Chapter 10: Chapter 9: September 1978 - October 1978
Summary:
Nothing worth having ever comes easy.
Notes:
Look who's back!!!
This chapter besides the obvious points in it was never planned to be how it turned out, but you get what you get!! It's a good chapter though and the next 3 (chapters 10, 11 and 12) are going to make you lose your minds in the best way !!! (I hope).
I'm hoping for a chapter up by Tuesday, but next week it's my birthday, I'm moving back home from uni for the summer and I've got 2 days worth of french fluency exams so it may be a bit hit and miss with my time estimations- I'm aiming for Tuesday though, Thursday at the latest but I'll update this note if it's going to be later.
Can't wait to hear your thoughts, I do love reading through all of your comments and theories- this chapter has one of the loosest possible links to canon so I hope you enjoy the *surprises*
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
September - October 1978
Regulus wakes on the first day of September and simply sits on the couch, watching the clock, until it reaches 11am.
Hundreds of kilometres away, the Hogwarts Express leaves without him.
What are his friends wondering? Do they think he's dead? Do they think he's lying? Either way, do they miss him?
He wonders what would have happened if he'd just showed up two months into his disappearance act, but he supposes he'll never know.
Still, a small part of him wishes he could give up his horcrux hunt and just sit on the train with his friends, his biggest worry being how much homework he is going to get and which NEWT class is going to be the hardest.
The much more rational part of him refused to entertain that idea; he has Kreacher's death to avenge and his list to complete. Plus, if he goes back to Hogwarts, he goes back to Dumbledore.
And really, his indescribable hatred for Dumbledore is all the convincing he needs to stay in his self-inflicted isolation as he tries to kill the most powerful wizard in Britain.
He ventures into another wizarding town in eastern Wales the same day, and he finds himself on another front page of the Daily Prophet in an article that was published a couple of weeks ago:
BLACK HEIR PRESUMED DEAD.
He is entirely apathetic to the article that deems him missing for 2 months, nearly 3, and it merely fills him with a deep sense of bitter amusement.
Sirius ran away years ago, but he still has to fight every day so he doesn't get pulled back into the fray of the House of Black.
Regulus didn't even want to leave, but now that he has, no one is looking for him. If they did, they didn't try very hard.
It's good, really, he likes being alone, but a small part of him wonders how Sirius took the news.
Sirius had read the newspaper the day it was released, and although he'd scoffed and rolled his eyes when he saw Regulus was presumed missing, he felt like somebody had stabbed him in the chest and twisted when he saw that he had been presumed dead.
They were providing a memorial service for him in a week, family only, the Prophet had said.
Sirius knew he wouldn't be welcome to attend.
That night, he had looked out at the night sky where it had taken him longer than usual to find Regulus, and when he looked up at his brother, he had sworn that his star appeared dimmer than usual.
Sirius had cried until he couldn't see Regulus at all and then had cried harder when he realised that that was how it would always be.
Not seeing Regulus at all.
Never seeing Regulus again.
He was presumed dead 77 days after he went missing, and now he exists exclusively in the sky. Every time Sirius looks at Regulus, he's reminded of what they used to be and what they never will be again.
Brothers.
The possibility of repairing the relationship they lost the moment Sirius was sorted into Gryffindor was always in sight but always out of reach, and now,
77 light years away,
So is Regulus.
Forever in sight and forever out of reach.
Regulus has been following a lot of leads that lead nowhere.
He tried visiting the site of Tom Riddle's orphanage, which is now a muggle apartment block and had no traces of magic anywhere.
He tried finding yearbooks of people who may have gone to school with Tom Riddle, except all of the Slytherins became his followers, and all the other houses gave birth to members of Dumbledore's resistance group. They're definitely not going to help him, and they're also not going to know much valuable information in the first place.
He crosses both points off his list and looks at the next idea.
Visit hometown/birthplace of T.R mother and father- Gaunt is descendant of Slytherin- ideas there???
Regulus knows that there is more to the story of Tom Riddle than Dippet knew, and upon looking through his notes and at Tom Riddle's family tree, he saw that the same day he graduated from Hogwarts was the same day that his father died.
Is this called coincidence or murder?
Maybe that's where one of his horcruxes came from; the murder of his father.
Maybe after he graduated and lost the trace on his magic, he celebrated by going on a killing spree?
If he had grown up in a muggle orphanage, he wouldn't have had access to the same dark pureblood literature that Regulus had; his parents removed the trace on his wand the same day he got it when he was 11.
Maybe Tom Riddle's birthplace and hometown will have clues and hopefully answers.
Answers about where his father came from,
Where his mother came from,
Where Tom Riddle came from,
And where Voldemort has been.
Finding out where the Riddle family came from is surprisingly easy.
Regulus is a blood supremacist for sure, but he can't deny that muggles have an excellent system of finding out where each of them lives.
In the wizarding world, you either have to send someone a patronus until they tell you their address, or you need to be added to their floo network. There is, of course, the option of blood magic and tracing runes; however, this has a high risk of prison time if you're caught.
Regulus entered a library in Newcastle to try and track down the Riddles, and when he reluctantly asked a library employee how he could find a long-lost relative, she had shown him to an archive of the past 150 years' worth of telephone directories.
Regulus had smiled politely at this, both unsure and uncaring as to what a telephone was, but she had also said that it stated their name, phone number and address, and that is what he wanted.
She looked young, probably only a year older than him, and she seemed to be hanging around him unnecessarily, fluttering her eyelashes and giggling like the first-year Hufflepuffs in the Hogwarts library, and so Regulus had told her in no uncertain terms to "fuck off before you give me a migraine."
Instead of getting angry that he had rejected her help, she seemed almost wounded, but Regulus genuinely could not give a shit. She should be grateful they weren't in a wizarding town where he could have cursed her.
The telephone directories are simple to use and are published annually, where all of the country's inhabitants are listed in alphabetical order.
Tom Riddle Sr. died in 1944, so Regulus finds an edition from 1943 and another from 1926 when Voldemort was born and compares the data.
They both show the same address.
Station Manor, Little Hangleton, England.
Unsurprisingly, the name Gaunt isn't listed in the muggle directory; however, The Riddles address is enough of a lead to begin with. So Regulus leaves the library, glares at the muggle girl who tries to smile at him on the way out, finds a small alleyway, and disapparates.
His first thought upon arrival is that he's apparated to the wrong place.
It's a muggle town, he knows this, but it's saturated in dark magic.
When he reaches out to try and feel it better, he jolts back reflexively.
It's weaker than the horcrux magic and seems to be older and less powerful, but it's Voldemort through and through.
It's the same feeling of magic from the horcrux and the same feeling that thrums through Regulus every time he breathes due to the snake and skull staring at him on his left forearm.
That's another thing to figure out, Regulus thinks. That mark has got to go.
It's early afternoon, around 1pm or so, but the town seems mostly deserted. The few people who are out on the streets seem to be those who are drunk, high or insane.
Regulus feels hypocritical for his next observation, but no one is smiling either.
He's spent enough time around muggles these past few months to know they're always ridiculously happy. There are exceptions of course, but at least 8 in 10 will smile at him, ask him how he's doing and say good morning or good afternoon as the day calls for it.
Regulus hates it and glares at every single person who tries.
In this town though? There's nothing, and Regulus has a horrible thought that maybe they're all dead, simply another batch of inferi that Voldemort deemed necessary to make, but after refuting this theory by sending a cutting hex at someone's arm and watching them bleed, he softens in relief.
The inferi didn't bleed in the water, only Regulus did, so whatever is wrong with these muggles, at least they're not dead.
He assumes that it's due to Voldemort's magic spreading through the town; all of the trees are dry and dead, and there's no grass anywhere, but once again, Regulus doesn't really care.
They're just muggles after all, although he would also leave purebloods in the same state if they weren't people he cared about. He has bigger problems to solve than why the muggles won't smile at him.
Plus, nobody tried to talk to him while he walked through the town, so he finds a small part of himself almost grateful to Voldemort that he apparently also hated muggles enough to find a way to make them shut up.
It's a small town, practically a village, with five shops, four of which are boarded up and surrounded by broken glass.
The only open shop is a pub, fittingly named The Little Hangleton Pub, and Regulus walks inside, immediately grimacing at the cheap alcohol he can smell. It's leagues apart from the Italian wine that he's used to, and the man at the counter snaps his head up in apparent shock that somebody has actually visited his establishment.
"Are you lost?" is the first thing he says, seeing a boy who isn't even old enough to drink walking in like he owns the place.
"No", Regulus says calmly, "I'm researching the Riddle family and have come looking here to learn more."
The bartender's face drops in horror, the first genuine expression Regulus has seen since coming to the town, and there's a warning in his voice as he says, "Run, boy. I don't know why you decided to research them of all people and what you think you're going to find, but it's best you stop now. Run and don't look back."
"And if I don't want to run?" Regulus asks with an eyebrow raised, staring at the muggle whose eyes seem to be getting wider and wider in genuine panic.
"I'm not joking around here, kid; you need to leave it alone, or you're going to get killed like the son killed his parents."
You've got answers, and I'm getting them, Regulus thinks determinedly, and realising that the man at the bar is probably Gryffindor, albeit a weak one, he knows that persuasion won't work like it would on a Hufflepuff or Slytherin.
What does work is short and simple "imperio."
The man's eyes glaze over, staring into nothing and waiting for Regulus' command.
"Tell me everything you know about the Gaunt and Riddle families."
The bartender does.
"Both families have lived here for centuries. They used to be well off, and the Riddles still were until they died, but the Gaunts lost a lot of their affluence about 150 years ago. They were a weird little family, odd things always seemed to happen on the rare occasion they came into town.
They knew English, and I'd heard their daughter speak it occasionally, but the father was around my age, he'd be around 80 or so if he was still alive, but I never heard him say a word of English in his life. Instead, he'd hiss, almost like a snake, but everyone in his family seemed to understand him.
Like I said, they were a weird bunch, but they've all died out now. The Riddles also have, although no one knows for sure what happened to their son, but it was a big commotion. About 50 years ago, the Gaunt daughter and Tom Riddle Sr had fallen in love in an unexpected romance. Nobody knew what he saw in her; she was neither smart nor pretty, but they adored each other and had a baby out of wedlock, another commotion really, but neither seemed to care.
The girl died hours after giving birth, and Tom Riddle Sr seemed to wake up from a trance of some sort, saying she had put him under a spell and that her death had woken him up. I never knew what happened to the baby, though. The Riddle's lost a lot of their prestige through that ordeal though they were still wealthy as ever compared to the rest of us folk, but then in 1944, there were fireworks on a random night in May. I'd never seen the colour before, neon green fireworks, but I just thought someone was celebrating something. The following day though, the housekeeper goes to work, and everybody is dead; Tom Riddle Sr, his parents, the groundskeeper, the gardener, I mean everyone, all dead.
We think it was their son, Tom Riddle Jr, his name turned out to be, and we believe he brought a poisonous smoke bomb and blew them up even though he somehow left the house unscathed."
"And where can I find the house of the Gaunts?" Regulus asks. If Tom Riddle came back to murder his muggle family, then he's not going to be leaving horcrux clues in their manor.
The descendants of Slytherin, though? That's a good bet.
"Up over the hill by the boarded-up tailors, and then there'll be an overgrown hedge that practically covers the gate."
Regulus cancels the spell and then says lightly, "well wasn't that easy, I appreciate your help."
The bartender's eyes widen in horror again, his eyes flitting everywhere as he stammers, "you, you're the boy, you're Tom Riddle's son –"
Regulus was going to let the man go, not wanting to notify Voldemort of any magical activity in his hometown, but after that?
"You think I look 51 years old?" Regulus asks incredulously and full of offence, and then he charms the wine bottles on the display counter to hover in the air and beat the man over the head 51 times to spite him.
The man is unconscious after 6 hits.
He dies after 23.
The bottles don't stop hitting him until 51, and the floor is a bloody, glassy mess.
"51", Regulus mutters on his way out, still offended, "I fucking hate muggles," and then he shatters the windows in the shop and lights the wooden furniture on fire for good measure.
"I fucking hate muggles."
To the public eye, he still has the Black decorum drilled into him since birth, but his mother would hex him for stomping his feet slightly as he walks and essentially throwing a tantrum at seventeen years of age.
Not fifty-one.
Yeah, he's still bitter. Even killing someone and committing arson couldn't settle the rage entirely.
He keeps stomping up the street, cursing muggles out in four different languages, and he barely even has to look where he's going to get to the Gaunt Shack.
The magic within it is like a lighthouse, an unmissable beacon, and while it would encourage most people to steer clear, Regulus is drawn to it.
The wards around the property are non-existent; it's like Voldemort is trying to lure people in because no matter how many different detection spells Regulus casts, nothing shows up.
He enters hesitantly but remains unharmed even as his body gets goosebumps as he looks around.
There are corpses, both human and animal, that are littered across the garden, and it makes Regulus slightly uneasy to know that he may become one of them.
Still, there's evidently either something to protect, or Voldemort is just a sadistic bastard, but Regulus isn't going to defeat him by being scared.
He shoves all his doubts behind his occlumency shields and reaches out with his magic to feel the wards around the house.
Again, there aren't any.
It's entirely unprotected, but there is a pull within Regulus that is drawing him in, a promise of something great if he steps inside the house.
He fights it, though, reaches down and throws a rock at the front door, which clatters uselessly to the ground to ensure there are no curses on the door handle, and then he turns around and walks off the property just so he knows that there's a way out.
Then, he walks back by the front door, casts a shield charm to hopefully protect himself from curses, and magically opens the door.
Again, nothing happens except there's something inside that Regulus is pulling him forwards, he's helpless to resist, and he slowly steps forwards into the Shack.
He feels like he's missing something. There's something, somewhere, that has made these corpses rest here forever, and this something makes itself known in a burst of yellow light that hits Regulus on the ankle, and he watches in horror as his pale leg turns brown almost instantly and begins literally decompose in front of his eyes.
"Oh shit, shit, shit", he cries out in panic. The curse is showing no sign of stopping, and it's slowly spreading up towards his calf.
He tries every spell he can think of; containment spells, preservation spells, preventative and purging spells ranging from extremely light to Azkaban-sentence dark, but nothing works.
The curse is still spreading, it's up to his knee now, and he can see the bones of his ankle where the flesh has dissolved entirely. It doesn't hurt, the nerves are too damaged to send a pain signal to his brain, but it's absolutely disgusting.
There are only two options left that Regulus can think of, and one of them is dying.
The other option is amputation.
He needs to cut his leg off and hope the curse hasn't already spread to his entire body.
It's just a limb, right? He's been cutting people's hands off all the time, and they still have enough consciousness to not die and keep talking, which is all Regulus needs.
Cut the leg off, stop the bleeding and the curse, and then find a way to regrow it later; how hard can it be, and how bad can it hurt?
The answer to the latter is a lot.
He casts a cutting hex that ends up being more like a blasting hex due to his stress, and his leg that he just cut off, which is mostly just bone at this point, shoots against the wall and shatters. Regulus tries not to throw up and focuses on his leg instead, which doesn't help his nausea at all.
He cut his leg off where there was still healthy flesh that the curse hadn't yet affected, where the nerves were still working.
This means Regulus felt it all; he felt it come off, and he still feels it now.
It's a throbbing, bloody, painful mess, and a small part of Regulus sends a silent apology that he doesn't really mean to everybody whose limbs he's ever chopped off in his life.
It really fucking hurts.
Still, he's more grateful than he ever thought he'd be to see his leg gushing blood because if he's bleeding, he's not rotting.
He casts a cauterising charm against his stump of a leg which stops the bleeding, and then he bandages it, goes to stand up and then nearly falls back over again as he realises that the rest of his leg is in pieces and scattered around the room in a mixture of bone fragments and rotten flesh.
Nausea and distress won't help him here, so he hides everything away behind his occlumency shields again, conjures himself a cane to hop along on, and with his wand held tightly in another hand and a shield charm on the tip of his tongue that probably won't stop the dark curses Voldemort used, he hobbles forwards towards the spot where the curse came from. There's a misplaced floorboard that seems to have something shimmering under it, trying to pull him in, he can't help but lean closer –
Another yellow burst of light shoots forwards, and Regulus screams as he drops onto the floor, mercifully unharmed but unmercifully pressing the weight of his entire body on his freshly amputated stump.
He's gasping, blinking tears of pain out of his eyes, but he is getting what he came here for, which is whatever is underneath that floorboard.
More prepared now, he charms a book on the mantelpiece to hit the floorboard, and the book crumbles to dust with another burst of yellow light.
While Regulus is sure that he could cut off another limb, he doesn't want to reach his hand inside and get cursed so severely that he can't even pick up the object in the first place.
He hides behind the couch and pulls up the runic sequence around the floorboard, which is a mixture of dark and blood magic.
The dark magic intertwined with the runes is complex and difficult to unravel. However, it's manageable and more straightforward than he'd envisaged, purely because of the extent of the pure paranoia that Regulus constructs his wards with, so in comparison, Voldemort's are almost laughably easy.
That's not to say it's simple though; there are still various hexes and curses that try to break free and a ward breaching notification that Regulus almost sets off, but eventually, there's no more protective or defensive magic surrounding the floorboards and Voldemort hasn't arrived to kill him, so Regulus assumes he's done a good job.
He cuts the palm of his hand and lets blood drip down onto the floorboard. He doesn't want traces of his magical signature to be left in the Shack, but he can't see any other way to neutralise the blood magic.
The moment of truth arrives, and Regulus throws another book at the floorboard that simply skids across the floor, uncursed and unharmed.
He tentatively hobbles forwards, nearly overbalancing again, before he casts yet another diagnostic charm over the floorboard, searching for any remaining traces of magic.
Only two items show up; the same brand of dark magic of a locket and another unidentifiable type of magic that seems to be stored inside whatever is in the box.
Despite the fact he hasn't got it yet, Regulus feels himself light up in euphoria; he came here for leads, not a horcrux, but he's so close to one anyways. If he gets this, he's over a quarter of the way there.
Regulus gets his wand hand ready for amputation if needed, and with his other, he reaches down under the floorboard, and his hand touches black leather.
It doesn't decompose.
Thank fuck, Regulus thinks relieved, and then he brings the box towards himself, double checks there are no tracking runes on it, and then hops out of the Shack, praying he never has to return.
He gets to the front gate, ensures he has the leather box, pulls the finger at the Gaunt Shack and says another quiet "fuck you" before disapparating.
He sets up his tent and layers 38 different wards upon each other, his magical threshold just wanting him to rest, fighting with his paranoia to put up more, until he hops inside, downs three blood replenishing potions and two pain potions, and gets ready for bed.
He's ready to lie down on his bed and deem everything else to be a later problem that he can deal with tomorrow, but the muggle bartender's voice rings in his ears again.
"You're the son. You're the Riddle boy."
Who is 51?
Who is 51?
"I don't look 51, you fucking prick," Regulus mutters angrily at his reflection.
Still, he repeats his skincare routine 3 times that night before he goes to bed and passes out.
A pain potion tends to last roughly 4 hours until it needs to be retaken, and Regulus wakes up 4 hours and 1 second later, wondering if he's been set on fire.
He hasn't, but it feels like flames are coming out of his stump of a leg that lick up his spine and seem to boil his brain.
He's gasping and sweating despite the cooling charms set on his room, and he manages to control himself enough to accio another pain potion and swallow it down.
It takes only seconds until he's slumped back against his pillows in blessed relief, and he realises that taking pain potions 6 times a day for the indefinite future isn't going to work. Since he cut off the part of his leg that the curse had affected, he's hoping that skele grow and another blood replenisher will grow his leg back, and he really doesn't know what he's going to do if that doesn't work.
The easiest thing to do would be to go to a potions shop and buy some, except magical signatures have to be recorded since it's a restricted potion, and once again, his whole presumed dead charade would be ruined quite significantly if someone found his name on a prescription potion sheet.
He also can't steal it unless he breaks through the wards, which, while definitely doable, are unlikely to be left alone for long enough to allow him to do so with the possibility of being killed or committing mass murder.
Both options are tempting, and Regulus has to tell the darker parts of his brain that neither option is viable at the moment.
The only feasible option is to make it himself, which is a month and a half long process. Still, it's not like he has any alternatives.
The ingredients aren't actually that complicated or exotic, so Regulus manages to buy them all with his glamour in a small wizarding town near Plymouth, where he hops around using his cane with an unpleasant feeling of embarrassed resignation.
He never thought he'd take having all of his limbs for granted, but he'll never make that mistake again. If his leg, no, when his leg grows back, he's not entertaining any other notions, he's going to be grateful for it for the rest of his life.
Has this made him grow a conscience and refuse to amputate people during torture and interrogations, though?
Of course not.
If anything, it makes him do it twice as often with twice as much passion because he knows exactly how it feels, and he wants all of those he interrogates to feel pain.
He starts work on the skele grow potion the following day, and while he finds it almost therapeutic and enjoys having a project to complete with a much lower fatality rate, this doesn't change the fact that the next month and a half is a right bitch of a time.
Horcrux hunting in any physical capacity is put on hold; he's not going to try and fight Voldemort and his repertoire of dark and sadistic defences while he can barely stand upright on his own.
He also doesn't go out to any wizarding towns for fear of coming across someone who recognises him and either tries to kill, curse or arrest him. While in normal circumstances, he could easily beat anyone who tries, everything is exponentially harder when all of your focus is taken up on concentrating on your balance and trying not to fall over.
He went into a muggle town a few days into the skele grow brewing to buy some more groceries, and it had been such as ordeal, trying to purchase what he wanted while dealing with the muggle children asking questions and having to deal with the girls his age excessively blinking at him and giggling, that he refused to leave his tent again until he could go to a wizarding town.
This petty tantrum lasted almost 3 weeks until he ran out of food, and Regulus nearly fainted from not eating for four days and realised that his stubbornness didn't override his intrinsic need to eat to survive.
This only made Regulus resent being alive even more than he already did, and then extremely reluctantly, he returned to civilisation and brought more groceries.
During the first week, Regulus spent drugged up on pain potions and missing a leg, he spent the entire time he wasn't sleeping or potion brewing, casting diagnostic charms on the ring he had found in the box.
It was unremarkable in every way, really. If Voldemort wanted a nice ring to make a horcrux in, Regulus would have offered him one of his own.
Well, no, he probably wouldn't have actually, but still.
The Blacks have thrown out rings nicer than this, probably even blood traitors like the Potters have nicer jewellery.
It's gold, sure, but it's of a low carat, and it wouldn't have cost more than 50 galleons at best.
Regulus' cheapest ring cost 15,000 galleons.
The gold is tarnished, which only accentuates its poor quality, and the inscription around the ring was so obviously done with a blade that wasn't platinum that even if this wasn't a horcrux, Regulus would still destroy it just so it could be erased from existence.
It is a tangible representation of Voldemort really: gilded colours over grey, plated gold over stainless steel, expensive tailored robes over a worthless half-blood who wasn't even supposed to be born in the first place.
Regulus is going to amend that if it's the last thing he does.
The ring also has the Gaunt family crest, which amuses Regulus. He had never imagined Voldemort to be a sentimental person, but first Slytherin's locket and now the Gaunt ring?
Maybe his next horcrux will be his baby blanket.
After eight days of spell casting and curse removal, Regulus deems the ring safe enough to touch, and when he does, nothing happens which relieves him. He picks it up, looks at it, shakes it, and there's a funny sound like something inside it.
If this is the curse that kills me, I'll come back from the dead and kill you myself, Tom Riddle, Regulus thinks forcefully before he points the ring away from him and flicks the clasp that holds the compartment closed.
The hinges fly open, and a small rock falls out that has red streaks, almost like lightning running through it.
There's the same unidentifiable magic that pulses from it that Regulus detected in the Gaunt shack, and when Regulus considers it to neither be dark nor curse him, he hesitantly reaches out and touches it.
Nothing happens.
He picks it up, drops it, turns it over, and tries talking to it, but it literally does nothing.
It's just a rock.
Maybe this is the first rock Voldemort stubbed his toe on, Regulus thinks with a huff of hysterical laughter.
There's got to be something significant about it for Voldemort to have locked it away and hidden it in his horcrux, but Regulus can't figure it out for the life of him.
It's genuinely just a rock pulsing with unidentifiable magic, but it's not dark. The magic is something Regulus has never been exposed to.
A part of him is tempted to throw it out, although Voldemort doesn't seem like the type for practical jokes, so Regulus picks the rock up and puts it in his mokeskin pouch along with the memory vial before locking the ring away in a separate hideaway to the locket.
He doesn't want the horcruxes to somehow be able to talk to each other and then tell Voldemort that they're being hunted down, so they're left in separate rooms.
Each day that passes between sleeping, potion making and potion taking, Regulus obsesses over the rock, but no matter what he does or tries, it's just a rock.
He doesn't throw it away, but he does throw it at the wall multiple times in frustration, but all the rock ever does is let the light reflect off its red lines, almost like it's winking at him.
You've already tried that, haven't you? It says, you're never going to figure me out, but I've already figured you out. You like solving puzzles, but you can't solve me, can you?
"Fuck off, you're just a fucking rock", Regulus yells until he quietens down and wonders if he's losing his mind by having a literal conversation with a rock.
It's magical, but he doesn't know how.
Maybe it's got magical properties to look like a muggle rock?
He doesn't know what it's meant to do; maybe it's meant to do nothing?
It's nothing special and nothing but a rock.
It's just a rock.
The other half of Regulus's spare time is spent researching the Dark Marks, how they're created, and more importantly, how to remove them.
He's semi-tempted to cut off his arm as well and then grow it back when the skele grow is ready, but firstly, he doesn't even know if his leg is going to grow back, and secondly, he really doesn't want to have to live without half of his limbs for another four weeks.
He also doubts that removing the mark would be that easy; he's sure Voldemort covered all of his bases to minimise the chances of betrayal by his followers. He's certain there is an extremely harsh punishment followed by a painful and unavoidable death if anybody tries.
Especially given his recent experiences with the cave and the curse where he literally watched himself decompose, he is unwilling to have another brush with death in such a short time period; he'll have to wait until the skele grow is ready and find a Death Eater that he doesn't care whether they live or die to test it on.
Fortunately, that list consists of practically every Death Eater except Evan and Barty, which will make things simple.
For the most part, though, the Dark Mark seems to be an original piece of magic which means that Regulus will also have to figure out how to create it and mimic it before he figures out how to remove it.
Literature on ink and its magical properties and the process of tattooing are easy to find; however, there is almost nothing on tattoos that connect people to each other and can be used to communicate as well as having a trigger when someone tries to remove it. So, Regulus has a lot of work to do.
Despite the intensity of his research on the dark mark, he's yet to make any significant progress.
The skele grow potion is finally finished in late October, and in the past week especially, Regulus has been unbearably restless as the prospect of having his leg back bubbles happily in the cauldron he prays he hasn't fucked up.
If it doesn't work, Regulus is going to scream.
The other problem with the skele grow is that it can't be mixed with any other potions, which means that Regulus has to detox from the pain potions he's been using to survive for the past 6 weeks.
He also can't just take dreamless sleep because that is also a potion, so when the skele grow is finished, he pours the correct dosage for growing back an entire leg in the flask, stores the rest away that he hopefully never has to use on himself again, and then puts the flask on his bedside table and makes himself a timer that hovers above his bed and counts down from 24 hours.
Regulus goes to write a poem, but after an hour, the pain is making it hard to concentrate, and after two, his eyes are watering too much to see the ink on the page.
He's only written two lines.
I see the light at the end of the tunnel,
is it an angel or merely the devil with a torch?
Sleep is out of the question, but by the fifth hour, Regulus is eyeing his headboard and wondering if he should slam his head against it to reach the blissful escape of unconsciousness.
Between the tenth and sixteenth hour, he passes out from the pain, and as the seventeenth hour passes into the eighteenth, he swears the pain has tripled.
The nineteenth and twentieth hours are spent sobbing helplessly, and the twenty-first and twenty-second are spent shaking with no tears left to cry.
There's a part of him that wants to call his brother for help, and the fact that he knows that Sirius would probably drop everything to be there for him, despite everything, is the only reason that he doesn't call him at all.
The further away from Regulus he is, the safer he is.
The twenty-third hour seems to last twenty-three years, and the twenty-fourth hour is spent watching the golden numbers above him tick down, minute by minute, second by second, as they get closer to zero.
At 5 minutes to go, Regulus sits up.
At 2 minutes to go, he drags himself to the edge of the bed.
At 30 seconds to go, he grabs the flask with shaky hands.
At 5 seconds to go, he brings it to his lips.
The second the clock hits zero, Regulus is chugging the potion down like his life depends on it, too far gone into pain and exhaustion fuelled delirium to notice the bitter, unpalatable taste.
The skele grow doesn't make the pain worse per se; it's just a different kind of prickly pain, like he's got pins and needles down all the way down the leg he doesn't have. It's uncomfortable at best and painful at worst, it doesn't compare in the slightest to the pain that came when he had no leg at all, so he finds it within himself to succumb to the fatigue thrumming through his bones and drift off to sleep.
He wakes up after 6 hours to see the outline of a leg that seems to just be a long sock of skin without any bones, nerves or muscles in it, and Regulus once again wants to throw up. Instead, he merely accioes a nerve regeneration draught, another blood replenishing potion, and glances longingly at the pain potion and the dreamless sleep that he knows he can't take until the skele grow has run its course.
Again, he's lucky to simply drift off for a few hours until the pins and needles flood through his entire body, leaving his body to tingle in suspense for something that never comes; it's simply a part of the process that Regulus endures until everything stops suddenly and Regulus looks up to see that he has two legs again.
He grabs his duvet, drops it unceremoniously over himself, and can't help but smile at the fact that he can feel the cotton and silk blend sheets resting on his calf. A sense of euphoria floods through him as he rolls his ankle and hears it click; usually, this would earn a grimace, but now he's just grateful to have bones to grate against each other at all.
He takes a quick lap around the room, slightly unsteady, having become unused to balancing all his weight on his own without a cane. However, he makes his way back to his bed where he rechecks the wards, adds a few more layers just in case and then swallows down the entire vial he owns of dreamless sleep.
It's 34 hours' worth of sleep, nearly triple the recommended dose, but Regulus would willingly fight anybody who thinks he doesn't deserve it.
So, without having any aching pains in his leg for the first time in weeks and rather ridiculously enjoying the sensation of having two legs again, the potion kicks in, and Regulus sleeps solidly and without interruptions for almost a day and a half.
When he wakes up, he walks around his tent again to get used to having his limbs back, and he can't help himself from casting a minor cutting hex on his palm and watching himself bleed. Eventually, he has to sit down, out of breath from laughing incredulously because it's like the past 7 weeks never happened at all.
Regulus basks in the stinging of the pain in his hand and watches as his blood continues to drip down his lifeline on his palm and curl around his wrist like a ceremonious crimson bracelet.
There's no inscription on it, but if his blood could be engraved, Regulus knows exactly what it would say.
You're alive.
Inferi can't bleed, and neither can Regulus if his flesh has decomposed, but now he is.
He's bleeding, and he loves it.
It's the only way he can prove that he's still alive.
His leg has returned, he's still alive despite everything, and he's no more at risk of spontaneously decomposing than anyone else, so Regulus lays back on the couch cushions and laughs and laughs and laughs.
Because he's alive.
He's gotten further in taking down Voldemort in 5 months than any witch or wizard ever has; if Voldemort made 7 horcruxes, then he's over a quarter of the way there.
2 down, no more than 5 to go.
Notes:
Regulus is a snobby pretentious prat at all times
Him getting offended and thinking the bartender is calling him 51 and him judging Voldemorts ring like his life depends on it? The characterisation is immaculate and you cannot change my mind.