Chapter Text
The clock hit seven o’clock at the same time thunder started crackling. Regulus sat by his usual tree at St. Georges’s Gardens reading.
“Give me the child.” He read. “Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way to the castle beyond the Goblin City to take back the child you have stolen. For my will is as strong as yours and my kingdom is as great. You have no power ove-”
Kreacher started barking.
“Quiet down Kreacher!” Said Regulus as he lifted his wrist to take a look at the silver watch resting on it. “Oh Merlin, it’s already seven?!”
Just as a few tiny drops of water started hitting his face, Regulus closed his book and slipped it into the brown worn out bag resting by his side. Kreacher had shifted the target of his barking to an owl perched on a bar of the nearby fence when he got up. “Come on!” Hissed Regulus towards the dog so that he knew they were leaving.
What started as a few droplets was beginning to turn into a full-on heavy pour. “Great, now not only do we have to run home, but we have to do it under London’s remarkable timing for its weather.” And just as he said, both of them started sprinting through the park’s fresh and apparently recently cut grass.
The streets were quiet except for the storm that was brewing. Just a few cars crossed Gray’s Inn Road that Tuesday at seven when Regulus and Kreacher, already soaked, hurried. They passed his favourite bookshop and dashed by several lawns trying to win time, but he was still late.
God, this isn’t fair, Regulus thought as he saw Walburga through the distance standing by number 12 from Grimmauld’s Place with her arms crossed in front of her chest and her usual ‘I expected better from you’ look.
“Really?” She asked when he stood facing her with Kreacher by his side.
“I’m sorry, lost track of time.” Regulus apologized.
“Well, you should have known better. Now, don’t stand dumbfooled in the rain.” Walburga snarled. “Not the dog!” She spit with a disgusted face as he climbed the couple of steps in front of the front door.
“But it’s pouring!” Regulus snorted.
“Go on, to the garage!” She still said.
Kreacher started its way there after stereotypically shaking the freezing water off its mud-dirty hair before Regulus stormed into the house followed by his stepmother.
“Regulus you’re an hour late!” She said at the same time she closed the door.
She’ll never stop complaining about me, right?, he thought.
“I already said I’m sorry.” Regulus murmured under his breath.
“Let me finish young man!” Walburga warned before continuing. “Your father and I go out very rarely due to his busy schedule.”
"But you go out almost every weekend, that's not true!" He interrupted.
"If we ask you to babysit, it's your duty as an older brother to obey us." Walburga stated with her other expression, apart from the disappointed one, where she had a small frown of her eyebrows that progressively grew and furrowed her lips into a thin line. Her stone cold eyes and icy voice tone surely didn’t help her look any less intimidating.
Walburga Black, after marrying his father three years ago, was a black haired woman with prominent features and fair skin that could have easily already been a member of his family. Ever since Regulus met her he doesn’t think he has seen her without wearing formal attire. Everything about her screamed ‘posh’, which was exactly what his father was seeking after losing his first wife and experiencing a skyrocketing increase of importance of his business. Even if Regulus was still a few centimeters taller than her, she managed to make everyone feel small with a few glances and passive aggressive sentences.
“I also have a life, you know? I can’t be here every weekend, cancelling my plans just because you want to go out and look good in front of possible business partners.” Regulus answered tired of having the same discussion every week.
“Regulus, are you home?” He heard his father say when he entered the living room with little Sirius in between his arms. “How can you arrive an hour late when you’re expected here?”.
He doesn’t think Orion Black ever cared about him as an average father cares about his son. After all, he has felt used, just as a puppet or maid, for as long as he can remember in his seventeen short years of life. Regulus’s mom wasn’t like that, but his father decided to permanently forget about her after her passing.
“I can’t do anything right, can I?” He exclaimed before bolting through the corridor and up the stairs on the way to his room.
When he got there and closed the door behind him, Regulus put his back against it and let out an exhausted sigh. At last, he thought.
His new room after moving when his dad got married was bigger than the one he had before. There were two big windows, with the one facing the door having some sort of small balcony where he liked to sit in the summer to read. He had three big bookshelves full of his favourite stories, some that used to belong to his mother and plenty of other things he always felt too nostalgic towards so he never threw them away.
Sitting on the desk beside his bed, Regulus laid his bag on top of it and took out his book. As he opened the novel, he examined its first page, a hand-written note of his mum. “For my darling one, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did when I was your age. With love, your mummy,” It read.
He put aside the bookmark and resumed what was his sixth time reading the book. “Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way to the castle beyond the Goblin City to take back the child you have stolen.”
“Regulus, a word.” Orion demanded, speaking from the other side of the door.
“There is nothing to talk about!” He snapped. “You better hurry or you’ll be late.”
“Listen, we fed Sirius and put him to bed. We’re leaving and won’t be here until midnight, so stop acting like a bloody pratt and being so selfish.”
“Wow, I see how much you wanted to talk to me.” Regulus murmured while he angrily stood up and stomped to his bed so he could lay down for a while.
Turning to his nightstand, after trying to calm down his frustration, he noticed something missing.
“My locket! Someone has been in my room again.” He gasped. And they know how much I hate it. Regulus fled as he left his room to enter the one beside it.
Going through the doorway he saw his locket thrown on the ground next to the baby’s crib. There he stood, Sirius, with his mother’s pitch black hair and the awfully similar grey eyes as his brother, bloodshot from all the crying. I hate you, Regulus thought, sweeping away the locket and bringing it as close as he could to his chest.
Walburga and Orion had had Sirius two years ago. Ever since, Regulus’s life has been even more miserable, if it was even possible after losing his mother. His stepmother only seemed to despise him more after having a child with his dad, and used him regularly as a babysitter or as the person to blame for every little problem that appeared in their lives.
“Someone save me, someone take me away from this awful place,” Regulus breathed, closing his eyes.
The sound of thunder resonated through the room and Sirius’s cries increased. “What do you want? Do you want me to tell you a story?” The older boy mocked looking at the baby.
“Once upon a time, there was a beautiful, young boy whose stepmother always made him stay home with the baby. The baby was a spoiled child that wanted everything for himself and the young boy was practically a slave. But what no one knew…” Regulus continued with the sound of a thunderstorm behind him. “...was that the king of the goblins had fallen in love with the boy, and he had given him certain powers. So one night, when the baby had been particularly cruel to him, he called on the goblins for help.”
He turned to now face his brother, still crying. “Say your right words, the goblins said.” Regulus added, doing a weird voice as if imitating a goblin. “And we’ll take the baby to the Goblin City and you will be free.”
Indifferent to Sirius’s urge for comfort, he narrated. “But the boy knew that the king of the goblins would keep the baby in his castle forever and ever and ever and turn it into a goblin, so the boy suffered in silence. Until one night, when he was tired from a day of housework and he was hurt by the harsh words of his stepmother and he could no longer stand it…”
Unable to keep ignoring his brother’s yelps, Regulus took him into his arms while moving them trying to soothe his cries. “Allright, come on, stop it,” He pleaded. “I’ll end up saying the words.”
“No, I mustn’t, I can’t do it, right?” Arguing, he looked into Sirius’s eyes. “I wish… I wish…” Regulus seemed to continue anyway.
“I can’t bear it no longer! Goblin King, Goblin King, wherever you may be, take this child of mine away from me!” The boy declared in a theatrical way.
Sirius’s sobs were almost deafening together with the sky’s roars.
“If only I really knew what to say to make the goblins take you away” Regulus wished leaving the baby again at the crib, now laying. Then, he walked to the door and stopped by the lightswitch. “I wish the goblins would come and take you away, right now.” He begged while turning off the lights. As soon as he flipped the switch and turned, Regulus stopped hearing Sirius’s incessant cries.
Going back into the room, he called out his brother’s name just to get silence as a response. “Sirius, are you alright?” He asked, trying to turn on the lights of the bedroom without result.
Slowly, the black haired boy approached the crib. “Sirius, why aren’t you crying?”
Hearing a strange sound, similar to muffled laughs, he decided to raise the bedsheets only to find an empty space where the baby used to be.
A flapping sound hit the room’s window, where Regulus saw a familiar white owl piercing its gaze into his eyes, and the next few seconds were impossible to describe.
Those muffled laughs multiplicated and seemed to be coming from hundreds of different corners as he heard tiny footsteps going through the bedroom without being able to see anything. Drawers opened, sheets moved, doors swinged and closets wobbled.
Until whatever was hitting the window, finally made its way through it. The owl streamed inside, going directly to Regulus, making him flinch and put his arms in front of his face as a way of defending himself. And by the time he lowered them, he noticed, Regulus wasn’t the only person in Sirius’s bedroom anymore.