Chapter 42: How much I hated you

The gates opened with barely a sound onto the Black domain, and Sirius glanced at both his cousins.

"A particular reason you didn't go home, Andromeda?"

The kindest of the two sisters present threw a pointed look towards the ghost by Sirius' other side.

Bellatrix squinted and hovered slowly away.

"What?"

Andromeda's eyebrows shot up.

"We need to have a... conversation, you and I, Bella. On the matter of family endangering family. I've been putting it off, because I was happy that I could finally talk with you without being damned into next week, but Narcissa and Sirius' little feud made it clear that we do need to talk about it."

The ghost made a face – one that looked further and further away as she discreetly drifted off, most likely in order to evade the coming conversation.

Sirius rolled his eyes.

"Bella. Stay with your sister and talk it out."

Bellatrix looked absolutely betrayed – in other words, miffed – as his words forced her to drift back to them. Sirius honestly didn't give a damn – she'd brought it upon herself with both her past actions and her lack of present cooperation.

Black Manor was only a hundred yards away when a raven flew out of one of the trees and affectionately landed on Sirius' left shoulder looking to be petted.

"Oh, Harbinger!"

As the wizard started doing exactly what the bird wanted – and, from his cousins' point of view, being unnecessarily tenebrous about it – his smile grew with a simple joy they'd rarely seen from him, no matter the decade.

In fact, it was usually when there were animals around, Andromeda mused.

"...I'd forgotten how popular you are with animals."

Sirius's eyes narrowed, and he almost got defensive – but his personal ghost snapped her fingers:

"True, true, there was, uh... Uncle Alphard brought back that baby snake from Mexico when you were three, and it just loved you so much he let you keep it! What did you call it, already?"

Sirius pinched his lips as he answered, wary – and still petting the raven.

"Scallywag. She was a Mexican black kingsnake and my best friend until Hogwarts. Scallywag never had opinions about what was proper or not, her."

The insinuation went right above Bella's head as she nodded:

"Yes, that's it. Scallywag, the black snake clinging to our baby cousin! For a while Mom wondered if you hadn't somehow been born a parselmouth, but by the next year you were also making friends with all the hounds on the estate, birds came to look at you, cawing and chirping in the background, whenever your parents took you outside. Circe, I think Mom's cat liked you better than he did her!"

Sirius sniffed, with the feeling that he was being accused of something, somehow.

"At least animals like me! You only ever got two cats to not bristle up at your approach, Bellatrix."

"You exaggerate, there were also the toads. Those never cared about my presence or lack thereof."

Andromeda winced and shook her head.

"Right. I'm not sure that's much better, Bella. Toads rarely care about anything. In fact, it'd have probably been... worrying... if you'd scared away the toads too. That being said, Sirius, Harbinger?"

Her cousin immediately focused back on the raven, reaching into his robes' pockets for treats.

"The most affectionate bird out there! And by that, I mean the estate, of course. He started turning up almost every morning on my balcony, so he got himself a name and a job. He's extremely suspicious of all things owl-related, you see, so whenever another owl than the Great Owlington flies into the domain, Harbinger comes and gets me. Even if I'm not here when a letter arrives, I always know that I need to stop by the owlery. He also pesters Sterhn when there are people at the gates, so yeah, he's a harbinger of all visitors."

The raven rubbed its head against Sirius and took to the sky.

The wizard watched him for a moment, then looked back at his cousins:

"Speaking of which, I obviously have mail, so... I'm letting you to your past-fueled discussion!"

Sirius disappeared into the manor about as fast as Harbinger had taken to the sky, leaving the sisters alone – and free to have an emotionally-taxing conversation.

...Bellatrix would curse him for that if she still had access to her old powers – but ghosts weren't witches and wizards anymore, not in terms of magic – and if it would have helped in any way.

Meda was set on talking about those months back after the dar... after Voldemort's disappearance. Sirius interfering might have pushed it back, but it would have happened anyway.

The ghost sighed loudly and reluctantly focused on her younger sister:

"...Alright. I'm here. Say your piece, I suppose."

Andromeda looked at her in silence for a while before shaking her head and sitting on the pond's stone edging.

Bellatrix followed her, perplexed.

Her sister summoned a handful of small pebbles from the border of the alley.

"Do you know how many times I wished you dead, by 1982?"

Before Bella could answer, Andromeda had thrown a pebble as hard as possible across the pond, making it ricochet in the most elegant – and vaguely intimidating – way the ghost had ever seen. The pebble actually touched the other side of the edging, before bouncing back into the water.

Bellatrix grimaced.

"I probably don't want to know?"

Meda wanting her dead was better than her sister wanting to kill her herself – but that was about it, the ghost couldn't find much else in terms of positivity in her sister's words.

Of course, she'd brought it upon herself – she'd made those choices, there was no shirking the consequences.

Andromeda didn't even pretend to care about her question, which was probably for the better.

"You sent a howler to my wedding. It wasn't enough that Uncle Alphard was the only one to show up, that our parents and grandparents and Aunt Walburga and Cissy pretended I didn't even exist, but you, you... You had to go and scream your rage without even bothering to come yourself."

Bella winced, thinking she'd better keep quiet, rather than try and say anything that would sound like a justification – Andromeda sounded like she was going to make a list, anyway.

But the silence grew long and unpleasant, and when she glanced over, she found her sister staring at her, waiting for something.

Right. Blacks. None of them cared much for the usual conventions, so there was no point treating Meda like an outsider.

"I considered showing up and cursing everyone, especially the groom. After all, if I scared him off, maybe you'd have chosen someone more... respectable... next. Someone the rest of the family could have tolerated."

Andromeda closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

"Right. Glad you didn't do that, then. I'm not sure it'd have deterred Ted, anyway, but what's certain is that it would have been an ever bigger mess on my wedding day."

"...Still, sorry for what I said in that howler."

"Uncle Alphard burned it to ashes the moment we recognized your voice. I don't know, and don't want to know what you said. I'm just saying that was the first time I truly hated you."

This time her sister wasn't waiting for a comment on her part.

"Then there was Shery Dodahm's murder, in 1976. I'd been in charge of her because of muggleborn duty for seven years, and she'd worked terribly hard to be accepted into the Academe for dimensional magic classes. She wanted to travel the whole world, setting up impossible places for wizarding governments and individual clients. She'd finally gotten a positive response, too, and she'd gone to the first classes. She'd written to share the news. And by mid-October I was reading about her death in the Daily Prophet. I'd just started suspecting that you had joined the Death Eaters, and that girl I'd protected all through Hogwarts from students like you was murdered. For all I knew, you'd done it yourself. Even if you didn't..."

Bellatrix had no recollection of a Dodahm girl, but that didn't mean much. She'd given as much intel as she could to the Auror Office, after Sirius' trial, but still. Sometimes she'd known the names of her victims, sometimes she'd simply accompanied another Death Eater who'd decided upon a target, sometimes they'd done raids and only learned about all the victims in the newspaper.

Besides, even if she hadn't killed that muggleborn herself, there had been others. It might not have been that girl – but there was a non-negligible chance that she'd killed – or tortured, or maimed – at least one person her sister knew personally.

Andromeda threw a third pebble across the pond.

"After that, there were others, of course. I've wondered a great many times if you were involved in whatever last act of terror had happened. There was that time in 1977 when you took part in a raid in Bontfelin and everyone clearly saw you killing a man, but you got away with it because you weren't wearing your Death Eater garb and claimed you'd mistaken him for one of the attackers. Or April 1980, when you were finally and officially recognized as a Death Eater because a classmate of yours had recognized your voice as he'd been in the middle of dictating a howler when the attack on his neighbors happened."

Ah, that... Needless to say, Bella hadn't liked being outed at all – even if she'd already had a lot of suspicions on her back since 1977 – and that classmate hadn't survived long. She knew from her little interviews with the aurors that they hadn't found Goardy's body until last month, thanks to her confession.

Being identified because the neighbor had been screaming at a piece of paper when she'd gone and taunted her victims was not a moment she was proud of, even if you didn't take into account all the other reasons why she shouldn't be proud of it.

"After that day... We do look alike, you and me. Not enough for people who know us to get it wrong, but random people in the street? Aurors who were looking for you and made a first-glance mistake? Three, four times a month for two years, I got accused of your atrocities, and that's not taking into account all the times it wasn't a mistake, the times people realized we were sisters and thought I was just like you."

...Had Bellatrix still been who she used to be, she would be thinking that it served her sister right – for trying to get away, to be different, to sully everything they were and should have been. She'd thought exactly that, when Sirius had been thrown in Azkaban the moment he'd made a – rather catastrophic – miscalculation.

"That's what Sirius was talking about with Narcissa, earlier, isn't it? When he said the family had made it so easy to believe that he'd go and betray and murder?"

"Yes, that's exactly the same thing. Even when you weren't there, you still made everything harder for me and for my family."

A fourth pebble – but Meda wasn't saying anything more.

The ghost frowned and looked away from the water – and on it her reflection, blurry, barely there, a few lines of greyed light indicating her presence and nothing more – to watch her younger sister.

Andromeda was biting her lower lip, staring into the pond just as Bellatrix had been doing.

She looked pensive, a bit angry, too – and given the subject of their conversation, that wasn't unexpected – but she wasn't looking at Bella at all.

"The next ones are the worst, still."

Bellatrix almost asked – then she reached an obvious conclusion.

She'd been outed as a Death Eater in April 1980. The events that could follow in this line of thinking – about how she'd hurt her sister, over and over again – were easy to guess.

"First, there was Regulus. The moment he disappeared, I knew it was because of you. I wasn't certain whether you'd involved him and that had gotten him killed, or he'd said he couldn't do it and you'd killed him yourself, but either way... That boy was always soft and you never managed to see it. So when he died, when we all thought he died... I knew you were to blame."

Bellatrix almost let her thoughts wander to the man – Regulus had grown up, hadn't he? A father and a husband in his own right, now – who had to be somewhere in the manor. She had no idea what game they were playing, him and Sirius, but something was going on. She could tell – lies, memories, secrets – even if they weren't telling her all the details.

Soulless-and-freaky-Sirius had convinced everyone – or at least had made it the most obvious conclusion for them to reach – that Regulus had little to no memories of the past, and while there was an obvious reason for that – former Death Eater, hello – Bella just knew there was something else behind it.

Something she wasn't being trusted with.

Not that it was surprising.

But it wasn't the time to wonder about that. It was a conversation about how many times Bellatrix's little sister had wished her dead. It was about airing out grievances.

This particular one was about the fact that Bella had gotten her youngest cousin killed.

"...You were right. I'm... I'm the one who told Regulus about the Death Eaters first, and he came to me when he made his choice. And, the worst, there... He knew not to come to me when he changed his mind. I never saw that he couldn't do it, and I wouldn't have listened if he'd come to me. I think I wanted someone like Sirius fighting with me, and since Sirius had gone to the other side..."

Meda snorted – unkind, bitter:

"You didn't stop to think that Regulus was nothing like his brother, at least for those things."

She threw a fifth pebble that went too far up and didn't even touch the water, ending up on the alley on the other side.

"And we come to Sirius, actually. Of course, you attacked him once in Hogsmeade during his seventh year, but the reason I truly hated you when it came to him... When we all thought he'd turned, there was only one way I could see that happening."

Oh dear. Bellatrix could see where this was going, and she couldn't even complain. The fact that she'd done none of it this time – that none of it had happened at all because Sirius had never changed sides – didn't even matter, because she would have if she'd gotten the opportunity.

"You thought I'd gotten to him, that I'd tortured him and whatnot until he'd broken."

Andromeda threw her a look – there was nothing resembling an apology for wrong assumptions there, only judgment. But that was alright, because Bellatrix deserved it.

"Yes, I did. After Nymphadora started Hogwarts, I begged Lord Black for access to the manor's library even if I'd walked out on the family, and then I spent several months going through the darkest grimoires on mind twisting during my evenings. Potions that would make someone more receptive to another's teaching, hypnosis, dream manipulation, I learned a lot about it all then."

The ghost gripped at her head, ashamed of herself.

"I... did think of it, after Regulus' disappearance."

"Of course you did."

Her sister didn't even sound surprised. Bellatrix laughed hollowly.

"I was looking for a way to get more purebloods on our side, to get them back where... where they belonged. Sirius, of course, but... you too. A lot of others, family members of Death Eaters who wanted nothing to do with us. Some from equalitarian families, too, if possible. And I asked Arcturus for access to the library too, but he saw right through me and banned me from the estate without telling anyone else."

They both looked up at the third floor of the manor – where the library and its age-old grimoires waited in silence for whoever might want to glimpse into ancient and forgotten – sometimes forbidden, ill-gotten – magics.

Andromeda shook her head.

"Tss, I still don't get him. The previous Black lord, I mean. It's obvious that he had opinions on it all, back then, but he never said anything out loud and even when he acted..."

The ghost only shrugged. She'd never cared that much about Lord Black, back when it had been Sirius and Regulus' grandfather. The wizard had been at the head of their House, of course, and Bellatrix had been cautiously wary of him in many ways – but he had been a first cousin twice removed, an old man she didn't see much outside of family reunions.

It was true that he didn't speak much of his own beliefs or limits, but she hadn't noticed, then.

For so long she'd believed he agreed with her and her father on almost everything, even if he didn't have her drive or her conviction, but in the end... There were so many little things, so many decisions he'd silently taken – and very few of those had gone her way.

Bellatrix had no way to determine what that meant, today.

What she had, however, was the opportunity to finish what they'd started, the two of them. To get to the end of it, the worst parts of their common history – to that one point they had to talk about.

The most important, if she knew Andromeda at all.

"I guess you want to talk about your daughter, too."

"Of course I do."

Of course she did.

Fourteen years ago, after the... after Voldemort's defeat, before she'd known to go after the Longbottoms, before she'd been caught and tried and sent to Azkaban – fourteen years ago, Bellatrix had found out where her niece was going to muggle school. She'd waited by the entrance while children were let out at the end of the day, wearing the same kind of clothes Meda would have. She'd put on an enchanted brooch that made familial resemblance stick out, and she'd deceived the teacher into letting her take her "daughter" home.

Little Nymphadora, almost nine years old at the time, hadn't let herself be taken, though – she knew her mother much better than the school teacher, of course, and familial resemblance meant nothing in comparison to that – and Andromeda and her husband had gotten there just as Bellatrix had drawn her wand to turn to violence.

Bella had still believed in the return of the dark lord, back then – had still believed it would be a good thing – and she'd chosen not to risk getting caught, so she'd left. She'd remained in the shadows, waiting, watching, until Crouch Jr had found her with news that the Longbottoms might know something, that they had been in on whatever the Potters had been doing that had gotten the dark lord's attention.

Meda hadn't forgotten that.

"I knew you were there, before, after. Once you broke the wards on the house and went through our belongings while Ted and I were at work and Nymphadora was at school, and I had to hire someone to redo all of the security spells. Another time I saw you in the corner of my eye just before I apparated to work. Ted's shoes or his hat would get hexed, and I had to bring him to St Mungo's twice because of it. You weren't doing anything too visible, too obvious, because the Auror Office was still looking for you, but I knew..."

Andromeda violently threw all the pebbles she had left into the pond – the ghost jumped in surprise.

"I don't think you can understand how much I hated you that day. When we saw you there, standing only a few feet away from our daughter, and we had a pretty good idea of what you'd do to her if..."

Bellatrix didn't point out that, herself, she wasn't sure of what would have happened if she had gotten the girl. She'd had plans, back then, but they were ever-changing, without any particular goal. She'd wanted her sister to hurt, she'd wanted her niece to regret ever being born, she'd wanted her family to remain with her, she'd wanted...

Who knew what she'd have done, exactly? Certainly not her.

At one point she'd thought of forcing Andromeda's hand, of making her come through Nymphadora's safety, of not allowing either of them to leave – and then what?

Bellatrix had never gotten that far. And either way, her sister would have hated her for it, whatever it was. She wasn't even certain which decision would have been the worst, all things considered.

"...If you'd so much as attempted a curse... I think I'd have gone for something like the breathless hex without a moment of hesitation. I'd have watched you suffocate and I wouldn't have felt any remorse, thinking about Shery Dodahm, about Regulus, about Sirius. About what you could have done to my Nymphadora."

"You'd have gotten away with it, I'm sure. The aurors still had those 'curse on sight' orders for Death Eaters on the run, and you were a civilian but self-defense would have been brought up..."

Apparently her sister still had a pebble hidden away, because the ghost felt something small and fast tear through her nonexistent body as Meda glared at her with a hand in the air.

"That's all you have to say?!"

Bellatrix tentatively drifted back and over the water.

"Apologies won't change what I did to you, and if I said I didn't mean it it'd be a lie, so..."

The ghost could see Andromeda's jaw grinding in anger and frustration, so she kept an eye on her sister's wand arm, just in case. Being already dead, she couldn't be grievously armed, but she would hate to be stuck in a tornado or something of the kind.

Her sister's glare became a bit more calculating.

"How about promising that you've learned from your death, from attempting another murder on a family member? That you will never put my child or my husband in such danger again?"

Bellatrix blinked for a moment.

"I... Alright? I mean, I can't go against Sirius' words, for good or bad, so there's that to consider, and I'm sure your kid has a mind of her own and will seek danger whenever possible, but..."

Andromeda waved that away:

"I'm asking your promise, Bella, I'm not asking you to take responsibility for someone else's choices. I'm not stupid enough to think decency on your part would banish any kind of danger that can happen in this world. Do you think I'm overly happy that Nymphadora joined the aurors and is risking her life on the front lines? Of course I'm not! But I am proud of her choices, and I understand that just because she didn't take the path I'd have chosen for her it doesn't make her stupid or naive. And I don't care that Sirius' interference means you wouldn't be able to betray us all, I want my older sister's word that she will atone for the ways she hurt my family!"

"...Oh."

"So?"

The ghost felt almost – she was still dead, after all – warm inside, and it had to say something about how much she'd damaged her relationships that her sister's demand felt like something positive.

"...I can promise that. I do. We're all on the same side and I don't want you to be hurt anymore, so I have no reason to even think about tricking your husband or your daughter. I promise."

"Can I have such a promise concerning my husband and son, too?"

Andromeda and her ghost of a sister turned around to see Regulus and his wife coming from the stone driveway – though the one who has spoken was obviously not Regulus himself.

Amanda had a serene smile on her face as she joined the witch and the ghost, while Regulus looked appropriately mortified – for a second son who'd never quite dared demand anything of anyone, always hovering between the things he took for granted and those he wouldn't even dream asking for. Andromeda didn't think there was much to be mortified about, but she hadn't grown up in Sirius' shadow, only in Bellatrix', which wasn't the same thing at all.

The muggle woman tilted her head – daylight reflecting off the magical glasses allowing her to see ghosts – and spoke again:

"I think it's reasonable enough to ask you for nothing more than a promise, Mrs Lestrange, was it?"

Regulus, who still held onto the spectacles case that they'd quite obviously just gone to buy, probably in the nearest mixed village – Oulwike, in Suffolk – looked like he deeply regretted having already given those glasses to his wife. He'd probably thought he could monitor her first introduction to Bellatrix and make it less confrontational, but obviously Amanda didn't think so.

Mrs White – or Black, really – seemed to be calmly in control of herself whenever Andromeda crossed her path. The witch was absolutely impressed.

Bella twitched, seemingly at a loss with being addressed by a muggle who had been unable to see her during the last few days.

"Uh... I suppose so? What was it, not putting Regulus in danger, nor your son Alshain, right?"

"Indeed. I understand you have a... checkered past, at best, much more so than Ca... Regulus himself, and I would be more at ease knowing that you do not intend harm to the one who deserted your cause to live the opposite life."

The ghost shook herself, squinted at her cousin who wasn't managing to get in the middle of this conversation with his half-hearted efforts, and regained her composure.

"I have no intention to bring harm to either Regulus or his son. But shouldn't you be the one asking for protection? Of the three of you, you are the kind I used to hate the most, you realize that?"

Both the ghost and the muggle were sizing the other up, that much was obvious – and Amanda's smile didn't move an inch as she looked away, content with the results of her intervention.

"I need no one to look after myself, Mrs Lestrange. My husband, on the other hand, needed to hear your change of heart for himself, just like your sister did."

The ghost stared at Amanda for a long moment before she burst out laughing.

"Circe, you've gotten yourself a wife who is more terrifying than you, Regulus, shame on you!"

"I prefer the word 'efficient', thank you very much."

"Right, err... Can we not..."

"Not what, dear?"

Regulus threw Andromeda a rather pleading look until he caught onto something he could derail the conversation with.

"Amanda... How can you talk with Bellatrix? The glasses allow you to see what a muggle can't, but you shouldn't be able to hear her...?"

His wife looked a bit amused as she answered:

"Cadfael, my love. Did you forget? I learned to lip-read with the neighbor's kid years ago."

"Oh, right. The deaf girl back home. Anyway, how did it go with Narcissa?"

Bellatrix winced and Andromeda made a face.

"She listened, if anything. Your brother undid all of her arguments nicely, too."

"Well, that, and she managed to get Sirius angry. You probably don't want to know, Regulus, but apparently your brother left Grimmauld Place because he'd been about to commit murder on your parents and he thought it was better to leave before it got that far."

Their cousin froze at those words, and only spoke up when his wife nudged him gently.

"...Oh. I didn't... I thought..."

Amanda took his arm and nodded at the sisters.

"We need to talk to Sirius, so we'll be leaving you. Andromeda, I hope to get to know you better one of these days. Mrs Lestrange, I suppose I'll see you around from now on."

As the couple moved towards the manor, they heard the ghost say that Regulus' brother had gone up to the owlery, so he'd most likely moved on to his study on the fourth floor.

Regulus quietly thanked Amanda as they moved up the stairs.

"I didn't know what to say. I never thought it was that bad, that Sirius would feel so badly about our parents. I mean, it wasn't always great at home, especially not for him, and Mom could be... When she got angry, she lost a lot of control, and Sirius could..."

He stopped by the balcony above the dining room and looked hollowly at the grand table under them, his hands white on the balustrade.

"Mom often got angry at him. And Father and I, we didn't get why he wouldn't just agree with her. It seemed obvious, back then, that she was right, that Sirius was wrong. It didn't look like him standing his ground to us, it looked like her being desperate not to let him go down the wrong path."

Amanda put a hand above his – their scars didn't match, didn't come from the same horrors, but it was still something they shared. Hers came from handling incandescent bomb fragments before they could put everything around them on fire. Some would call her actions that day reckless – but it had been that or risking seven people burning alive. She didn't regret her wounds.

"Yeah, that's the problem, most of the time. Each side is convinced that they are right and don't stop to consider that the others believe just the same."

"I'm not... I think Sirius could see it, him. He understood why, at least in the last years he spent at home, but he still disagreed. And we never gave him that same consideration..."

"Come on."

They started going up the stairs again, Amanda keeping her husband's hand in hers.

It had grown increasingly obvious to her that, since he'd gotten his memories back, self-doubt had become an almost-crippling condition for him. It was, she believed, the result of having moved on from destructive beliefs without knowing what he was moving on from. For so many years, Cadfael had only been aware that he'd done something wrong, before – but he hadn't known.

Now, everything he'd learned without the prejudices he'd grown up in clashed with all the mistakes he'd unknowingly made back then. He had become a better person as Cadfael White, of that Amanda had no doubt – but he still needed to understand what it meant as Regulus Black.

Still. She did believe it for the best. He'd found his brother and cousins again, he'd stopped wondering about the past. The world right now wasn't the best for anyone to live in – but that would be true even if he hadn't known his part in it.

"Amanda?"

"Hmm?"

They were on the third floor, now, and the library opened itself around them as they turned to take the central revolving staircase that would lead to the lord of the manor's floor.

"Do you think my brother truly wanted our parents dead?"

The woman stopped right before the staircase and watched her husband for a long while.

Cadfael – Regulus looked more pained than anything.

"I don't know Sirius very well, but I think he'd have managed it if that had been his true desire. He left your home because he didn't want it to come to that. I don't know if you could say he liked your parents, considering, but I believe he loved them anyway."

A weird, derisive look fell upon her husband's face as he mumbled:

"Is it bad that I think Mom would be relieved to hear that?"

Since Amanda didn't have an answer to such a question – it was a tremendously low bar to judge a parent-child relationship – they just went and walked up the stairs to the last floor. They ended up in an eight-sided anteroom with empty paintings – not really, there were nine menhir-like stones standing ominously against a blinding sky in the backgrounds – on each wall except for the one with a double door which led into the lord of the House of Black's quarters.

Regulus squinted at the central mirror at about-eye-level on the door and cleared his throat:

"Sirius, are you there?"

Mannaz glowed quietly behind the mirror – so the couple waited.

About two minutes later, Sirius pushed the left door open, glancing out suspiciously. When he recognized his brother and Amanda, he relaxed visibly.

"Oh, it's you. I left Andromeda and Bellatrix together to talk about the latter's crimes against family, and I don't really want to get involved in that conversation..."

Regulus made a face as they were left to enter the lord's quarters through a large sitting room.

"Oh, we know, we walked right into the end of that conversation."

Sirius went back to sit in a dark armchair by the balcony windows, inviting them to do as much. As he sat down on the closest couch, Regulus noticed a handful of letters scattered on the low table.

One was a letter from his brother's charge, as evidenced by the school schedule peeking out and the untidy penmanship. Another bore the Travers' armorial bearings, which was a bit more unexpected. A thick envelope that hadn't been opened yet had their elder cousin Callidora Longbottom's name written in a corner – that sounded like House of Black business, and now that Regulus was older he was glad not to have to deal with any of it himself. One last piece of parchment was folded into two on top of the others, and Regulus wondered if, perhaps, that wasn't from Eleanor Rowle herself.

Before he could think better of it, he was asking his brother about it:

"Love letter?"

Regulus blushed almost as soon as the words escaped his mouth, while Amanda hid a polite laugh. Sirius only stared at him – then he shook his head:

"Hardly. I mean, it is from Eleanor, true, but it's on the matter of her muggle friend who needs to be convinced to protect herself from delusional mass murderers. We'd visit by the end of next week, supposedly, if the world hasn't ended by then, of course."

"...Right."

Regulus had no idea why Eleanor Rowle had a muggle friend who needed more protection than the usual muggle – but he wasn't going to ask this day. Later, perhaps.

Amanda shook her head, amused despite the less-pleasant turn the conversation had taken quite rapidly, and gently brought them to the subject the couple had come to Sirius' quarters for.

"We were wondering, Regulus and me, what you had in mind for him."

Because, just like they'd started looking for a house outside of the estate – Oulwike seemed more and more likely, or perhaps somewhere a bit more isolated, in-between the mixed village and Black Manor itself – the couple needed to know what was possible for their future. They weren't going to remain passive until the end of the war – if anything, some choices were theirs to make – but the point wasn't to make things more difficult for Sirius and the Order of the Phoenix.

That, and Regulus was expecting some backlash from the Death Eaters, even if his brother had effectively protected him from the other side of that spectrum – from the Ministry.

Sirius pinched his lips and fell back against his armchair.

"Ah. That. Well, for now... I'd rather you kept well away from any of your old... friends... Even if we wanted to, you aren't spy material and Voldepants might want to see you punished for your betrayal, memories or not, so there's no point in dangling you as bait. Terrible idea, really."

Regulus didn't feel like arguing with that – so he didn't.

"That may be true, but there has to be... something, anything I could do?"

His brother's mouth opened but no words came forth, and his mouth closed as he took to squinting pensively at Amanda instead.

"Actually, I was thinking about you and your brother the other day, Amanda. Something about a crash course in muggle ass-kicking for Order members who could benefit from being able to surprise their opponents with a punch to the teeth. What kind of muggle fighting could be viable against wizards and all that. Regulus, you could help them figure that out before I start pitching the idea to the others, and, hmm... You could also try and compile a few countercurses and other treatments, see if there's anything in our familial expertise with the Dark Arts that can be useful when the Order gets used for target practice by Death Eaters."

Sirius hesitated a moment, then added:

"And I think it's time for a picnic by the sea, complete with inferi and other trauma-related issues. We can't let your fake horcrux be found, not with the daring note you left there, so..."

Regulus stiffened the moment he understood the implications, but he forced himself to nod.

"I... Yes, you're right. And... You'll need me to show you."

"If that makes you feel better, I'll drink the damn potion, not you. I'll just ask that you learn how to deal with inferi, because I don't fancy getting dragged into the water by a bunch of rotting corpses."

The younger brother only found that idea worse – the article about Azkaban with Sirius' gaunt picture flashed in his mind again – but he couldn't bring himself to disagree, to say he'd drink it himself, that he'd done it once and could do it again.

Amanda interrupted:

"Are we talking about an expedition to where you almost died just before I met you?"

Regulus gave his wife a pale, transparent smile.

"It's... necessary."

She didn't try to dissuade him – instead, she drummed her fingers on her jaw before speaking up:

"I'm coming along, then."

Regulus knew better than to believe he could change her mind, but that didn't stop him from looking fixedly at Amanda with what he was certain qualified as terror plastered on his face.

Sirius only looked back at his brother's wife with an equally matter-of-fact countenance.

"Are you, now?"

"The main problem here is a potion that causes the worst pain and memories possible, right?"

Her fingers were running along Regulus' scars – it was easy to guess why she didn't want him to drink that thing again. The thing was, it only reminded Regulus of the scars on her arms instead.

"Sure. Last time it got your husband almost killed because he couldn't fight off the inferi, which are also a problem, but less so once you are of sound mind. No point letting him drink it, it would just happen again, and it would be worse because of the lingering trauma from the first time."

Amanda leaned back into the couch, a prosaic look on her face, as if they were merely talking about cockroaches and lukewarm beer instead of inferi and a despair-inducing potion.

"And you spent more than a decade in a place that induce depression into its prisoners after being deeply betrayed. Someone has to drink that potion, and out of the three of us I'm the least likely to break down. So I am coming, and you two can focus on battling off the zombies."

Salazar's sake, now Sirius looked interested.