The water is dark, almost black, in the low light of the cave. Still, he catches glimpses of pale and bloated skin beneath the still water, and knows that to break that unquiet calm will be the death of him. His hands shake, and he winds them tighter around the fine crafted deception to still them. He is afraid, as afraid as he has ever been, and this defiance does not come easy to him. He has never had Sirius's easy courage, Bellatrix's wild fearlessness. But he knows with cold certainty that this is what is right, and so, though his hands tremble, and he is frightened, and he wishes nothing more than to turn and flee from cruel truths and personal duty, Regulus Black simply speaks some words of comfort to his quivering servant, and waits for the boat to arrive at its Stygian harbour.
o0O0o
He hates the house, down to all of its parts. He hates its furnishings, opulent and ruined. he hates its rooms, grand and desolate. He hates the secrets hidden in its walls, and the histories scratched in its floors. He hates the memories it holds. He wants nothing more than to leave, to go, to run and leave the manor to its slow dereliction. But he stays, because Dumbledore tells him to, and because Harry would want him to, and because The Order needs him to (or so he's told at least; that last one he never quite manages to believe). He hates it though. Hates it more than almost anything (but for Peter, and Voldemort, and his prison, and its wardens).
He stays, and waits, and hopes that he might leave someday soon (and nothing terrifies him more than the though that he might not; that he might live the rest his live beneath its shadowed roof, and, even free of Azkaban, still manage to die in a cage).
It's an easy choice in the end. James's son is in danger, and The Order needs any help it can get, and he finally has a reason, a good reason, to leave the evil old house and its barbed memories behind. His hands tremble as disapparates, from worry, from fear, from a nervous excitement he hasn't felt for some 13 years. This is what's right, he tells himself, and, armoured in that certainty, Sirius Black takes the field.
o0O0o
For as long as she cares to remember, the thrill of the duel has held high prominence in the temple of her heart. On the rare occasions when she self reflects, she considers it to be the risk that allures her so. Always, there is the chance of injury, defeat, or death. All the world suspended on a moments breath, a quick motion, a word.
Molly Weasely howls with a mother fury, and Bellatrix Lestrange laughs as she rolls the dice once more.
o0O0o
She is spared Azkaban in the end. not, to her chagrin, due to any last minute cunning or long standing scheme, but rather the weary plea of 17 year old boy with war hardened eyes. She never quite understands why he does it; nor does she ever feel particularly grateful. By day, she lives with knowledge that her son will spend what's left of his youth forgetting the best parts of it. That her husband will die a broken shell.
It's only on rare occasions when she startles awake late at night in her empty manor, a cry unvoiced in her throat and hands clutching at the cold flesh of futures that might have been, that she breaks, and sobs, and is more thankful for the future that is than she can ever say.
o0O0o
It is the silence that hurts the most. She has lived her life surrounded by noise: the shouts and rantings of those bitter early years, the cheerful common bustle of her school, the tender sounds of youthful matrimony, the loving sounds of another's childhood (different, so different to her own, but its equal in cacophony if nothing else), and the rising clamour of a graceless adolescence. The quiet moments have always stretched few and far between, and she treasured them for their rarity.
And on calm summer days, when Teddy is gone off with his godfather on some fresh adventure and the house falls to a perfect quiet, Andromeda Tonks sits alone on the old couch in the parlour, and tries desperately not to drown.