[From Samhain to the Solstice]: A New Creation, Regulus/Harry, R, 4/6

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Part Four

He wakes up early to an explosion. Because Regulus is never too tired to defend himself, he rolls out of bed and lands on the floor in a crouch, wand aimed at the door, before he’s even properly awake.

Then he blinks and runs a hand over his face. What happened—

Harry. Kreacher.

Regulus rushes out of his bedroom and towards the front door, for a moment wondering if he’ll be chasing the Master of Death again. His resolve tightens. If that’s the case, he’ll simply summon Harry back with another name-calling ritual. He needs to talk to him, needs to understand what happened to and because of the most fascinating person he’s ever met.

But he doesn’t chase Harry out the front door. Instead, Harry is standing by the door, wand moving in regular patterns that fill the entrance hall with flowers of gleaming fire. He whirls around to face Regulus as he steps off the last stair. Harry’s green eyes so bright and his magic so stirred that his hair floats around him.

“Why did you order Kreacher to ward the door?” Harry demands.

“I could have warded it.”

“You’re not strong enough.”

Regulus blinks, feeling oddly as though he’s been slapped. “I am most certainly strong enough. I am the wizard who defeated the Dark Lord Voldemort.”

It feels unnatural to introduce himself that way—it’s not as though he’s had to do it in years—but then again, Harry unsettles him. Regulus finds himself wanting to impress Harry, hold his attention, prove himself.

Harry stares at him with his mouth slightly open, and for a second, Regulus thinks the “impressing” part of the plan has worked. Then Harry snorts. “The locket was his only Horcrux here, then?”

“How did you know about that?” Regulus whispers feeling breathless. He hasn’t told anyone about the Horcruxes except Dumbledore, who kept asking how Regulus had defeated Voldemort and who was so annoying that Regulus told him mostly to get him to shut up. He would have told Sirius if his brother had asked, but Sirius didn’t care.

“Because I hunted down five of his Horcruxes, and killed a sixth one. And I know that Dumbledore killed the seventh.” Harry folds his arms. “So you aren’t as high and mighty as all that.”

“You—” Now someone has slapped Regulus with words for the second time in three minutes. He feels dazed. “You knew about the Horcruxes in your own world and brought down the Dark Lord?”

Harry closes his eyes tightly. Then he says, “Yes,” just when Regulus has decided that Harry won’t answer. “A fat lot of good it did me, given that I had to die to get rid of the last one.”

“Because it required a sacrifice?”

“Yeah, let’s go with that,” Harry says, and then opens his eyes and glares at Regulus. “And when I woke up in this white place that seems to be some kind of afterlife, I met Professor Dumbledore, and he told me that I had the choice to return to life. I said I would, and I thought I would go back to my friends, and instead I woke up here.”

Regulus blinks slowly, determined to weather the shocks instead of immediately giving in to what he wants to say. “Were you aware that you were the Master of Death?”

Harry’s mouth tightens. “That’s a children’s story, in a book Dumbledore left my friend Hermione.”

Absently, Regulus wonders who “Hermione” is. It sounds like a pureblood name, but James Potter married a Muggleborn woman here, so who knows? “Technically, the book doesn’t say that any of the three brothers became the Master of Death—”

“Come off it!”

Regulus whoofs out air as Harry’s magic seizes him and throws him across the entrance hall, pressing him up against the far wall. He stares at Harry, who takes a step back and looks stricken, staring around as if he hopes that someone else will step out and claim the credit for throwing Regulus like that.

“I didn’t mean to do that,” he breathes.

“You did.” Regulus straightens up as the invisible pressure holding him there vanishes and dusts some equally invisible soot and ash off his sleeves. He can’t take his gaze from Harry, the Master of Death who has launched surprise after surprise at Regulus. Regulus’s heart is thundering, his brain alive with shining clarity, the way it was when he faced Voldemort.

Yes. This is the way it should be. This is what I’ve been missing. A way to live with a purpose every moment.

Harry lifts his head and stares at him. “Then you should want me to leave, right, so that you won’t be in danger from me anymore?”

“I’m not in danger in the halls of my own ancestral home.” Regulus steps close to Harry and lowers his voice into a coaxing murmur. “Was there anyone who could understand you, in your own world? Anyone who really knew what it was like for you to be the one taxed with conquering the Dark Lord, what it was like to be the Boy-Who-Lived?”

Harry jumps. “How did you know they called me that?”

“They called me that, too, while I was young enough that it didn’t sound ridiculous. I defeated the Dark Lord when I was seventeen. As I grew older, they switched to calling me the Man-Who-Conquered.”

“That’s even worse.”

“I do agree. But I’m still interested in the answer to my question. Was there anyone who could understand?”

Regulus would wager half the Black fortune that there wasn’t. Harry sounds as if he had friends, as if he fought the Dark Lord because it was the right thing to do. But he also sounds as if he pursued the goal almost alone. It’s not everyone who would get close enough to the dark, slimy truth of Horcruxes to know what they are, after all.

Harry is silent for a moment, eyes searching Regulus’s face. But he doesn’t seem to find or feel the intense kinship that Regulus feels with him. He shakes his head stubbornly. “No, but I had friends. Good friends, who stood beside me no matter what happened. That’s one reason I want to go back to them.”

“Why do the Dementors follow you?”

“It’s your stupid world that made that happen!” Harry snaps unexpectedly, firing up now. He steps close to Regulus, and Regulus feels Harry’s magic beating like heat on his skin. “I never had that problem before I came here!”

“So you don’t know.”

“Let me guess, they called you a genius, too?”

Regulus blinks, and then chuckles. It’s ages since someone stood up to him and acted as though he could be a prat rather than someone they had to worship because he saved their arses. It’s refreshing.

“Some people do, who want to date me,” Regulus says, and snorts again when Harry’s nose wrinkles. “It might seem ridiculous to you, but some people do want to date saviors of the British wizarding world, you know.”

“There’s no accounting for taste, I suppose,” Harry says dubiously, looking at Regulus from head to foot.

That piques Regulus a little, but he holds the emotion back. He knows as well as if Harry had told him that Harry won’t be impressed by pique. Regulus just cocks his head. “You found yourself in my bedroom when you came to this world?”

“Yes. I opened my eyes expecting to be back in my world, and I was here. And a Dementor was coming towards me. So of course I used my Patronus.”

Regulus feels a little disappointed that Harry didn’t save his life because of Regulus specifically, but was just trying to save his own. He buries that emotion. In a way, it’s better. Regulus can understand practical motivations.

And it doesn’t change the Life-Debt he owes.

“And everywhere you’ve gone since then…”

“They show up, unless I’m in the Muggle world.” Harry rakes a hand down his face and takes a step towards the door. “That’s why you should let me leave. They’re probably gathering beyond the wards far enough away that we can’t feel them. But they’ll be on me as soon as I leave.”

“Wouldn’t you want to stay where you’re safe?”

“Why would I do that, when I could lead them straight to innocent people?”

Harry’s voice is utterly baffled. He would no more seek to lead the Dementors to someone who could help him than Regulus would seek to avoid it.

It’s as though someone fed me through the Mirror of Erised while my brother was looking into it, Regulus thinks, dizzy. Harry is the savior that he always wished I would be, the person he always wished I would be.

That doesn’t lessen Regulus’s determination to help Harry. He can still feel that clarity in his mind that he had when he defeated Voldemort. That was the right thing to do, and helping Harry is the right thing to do.

It seems that he has to eat some of the words he once spoke to his brother. Life is more than the pursuit of pleasure. Doing the right thing is important, as long as one knows what the right thing is.

Not that Regulus is going to admit that to Sirius.

“I understand that your world is lost beyond recall,” he says. “I understand that Headmaster Dumbledore could help you.”

“He’s alive in this world? Like my mum and dad?”

Regulus pauses. His own parents were horrible excuses for almost everything, parents included, but at least he had them. And they weren’t so bad when Regulus was younger. “Your parents are dead? The war killed them?”

“Yeah. They died when I was a year old.”

Dear Merlin. Regulus slowly tilts his head back and forth. “So you grew up with my brother? He was your godfather in that world?”

“I grew up with my mother’s Muggle relatives.”

Regulus doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what to think, except that it explains the ease with which Harry seems to navigate the Muggle world.

Harry, meanwhile, is frowning, as if Regulus has done something puzzling. “Aren’t you going to kick me out?”

“What?”

“I’m a half-blood. You know that, if my mum married my dad in this world the way she did in mine. And I grew up with Muggles. You think that’s tainted, don’t you? Intruding on your prissy pureblood sensibilities?”

Regulus shakes his head and laughs helplessly. It’s been so long since he’s done that that he doesn’t honestly remember what it feels like until it’s shuddering through him. It makes Kreacher appear at the top of the stairs and look down at him as if he thinks he might need to rescue Regulus from choking on an apple.

“What?”

Harry’s voice is surly. Regulus half-shrugs. “You keep surprising me.”

“Surprising you into letting me go, right?”

“Do you think you can deal with the Dementors while living in the Muggle world?” Regulus asks. “Far away from the magical libraries and books that you would need to research? I know that you came here and took some of them, which you’re welcome to, but you won’t have access to other libraries that you need, and doubly so if you’re living in the Muggle world.”

“I can’t chance them eating—”

“They’re not solely attracted to you. They went after innocents in Diagon Alley. Children. Do you think they wouldn’t eventually do the same, if they got bored waiting for you to emerge from a Muggle neighborhood?”

Harry swallows, his throat bobbing. It turns out that his haunted expression is absurdly like Lily Potter’s. Regulus feels a small stab of guilt, but he’s honestly doing it for Harry’s best interests. He can’t do magical research with anything except the books he already removed from the Black library if he stays in the Muggle world.

“What do you think you can provide that’s better?”

Regulus holds back the shout of triumph he wants to give, and just nods. “Your parents don’t have any children in this world, but they do have a large collection of books, mostly inherited from James’s parents. They can give you time and space to research. And they can both conjure a Patronus, as far as I know. You can see Sirius.”

For some reason, Harry’s eyes close when Regulus speaks his brother’s name. Regulus brushes aside his jealousy. Before he is done, Harry’s eyes will open when he hears Regulus’s name.

“They would treasure you,” Regulus says softly. “They would hold you safe and give someplace to eat and bathe and sleep that’s friendlier than Grimmauld Place.”

“And what’s in it for you?”

“That you would stay in the magical world and stop running off to the Muggle one,” Regulus says easily. “And to be frank, when we come up with a plan to destroy the Dementors, I’m the one who will have to help you execute it. None of them can match me for raw magical power.”

It’s not something he’s ever said aloud. Sometimes he’s traded glances with Dumbledore that say they both know it. But right now, Regulus is glad of his power as he hasn’t been since he killed Voldemort.

“Huh. I never knew that about you in my world.”

“What was my fate in your world?” Regulus asks, giving in to curiosity. “I can’t imagine I spent much time around you if Sirius was your godfather and you grew up with Muggles.”

Harry looks at him with keen, tearless eyes. “You were killed by the Inferi while trying to retrieve the locket.”

Regulus swallows. “The locket—you found it?”

“I found the fake at first, with Professor Dumbledore. Then we found out later that Kreacher had escaped with it and had spent years trying to destroy it. He couldn’t, and neither could we for a while, but we were finally able to use the Sword of Gryffindor. It was actually Ron, a friend of mine, who pierced it with the sword.”

“I was unaware that a simple sword would be able to do something so complex.”

“The sword was carrying basilisk venom on the blade.”

“What?”

“I think I forgot to mention the part where I fought a basilisk living in the Chamber of Secrets and killed it with the sword.”

Regulus stares at him. Harry stares back, still pale and exhausted and scrawny, but radiating defiance like a fire radiates heat.

“You did,” Regulus says, and feels as if he will never be bored again.

*

“Harry.”

Lily Potter’s voice trembles as she reaches out her arms. For a moment, Regulus watches, unsure what will happen. Harry seems to never have known his parents as people, only as memories. If he has any memories of them, since he was an infant when they died. Regulus wonders if Harry can run into Lily’s arms the way she will probably be assuming he would, since she thinks he has parents back in his world.

“Um, Mrs. Potter,” Harry says, wavering on the threshold of the Potter home.

“Harry?”

It’s Lily’s heartbroken tone that does it, Regulus thinks later. Harry breaks along with her, and surges forwards to embrace her.

Regulus looks slightly off to the side. He doesn’t want to embarrass them, or be embarrassed himself. Although, in truth, at the moment, they look as if the world could end around them and they wouldn’t notice.

“Harry?”

It’s James, coming slowly down the stairs and rubbing his hand through his hair as if he’s remembering that he was more reluctant than Lily to try the blood tracking magic. He reaches out a hand and then lets it fall. He’s shaking his head, eyes tear-bright.

“Harry? It’s really you?”

“Dad?”

Regulus has to step closer to the door. There are choking sounds behind him, and James whispering something that is frankly none of Regulus’s business, and more embraces. But as uncomfortable as it makes him, he can reassure himself of one thing.

After this, it’s going to be hard as hell for Harry Potter to leave this world.

*

“We died?”

“You grew up with Petunia?”

James and Lily’s voices overlap with sheer incredulity and outrage as Harry tells his story, most of the parts of which Regulus has already heard. He sits at the Potters’ table with a mug of Firewhisky in one hand, which James gave him with a look that said he should be quiet. Regulus is more than willing. It’s good Firewhisky, and watching and listening to the Potters as Harry tells the story of his world is entertainment enough.

“Yeah,” Harry says, and rubs his mouth with one hand. Regulus narrows his eyes. There seem to be thin white scars on the back of Harry’s hand, letter-shaped. Did someone brand him? That’s an adventure he hasn’t confessed yet. “I grew up thinking I was a Muggle. Not that I knew what a Muggle was. When strange things happened around me, I didn’t know it was magic…”

There’s more in the same vein, and some of it makes Regulus want to bang his head on the table. By all rights, Harry shouldn’t be alive. Either Quidditch, Voldemort, his numerous admirers, Death Eaters, Dementors, the basilisk or someone or something else should have killed him before he reached the age of fifteen.

Regulus is glad, now, that his own fame started when he was already of age and could somewhat control his own destiny. He can’t even imagine bearing that burden as a child, the way Harry had to.

Lily and James are white-lipped by the story of the basilisk, which of course is when the door opens and Sirius steps into the middle of the tense situation, continuing his lifelong habit of appearing at the wrong moment. Regulus leans back and raises his mug to his lips to hide an expression that might be a smile or might not. Harry has admitted Sirius was in Azkaban and died trying to save Harry in the Department of Mysteries, but not all the details.

Harry glances around with something icier than heartbreak on his face. “Padfoot?”

“I—I was your godfather?” Sirius asks, almost before Harry’s voice dies, his eyes tracing Harry’s face with longing.

Regulus bristles a little. It had better be the longing he knew Sirius felt, because of the drunken letters he got from his brother, about not being able to be a godfather when the Potters couldn’t have children. It shouldn’t be any hotter or deeper than that.

It would be wrong, of course, for a godfather and a godchild to be together.

(Regulus resolutely ignores the memory of more scandalous unions than that which he carries, courtesy of the Black family tapestry).

“Yeah,” Harry says, smiling at him. “Yeah, you were.” His voice is trembling, but he clenches his hand down at his side and steadies it again. “You told me about all the times that you and Dad and Remus and Peter played pranks in school.”

His voice deepens on Pettigrew’s name. He hasn’t actually mentioned who the “traitor” was that sent Sirius to prison, probably worried that Lily and James would react badly if they were friends with him in this world, but Regulus can guess now.

“Huh,” Sirius says, flinging himself into a chair across from Harry and staring unabashedly. “Peter. There’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.”

“Why’s that?”

“He died in the war with You-Know-Who,” Sirius says, and blinks a little, staring over Harry’s head for a second. “With a Mark on his arm.”

Harry closes his eyes and swallows. “He did the same thing in my world,” he whispers. “But not until years later, and not until after you spent twelve years in Azkaban because he betrayed my parents and everyone else was convinced that you did it.”

The mood in the room shifts, and Sirius looks as if he might run away or make a joke, which is what he always does when he’s uncomfortable. Regulus sighs and inserts himself into the conversation.

“You should hear the story before you shout at him, Sirius.”

“I wasn’t going to shout at him, you—”

And Sirius is off, ranting at him, but that at least means he’s not making Harry more uncomfortable than can be helped.

Regulus feels Harry staring at him, and looks at him out of the corner of his eye, without turning too much away from Sirius, which would be noticed. Or maybe not. Sirius is in full rant mode now, with James trying to soothe him and Lily shouting at him.

Harry is blinking and staring as if Regulus is a flobberworm who learned how to talk.

Regulus just smiles a little, winks, and turns back to bait Sirius some more. He won’t have Sirius’s place in Harry’s life, or his parents’, but that’s all right. He’s much more interested in a different one.

At Harry’s side.