こんにちは。More words for you all. Sorry it's super short but did you really want the boring filler to be stretched out any longer? I'm excited for the plot, which should get some major payoff next chapter .

When Sirius first came to, he first saw that the world was on fire. Before he even opened his eyelids, he could feel the heat and sense the brightness that scorched the night. Everything was orange and red.

Second Sirius noticed that he was left completely alone, flat on his back on the crackling lawn. He staggered into an upright position and saw no one. To his left, just barely audible over the snaps of the enormous fire and the roars of the oceans waves, he heard the voices. They had moved to the beach, and left him unattended because he had been stunned. Why, though, had he woken up? You couldn't exactly throw off a stunning spell…

With a start, Sirius felt something cold and slick moving under his shirt. A long, black garter snake uncoiled itself from his waist and made off towards the beach. Panting, Sirius stood up and watched it go.

Sirius's first instinct was to apparate away, back to the ministry where he could summon help for his parents and cousins. He almost left, but the tingling he felt along his waistline where the snake had touched him lingered…he touched a hand to his stomach.

Where was Regulus?

The path to the beach was steep. Sirius perched himself at the edge and stared hard down at the shoreline. There was enough light from his flaming home to see the searching.

"He can't have gone far!" a woman cried, sending jets of light from her wand to illuminate the darkened sand dunes.

"He's here. He can't have apparated; there's no way he's certified," another insisted. "Someone get back to Black, make sure he doesn't slip past us and go wake him up!"

Sirius crept out of sight. So Regulus was hidden somewhere, he told himself. Whether Regulus was involved with any of these people or not, they would kill his brother if they found him…Sirius was running out of time. He didn't know how long he'd been out—long enough for someone to start a fire—or what the status at Grimmauld Place was. Should he stay and try to secure Regulus's safety, or risk Regulus to get help for everyone else, presuming they were any of them still alive.

"Shit," he muttered, dashing around the manor towards its back garden. With more snark than was maybe necessary, his mind pointed out to him how he didn't seem to care that his entire home was turning rapidly to ashes. There was nothing for him in that mansion anyway. The belongings in his room, the priceless paintings in the den, the house elves in the cellar…none of it meant anything to him.

"Regulus?" he called softly, very much aware of the intense heat around him as it scorched his hair and set the ends of his robes smoldering. He knew he had only a few seconds more before someone noticed his body was not lying obediently where it had been.

Frustrated, Sirius raked a hand through his singing hair. There really weren't that many places to hide on the property that weren't already half incinerated, and the Phoenix earlier had been right; Regulus was not certified to Apparate. Permission to utilize that kind of magic needed to be given by Voldemort himself. Sirius's earlier double Apparation with his brother had probably already been tracked and catalogued by the Carrows—as was one of their many jobs—and he imagined he'd have to do some smooth talking to explain everything to his superiors later on…

…if there was a later on.

"Regulus, I don't fucking have time for this," he hissed. "Now come out so I can beat the shit out of you and then get us both out of here."

A slight ruffling sounded from behind him. Sirius whirled around and saw the air in front of him shimmer a little as the heat waves rippled, but then the air started to shudder more than was natural even for a fire this big, and soon a shape materialized. From where before had been empty space, Regulus Black appeared, hanging his head and looking up timidly at his brother from behind ash-laden bangs.

Sirius gaped and then immediately set into a volley of coughing, smog clogging up his lungs. "Where did you learn to do that?" he demanded, momentarily forgetting the danger they were in.

"From Bella," Regulus admitted quietly, and Sirius felt a sudden pang at the mention of his cousin. Bellatrix had truly been a remarkable wizard, but now she was dead, and would never have the chance to teach Regulus anything more. A tiny amount of jealous anger stormed up Sirius's throat and into his brain as well, though, just what had Bellatrix been doing spending time with Regulus? She didn't like him much more than Sirius did…

"Oh really? And what had she been smoking that made hanging out with you seem like an enjoyable idea?" he scoffed before he could stop himself. Regulus only looked away.

"She's gone," he mused, eyes on the ashy sky.

An impotent yell filtered around the house and directly into Sirius's ears.

"And so are we if we don't move," he said. He grabbed Regulus by the forearm.

"Wait!" Regulus cried.

"What?" Sirius asked out of pure reflex.

"Conjure bones, light them on fire. Make them think we're dead."

Sirius took an instant to really stare at his brother. He had the creeping feeling that when Regulus said "them" he meant not just the Phoenix members, but perhaps the entire world as well.

"Good idea," he nodded, and proceeded to do just that. He hadn't the energy to conjure from nothing, so he summoned the dead house elves from the depths of the house. They appeared, sprawled out and smoking, face down on the lawn. Sirius transfigured them larger, gave them dark hair and human features, and slid off his robes and Regulus's shirt. Clothing, after all, couldn't be conjured. When the bodies looked enough like him and his brother, he shot one final jet of fire at them for good measure, and then pulled Regulus to his chest. His fingers tingled as they connected with the bare skin on the back of Regulus's shoulder.

"Deep breath," he commanded, and Regulus obeyed.

They disappeared in a crackle of flames just before the first of their enemy rounded the corner of the house.

Sirius and Regulus landed with a clatter in a completely random location. Sirius's mind had been too scattershot to think reliably of a destination, and so they had ended up in a back alleyway behind what looked to be an Italian restaurant. Sirius, feeling weak in the knees from the harsh impact with the concrete, pushed his brother out to arms length to inspect him. Regulus looked like he'd been pulled from an oven and then struck with a blunt object, but everything was still attached. Sirius supposed he was immensely lucky he hadn't splinched half his brother off.

"Good to see you're in one piece," he said tonelessly. He needed to keep moving quickly. Partly to get to what remained of his family, and partly to distract himself from his brother. Regulus was the closest to naked Sirius had seen him in years and he just wanted to…touch. "Now get ready to go again, we need to get to the Ministry and alert the authorities."

Regulus shook his head. "I…I can't do it again," he coughed into his open hand; his palm came away grey with soot.

"Fine," Sirius snapped immediately. He didn't have time for this. "Then stay here, I don't care! I'm going back to help our parents. Can I trust you to stay put?"

Regulus slumped against the wall. Sirius cursed and pulled his wand back out. With a flourish he demolished the back door to the restaurant, and dragged Regulus inside by his hair. The alarm started to sound, but Sirius silenced it with a sharp jab of his wand.

"There," he tossed Regulus into a booth. "Sit. And stay. I'm going now. Those bastards who were waiting to ambush us at my house will probably have regrouped with the others by now. I need to move quickly."

Yet for all the urge Sirius felt to leave, something pulled him back. A small tickling was poking at his chest and now that his life was not in imminent danger, he found himself wondering…

"Regulus?" he barked suddenly. Regulus, who had started to lay down in the booth, shot back up at his brother's harsh tone.

"Yes?" he asked.

Sirius sauntered up very close to Regulus looked down at him. Regulus met his gaze a little hesitantly. "Would you like to explain to me exactly how you seemed to know they would be at my manor?"

Regulus shook his head. "I don't know what—"

"Uh-uh," Sirius grabbed him by the hair to stop his head shaking. "You knew. You fucking knew because you were telling me not to go there. Begging me. And while we're at it, perhaps you would also like to elaborate on your behavior back home. What was with all the guilt, Regulus, when you were telling me to leave you behind at Grimmauld?"

Regulus licked his greyed lips and coughed again.

"You're the one who fucking sent them," Sirius said quietly. "You traded them the warding blueprints to the house, and the location of my manor for that stupid badge I caught you with earlier. The one you fucking threw away." The sudden realization that Regulus had sold his family out for something he hadn't even wanted enraged Sirius past his boiling point.

"It's not like that!" Regulus yelled suddenly. "I didn't know what they were going to do!"

Sirius bore down on his brother instantly. With no thought at all, he slammed Regulus face first into the table. There was a crunch and a thud and a river of blood swarmed down to the floor. "Oh really?" Sirius screamed. "You didn't know what you were doing?"

Regulus sprang back upright and clutched at his mouth and nose. He let out a low, keening scream. "She said they weren't going to hurt you!" he sputtered through blood and chunks of skin. The impact had sent his front teeth straight though his upper lip.

"Who?"

"Lily, the lady in charge of—"

"Bella and Rabastan are dead," Sirius screamed, suddenly no longer interested in things such as names. "And who knows who else by now, because you wanted to play friends with the rebels?"

Regulus shook his head, hands still clamped over his face like it was the only thing keeping his nose attached. Sirius took hold of his neck and Regulus was forced to lower his hands in an attempt to free himself from his brother's grip. His nose was streaming blood and positioned much too far to the left.

"Why?" Sirius raged, shaking Regulus like a particularly noisy baby. "What would possess you to do this?"

"I didn't know what else to do," he repeated. "They said they'd come for us either way, if I let them in then..."

Sirius wasn't really listening. Regulus's already ash grey face was turning even paler without any oxygen.

"You murdered your entire family for a goddam bird pendant that you didn't. Even. Want," he hissed again. "Or did they give you something else? Offer you something more?"

Regulus's eyes gave him all the answer he needed. There was more to this story. Sirius loosened his grip to let his brother breath and explain.

Regulus gasped and spat out blood and mucus all over Sirius's wrists. He hiccupped once. "Th—they promised I could keep you!"

Sirius panted hard, but otherwise didn't speak. He looked at Regulus intently and so his little brother continued pathetically, "They said it would be easy to take off during all the commotion and have nobody notice us gone."

"You expect me to believe a word you're saying you little traitor?"

"I'm not a traitor," Regulus murmured.

"Oh really? Did you not care at all for Bella or Rabastan, or our parents for that matter?"

"Not as much as I care about you!" Regulus insisted. "And they said they weren't going to kill anyone…"

Sirius shook his head. "Don't waste your last breaths," he hissed. "You were fucked up from the start. I can't believe Mother and Father thought it was a good idea to keep you. Don't you try and tell me you had noble intentions!"

Regulus took a deep, stuttering breath. He looked close to passing out. "I wanted you to go away with me."

"What?"

"The cards said—"

"Fuck your tarot cards, Regulus," Sirius shouted. "No tea leaves, no crystal ball, none of that nonsense! You can't explain this away with any of your fucking childish hobbies." He turned on his heel to leave, but Regulus reached out to him.

Sirius flung him back. "Get away from me," he insisted. "Regulus, I don't ever want to see you again. Understand that if you were anyone else you would be dead where you sit, but you're my brother and I promised Father I'd get you out of Grimmauld Place alive. If you ever come near me again, though, all bets are off. I will kill you."

Sirius looked at his brother with the utmost honesty in his eyes.

"My cards aren't ever wrong, Sirius," Regulus whispered, and there was a deranged fierceness alight in his eyes that Sirius desperately wished he was surprised to see. It were as though, to Regulus, the world did truly consist solely of himself and Sirius. "And they said to me—"

"I don't care," said Sirius, and he Apparated away straight to his office at the Ministry. He never wanted to see Regulus Black again. He was scared of what his brother had done, he was scared of what his brother might do, and he was terrified of how quickly he might forgive him.

Sirius took a deep breath and steeled himself. All that was left to do now was pick up the pieces of his shattered family, and rehearse what he was going to say to his parents, if they were even still breathing.

Surrounded by his familiar knick-knacks, Sirius felt himself calm ever so slightly. Here was his work desk, his calendar, his clear-blue paperweight… His black work-owl sat poised in her cage next to his desk chair like she did every day, waiting for the next work memo of business letter to need sending.

Sirius pushed his office door open and leaned into the hallway.

There wasn't a soul to be found in this wing of the Ministry. Its normally bustling corridor was still and silent; there were half empty coffee mugs sitting on the office desk next door. Everyone must have been called out to Grimmauld Sirius mused. Or at the very least they had be swept up in the commotion and sent out to commence damage control. How much time had actually passed since he'd tossed his brother out his bedroom window? The clock on his wall told him no more than fifteen minutes. Had all this truly happened in a quarter of an hour?

His owl keened dolefully, ruffling her feathers.

"Hush, Mida," Sirius said absent-mindedly.

Yet fifteen minutes was also a very long time, and the longer he stayed away, the harder Sirius was finding it to go back home. He sat down in his spinning office chair. There was no need for him to sound the alarm now, someone already had. Most likely one of the built-in security mechanisms back at the house, or else one of those maniacs had started another fire.

Probably best to leave the fighting and medical care to the professionals, anyway. Sirius had little practical experience in such matters. There was a reason he signed the Dark Lord's paperwork, because he simply wasn't much of a hands-on person. Medical business grossed him out and despite his alarming tendency to smash his brother's face and throw his wife across the bedroom, he wasn't a particularly violent person.

Narcissa…Sirius groaned softly. What a hell his life would be if she survived, if she found out what Regulus had done. She'd blame Sirius for everything, and surely see that Regulus was carted back off to the mental ward on Azkaban for good this time. Sirius found he didn't much like that idea. Regulus had always come back odd, and somehow even more withdrawn after every stay on that island.

He remembered Regulus's most recent stay, shortly after his fifteenth birthday, where he had been sectioned for two months after their father been unnerved by some sketches he'd found in his youngest son's bedroom. The rare, pleading look Regulus had sent to him, begging for some kind of intervention had been easy enough for Sirius to dismiss, but the haunted, worn-out expression he'd borne upon his return had been harder to shake.

Sirius had always meant to approach the subject of Regulus's treatments with his parents but…there had never seemed a good time. Was it at least in part his fault Regulus was insane?

Slowly, Sirius lifted his feet onto his desk. He wondered if the surviving Phoenix members at Grimmauld had been captured or killed, and if anyone had stopped by the remains of his manner yet.

His bird cooed again. He looked up at her sharply, whereupon he noticed the family photo he had hanging on the wall near the door. There he stood, smiling a stony smile and standing perfectly poised next to his father, mother, wife and brother. Everyone was positioned correctly: the younger child in front, bookended by the two women with the father and oldest son looking regally on from behind them. Narcissa smiled the most, Orion the least…it was a standard family photo.

And that's when an uncomfortable truth hit Sirius like a bludger. He wasn't angry with Regulus for inadvertently harming his family. He was angry with him for destroying Sirius's sense of normalcy, for throwing him headfirst into the unknown. He had screamed at Regulus for being uncaring, but it was he who felt no grief over his family. He who thought of their deaths not as sickening tragedies, but as inconveniences to him and his life. How much paperwork was he going to have to fill out? Who would take care of his finances for him? (For his parents had always controlled his life in that regard). How much was Narcissa going to complain, should she survive? Would the Dark Lord reprimand him for his lack of vigilance and bravery?

A powerful fear took hold of Sirius at that thought—the Dark Lord. This was going to upset his standing. The Order of the Phoenix had caused considerable damage this time, and Sirius was not liking the looks of being one of the sole survivors of this incident.

What was it Regulus had said mere moments ago? They said it would be easy to take off during all the commotion and have nobody notice us gone.

He had left those altered corpses at the mansion…unless he chose to reveal otherwise, Sirius Black was dead to the wizarding world!

He could leave, go wherever he wanted, do whatever he wanted…or he could try and patch up his life in London. Sirius weighed his options in his head. As frightened as he was by the unknown, an adventure of this sorts had an enormous appeal to him, and, as he smugly told himself, if it didn't work out, couldn't he always come back later? Confess he'd been hiding for his and his Master's safety? Something along those lines…

Sirius swept himself back up and left his office. Rarely was he this impulsive—or perhaps 'never' would be a better word—but this felt right. It was time to have some actual agency in his life.

Sirius's next step was more complicated. He needed to get Regulus. Oh, he was still hopelessly enraged with his brother, but that was subject to change. And there was still the more pressing issue that if Regulus were to be noticed, then so too would everyone know Sirius was alive as well. There was some pride involved as well. Regulus Black had ruined all but one piece of Sirius's life, destroyed all his family save for one member: himself. And fuck all if Sirius wasn't going to reclaim his sole remaining piece of normalcy before fleeing this dismal country.

Yet he had no way to track down his brother. He had no idea where exactly it was that he had left the kid, and no way to communicate with him. The best he could hope for was to head Regulus off wherever he was likely to go next.

If Regulus was going to be going anywhere at all. Sirius had left him in pretty bad shape and in all honestly he was probably lying unconscious in that Italian Restaurant right now. Sirius set off briskly down the third-floor hallway, contemplating how to regroup.

First things first, he needed to change his appearance. It hurt him to do so, because if Sirius Black was anything it was vain, but it was a necessary evil. He slipped down a stairwell and into one of the Ministry's lower labs. He quickly closed the curtains on the lone window—not that there was anyone around outside to see him, but who knew which dilapidated apartment complexes might still have living residents peeking out their windows?—and got to work.

He didn't dare use his own wand. Voldemort kept extensive records of his wizards' active levels of magic usage, and he needed to see that Sirius had stopped using his wand tonight. No, potions it was. He should be able to do this without arousing suspicions about missing ingredients, he had authority to alter the labs inventory records, after all.

In the end, he didn't look much different. There wasn't time for a complete biological overhaul, and he was probably less conspicuous like this anyway. The blonde hair he'd had to give himself aggravated him, though; he looked like a Malfoy.

He walked confidently out of the Ministry, running into perhaps three or four people total, none of whom seemed to recognize him.

"Excuse me!" yelled a DoM employee as she collided with him near the exit. "I'm sorry, been called out, you know!"

Similarly, the main secretary was in too much of a hectic, work buzz to pay him much mind. He strolled right past the man and he didn't even look up from the sea of papers continually spawning in and around his desk.

"Perfect time for an attack, really," Sirius pondered. The Dark Lord had downsized the Ministry greatly in recent years, understandably wanting only those he deemed trustworthy to hold any kind of power. Yet in times like these, it meant damn near the whole government could be called out when something important was going on. Had the order been thinking, they would have staged the commotion at Grimmauld, and then used the weakened security to sneak into the Ministry itself.

"I would have made a great rebel," he said with a sideways grin before pushing open wide the front doors and strolling confidently outside into the night.

Sirius spent the night in a muggle hotel, feeling slightly depressed. He was starting to really tear himself up over Regulus and he wasn't sure why.

He can take care of himself, he thought as he stretched out over the dingy bed, clothing still firmly on because no way was his bare skin touching those sheets any more than was necessary. At least until I can get ahold of him.

Promises, promises.

Sirius rolled onto his side and closed his eyes. For the past few hours, his Dark Mark had been aching; it clawed and worked its way around his forearm and wrist, begging him to take note, to send some kind of response. Sirius ignored it. Voldemort was double checking, wanting to think that maybe the dead body at the mansion wasn't his after all. His Sirius had never lied to him before…

Sirius would need to avoid performing any magic for a while, at least until he could get a wand with a new signature, one that wouldn't be tracked, which would be tricky in that it would have to be purchased outside the U.K. Regulus would need one, too. Sirius frowned. Regulus had modified his current wand many times over himself, and would surely put up a fuss when Sirius destroyed it, but that was something he'd have to worry about later. At the moment, he dug his nails into his palms, trying to offset the pain in his arm.

His former life, had it been a life at all, was over.

Sirius blew out the candle and let its smoke syphon into his lungs while he slept. Eyes closed he didn't notice the golden garter snake carved into the lamp-stand wriggle free a few inches and whip its head around to stare at him intently, watching over him carefully in the dark.