Regulus paced back and forth across the room from where his father and brother were arguing. Their argument had been going on for almost an hour now, and the two of them were even further from straightening things out than they had been in the beginning. Regulus knew that he had to do something soon, and while he did have an idea of what could possibly bring his father and brother closer together, he couldn’t think of a way of actually doing it.
At least, not without being seen, that is. It was hard enough for him to stay invisible during the argument (though he had gotten a lot of practice doing so in his life). Adding the mental stress of trying to come up with a plan to bring them together wasn’t helping matters. The younger Black son was reaching his breaking point.
Finally, though, he’d had enough. He stopped walking, leaned up against the wall, and slowly slid down into a sitting position in the farthest corner of the room. The large, wooden table blocked him from being seen by anyone else in the room, and he pulled his wand from his pocket to put his plan into action.
Placing an old photograph in front of him, Regulus took a deep breath and muttered, “Cloustra Minima” while moving his wand in a swift, circular motion. Then, with a final flick of his wrist, the charm he had performed was in place, and he watched as the two people in the photograph slowly began to move further and further away from each other. Sighing, Regulus looked up at where his father and brother continued to argue. The two were standing no more than four feet away from each other, and Regulus felt that he might as well act now: this moment was as good as any other, and besides, he was tired of waiting.
He rose to his feet, picked up the old photograph of his father and brother, and began to walk around the large table to where the two were standing. Immediately, the arguing stopped, and Orion turned to look at his younger son.
“What is it now?” Orion growled, glancing down at what Regulus held in his hands. Sirius did the same and reached out to grab the photograph from his brother.
“Why the bloody hell do you have this?” Sirius asked.
The moment his fingers wrapped around the photo, he felt a strange tingling go through his hand and up his arm. He didn’t think anything about it, soon putting the feeling out of mind, passing it off as imaginary (or a byproduct of being dead, of course). Having put the strange feeling aside, Sirius began to pace back and forth as he looked at the old photo.
However, when he attempted to move further away from Orion, Sirius couldn’t: he felt as if his feet were glued to the ground. He tried as hard as he could to take just one more step, but his body wouldn’t let him.
“Regulus! What the hell did you do?” Sirius yelled.
Regulus looked at his brother, and slowly his eyes began to move down to the picture in Sirius’s hands. A small smile pulled at his lips, and he turned his attention to his father. “Father, see if you can move any further from Sirius.”
Orion lifted his foot to take a step, but, like Sirius, he couldn’t move an inch from the spot he was currently standing in. His eyes narrowed, and he stared back at his younger son. “Regulus Arcturus Black!” he exclaimed. “Fix whatever it is you’ve done!”
“I’m sorry, Father, but I can’t do that,” said Regulus, finally letting the smile he’d held back earlier to break free. His face lit up with the wide grin.
“What do you mean you can’t?” Orion replied.
“Well, the photograph that Sirius just took from me has a charm on it. I can’t break the spell; only you and Sirius can,” Regulus began. “You see, all you two have to do is make amends with each other and become closer, and the spell will break. The photograph is the key; once you two are closer in the picture, it means the spell’s broken.
“Years ago, back when Sirius moved out after you two had your falling out, your photographic selves separated from each other. I placed the Cloustra Minima spell on the photo, and as soon as Sirius touched it, it was put into place.”
Orion growled, and Sirius smiled to himself. His brother was always the type that would try to make people get along. Some things never changed, it seemed, and Sirius doubted Regulus could ever stop playing the peacemaker. He always wanted to help; it was one of the main reasons why Sirius had been shocked in the beginning to find out Regulus had joined the Death Eaters. At first, he couldn’t believe it; joining a bunch of blood-obsessed murderers wasn’t something that Sirius had ever expected his younger brother to do. Not the Regulus who had always shied away from conflict, he had thought before.
But, as time went on, and Sirius really thought about it, he realised that he wasn’t as surprised by the decision as he had once been years ago. Regulus had only joined to show their father that he could be just as good of a son as Sirius had been at one point. His brother had said so himself. He hadn’t done it because he had actually wanted to.
These thoughts of the past drifted into more memories, and Sirius soon found himself remembering a time when Bellatrix had been over at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place to play with Sirius and Regulus. Unfortunately, it hadn’t turned out quite as well as their parents had hoped it would. Ever since she had started at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Bellatrix had never gotten along with Sirius. The two of them hadn’t been the closest of cousins before then, anyway, but once she had come to think that she was better than everyone at school (except for the rest of the Pureblood families, that is), it just grew worse.
~*~
Outside the house, warm wind blew across the children’s faces and caused the ball that they were playing with to roll across the yard. It wasn’t very hot out, but after running around in the sun for hours on end, all three children had red and sweaty faces. For now, though, the children were sitting in the grass under a large oak tree that blocked the sun’s rays. They had been talking about the famous wizarding school, Hogwarts, and it had already started a heated argument between the two older children.
“There are so many filthy Mudbloods at the school, and I can’t believe I have to sit through classes with some of them,” Bellatrix complained to her two younger cousins. She raised her hand and wiped the sweat off of her brow.
“Why are they filthy, Bella?” young Regulus asked.
Bellatrix snorted. “Why aren’t they? The Mudbloods are the worst. They walk around like they’re all so special because they can go to a school to learn magic when other Muggles can’t, and the Half-Bloods... Well, they’re just as bad with that as the Mudbloods are!”
Sirius sighed in frustration. “Bella, just because we’re Purebloods doesn’t mean we have to act like we’re better than anyone else! Muggle-borns and Half-Bloods are just as powerful as Purebloods, and you’re just going to have to accept that.”
Bellatrix looked at Sirius, and she couldn’t help but laugh at the ignorant remark. What does he know? He’s not even old enough to go to Hogwarts yet. He’ll see when he gets there next year, she thought to herself.
“Sirius, you have got to be joking! Of course we’re better than them. Our family traces its bloodlines back to the Middle Ages; the Blacks have been pure for over seven centuries!” said Bellatrix, laughing.
Sirius’s face began to grow red again and he lifted himself to his feet. “Bella, you are so full of it, do you know that? It doesn’t matter how far we can trace our families, or how pure the blood is. Magic is magic. If the Half-Bloods and Muggle borns got into Hogwarts, then obviously, they deserve to be there!”
Bellatrix stood up in the attempt to use the advantage of her height to try and scare Sirius into backing down, but it didn’t work; her cousin didn’t have an inch of give in him. He continued to glare at her, and she huffed in frustration. She couldn’t believe that he was saying these things! Sirius was a Pureblood himself and he should believe in the same things she did. Bellatrix knew for a fact that his parents didn’t raise him to feel nicely about Muggles and Mudbloods. Not Uncle Orion and Aunt Walburga, she thought.
She withdrew her wand from her back pocket and pointed it in Sirius’s face. “Just wait until you get to Hogwarts next year, baby cousin, and you’ll see exactly what I am talking about. Trust me, you will learn to think the same way I, and the rest of our family, does.”
Regulus jumped up and forced himself between the pair.
“Guys, can you stop, please?” he asked. “Bella, put your wand away. You already know that you’re not allowed to use magic outside of school until next week! You’re not seventeen yet, and Sirius, please, you know how Bella is when it comes to things like this. Just please stop it. I don’t want to get into trouble with Mother and Father.”
Sirius glanced down at his younger brother, and though the action was slightly reluctant, he nodded his head. Regulus smiled and then looked up at his cousin.
Bellatrix’s reluctance was a lot more visible than Sirius’s, of course, but she agreed to Regulus’s plea all the same. She placed her wand back into her pocket and stomped off towards the house.
~*~
It had only been a half hour since the spell was put into place, but Sirius could tell that it was taking its toll on his father. Sirius himself wasn’t feeling half as bad, and he smiled when Orion sighed heavily next to him.
Regulus had gone back to his seat across from Sirius and his father, and he waited to see if the two would become closer “ or just outright refuse to talk to each other. Both of them are stubborn enough to do just that, he realised. Rubbing his eyes, Regulus put his head down to rest on top of his folded arms. In the beginning it had seemed like a good idea to place the charm on his brother and father, but now that it was taking a while, he was starting to have second thoughts about the whole plan.
“How long is this supposed to take?” Orion asked Sirius in a low, stern voice.
“As long as you make it,” Sirius replied, a slight smile beginning to spread across his face. He knew that his father was stubborn “ not that he denied being stubborn himself, but Sirius knew that Orion had that Black family trait far more than he did -- and that it could take a lot longer than anyone in the room thought for the two to become as close as they had once been.
There were times when Sirius and Regulus were still just children when they had been punished for things that weren’t nearly as horrible as their father had made them out to be. These punishments always lasted a long time, and Orion never backed down from the things that he said. If their father happened to be in one of his bad moods, the punishments would be even longer.
But eventually, the punishments would end and as soon as something good would happen, the two boys would be back outside playing on their toy broomsticks and wrestling in the grass.
Orion gave a heavy sigh once again and put his face in his hands. He began to think back to when he was close to Sirius, but he couldn’t come up with a way to get himself out of the mess he was in right then.
~*~
Orion stepped through the door to Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place and went straight to his study, slamming the door as he went. Sirius and Regulus had been in the living room playing when they’d seen their father come home. They glanced at each other when they heard the door slam, and Regulus decided it’d be best to clean up the mess before the two of them were punished. Sirius glared fiercely at his brother as Regulus attempted to put their toys away, and Sirius snatched the Chocolate Frog cards from his hands.
“Sirius, what are you doing? Father is home, and he’s in another bad mood. You remember what happened the last time,” Regulus stated, trying to take the cards away from his older brother.
“Yes, I do, and to be honest, I don’t care,” Sirius replied, lifting himself to his feet and walking towards the door. He glanced back at his brother and snorted. “I can’t believe you, Reg. You’re really going to clean everything up?”
Regulus nodded and continued cleaning the mess. Sirius sighed, shook his head, and left the room. His father was waiting for him in the hallway causing Sirius to jump back in shock, having expected Orion to still be in the study.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Orion growled, glaring down at his eldest son. “You better get back in there and help your brother.”
“Why should I? He’s almost done with it anyway,” Sirius said as he looked up at his father.
Orion narrowed his eyes and grabbed Sirius by the arm. He pulled his son into the living room and pushed him towards Regulus. He then took the toys Regulus had in his hands, threw them on the floor, and glared back at Sirius.
“Now, I want you to clean up this mess, and then, when you’re finished, I want you in your room until I say you can come out,” Orion said, his voice calm yet still forceful.
Sirius glared at his father, but he knew that face, had been talked to in that voice before. Arguing was pointless. Blood boiling and his face red with anger, Sirius knelt on the floor in front of his father and began to pick up the toys.
~*~
Sighing, Orion ran his hands over his face. The memory had opened his eyes to how he truly was as a father. He knew he had to be tough, had to be stern, but to be cruel? That was another thing in itself. He had wanted his sons to respect him, not be completely afraid of him.
Orion knew that fear hadn’t been his eldest’s problem; Sirius had been far from being afraid of him. But Regulus, Orion was coming to realise, had been a different story. All of the things Sirius had said about Regulus and how he’d treated his younger child had been true. Never once had he told Regulus that he was proud of him for the things he had accomplished, and never once had he attempted to see things from his son’s point of view.
Deep down, Orion Black slowly started to accept that fact. He had slowly started to see that Sirius had been right in everything the other wizard had said … and that Orion was in the wrong. And yet, Orion could not bring himself to admit that.
He knew, therefore, that the spell was going to take a fairly long time to be finished. Stubbornness and pride were easily two of the strongest traits that ran in the Black family; every one of them had a level of both, and Orion was no different. He was too stubborn to admit that he was wrong, and he was too proud to apologise to his own sons.
World of the Dead by TCole
Chapter Notes: I would like to thank Megan and Nikki for betaing this for me. They're both absolutely amazing. =D
Chapter Endnotes: So, what do you think? Horrible? Great? Amazing? Review? Please? =P Thank you for reading!