Chapter Text
COME HOME SON.
Son.
Regulus couldn’t make sense of it.
The curtains were still shifting in the cold air. Beneath the smell of blood in the room, there was a faint smell of pine. Regulus turned his head and saw a Christmas tree in the corner. It hadn’t been decorated yet.
His stomach turned over. He ran out through the kitchen and into the garden. The wet cold struck his face, and then he was on his hands and knees in the grass, bringing up what little was in him.
He hadn’t eaten properly. His body tried anyway, again and again, until there was nothing left, and still it tried.
Kreacher appeared beside him, wringing his hands. “Master Regulus—”
Regulus lifted one hand without looking up, and Kreacher stopped.
He breathed through his mouth, one palm pressed flat into the wet grass. Dirt had worked under his nails. His knees were soaked through, the cold already past the fabric.
Then he looked up.
The shed.
Remus.
He pushed himself off the ground and ran again. The grass slid under his shoes, and he slammed hard against the low fence, caught himself, and kept going. By the time he reached the shed, his wand was in his hand, though he did not remember drawing it. His fingers were shaking so badly that he had to grip it tighter just to hold it steady.
The magic was still there. He could feel it before he touched anything, low and humming and intact. The ward was up, and the ward meant Remus was inside, and inside meant safe. It had to.
He grabbed the handle, and the ward bit him. Pain flashed white across his palm. He pulled back with his teeth clenched, a red line already welling across the skin.
He raised his wand instead.
“Alohomora.”
The lock didn’t move.
“Finite Incantatem.”
The ward shoved back up his arm and into his shoulder. His fingers went numb around the wand. He stepped closer and cast again, with more control this time. The air around the shed flickered once, settled, and gave him nothing.
He tried every unlocking charm he knew, then a revealing spell, but the magic stayed exactly where it was, thick and unbothered.
“Remus.” He was close to the door now, careful not to touch. “Remus, can you hear me?”
Nothing answered. He turned his ear toward the gap without letting his skin meet the surface and listened. No movement, no shifting weight. The shed could have been empty.
But it was not empty. Lyall and Hope would have put him here before they did anything else, would have sealed him in first, because that was the one thing they never failed to do.
They kept him safe.
“Kreacher.”
The elf was at his side at once.
“Open it.”
Kreacher looked at the door, then at the blood on Regulus’ hand, and his ears sank. He raised both hands. His magic gathered differently from wand magic, dragging at the air until the lock rattled in its housing.
Then the ward snapped, and Kreacher was thrown back into the grass.
Regulus turned on him. “Again.”
“Kreacher cannot—” The elf was already scrambling up, his voice climbing. “Master Regulus, Kreacher is sorry, Kreacher cannot—”
“Again.”
They tried it together after that. Regulus held the Finite while Kreacher pulled at the edges of the protection. Regulus worked at the lock while Kreacher went for the hinges. The shed shook, but the door did not give by so much as a hair.
Regulus stood in front of it with his breath coming too fast. He needed an adult wizard, and there was no one. His parents could not know he was here. No one from his parents’ world could know. There was no one he could—
Vane.
“Get Cassius Vane,” he said.
Kreacher blinked up at him. “The piano teacher?”
“Yes. Bring him here. Now.”
“Master Regulus should not be left alone in this place.”
“Go.”
Kreacher hesitated a moment longer, then was gone, and Regulus lowered himself to the ground in front of the shed because his legs had stopped doing their work and standing seemed like effort he couldn’t spare. The wet soaked through his trousers. He leaned in until the ward pressed faintly against his cheek, though his skin never touched the shed.
“Please be in there,” he said, very quietly. “Please.”
He kept his eyes on the lock and waited.
The air cracked behind him. He turned, and Vane was standing in the garden with his wand already in his hand. His grey hair had been tied back badly, loose strands falling against his face, and his coat sat crooked over a half-buttoned shirt. Kreacher had not given him time to do anything properly.
Vane’s eyes moved over him. Over his face, his hands, his knees soaked through in the wet grass.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
Vane looked at the blood on his palm until Regulus closed his fingers over it. “Remus is inside,” he said. “I tried to open it. Kreacher tried. It won’t open.”
“Where are his parents?”
Regulus opened his mouth. He couldn’t say it out loud, so he only shook his head. The movement was small, but Vane seemed to understand it.
Vane looked toward the house, but Regulus caught his sleeve before he could turn properly.
“He’s still in there. The door won’t open, and I’ve tried everything I—”
Vane set a hand on his shoulder. Regulus meant to shake him off. He didn’t, because the weight of Vane’s hand was the only thing keeping the shaking in his hands from reaching the rest of him.
Then Vane let go and crossed to the shed. He did not cast straight away. He stood in front of the door and read it, his wand raised but still, then drew the tip slowly along the frame without letting it touch the wood. A thin shimmer woke across the lock and sank away again.
“A ward,” he said. “A very careful one.”
“Can you open it?”
“I’m going to try.”
He spoke something low, and the magic around the shed shifted, pressed outward, and settled back exactly where it had been. He changed the turn of his wrist and tried again, harder, until the wood gave a long groan that sent Kreacher whimpering into the grass behind them. The third attempt put a tremor through the whole shed and shook dust loose from the roof, and the ward only answered with a deeper hum.
Vane lowered his wand. “It’s holding against everything I have.”
“Please don’t stop.” Regulus heard his own voice climb and made no effort to bring it down. “He has been in there all night. I don’t know what state he’s in—” His free hand pressed flat to his own chest.
Vane turned back to the shed. He stopped working at the lock and began following the edges of the protection instead, no longer pushing against it but tracing it. The light had shifted while Regulus waited. Dawn had thinned and opened into morning.
The lock clicked.
Regulus had his hand immediately on the handle. Vane caught his wrist.
“Wait.”
“It opened.”
“That wasn’t me.” Vane was frowning at the lock, moving his wand near it again. “It opened on its own.” He stayed with it another moment, and then his face cleared. “A time charm. The door was never meant to stay shut. Whoever set it wanted it sealed only until morning.”
Lyall had done that. He had still made certain the door would open for his son when morning came.
“Now?” Regulus asked.
Vane released his wrist. “Now.”
Regulus pulled the door open and went in.
Remus lay on his side on the floor, one arm drawn close to his chest, damp hair stuck to his forehead, and for the length of a breath Regulus saw nothing but that he was there. Then his back lifted, and lifted again, and Regulus understood that he was breathing.
He crossed the shed and went down on his knees beside him. “Remus.”
Remus didn’t stir. The scratches across his shoulders were fresh, the old scars pale beneath them, and he was naked on the cold stone. Regulus took the blanket from where it had been dragged loose and drew it over his shoulders, chest, hips, the long line of his legs, until nothing was left uncovered.
“He doesn’t like people seeing them,” Regulus whispered. He had not meant to say it aloud.
Vane had stopped in the doorway. Regulus looked up at him, his fingers tightening in the blanket, and watched Vane’s eyes move slowly over the room: the stone floor, the chains, Remus under the blanket, the pale scars showing above Regulus’ hands where he held the fabric in place, the lock that had opened only after morning. He watched him put it together. He braced himself for what came after. A step back, the look that said his opinion of Remus had changed. But Vane came closer.
“May I?”
Regulus’ grip didn’t loosen. “What are you doing?”
“Clothing him.”
Regulus shifted back just far enough to let him near. Vane crouched and touched the edge of the blanket with his wand. The fabric pulled and folded and remade itself into loose clothes over Remus’ body. Plain trousers appeared. A soft shirt, nothing that would sit tight against the skin. Then Vane leaned in and cast a low diagnostic charm, and a pale line of light moved the length of Remus and faded.
“He’s exhausted,” Vane said. “Cuts and bruises. Nothing immediately dangerous. He needs rest.”
Regulus looked up. “He can’t wake up here. He can’t see the house like that.”
Kreacher made a small sound from the doorway. “Master Regulus must come home. The Mistress will notice if young Master is not at breakfast.”
Regulus looked down at Remus. He could not leave him on this floor. He could not leave him in this shed at all.
“I’ll take him to my house,” Vane said, before Regulus had to find a way to say any of it. “He knows me. And you know where it is.”
“I’ll come tonight.” Regulus’ eyes stayed on Remus. “After dinner.”
“After dinner, then.”
Vane slid one arm beneath Remus’ shoulders and the other under his knees and lifted him. Remus’ head tipped against his chest, and Regulus took an involuntary step closer, but Remus didn’t wake.
Vane vanished with Remus, and Regulus was still leaning after them when Kreacher took his hand and the garden folded away.
Grimmauld Place was quiet when they returned.
Regulus stood in the hall with Kreacher’s hand still around his fingers. He had to go upstairs. He had to change. He had to sit at breakfast and make his face look the way it always looked, and he had no idea how he was supposed to do any of it.
Kreacher looked up at him, ears low.
“Young Master is wet through.”
Regulus looked down. There was mud on his trousers, grass stuck to one knee, blood dried across his palm where the ward had bitten him. He had forgotten all of it.
“I’m fine.”
Kreacher made a small sound and lifted his hand. The mud vanished first, then the wet, warmth moving carefully through the fabric without changing the fall of it. Then Kreacher took Regulus’ injured hand between both of his own and brushed one long finger over the cut. The skin closed beneath the touch.
“Young Master must change before breakfast,” he said. “Kreacher will choose the robes.”
Regulus should have told him he could choose his own clothes. Instead he nodded.
The weight of the day ahead settled on him then, so suddenly that his knees nearly went weak again. Breakfast. His mother. His father. The empty chair. The hours after. The waiting. Remus waking somewhere else with Vane and knowing.
Regulus closed his eyes for one second.
Kreacher tugged carefully at his sleeve.
“Kreacher will help,” he whispered.
Regulus opened his eyes. His throat felt tight.
“Yes,” he said, because he could not manage anything else.
Kreacher led him upstairs.
Walburga told him he looked pale. He said he hadn’t slept well, which was true, and she let it go. Orion barely lifted his eyes from the Prophet. Sirius’ chair stood empty at the table, polished and unused, and no one remarked on it, the way no one had remarked on it since the holidays began.
Regulus ate enough not to be asked about it.
The day moved past him in pieces. He sat in his room and lay on the floor. Every sound in the corridor pulled his eyes to the door. Every long stretch of silence brought Remus back first, then the house, then Hope and Lyall on the floor. Regulus knew he would never forget what they had looked like. It was the smaller things that kept coming back. Hope opening the door to a stray cat out of the cold, oh, hello, Blink, as though his turning up were a piece of good news. Lyall, thin and tired, one hand on Remus’ shoulder. He won’t have you. Do you hear me?
And the last thing Lyall had ever done with his magic had been to set a door to open in the morning. He had died, and still he had made certain his son got out.
Regulus lay on the cold floor of his room until the light went, and grieved them the only way the house allowed, without a sound.
After dinner, he waited until his parents had gone up. Then he called Kreacher.
“Take me to Vane.”
“Yes, Master Regulus.”
Apparition squeezed around him, and then he stood in the entryway of Vane’s townhouse.
Vane was waiting. Tonight the piano was closed.
“Is he awake?”
“Yes.”
“Is he all right?”
Vane didn’t answer at once. “He’s exhausted.”
He let the rest sit unsaid, and Regulus heard it anyway.
“Does he know?”
“I told him.”
Regulus took that in. “Where is he?”
“The small guest room at the back, next to the record room.”
Regulus went down the hall and stopped at the door. Light showed beneath it. He knocked, and nothing came, and he knocked again.
“Leave me alone.” Remus’ voice through the wood was rough and raw.
Regulus stood with his hand still raised. “It’s me.”
There was silence. Then quick movement, and the door opened. Remus stood there, still in the clothes Vane had made him, loose on his frame, his hair a wreck and his eyes red, with the look of someone who had been crying for hours and was nowhere near finished. He stared at Regulus, then turned and lay down again.
But he opened the door.
Regulus ended up beside the bed, with no idea what to do with his hands. Remus was right there. Alive, awake, broken in a way Regulus could see clearly and could not fix.
There should have been something to say. People always had something to say when someone died.
“I don’t know what to say,” Regulus said.
Remus looked up at him, and Regulus wished at once he’d kept it behind his teeth. But Remus only gave a small nod and turned his face back into the pillow.
Regulus could not make himself cross the last of the distance as a boy.
So he changed.
The room rose around him, the bed climbing into a wall of dark wood and bedding, the air thickening with scent, and he came down on four paws and jumped up onto the blanket. Remus stared at him, and whatever had been holding his face together loosened by a fraction.
“Oh,” he said, very softly.
Regulus stepped closer, and Remus reached for him with both hands and gathered him in against his chest, one palm pressed deep into his fur and the other curled around him as though someone might come and take this one too. Regulus pushed his head up under Remus’ chin, and Remus’ breath caught on it.
“I missed you,” Remus said into his fur.
The purr started in Regulus’ chest, low and steady and warm, and Remus held him closer for it.
Regulus could feel the wetness on his fur. Remus was crying again. He pushed his head higher, clumsy and insistent, until the fur at his temple brushed over Remus’ cheek.
“Mad cat,” Remus murmured.
They went down onto the bed like that, Remus curled around him, and the room stayed quiet. Vane did not come. No one knocked. There was only Remus breathing and the low sound of Regulus purring against him. Now and then a tremor went through Remus’ body, and each time it did, Regulus pressed in closer until Remus’ hand tightened in his fur and the shaking let go of him. Regulus lost track of how long they stayed there. The room grew darker around them, and he did not move out of it.
Then Remus shifted, and Regulus lifted his head, and Remus’ hand came up at once to keep him there.
“Don’t go.”
Regulus stayed.
Remus lowered his mouth to Regulus’ ear. His breath came warm through the fur, and when his lips brushed the tip of it, the ear twitched flat and sprang up again. A shiver ran from there down the length of his spine, raising the fur with it. He held himself still under it.
“Can I tell you another secret?” Remus whispered, so close the words stirred the fur at his ear.
Regulus looked at him. Remus kept one hand buried in his fur.
“It’s my fault they’re dead.”