Chapter Text
Azkaban was dark despite the midday sun overhead and cold in a way that had nothing to do with the freezing late December weather. The cold of ice and snow was barely skin-deep by comparison; the cold of the dementors went all the way to the bone. Still reeling from the bad memories brought on by the boat ride over, Regulus Black shivered. Even with his patronus - a spectral silver thestral - trotting along behind him, he could barely remember what daylight or warmth felt like. It was hard to believe he would ever see them again.
On a purely factual level, he knew that he would. In a few hours, he would be far away from the infernal chill and endless darkness of Azkaban. A much less dismal future awaited him at Hogwarts, where he had been hired to teach Ancient Runes - and to help Dumbledore find and destroy the Dark Lord’s remaining horcruxes. No, by some strange twist of fate, it was not the former Death Eater but his blood traitor brother who had been condemned to life in prison, accused of espionage and mass murder.
Regulus wasn’t sure if he believed it. The evidence seemed clear at first glance, and perhaps to anyone who did not know Sirius - who just saw the surname Black and assumed the worst - it would appear to be an open-shut case. But Regulus did know his brother. He wasn’t prepared to take the Aurors’ reports or even Dumbledore’s account of what happened at face value. At the very least, Sirius deserved a trial - and Regulus intended to make sure he got one.
So here he was, climbing the stairs of the prison fortress, his patronus floating along behind him. At his side was an Auror: Kingsley Shacklebolt, who happened to be one of Regulus’s favorite people at the D.M.L.E. It was really a stroke of luck that Kingsley had been the one assigned to escort Regulus today; he and Amelia Bones were the only D.M.L.E. employees who had been at all helpful or even polite during the grueling process of getting permission to visit Azkaban. In fact, Regulus couldn’t help but wonder if one of them had something to do with the request finally being approved. That was certainly more likely than Barty Crouch Sr., the Head of Magical Law Enforcement, suddenly having a heart made out of anything but stone.
Cutting off that line of thought right then and there, because thinking about the Crouches would only make his patronus disappear, Regulus glanced sideways at Kingsley.
“Is it much further?” he asked.
“Just up ahead,” said the Auror as they approached the landing for the next floor. A heavy-looking barred door ahead marked the entrance to the high security wing. By the light of their two patronuses, he gave Regulus a brief flicker of a gloomy-looking half-smile. “I’m sorry, by the way.”
For a moment, Regulus’s blood ran cold. Was this all some sort of horrible trick? Was he, in fact, not going to be leaving today at all? But - no, that wasn’t possible. Dumbledore had handled everything for him with the Ministry; if he was going to be thrown in prison, it would've happened that day in the courtroom, not a month and a half later under false pretenses. Forcing himself to remain calm, he looked at the Auror carefully. There was an awful lot of guilt in his expression.
“Sorry for what?” asked Regulus, trying to keep his voice steady.
“What you’re about to see, it’s …” Kingsley shuddered. “It’s not pleasant - and from how hard you fought to get approved for a visit, I can tell you care about your brother. I’m sorry.”
Regulus took a deep breath. Of course that was it. Just the guilt that came from being a decent person in a world where even the so-called “good guys” were not always particularly ethical.
Regulus nodded. He didn’t say “it’s alright,” because absolutely nothing about this was alright.
“If it’s really so bad, I’m not the one who deserves an apology,” he said. “And frankly, I doubt that anything in there” - he gestured towards the door - “is your fault.”
Except, maybe, the people he had put there. But there were people who needed to be behind bars. Bellatrix and her husband, for instance. It was Barty’s father who had made the call to send Sirius to Azkaban without so much as a trial. He was to blame, not some low-ranking junior Auror.
“Shall we?” he asked.
Kingsley nodded and pulled out a ring of rusted metal keys. Selecting one, he turned it in the lock, and the barred door opened, creaking on its hinges.
The first thing Regulus noticed was the screaming. They must have done something to the door - some kind of imperturable charm - because there was no way a natural door of metal and wood could have blocked it all out. The screams were horrible, broken up by sobs and faint, incoherent pleas for mercy. It was like listening to someone being tortured - and Regulus knew what that sounded like from experience.
The smell wasn’t any better. In all the time his thoughts had lingered on Azkaban over the past few months, that was something Regulus had never considered: the smell of filth and mold and he didn’t even want to know what else, creeping through a cell block where such things as showers or clean clothes didn’t exist.
The cells themselves were tiny, small enough that Regulus suspected, if he were to stand in the middle of one and stretch his arms out, he could probably touch both walls at once. Each cell was made of three rough gray walls and a set of iron bars, with a tiny, barred window on the far side providing a faint source of light, devoid of any furniture except what was probably supposed to be a cot but was really more of a bench attached to the wall. The man in the nearest cell looked up, and there was something hollow and empty about his eyes.
Rabastan Lestrange. Regulus recognized him at once. He had never liked the Lestrange brothers much. They deserved to be here if anyone did. But that didn’t stop Regulus’s stomach from twisting uncomfortably at the sight of him like this.
Lestrange’s eyes narrowed, and his mouth twisted into a scowl.
“Traitor!” he snarled.
Regulus looked away. Glancing back at Kingsley, he saw the clear discomfort on the Auror’s face.
“Your brother is that way.”
Regulus nodded and followed him in the direction he had indicated. The uneasy feeling in his stomach only got worse as they made their way further into the high security wing, definitely not helped by the fact that he recognized a lot of these people.
It wasn’t that he particularly liked or cared about any of them - although, somewhere in here, there was a Death Eater he still cared about, and the thought of running into Barty down this hellish corridor was enough to make him feel sick. It was more the fact that he had once been not so different from them, and in another life, maybe this was where he himself would have ended up.
More likely, he would’ve joined the Malfoys, the Notts, the Averys, and so many of the others in claiming Imperius the moment the Dark Lord disappeared. Which was its own brand of injustice, really. Somehow, they were all out there despite their obvious guilt, while Sirius was in here without so much as a trial.
He had known Azkaban was bad. But he doubted anyone understood just how awful it was until they were standing there inside of it.
Kingsley came to a stop in front of a cell halfway down the row. The man inside had scraggly, unwashed black hair and wore a tattered, dirty prison uniform. He looked up, and his eyes widened. Unlike Rabastan Lestrange, Sirius didn’t scowl or call Regulus a traitor. The look on his face could probably be described as “astonished” or maybe even “hopeful.”
“Reggie?” he asked.
“Yeah. It’s me.” Regulus glanced at Kingsley. “Can you let me in, or … how does this work?”
“You’ll have to stay on this side of the bars, I’m afraid.”
Regulus frowned, but he figured the important thing was that he was here, not whether he was able to embrace his brother properly.
“I’m sorry,” said Regulus, turning back to Sirius. “I’ve been trying to visit since November, but it’s incredibly hard to get permission. Listen - Sirius - we’ve only got a short time. I have to ask -”
“It was my fault,” said Sirius, his expression darkening.
Regulus’s heart sank.
“You’re telling me you really were the traitor?”
“No. But it was my fault. I convinced them to switch Secret Keepers. I thought - it would be too easy to guess. I’d be too obvious. So I said we should choose someone else, someone nobody would ever suspect.”
As he spoke, the pieces fell into place in Regulus’s mind.
“Pettigrew.”
“Yeah. The little rat.”
He said that like it was supposed to mean something, but Regulus couldn’t imagine what, except of course the obvious fact that Peter Pettigrew had fooled them all.
“I always thought he might sell us out,” said Regulus carefully. “Under the right circumstances. If he was threatened or tortured. But you can’t force out a Fidelius secret under torture.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. So Pettigrew was a traitor and you went after him for revenge. That should help, if we can prove it. But why blow up the street?” asked Regulus. “This would be an open-shut case, I think, if you’d only killed a Death Eater.”
Sirius broke out into a fit of hysterical laughter.
“What?” asked Regulus, feeling more than a little frustrated. “What could possibly be funny about any of this?”
“I wish I’d killed that treacherous little rat,” gasped Sirius. “I wish I had. But he … I … Reggie, you don’t really think I’d blow up a street full of Muggles, do you?”
Oh.
“You’re saying that was his doing?” Regulus’s thoughts raced. “They never actually found his body, just a finger. He could’ve splinched himself, I suppose, or left it behind on purpose …”
Sirius looked for a moment like he was about to say something, but then he glanced sideways at Kingsley and stopped himself.
“Yeah,” he said. “Something like that, I reckon. Listen, what’s going on out there? They didn’t tell me anything. Is Harry okay? And Remus? And the rest of the Order? Are you okay? You’re not in any trouble, are you?”
Regulus managed a smile in spite of everything.
“No, I’m fine. Dumbledore came through for me.” Which makes one of us, he thought bitterly. “As for everyone else …”
He didn’t particularly want to talk about anyone else. But, he reasoned to himself, what he wanted wasn’t really the important thing right now. Sirius was the one who had been locked away for two months with little access to information about the outside world. Of course he would want to know what had become of those he cared about. So Regulus told him. He told him about Harry Potter, hidden away somewhere safe by Dumbledore, and Pandora Lovegood’s daughter, who was already starting to say her first words. About Andi and Ted, who were finally taking steps toward their longtime dream of starting a herbology business, and Marlene McKinnon, now fully recovered from her injuries. He didn’t mention Frank and Alice Longbottom. Most likely, Sirius had already heard that story from Barty and the Lestranges, and if he hadn’t, it was hardly the sort of knowledge that would make his stay in Azkaban any easier.
“Remus?”
“I’m not sure exactly what he’s up to these days,” said Regulus. “We were never close. But I know it’s been hard for him.”
“Will you tell him what I told you?” asked Sirius. “About what really happened? And tell him I’m sorry for ever suspecting him.”
Regulus smiled.
“I’ll tell Lupin, yes, and whoever else I can get to listen. But I’m not going to stop there. I’m not going to just leave you here to rot.”
Sirius looked at him, uncomprehendingly. Then, a look of panic sinking in, he shook his head.
“Don’t do anything stupid or illegal. No offense, Reggie, but I don’t want you as a cellmate.”
Regulus laughed.
“You’re the reckless one,” he said, ignoring for the moment that he himself had been known to behave recklessly on occasion, as well. “And for the record” - with a nervous glance at Kingsley - “I wasn’t implying I’d do anything illegal.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“You were thrown in here without a trial,” said Regulus. “I intend to make sure that you get one.”
Crossing over through the metal bars that separated the two brothers, Regulus’s thestral patronus leaned forward and nudged Sirius gently. In its silver light, he looked just a little less hopeless and miserable.
“You believe me, then?” asked Sirius.
Regulus nodded.
“I do,” he said, “but I can't guarantee that anyone else will.”
It was more difficult than he had expected to walk away and leave Sirius behind. But, of course, that was exactly what he had to do. Back on the ground floor, Regulus and Kingsley boarded the tiny boat that would take them away from Azkaban.
“You really believe he’s innocent?” the Auror asked.
Regulus searched his face for any sign of - well, anything, whether it was sympathy or suspicion or mockery - but he found nothing. Kingsley Shacklebolt was good at keeping his thoughts and feelings to himself, something Regulus could certainly respect but which did him absolutely no good at the moment.
Honesty, he decided, was probably the best way to go.
“As far as Sirius was concerned, the Potters were his real family, far more than those of us he was actually related to. We patched up our relationship once we ended up on the same side of the war, but even so, I would’ve had a much easier time believing he could betray me than James Potter - and yet from what I’ve been able to find out, he never told the Dark Lord I was alive. Pettigrew, on the other hand …” Regulus shrugged. “He was always a bit of a coward, even at school. I can see it.”
Kingsley hesitated, then nodded.
“That doesn’t prove anything, of course,” he said. “There were plenty of witnesses who saw Black murder Pettigrew.”
“I know. It’s going to be hard to prove in court. But he deserves a trial, doesn’t he? If there’s any doubt whatsoever …”
“Yeah,” said Kingsley. “I can agree with you on that, at least.”
They both fell silent for a while, with nothing but the nauseating movement of the boat as it bobbed up and down, spraying ice-cold water at the two men. Regulus tried not to think of another boat, another hostile body of water, another trip to a nightmarish island that probably should have been where it ended for him.
“I’m not high up enough to have any say in who gets a trial,” said Kingsley after a pause. “But if there’s anything I can do to help - anything legal, I mean - let me know.”
Regulus nodded. At the moment, he couldn’t think of anything, but he certainly wouldn’t forget about one of the few people at the Ministry who might be on his side.