[From Samhain to the Solstice]: A New Creation, 2/6, Harry/Regulus, R

[lomonaaeren]

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Part Two

“Who are you again?”

Regulus smiles a little as he sits down in the chair across from his aunt. “Regulus. You know, the one you liked.”

“I don’t like any of you.”

It’s always hard to tell how mental Cassiopeia Black is at any given moment. She seems to wander both in her mind and around the room, absently touching the collection of dolls on the shelves that stare at Regulus with creepy glass eyes. But then she’ll glance at you, and you’ll see that her eyes hide a lot of sharpness.

Regulus sits and waits. It doesn’t bother him as much as it might when visiting the slightly musty older relatives elsewhere in his family, because Aunt Cassiopeia has a house-elf named Misty who makes fantastic sweets.

Regulus is eating his way through some marzipan when Aunt Cassiopeia turns back to him again. “Why are you here?”

“I met a boy last night who could get through the wards on Grimmauld Place, plus the wards that I put up around my bed,” says Regulus. “Kreacher claimed that he was a Black heir, but not a Black by blood. I came to see if you were foolish enough to make someone else your heir.”

Aunt Cassiopeia laughs, doubling over so much that Regulus nearly calls Misty to catch her. But in the end, she stands back up and hobbles over to the chair opposite Regulus’s on her own. She shakes her head hard enough to make her long grey braids whip her in the face. “I’m not that stupid. When I die, every bit of this is going up in flames.”

“Oh, really?” Regulus eyes the doll collection. Some of them are just the kind of thing he’d find in the junk shops in Diagon, but there are some valuable porcelain and china ones. “Why all of them?”

“Because they’re mine! They’re going up in smoke so they can’t tell my secrets!”

All right, there’s the madness, Regulus thinks, and finishes his marzipan. He leans forwards a little. “So, you didn’t make anyone your heir. Do you know of any other family member who did?” There’s not that many of them left, but Regulus doesn’t spend all day staring at the tapestry, either. Maybe someone has adopted a child or had a child years ago and he never noticed.

“No.” Aunt Cassiopeia abruptly narrows her eyes and tilts her head. “But Bubby says I can tell you something.”

“Bubby” is apparently a large doll made of straw with bright blue eyes and black hair sewn onto it, near the side of her chair. Regulus nods, deciding to humor her for another minute or two. “All right, what is it?”

“You need to be careful,” Aunt Cassiopeia whispers. “The Master of Death is not native to these shores. He draws the intruders with him.”

Regulus sits up, heart hammering. He said nothing about the Master of Death, he’s sure, and Kreacher would have told him if Misty had come to the house to spy on them. “What?”

“She said what she said.” Aunt Cassiopeia folds her arms and stares at him.

Regulus settles back and sighs. “Can I have some more biscuits?”

“Right, you were the one I liked.”

*

Regulus sighs and stares up at the sky, half-hoping it will start to rain and he can take the excuse to Apparate home. It’s almost lunchtime. Surely he can come back later and speak to his ridiculous brother.

But memory of the only interesting thing in his life for years tugs on him. That and Aunt Cassiopeia’s odd pronouncement. There has to be something going on, and even if the way the boy got through the wards does have to do with being the Master of Death, that still doesn’t answer all the questions, like why he chose to show up, save Regulus from a Dementor, and immediately leave.

One way or the other, Regulus will have to decide soon. He’s already drawn a few glances, standing across Diagon Alley from his brother’s shop. And those people are starting to whisper to others. Sooner or later someone is going to come up and ask for an autograph from the Man-Who-Conquered, and—

The shop’s door open. Barks and mews and whuffles and neighs emerge. It’s typical of Sirius to have opened up a shop that both sells pets and shelters the old, tired, broken-down ones. Sirius has such a soft heart, and animals probably appeal to it in a way that imperfect people don’t.

Sirius steps out through the shop door. Regulus stares at him. Yes, all right, so he’s gone for ten years without speaking to his brother and only seeing him in passing occasionally, but still.

“Your beard is trying to eat your face,” he says.

Sirius starts and stares at him. Then his face settles into grim lines, and his hand twitches as if he’s about to draw his wand. Regulus sneers a little. He’s dueled a lot in the past decades, partially spontaneously, partially by invitation, and partially because of the people who keep trying to use him to bring the Dark Lord back one way or the other. He’d be surprised if Sirius has fought a quarter as often.

“Regulus?”

“Yes, that’s my name,” Regulus drawls. He walks across the Alley. Sirius is still staring at him with his mouth hanging open and doesn’t seem inclined to close it any time soon. “Could we go inside? There’s something sensitive I ought to discuss with you.”

“No.”

“Then we can discuss is on the pavement, I suppose.” Regulus folds his arms and ignores the way that it’s getting colder. A cloud has moved across the sun. “Right. Someone Apparated into Grimmauld Place past the wards, and I want to know if you have anything to do with it.”

“Why the fuck would I want to get into the house or teach someone how to get past the wards?”

Regulus wrinkles his nose. He forgot how crude Sirius is. “I don’t know, either. That’s why I wanted to ask you.”

“What—what are you—”

Sirius’s breath is misting in front of his face. Regulus whirls around, drawing his wand. All over Diagon Alley, people are slowing down and grasping for their wands, confused, slurred words coming out of their mouths.

Dark floating figures appear at the entrance where Diagon Alley runs into Knockturn.

Regulus curses volubly and starts weaving the proper wards. He fully intends to keep the Dementors away from him, and away from Sirius until his brother’s answered his questions. He’ll push the wards out as far as he can, but he doesn’t think that he can shield most of the people in sight that way.

“Your wand!” he snarls at Sirius, who is staring at the Dementors with blank eyes.

“I can’t—I can’t cast a Patronus…”

You’d think that all those happy memories Sirius kept bragging he was making in Gryffindor would be good for something, Regulus thinks viciously, but he doesn’t waste time or breath on scolding his brother. He raises the first line of wards while the Dementors begin to float towards a woman who has collapsed on the pavement, her face grey and her eyes glazed and staring.

“We have to help her!” Sirius says, snapping out of his trance.

“How? You said you couldn’t cast a Patronus!”

“We just have to help her,” Sirius says, and starts to step out of the range of Regulus’s wards. Regulus lets him because it’s not his fault if his brother wants to commit suicide, but it turns out that Sirius is aiming back towards the shop. “Lily!” he calls.

Regulus’s eyes widen. He didn’t know Mrs. Potter was here. He did remember hearing, from somewhere, that she could cast a Patronus.

The woman who steps out of the door gives Regulus a look as scorching as the vivid red color of her hair, and draws her wand with a steady hand despite the horror in her face. “Expecto Patronum!” she cries.

A shimmering silvery doe manifests out of her wand. Regulus blinks. He has to liken it to the stag that was in his bedroom last night. Are deer commonly the way that corporeal Patronuses manifest? He has no idea. It bothers him that he has no idea.

There doesn’t seem to be any communication between Potter and her Patronus, or maybe there doesn’t need to be when the Dementors are right there. The doe canters up the pavement, and the Dementors scatter when they see her coming. The one in front of the grey-faced woman, bending over her, doesn’t seem to notice.

The doe whirls and kicks it with her ephemeral hind hooves.

The Dementor shrieks and staggers off-balance. The doe follows it up, standing over the woman who’s now lying senseless on the street and snorting, scaping a hoof. The Dementor slowly floats backwards and then tries to circle in, but the doe lowers her head and turns to face it, exactly as if she has antlers.

She’s a spot of brightness and strength, but already the Dementors are recovering from what Regulus supposes he has to term the shock of her appearance, and closing in, slowly but relentlessly, on anyone who hasn’t managed to Apparate or scramble out of the way. Regulus watches a man clutching his child, backing towards the wall of a shop. He frowns. He doesn’t like the way his chest feels right now.

“Do something!”

Sirius’s hand has clamped down on Regulus’s shoulder. He shrugs it off. “I can’t cast a Patronus,” he snaps back. “I’ll just accomplish getting three people’s souls eaten instead of two.”

Sirius curses at him. Regulus opens his mouth, and then whirls around. There’s something, some heavy feeling in the air, that he can sense even through his wards.

“Expecto Patronum!”

It is. The same boy who was in his bedroom last night, the shaggy-haired Master of Death. In the daylight, Regulus can see that he’s wearing torn and patched robes, and his face has a look of implacable determination.

And youth. He’s all of seventeen years old, if that. He’s small, as though someone took a taller boy and crushed him down.

The silvery stag manifests in the middle of the densest cluster of Dementors, scattering them.

Lily Potter gasps sharply.

The boy spins towards them as if he’s heard her, although the distance between them and Regulus’s wards make it unlikely. Regulus stares when he sees his face more closely. Determined, yes. Young, yes. Scrawny as if starved, yes.

But still beautiful.

And Regulus knows now why those green eyes looked familiar. They’re the eyes of the woman standing beside him, the woman who hasn’t been able to have any children.

The shape of his face and the wild disarray of his hair do rather recall James Potter, now that Regulus thinks of it.

“What is this?” Potter whispers.

The boy turns away and waves his wand. The stag grows larger, shimmering with life. It turns and stamps and then charges straight at the Dementors who are gathered the closest to the man and child by the shop.

A few of them scatter. Most don’t. Maybe they’re lured by the promise of an easy meal, or maybe Patronuses don’t normally do what this one seems capable of. It’s not as though Regulus knows much about the Patronus Charm.

The Master of Death’s stag lowers his antlers and plows right through them.

Dementors explode. There are large puffs of darkness and scattered grey ash, and those drift on the wind and fade before they even hit the ground. Some of the sparks and ash hit the stag, but glance off his magnificent hide. The stag is larger than before, and shining more than ever like a living statue as he finishes his canter through the Dementors.

The ones left in the Alley take to the air, shrieking.

The stag doesn’t seem to intend to let that stop him. He leaps and soars through the sky like a flying horse without wings, chasing down the creatures that still hover over the rooftops. In seconds, they’re gone, and the silvery dot of the Patronus fades out of sight like a comet, chasing them.

The Master of Death sags in place, bent over with his hands on his knees, panting.

Regulus shakes his head. It’s such a human gesture for someone he suspects of being an entity with powers to influence the afterlife. But then, if the Master of Death could look like anyone, Regulus suspects that a young mixture of James and Lily Potter in worn robes is an odd choice anyway.

Regulus lowers his wards and takes a step in the Master’s direction, but someone sprints by him fast enough that he has to catch his breath.

Lily Potter is running towards the boy, eyes fixed on him as if he’s the answer to all her prayers.

The boy rears back, his face wearing a mask of pure shock. Regulus only has a moment to study the expression, but it’s not as though the boy doesn’t recognize Potter. He just doesn’t expect to see her here.

And then he Apparates.

Regulus curses softly under his breath. Potter comes to a stop in the middle of the alley and stares at the place where the boy stood. She doesn’t make a sound, but her shoulders slump as if her heart’s broken.

“What the hell was that?” Sirius demands. “What did you do?”

“Typical of you to assume I did something,” Regulus murmurs, but the jibe at his brother is half-hearted. He’s watching Potter, who is walking back towards them now.

No, he thinks. She had nothing to do with this, and she doesn’t know what’s going on.

She comes back and stops in front of him, studying his face. Regulus has never been this close to her before. He studies her back.

“You know something,” Potter whispers. “You weren’t surprised to see him or the stag.” She holds out her hand, and the doe Patronus canters up to her, touching her hand with a softly fading muzzle. In seconds, the Patronus is a mere wisp of light in the air. “He’s the one you came to ask Sirius about.”

“Yes,” Regulus says softly, holding her gaze. It’s fierce, but nowhere near as fierce as the Master of Death’s. “He got through my wards like they were nothing.”

“Tell me everything you know.”

Regulus is more than glad to comply. If the boy somehow is the son of James and Lily Potter, there are advantages to allying with her.

Blood tracking, for example.

Normally, Regulus would never dream of asking the uptight and upright Potters to participate in such a thing. But for the sake of a boy who looks like the son they never had?

Yes. Yes, they will.

*

“I didn’t believe it,” James Potter says for the fifth time.

Regulus manages not to roll his eyes. It wouldn’t be polite except in the space of his own home, and right now, he’s sitting on a patched couch in the middle of the bright, airy wooden room at the heart of the Potters’ house, a glass of fine Firewhisky in his hand.

James Potter is sitting across from Regulus, still staring with a shocked look at the Pensieve on a table in the center of their circle of seats. Lily put her memories in first, followed by Regulus and then Sirius. It’s Sirius’s memories of the boy that James has just surfaced from.

James closes his eyes now. There is the sheen of tears in them. Regulus shifts in place, but says nothing. The more emotion the Potters experience, the more committed they will be to this hunt.

“We have to find him,” James whispers.

“Where did he come from, though?” Sirius interjects. Hilariously, it’s Regulus’s brother, the Potters’ best friend, who seems to think this is all a trick. “What if he’s the product of some Dark spell?”

“You think I would give a shit?” Lily asks softly.

Regulus stares at her. At least he’s not gaping like the other two.

“What?” Sirius croaks. “Lily, if someone cast a spell to create him, he’s not—he’s a homunculus or a doppelganger, he’s not your son. He’s not real.”

“I want to speak to him.” Lily’s eyes are merciless. Regulus sort of appreciates the insight into the way that the Master of Death’s eyes might look, but he also thinks, privately, that his mystery’s eyes will be more beautiful. “I want to hold him in my arms and learn his name. If he’s the product of a Dark spell—which, honestly, Sirius, a homunculus or a doppelganger wouldn’t magically be able to cast a Patronus—then I still want to know him.”

“Tell us again, Black,” James says. “What happened with the wards.”

Regulus tells the tale of the way the boy appeared and how the wards parted around him for the second time. He tells how Kreacher recognized him and declared him a Black by inheritance. He keeps the part about the symbol of the Hallows to himself.

There are some things other people don’t deserve to know about his mystery.

The idea that the Master of Death has some connection to the Black family does confound the Potters. James and Lily talk in low voices about the possible connections between the Potters and the Black family. Regulus is privately amused to see how well James Potter, who goes around proclaiming that pure blood is nothing special, obviously knows his family tree.

“There’s one possibility that makes sense,” Lily says at last.

Regulus nods to her. “What is that?”

“If he came from another world,” Lily says. Her voice is steady, but her hand is clenched down near her thigh, and Regulus notices. “If he was Sirius’s godson there, and lived in Grimmauld Place, and—he would have had a connection to the house. Kreacher could recognize him. House-elves are a lot more powerful than we think.”

Regulus only raises an eyebrow, but James and Sirius immediately start arguing how that’s impossible. Regulus leans back on the couch and sips his Firewhisky, lost in thought.

Yes, that’s a good guess. He doesn’t know how or why a stranger from another world would have appeared in his bedroom, however. Or why he seems to be wherever the Dementors are, ready to defeat them.

Could the binding failing on the Dementors have summoned him?

Regulus half-shrugs to himself. Yes, that’s also a possibility. But there’s no proof one way or the other.

A name catches his attention. “We need Albus,” James says, his jaw thrust out and his eyes like steel as he glares at his wife, who glares back with eyes like ice. “We need to figure out what’s going on, and we need to—we need to find him.”

Regulus clears his throat softly, drawing their attention back to him. They don’t look as if it’s a pleasant remembrance. Too bad for them. “Why do you need Dumbledore?”

“He’s the only one who’s powerful enough to tell us if the boy comes from another world,” James says.

“Not the boy. Our son.”

“We don’t know that, Lils—”

Regulus jumps in before this can become a private Potter argument. “There’s another way. You could use your blood to track him.”

James just blinks, seemingly so taken aback by the suggestion that he has nothing to say. But Lily is nodding. Unfortunately, she doesn’t get a chance to speak before Sirius sweeps around the couch and points a finger at Regulus’s face.

Regulus raises an eyebrow at the finger.

“I knew you would suggest Dark magic!” Sirius snarls, like the dog he can become. “That kind of magic invades someone’s privacy and uses runes drawn in blood and—and—” He draws in a breath, and stands there. Regulus is just about certain that Sirius won’t be able to find a third reason, when he snaps, “It’s the kind Mother and Father used!”

“Yes,” Regulus says, with a shrug. “And they’re both dead. I think it’s the best option if we want to find the boy.” He cuts his eyes towards the Potters, who are now arguing about blood magic, and raises his voice a little. “And if we want to figure out whether he’s a Potter at all.”

“Of course he is!” James says, waving his hands around like the undignified moron he is. “My hair, Lily’s eyes—his Patronus is a stag, just like my Animagus form—”

“But my dear brother is right that someone could still be attempting to trick you by showing you a vision of the son you’ve always longed for,” Regulus says, smiling at Sirius, who scowls at him. “Your desire for children is well-known, and this boy looks so much like you. If we use the blood magic and it turns out he has no connection to you, then we don’t have to waste the time tracking him down.”

Not that Regulus intends to stop. Where the Master of Death came from, why he saved Regulus’s life, and his connection with the Dementors are all delicious mysteries that will pull him on, not to mention the Life-Debt he owes and what the Master’s connection with the Blacks is. But this way, he can see early on whether the Potters are useful allies or whether they have nothing to offer.

He’s fairly certain that if they can prove the Master has no blood connection to them, they’ll give up and take themselves out of the way. Regulus would still win.

The argument eventually boils down to the fact that James is willing to use blood magic but wants Dumbledore to supervise. Lily reluctantly agrees. Regulus has the impression that she thinks Dumbledore won’t let them use blood magic at all, and also that she intends to talk them around.

Regulus leaves with a smile on his face.

*

Kreacher meets Regulus at the front door of Grimmauld Place, wringing his hands. “Master Regulus! Oh, Master Regulus!”

Regulus hands his cloak to Kreacher with a frown. “What is it, Kreacher?” Usually, Kreacher isn’t this disturbed unless he creates an accidental mess, and it’s been years since that happened.

“The boy who is a Black by inheritance came back!” Kreacher wails. “Kreacher could not keep him out, and the boy be taking books from the library!”

Regulus doesn’t bother responding, but runs to the library. His heart is pounding. Kreacher Apparates into place beside him as Regulus stands in the doorway and stares at the empty holes in the shelves.

The Master of Death took more books than he should have been able to carry, but then, he does wield a wand. And Regulus can see at a glance that the books are on Dementors, the theoretical possibilities of time and dimension travel, and blood magic.

He smiles. It seems Lily Potter’s guess is likely after all.

One more book is missing, but it takes Regulus a bit of wandering around the library to find the gap in the shelves, and longer to remember which book stood there. The Tales of Beedle the Bard.

Regulus touches the shelf and smiles, speaking absent words to quiet Kreacher’s self-loathing.

He cannot wait to meet his mystery again face-to-face.