do. . . ."
"Sirius. . . ." Regulus and Remus said in simultaneous warning.
"Hey, Reg?" Sirius asked, clearly not listening, "who owns Grimmauld now?"
"You, I believe," he answered, adjusting his glasses and picking his coffee back up. "Since they think I'm dead, you're the last adult male relative standing."
"Oh. Then I suppose we can use that. If Kreacher's still alive and is doing his job, it might even be clean."
Regulus grinned slightly over the coffee mug. "And if he'd dead or hasn't been, it will at least give you something to do."
"Housework," Sirius muttered, disgusted. "Wonderful. Just the sort of useful business I imagined doing in the wake of Voldemort's return."
Remus shook his head, watching the two of them. Even in the middle of an impromptu war meeting, Sirius hadn't entirely lost his spark of irreverence, and it seemed he still had someone to feed it, even though James was no longer around. His little brother could fill that much of the gap.
"Anyway," Sirius announced suddenly, waving his hand as if brushing that away, "we've all got to do something. So how much exactly are we supposed to tell the old Order?"
Remus accio-ed paper and a quill, and, pushing away bowls or coffee cups, the three of them started drafting the next phase of the Order's resurrection.
Author's Note: Okay, so we finally discover what Regulus saw and Sirius gets his chance to be wise (which I really think he deserves on occasion). Remus also appears once again, which is good because he has a major role to play in 1995. I have actually started writing 1995, although with the hecticness of the holidays I cannot guarantee it will be up next week. I'll try. Speaking of them, Happy Holidays everyone!
Wow . . . it's been an interesting trip again, and I'm glad for everyone who joined me. Now, as always, there are people I must thank. First of all, to my beta Pam (a.k.a Suishu Tomoe), who was very helpful in correcting the chapters I did get to her on time. To Mizz Mooney Luver, who occasionally points out little things I might overlook and frequently makes me laugh; to Jackline, who keeps asking the right questions; snape'smistress–in-law, whose reviews checked my characterization in a couple of key places; to Gwinna and xtotallyatpeacex, who assured me I was on the right track; and to Gabwr, imakeeper, gatermage, and scarlet dreamer for dropping a line almost every chapter. Also, thanks to SupportSeverusSnape, ave-adore, Bakuscrazedfangirl, Padfoot2446, anonymous, Lily Hermione Potter, Rice Stalagtite, firorenza, Isis Flamewing, LastOfTheSummerWine, MercuryBlue144, krenya-alenak, Starshinesoldier, Jill, babygyrl, CapriceAnn Hedican-Kocur, Ramzes, StarGirl5000, hi, and Hebi R. for offering encouragement or criticism somewhere along the way. I've really appreciated every bit of it!
Until Double Trouble: 1995, Cheers! — Loki