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It’s a dark and stormy night; Regulus barely registers it. He’s too distracted.
He’s seen the news, after all. His friends say he’s too invested for someone with no personal stake, but that’s not true. He does have a personal stake, even if his own life is (probably) not at risk.
The relief he feels at the Dark Lord’s demise is strange, though. He’ll have to examine that later, a few firewhiskeys in, and certainly alone. He doubts any of his friends will understand. Barty is probably planning something fantastically risky right this very moment.
Sometimes he thinks it’s ironic how deeply Barty and Sirius have always hated each other, given their mutual driving force of pissing off their shit parents. (Well, parents, plural, for Sirius; Barty’s mum is all right, actually.) The one time Evan brought it up, Barty hexed him, so… it’s really best if Regulus keeps his mouth shut.
He’s good at that.
He’s had to be.
And he’s reaped the rewards: namely, a flat all his own in Diagon Alley, because his mother has deigned him acceptable enough to allow him some modicum of freedom. (A more sentimental person may suggest that she feels emotions toward him, but Regulus knows better by now.)
Of course, he’s paid the price, too. While his friends all signed up to serve the Dark Lord, his mother had gone on about the family line and arranged an engagement to some appropriate Pureblood girl (who’d run off with a Half-Blood the moment she’d turned seventeen; no replacement was ever selected – Regulus didn’t particularly mind).
Today, though, Regulus feels no regret that he couldn’t serve.
Only relief that it’s over – or near enough.
(Concern for his friends’ welfare will come later, once it sinks in what it means for the Ministry to finally, finitely have the upper hand in this war.)
What draws him out of his reverie – he refuses, on principle, to join the still-ongoing celebrations outside (even though it’s been two days) – is a very loud bark, followed by what can only be an animal’s nails on his door.
Regulus has never been overly fond of dogs; he’s always preferred cats, personally. His brother always needled him about it, and even Evan used to make comments about cats and dogs before Sirius abandoned him.
He can’t think about Sirius right now, even though he knows it’s Sirius’s best friend who’s died, too. (What would he do if it had been Evan? Or Barty?)
He pounds on the door from the inside, hoping to scare the creature away, but he’s only greeted with more barks, and more desperate clawing.
Regulus isn’t one to be cruel to animals – he never has really learnt the cruelty his mother has spent so many years trying to inspire in him – but he really doesn’t want to be bothered by what sounds to be a very large dog.
Some sparks, he decides. Nothing to hurt the creature, but enough to maybe send it back to where it came from.
Unfortunately, he’s no sooner opened the door than the dog – a big, black thing – runs inside, cleanly pushing him over and knocking his wand out of his hand in one fell swoop.
Before Regulus can reach for his wand, the dog has somehow shut the door behind itself, and has turned on him.
If this dog kills him, he’s going to scream.
He makes one desperate lunge for his wand, but the dog bites his arm, tearing his sleeve, and starts dragging him away.
Yeah, no, Evan and Barty are never going to get over death by dog.
Once he’s far enough from his wand, the dog settles in on his chest and lets go of his arm. Regulus has always prided himself on his cool head, but what he does in the moment is shove desperately at the thing – only it doesn’t move.
How the fuck is this even happening?
Except then – he doesn’t notice it at first, but the dog changes; it shifts into something else.
And that something else is, in fact, a very familiar someone.
“Hi, baby brother. Glad to see you never bothered getting a Dark Mark with your friends.”
“Get the fuck off me!” Regulus hisses, shoving him off with no concern this time.
He might have compassion for animals, but for his brother to break into his flat and act as if he didn’t abandon him just a few short years ago – it’s too much.
Sirius lets Regulus shove him away this time.
“You bit me, you prick!”
Sirius shrugs. “Not the first time.”
“Yes, well, seeing as we’re no longer children, you can forgive me for assuming your biting days were over.”
“Shut up and listen to me.”
“No,” Regulus says, lunging for his wand – successfully, this time – and raising it at his brother.
Sirius only raises an eyebrow. “You wouldn’t.”
No; he wouldn’t. Fucking prick. Instead, Regulus summons some dittany and starts dabbing it on his arm. “If this is some bizarre stage of grief I don’t know about, I want no part of it.”
Sirius looks stricken for a moment, but he recovers quickly. “It’s not grief.”
He’s drawing this out. “What is it, then?”
Sirius glances around the flat. “Are we alone?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure? Rosier isn’t skulking about in your bedroom?”
Regulus feels his face heat. Merlin, he hasn’t missed this. “Evan doesn’t skulk about, and no, he’s not here. What do you want, Sirius?”
“Your friends are Death Eaters.”
“I’m not responding to that,” Regulus says, which is as good as a confession – but he knows better than to admit it outright. In spite of everything, he wants his friends to come out from this war unscathed.
Maybe that makes him a horrible person, when his friends have done objectively unforgivable things (quite literally).
He doesn’t care.
“Would – would they want to know who betrayed Voldemort?” Regulus flinches at the name, but Sirius seems to take no notice. “Seek a bit of revenge?”
“So you’re sympathetic to the Cause, now?”
“Of course not,” Sirius snaps.
“Right. Can’t do anything Mother might approve of.”
“Piss off. I’m offering a trade. Information.”
“You evidently are well aware that I’m not a Death Eater,” Regulus says. “I don’t have anything to do with the war.”
“No; you slave away quietly in a Ministry job while your boyfriend and friends go about murdering people, thinking your inaction absolves you of guilt.”
Regulus does his best to appear unaffected. “Did you have a point?”
“Peter Pettigrew. He was James and Lily’s Secret-Keeper. He betrayed them, and he’s the reason Voldemort’s dead. I – they’re going to think it was me. They’re going to come after me if no one hauls him in.”
“I am entirely certain Bellatrix has dissuaded even the most delusional from believing you’d ever do a single thing our family wants.”
“Not her. The Ministry. They’re going to – to send me to Azkaban. You know I didn’t do it, Reg. You have to know.”
Regulus does his best to appear impassive. The truth of the matter is that he does know. Aside from the very simple, objective fact that Sirius would rather die than do a single thing that might, even incidentally, please their mother… Sirius always loved Potter more than his own family.
While he has little doubt that Sirius would sell his own family out if it benefitted him, Regulus knows his brother would never do the same to Potter.
He also knows that Sirius’s unwavering loyalty to Potter is common knowledge among anyone who’s even so much as heard of the two of them.
“Why would the Ministry think you did it?” Regulus asks as he finishes with his dittany. “Everyone knows you prefer Potter to your actual family. You have for nearly a decade.”
He intends it to be cutting, but Sirius doesn’t even flinch.
Of course not.
“Dumbledore offered to be their Secret-Keeper, and they refused. He thinks – I’m sure everyone thinks it’s me. Was me. But – we changed it last minute. Peter seemed a less obvious choice; less likely to be targeted.”
Regulus bites back a comment about how that turned out. He tries to think about how he’d feel if Barty betrayed Evan – well. Unsurprised, really, particularly if there were any benefit to Barty. Even the other way around… he could believe it, too.
But to frame him…
Barty might (again: it all comes back to how it serves him). Evan never would.
“Potter had to know the risk.”
“Peter worshipped the ground he walked on.”
“Pettigrew isn’t you, though. Do Gryffindors not think critically about who they can trust?”
In an instant, Sirius’s wand is at his throat. “Don’t you dare blame James and Lily for this.”
“I’m not,” Regulus says, even though he sort of is, a bit. “And we both know you won’t kill me, so stop embarrassing yourself. Do you really think presenting this information to some Death Eaters – who I’m certain are unmoored and utterly disorganised due to the Dark Lord’s demise – will do you any good?”
“They could kill him.”
“Brilliant idea,” Regulus deadpans. “Then your only witness is dead and unable to corroborate.”
Sirius seems to deflate at that. “He’ll go underground. He’ll know that I’m after him. He won’t corroborate anyway. I wouldn’t put it beyond him to fake his own death.”
“So… what, exactly, is your plan?”
“One of your friends could lull him into a false sense of security and then turn him over to the D.M.L.E.”
“That is the stupidest thing I’ve heard in my entire life,” Regulus says flatly. “Why would anyone turn Pettigrew in to the D.M.L.E.?”
“Clemency,” Sirius says easily. “Even if your entire little group of friends hasn’t joined up – enough of them have. Do you think they’ll all stay out of Azkaban?”
“So you want someone I care about to admit to casting Unforgivables – to committing war crimes – to exact revenge on your… former friend?”
“Have them say someone Imperiused them. Bellatrix probably would – what about Rosier? If he didn’t live up to family expectations? Wouldn’t Bellatrix take desperate measures? After all, she’s his cousin, too.”
“Evan’s family expectations, as you put them, are the same as mine: marrying well and continuing the family line.”
“And yet you’re not married. Either of you.”
“I’m not sure what you’re insinuating,” Regulus says coolly. He knows Sirius can see right through him – he always has – but he’s hardly going to admit to anything.
“Oh, I’m saying outright that you’re fucking him – or want to be, at least – and would do anything to keep him safe. I’m not the only one in our family capable of love.”
Regulus falls back on deflection. “Yes, Cissy does seem to love her family, doesn’t she?”
“Regulus. This could be your only chance. You said we should think critically about who we can trust. Do you trust all of your friends to keep each other safe?”
No, he doesn’t. He doesn’t trust Barty, and he doesn’t trust Rabastan, and he certainly doesn’t trust those on the fringes of his circle: Mulciber, Avery, and Snape. Honestly, he doesn’t even trust Evan not to turn on others.
Just because he’s sure Evan would never turn on him doesn’t mean that everyone else has earned the same loyalty.
At the end of the day, they all want to save their own necks.
“You said Pettigrew will fake his own death.”
“I know how to find him.” Sirius sounds confident. “He can’t hide from me – he’ll have to leave Britain, and even then, I’d chase him down.”
“Am I to assume he’s also an unregistered Animagus, then? Of all the stupid things.”
“Jealous you couldn’t manage it, hm?”
“I’m not arguing with you, Sirius,” Regulus says. He keeps his tone firm, even though he really does want little more than to call his brother a blathering idiot. “Answer the question.”
“He’s a rat.”
“Ironic.”
“Fuck off,” Sirius says. “He’s a rat, and I know how to lock onto his magical signature.”
“So, what, you want me to have someone I know track him down, lull him into a false sense of security, and somehow transport him to the D.M.L.E. and keep him in hand enough to turn him in?”
“And hide me, preferably.”
“I’m the first person they’ll ask about you, if they think you’ve changed sides. In case you’ve forgotten, I am your brother.”
“Better work fast, then,” Sirius says. “And once this is over, I’ll need your help with Harry.”
“The child?” Regulus asks. “Why?”
“Dumbledore and the Ministry have sent him to live with Lily’s sister.”
“Is there a reason I should care about that?”
“Given the way she treated Lily – the way she acted when she met James – I suspect… she’d handle a magical child in much the same way our mother would handle a squib.”
Regulus just can’t manage to suppress a shudder. He has enough memories of the time before his magic manifested. Sirius had always been the gifted one; he’d used accidental magic as a literal infant – Regulus, on the other hand…
He’s always been second-best.
Even once Sirius left, Regulus knows he’s still second-best; this time, to the hypothetical dutiful Slytherin that Sirius ought to have been.
He’s really quite used to it at this point.
“You want me to convince one of my friends to give themselves up and then make myself complicit in a kidnapping?”
“Yes,” Sirius says simply.
Regulus sighs. His brother knows his weaknesses, after all this time. Anyone who thinks Sirius couldn’t have been a Slytherin – that Gryffindor wasn’t an active choice – is fooling themselves.
He can’t leave a child in an abusive home any more than Sirius can.
“And I should trust that you’re fine with one of my friends – someone who has, as you so eloquently put it, signed up to join a fucking pureblood supremacist death cult, staying out of Azkaban?”
“I’m not fine with it,” Sirius says. “I think every Death Eater should be behind bars for what they’ve done. But I’ll never manage to get Peter myself, and I don’t want you risking your life.”
“Risking my life?” From his knowledge, Pettigrew had been an adequate student, but hardly a duellist.
“He’s desperate. Every day I’m not hauled in… he’ll get worse and worse.”
“Why not wait for him to reach the end of his rope, then?”
“Because who would believe me over him when he goes to the D.M.L.E. to claim I’ve Imperiused him? I’m a Black; he’s a Half-Blood with a generations-long family tradition of being sorted into Gryffindor.”
“You don’t have a Dark Mark.”
“Because Voldemort would never think strategically? And anyway, maybe I’m not a Death Eater, but maybe I’m a sympathiser who’s Imperiused him, anyway.”
Regulus can’t argue that that wouldn’t work.
“If you don’t help me, I’ll try my own luck – but I really think this is the best option.”
Regulus wants to argue, because it is truly an incredibly stupid plan with far too many holes, when Evan apparates into his apartment.
“Avery’s been hauled in,” he says immediately.
“See?” Sirius says.
Evan jumps when he notices Sirius, and wastes no time in drawing his wand.
“It’s fine,” Regulus says. “Is Pettigrew a Death Eater?”
Evan doesn’t lower his wand. “Hell if I know.”
“You don’t?” Sirius asks.
“Sirius, shut up and let the adults handle this,” Regulus says.
“I don’t know how the Order does it, but hypothetically-speaking, it would be incredibly stupid for all of the members of a resistance cell to know everyone involved. It would make much more sense to limit who knows who.”
“The Order –”
“Sirius,” Regulus says. “Don’t take the bait. Evan, stop baiting him. Sirius claims Potter was betrayed by Pettigrew.”
Evan looks Sirius over. “Well, you’d never do a thing to make your mother happy,” he says. “I suppose betraying Potter would be one of those things.”
“It would,” Sirius says.
“Particularly given his choice of wife,” Regulus can’t help but add.
Sirius’s wand is back at his throat, which means Evan’s wand is at Sirius’s throat, and this is just a mess.
“Do you disagree that our mother would be displeased with James Potter’s choice of spouse?” Regulus asks.
“Fuck you,” Sirius says.
“I thought you wanted my help.”
“Why Pettigrew?” Evan asks. “Why not Lupin? He’s the werewolf, isn’t he?”
“Werewolf?” Regulus repeats. That doesn’t make any sense; Lupin went to Hogwarts! Who would allow a werewolf at Hogwarts? Wouldn’t that pose a danger to the entire student body?
But then… Sirius is an unregistered animagus. And there was the time Severus Snape got too close to the Whomping Willow…
Evan shrugs. “Sev told me.”
“Sev,” Sirius spits. He lowers his wand, though, and Evan follows suit.
“Yes, I know you’re forever –”
“Evan,” Regulus tries. “Honestly, both of you just stop. Sirius says Pettigrew was their Secret-Keeper.”
“Were you there to see the spell performed?” Evan asks.
“I cast it,” Sirius says.
“So go to the D.M.L.E. yourself – take some veritaserum or show them your memories. Easily enough handled.”
“If I weren’t a Black, I might do just that,” Sirius says. “It’s a miracle no one’s accused Reggie of anything.”
“I don’t appreciate that insinuation,” Regulus says.
“Regulus is too soft to be a killer,” Evan says, though Regulus can hear the affection in his tone.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Evan.
“He’s still a Black,” Sirius says. “You can’t pretend that Crouch doesn’t judge people based on their family.”
Evan snorts; presumably Sirius doesn’t know about Barty. That’s just fine. Neither of them are going to sell him out.
If Barty’s caught, it’ll be due to his own lack of discretion.
“And why am I being informed of this plan?”
“Sirius thinks you’re a Death Eater,” Regulus says as casually as he can manage.
“Does he?” Evan asks. He looks Sirius over. “I’m not the one who looks like he’s been living in a gutter for two days.”
Regulus slaps a hand over Sirius’s mouth before he can say anything. To Regulus’s horror, Sirius responds by licking his hand.
Disgusting. Regulus pulls his hand away in shock and wipes it on his robes. “You are repulsive,” he tells his brother. “Are you a child?”
Sirius ignores him. “Rosier, cut the act. If you turn Pettigrew in, you can claim he Imperiused you – or maybe Bella did – and throw yourself at the D.M.L.E. for clemency.”
“No one in their right mind would believe Pettigrew Imperiused me,” Evan says.
“Bella, then,” Sirius says. “Surely you wouldn’t be sad to see her behind bars – she was every bit as cruel to you as children as she was to us.”
Evan considers it. “She was,” he says after a moment.
“Evan,” Regulus says. He can’t honestly think he can get away with this!
“You were also the best duellist at Hogwarts – presumably that hasn’t changed. You can take Pettigrew if he tries to kill you.”
Evan scoffs. “Pettigrew’s form has always been lacking.”
“Your friends will betray you – all of them but Reggie, who’s innocent himself. Maybe not all of them, but all it takes is one. And isn’t your father rumoured to be in Voldemort’s service, as well? Family tradition?”
“My father would never use Dark Magic on me,” Evan says coldly. “We’re not all Blacks. Some of us have compassion.”
“Yes, compassion enough to murder Muggles and Muggleborns,” Sirius says lightly. “So grand of you. Doesn’t mean Bella didn’t Imperius you; she’d be livid if you refused to follow family tradition, and you know she’s never particularly cared about carrying on bloodlines.”
“So to be clear,” Evan says. “You want me to track Pettigrew down, turn him into the D.M.L.E. as a Death Eater and the real person who betrayed the Potters, then use that as leverage if I were hypothetically to have joined the losing side myself.”
“Exactly,” Sirius says.
“And why would they be more inclined to believe a Rosier than a Black? We have every bit the Slytherin tradition that you do – and my Great-Aunt Vinda was one of Grindelwald’s most dedicated followers. The Ministry must surely know that.”
“Compared to our Great-Aunt, who tried to bring Grindelwald’s war to Britain?”
“Touché,” Evan says. “Regulus, what do you think?”
“I think it’s a stupid, suicidal mission, and Sirius should just go to the D.M.L.E. himself to clarify the situation.”
“You have a lot of faith in Barty Crouch – don’t you know his son well enough to know what a psychopath the man is?” Sirius asks.
Regulus has nothing to say to that. Barty’s father is a tyrant, and everyone knows it. He knows that he wouldn’t believe Sirius – but why would he believe Evan, either?
Particularly considering how much Crouch, Sr. hates his son, and how everyone knows that Evan has always counted himself among Barty’s friends.
“If I were a Death Eater, you do know that giving names would paint a big target on my back,” Evan says carefully.
“That’s the beauty of it! I’m sure every single Death Eater alive blames Peter for Voldemort’s downfall! Why wouldn’t they? He told Voldemort to go to that house – did he have inside information? Was he a double agent?”
“If he was, then shouldn’t you want him out?”
“If someone betrayed Regulus and left him to die, would you let them get away with it?”
Evan looks at Regulus; it’s impossible to ignore the warmth in his gaze. “No,” Evan says. “I wouldn’t.”
“No one will blame you for turning Pettigrew in; he’s the reason Voldemort is dead, and he effectively killed Lily and James. Everyone ought to hate him. At worst, you’ll have grudging respect from people who really don’t like you.”
“And if this backfires and I spend the rest of my life in Azkaban while Pettigrew walks free?”
“Then I’ll kill him and join you there, and Regulus can visit the both of us.”
“Sirius!” Regulus snaps.
Sirius only shrugs. He offers his free hand to Evan – his wand still clutched in the other. “Do we have a deal?”