The Fall of the House of Black

[starfishstar]

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF BLACK

Summary: Remus Lupin has heard not a single word from his old friend Sirius Black since Sirius retreated to his family’s ancestral home, abruptly and without explanation, twelve years ago. Now Remus receives an urgent letter from Sirius, begging him to visit the House of Black.

Characters: Sirius, Remus, Regulus, Kreacher

Words: 16,000

Notes:

I was thinking about Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Fall of the House of Usher” and about the “Noble and Most Ancient House of Black,” and how delightfully they might map onto one another: two grim houses, one gothic tale! But in this one, perhaps there’s romance to be had as well…

(This is an AU and a fusion with Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” but you don’t in the least need to have read that story to enjoy this. Though if you have read it, I hope you’ll get a kick out of spotting the parallels!)

Written for the 2017 Remus/Sirius Games (Team Sirius, Day 21; prompt: picture of a stack of old books with a glass jar on top).

I’ve also created a music playlist to accompany this story (see the end notes for links to individual songs).

Thanks so much to huldrejenta for betareading!

Read here below or on AO3.

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It was a dull, dark day in autumn when a letter arrived for Remus Lupin.

A dusky owl dropped the envelope beside his plate at the staff table in Hogwarts’ Great Hall, then winged silently away. Remus snatched up the letter and stared at the elegant scrawl of black ink that graced the front of the envelope, proclaiming Remus’ name across heavy, cream-coloured paper.

Remus knew that handwriting. He would know it anywhere.

With mumbled excuses to his colleagues, Remus made his way down from the staff table and through the throngs of students chattering over their breakfasts. He pushed open the oaken doors of the castle, seeking a solitude that was hard to come by within the castle walls.

He found a somewhat secluded seat on a rock beside the lake, under a brooding sky. The air was clammy, hinting at coming rain, and fallen leaves shuffled restlessly about his feet. It was fitting, somehow, that this letter should arrive now, of all seasons of the year. For Remus, autumn always brought to mind lost friends.

He breathed in and slid one finger under the envelope’s flap. The paper came apart smoothly, as Remus had known it would do. How often had he watched just this sticking charm cast by the same hand that had written Remus’ name in such an elegant, careless scrawl across the envelope he now held?

Remus suppressed a shudder of terrible nostalgia, and slid free a single parchment sheet.

The letter indeed proved to be from Sirius Black. The famously reclusive Sirius Black who’d lived shut away from society these last twelve years, speaking to no one but an old house-elf people said still tottered around the grand old country house Sirius had inherited from his pure-blood family. That crumbling mansion had passed down through so many generations, from sire to son of the aristocratic Blacks, that eventually the family and the estate came to be known by the same name, both referred to simply as the “House of Black”.

The letter Remus held was brief. There were no explanations, no apologies for the long years of silence. Sirius simply entreated his old friend, in words that failed to hide a state of high agitation, to come to the House of Black as soon as possible. Sirius made vague mention of some illness and alluded cryptically to its urgency, but seemed disinclined to commit more detail than that to paper.

He signed the letter:

Your friend,
Sirius

Were they friends? Remus wondered, staring out over the Hogwarts lake without taking much notice of the chill waters or the wind that soughed across the surface, whipping tips of white to the scudding waves. They’d been inseparable, of course, here at Hogwarts: Sirius, James, Peter and Remus. But all that had changed twelve years ago, with Peter’s betrayal and James and Lily’s deaths. And then, in the terrible days after that shattering loss, when Remus had most needed his only remaining friend, Sirius had departed abruptly to his family’s old country estate, the ancestral home he’d previously renounced. He’d given a vague explanation about needing to put something in order there and said he would be back soon. But he’d never returned, and Remus was left standing suddenly and utterly alone.

Remus had carried on, yes. What else could he do? He scrounged up what little work he could find despite the necessities of concealing his lycanthropy; he looked out for Harry from afar; he kept putting one foot in front of the other, walking through a drab world so different from the one he’d known in those too-brief days when he’d belonged to a band of merry boys. If Remus was not happy, precisely, there were at least occasional bright spots. He’d been grateful indeed to receive Dumbledore’s invitation to teach at Hogwarts this year. But the friends he’d once had were gone: two dead, one in Azkaban, and one a self-styled exile who’d never had the decency to tell Remus why.

And yet, even after all this time of bitter silence, Remus knew he couldn’t ignore Sirius’ summons. Not when he wrote in such evident agitation. To have reached out after so long, Sirius must be in very desperate need. And a friend’s need was something Remus had never been able to resist – nor would he want to.

Resolute, Remus stood from his seat on the rock beside the lake, only now noticing the chill that had seeped from the air into his bones. He would request a few days’ leave of absence from his teaching duties and pack a bag immediately.

The next morning, so early the grass beneath his feet was still damp with dew and the sun was barely struggling out from behind a bank of clouds on the horizon, Remus stood atop a low rise of land, his small travelling case in hand, gazing across a dark tarn at the imposing sight that was the House of Black.

He’d Apparated to the nearest village, a dour collection of half a dozen low-roofed houses huddled in a hollow between two forbidding stone tors, then he’d come the rest of the way by foot, crossing some five miles of desolate, uninhabited land. And now Remus stood looking at the House of Black for the first time in his life.

It was a grim old place, gloomy and dark, its walls crumbling beneath a matted layer of ivy, and yet somehow its ruined splendour made the place all the more imposing. There it hulked, a great bulk of bleak stone with rows of narrow windows staring out from its walls like so many malevolent eyes. Crippled old trees surrounded the building, their gnarled trunks groping inwards at the house, hemming it in with their branches.

Remus remembered Sirius saying once, in that falsely careless voice he’d always adopted when speaking of his family, that some ancient ancestor of his line had considered establishing the family seat in London, but in the end had chosen instead this far-flung, desolate reach of countryside.

“Even the grimmest parts of London would have been too cheerful a place for us Blacks,” Sirius had said, with a forced, too-bright attempt at a laugh. He’d always hated talking about his family. He was weighed down even then, even before the worst of the war, by his family’s reputation for Dark magic and pride and pure-blood mania. He’d never let any of them visit him at home, not even James, although Sirius had come to all of their houses as often as he could manage, painfully eager to spend the school breaks anywhere else but his own home. He was always muttering that one of these days he was going to run away from his family for good.

He’d even managed it, for a time. So why had he returned?

Remus felt cold at the thought that the forbidding edifice before him was where Sirius lived – Sirius, who in their schooldays had always been so full of life and laughter. For twelve years now, Sirius had locked himself away in this bleak place. Could grief do that to a person, twist him so badly that he shunned everything that might still have had the power to bring him happiness? Or was it guilt, guilt that he’d failed to recognise when Peter had turned traitor to them all?

Remus, too, knew that guilt. He’d lived with it for the past twelve years.

The tarn – a small lake – lay between him and the house, its waters unmoving. The House of Black was reflected in that water, its inverted image even darker and more forbidding than the house itself. Looking at that doubled image, Remus felt a thrill of terror without knowing why. He couldn’t be afraid of a mere house, could he? Sirius’ parents had by all accounts been cruel people, but they were long dead now, as was Sirius’ brother, all of them killed near the end of the war that had engulfed so many lives on both sides of the conflict. There was no one here now but Sirius.

Summoning his determination, Remus trod with firm steps down the slope that led to the House of Black.

Remus rapped the tarnished brass knocker, then stood waiting a long while. At last, a wizened house-elf with a snout-like nose opened the door.

“Good morning,” Remus began, attempting to start off with politeness despite the elf’s heavy scowl. “I’m here to see –”

“The stranger is here to see the master, no doubt,” the elf grouched in a froggy voice, seemingly addressing his attention to Remus’ knees. “The master has always done as he pleases, yes, and now he invites riff-raff into his mother’s noble house, a house fit for the eyes of only the purest of wizards, this great and justly famous House of Black.”

“Er,” said Remus. Not having grown up in a home with house-elves he always felt a little unsure of the proper mode of address, but this conversation did seem a tad unusual already.

“Oh, my poor mistress, what would she say if she could see the contempt her first-born son shows for her noble home! If she could see his ingratitude!” the elf cried, his voice booming with his disapproval. But he hobbled away down the house’s long corridor, leaving the front door flung open, so Remus cautiously followed.

The corridor began with a high, Gothic archway and stretched deep into the house. It had a ceiling of carved woodwork and walls draped in intricately woven tapestries so imposingly old, Remus feared they might crumble if he accidentally brushed against them as he passed.

Following the grumbling house-elf, Remus turned down one dimly lit passageway, then another, working to maintain his sense of direction within the labyrinthine hallways of the house. Abruptly, the elf stopped in front of an apparently unremarkable door, no different from many others they had passed.

“The master sees fit to spend his time in the old library, even while his noble father’s elegant study stands empty all these years,” the elf muttered under his breath, addressing his remarks to somewhere under the doorknob. “The master has no respect for tradition, oh, if only his poor father knew!”

Remus wondered if he was meant to make some response to this idiosyncratic declaration, although the elf didn’t appear to require Remus’ participation in his one-side conversation, nor even to pay any regard to Remus’ presence.

But then the door in front of them opened and Remus’ words died on his lips.

Sirius stood framed in the doorway, dust motes swirling around him in what little light filtered down from the room’s high, narrow windows, creating a faint halo about his dark head. Remus stared.

As a boy, Sirius had possessed an unearthly beauty, with his high cheekbones, his silky dark hair and his mesmerising grey eyes. Girls and boys alike had thrown themselves at Sirius in their time at Hogwarts, but he’d worn his princely looks lightly and laughed off anyone who tried to take him too seriously as any sort of teenage heartthrob. In fact, when Remus thought of the Sirius of those days, the good days before the war, before Peter’s betrayal and James and Lily’s deaths, he remembered Sirius always laughing, his head thrown back and his gorgeous face in profile.

The man who stood before Remus now was terribly changed. His face was almost cadaverous in complexion, as if he hadn’t ventured into the sunlight in all these twelve years. His eyes, always striking, now took up an inordinate amount of space in his pale, drawn face, and his dark hair hung lank about his shoulders. It was only by his patrician nose and the surpassingly beautiful curve of his lips that Remus was certain this was indeed Sirius Black.

“Remus,” the man in the doorway said, and his voice, at least, was the same as Remus remembered, still thrillingly rich, despite a hoarseness that spoke of disuse. The sound of it sent a shiver along Remus’ skin.

Sirius moved as if to embrace Remus in greeting, but at the last moment dropped his arm and stilled himself, stopping in the doorway. Instead he said to the house-elf lurking at Remus’ elbow, “You can go, Kreacher.” The elf skulked away down the corridor, still complaining under his breath.

Sirius stepped aside, allowing Remus to enter the room. The old library, as the elf had called it, was large and lofty, a grand room despite clearly having fallen into disrepair. Sun-faded curtains drooped beside narrow windows set so high in the walls that only a few squibs of autumn sunlight struggled down to meet the oaken floor, tracing strips of pale light across the otherwise gloomy expanse.

Dust covered nearly every surface: the long wooden tables and the heavy chairs, the ornate iron wall sconces and candelabras, and a dark draped cloth that concealed the unmistakable curving bulk of a grand piano. And of course there were shelves upon shelves of books, by the look of it a collection to rival the library at Hogwarts itself. And yet despite this wealth of knowledge and opulence, the room inspired only melancholy in Remus. It showed no sign of Sirius’ presence except for a stack of books perched at the end of one long table, and a dust-free track worn on the floor by his comings and goings between the table and the door.

But, incongruously, an inviting fire crackled in the hearth, and two squashy red armchairs were pulled up close beside the grate.

“Thought you might want to sit by the fire, since it’s a chilly day,” Sirius said gruffly. “Makes it a bit like Hogwarts, evenings in the common room and all.” He rubbed a hand nervously through his unkempt, overlong hair and stared at Remus with those mesmerising eyes.

“Right, yes,” Remus said. “Yes, of course.” He set down his travelling case beside the door and followed Sirius into the room, as if there hadn’t been a gap of twelve years since the last time they’d lounged in front of a fire together.

They sat, Sirius throwing himself into the chair to one side of the fire and Remus perching awkwardly on the edge of the other. The cushion was comfortable and the merrily crackling fire was warm, but Remus could not seem to slow his racing heart. Here was Sirius, sitting across from him, Sirius Black whom he had thought he would never see again.

No sooner had Sirius sat than he flung himself up again and began to pace back and forth across the thick carpet in front of the fire. Remus pulled his legs to the side so Sirius wouldn’t trip over them.

“I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’ve come,” Sirius said, his voice pitched so low that Remus had to lean forwards to hear him. “After so long, I didn’t know if you – that is –”

He reached one end of the carpet, spun on his heel, and stalked back, his intense grey stare once again fixed on Remus.

“This house!” Sirius burst out, and Remus startled back in his seat. “This house, it makes people go mad, not that my family weren’t mad to begin with – ha – you remember, don’t you? But back then I was foolhardy enough to think I’d escaped all that!” Sirius laughed, but it wasn’t a sound of mirth.

He rushed forwards and dropped onto the arm of Remus’ chair, now suddenly, disconcertingly close. “Remus,” he said, his voice low like it had been when it was sometimes just the two of them talking late into the night in Gryffindor Tower.

Remus shivered despite himself. But it would not do to get swept away in memories. He was here to help Sirius with whatever trouble had befallen him, that was all. Not to grasp vainly for signs of the boyhood friendship that had once been.

“It’s such a solace to see you again,” Sirius said, still low and intense and far too close to allow for clarity of thought. And although the words hardly sounded like something Sirius would have said at seventeen, there was no mistaking the earnestness behind them. Remus swallowed and forced himself to meet the gaze boring down at him from Sirius’ perch on the arm of his chair. “I think you’ll be able to help me,” Sirius went on. “I’ve about reached the end of my wits and I don’t know what I’m going to –”

At the far end of the library, a door opened. Barely discernable through the gloom there in the recesses far from the windows and the fire, a figure stepped into the room, plucked a book from a shelf, then once more disappeared, closing the door and departing as silently as it had come. The figure had been a human, not the house-elf, but more than that Remus had not been able to make out.

Sirius’ reaction was immediate and extreme. He jolted up from the arm of the chair, sprang to his feet and lunged forwards several steps as though he would pursue the figure, although it was already gone. Then he stopped just as suddenly and turned back to Remus with vividly conflicting emotions on his face. He looked very much as though he were about to try to deny that anyone had entered the library at all.

Illness, Sirius’ letter had said, but Sirius did not seem ill. He seemed to be isolated, behaving strangely, and harbouring a mysterious houseguest despite the public rumours that had him living alone aside from the house-elf all these years.

“Sirius,” Remus said. “Tell me what’s going on.”

For a few moments more, Sirius simply stared, as though he really would try to pretend that nothing was amiss.

Then he rushed back as fast as he had first dashed away and flung himself to the floor at Remus’ feet, dropping his head with wild abandon onto Remus’ knee. It was a posture of such abject submission and utter trust that Remus’ heart stuttered in his chest.

“You’re right,” Sirius rasped. “I can’t conceal this from you. I need your help and what’s more I need your sanity, because I swear to you we’re going mad here, both of us.”

Both, Remus wondered. Who was both?

Given Sirius’ state of agitation, he must try to ask gently. And perhaps he’d better start more generally with the background of the situation, because right now Remus was utterly at sea.

“Sirius,” he began, in the calm tone of voice that often served him well with frightened first-years, “why don’t I tell you what I thought I’d understood, when we were younger, and you can tell me when I begin to go wrong. This is your family’s ancestral home, right?”

Almost imperceptibly, his head still resting against Remus’ knee and a tangle of hair obscuring his face, Sirius nodded.

“I know you hated this place,” Remus said. There was no kinder way to put it, so he said the words but said them gently, and had to trust Sirius would know even after all this time that he was never trying to be cruel. “You ran away from here when we were still in school and you swore you would never come back. But then, at the end of the war, after –” Remus stumbled over James and Lily, even now. It was too painful to speak aloud of the excruciating emptiness where they should be but were not. Instead, he hastily substituted, “You came back here, after your parents and Regulus –”

Sirius’ whole body stiffened against Remus’ leg. He lifted his face now, but it was with the frozen terror of an animal caught in a predator’s gaze.

Cautiously, Remus backtracked and tried again. “Your parents both died before the end of the war,” he began.

Sirius nodded, unperturbed. Though he’d been in constant conflict with his parents when they were alive, they were clearly not the source of his distress now. It must be something about Regulus, then.

“And your brother… I know he was a Death Eater, and I know you lost contact with him after you left home. Later, after everything, I heard he’d been killed for trying to defect from Voldemort’s side. I’m sorry, Sirius. I know you didn’t get on with him, but still, I’m so sorry.”

Sirius’ eyes staring up at Remus were two pools of tragedy. He seemed hardly to breathe. Finally he said, his voice barely above a whisper, “He’s not dead.”

Remus shuddered. Sirius, pressed so tightly against him, must have felt it too. “What do you mean?” Remus managed. “You always said it yourself, serving Voldemort was a life term. No one escaped him and survived.”

“I don’t know how he did it! I think he must have had Kreacher help him. Voldemort believed he was dead, I’m sure of that. He wouldn’t have been allowed to live otherwise. But he got out, and he came back here, and I – I found out just after –” Sirius couldn’t speak of James and Lily’s deaths any more than Remus could. His gaze up at Remus was tortured. “He’s my little brother. He seemed half mad from whatever they’d done to him as a Death Eater, and he was in such danger. If word had got out that he was still alive, he’d have been at risk from everyone. From our side because he’d been a Death Eater, even if he did renounce them in the end, and from Voldemort’s supporters because he’d dared to leave…” Sirius seemed to steel himself, then went on: “I hadn’t been able to save them, Remus. It was too late for James and Lily, but I thought at least I could save Regulus. So I let the rumour stand that he was dead, and stayed here where I could watch over him.”

They stared at each other. It was a shock to think Regulus was alive, Sirius’ brother whom Remus had hardly thought of in twelve years. But it made a terrible sense of the way Sirius had left everything behind in the wake of the war.

For he’d left truly everything: his life, his flat in London, all the rest of their friends and acquaintances. And he’d left Remus alone in those terrible days of their shared grief over losing James and Lily, who’d been like family to them both. James and Lily, who’d unhesitatingly made Remus a part of their lives, lycanthropy and all, and only laughed and hugged him when he’d asked if they were sure they still wanted him around once they had a baby. James and Lily, who’d made Sirius godfather to that same child. Yet here Sirius was, absent from Harry’s life without a word for the last twelve years.

“I didn’t want to leave, Remus,” Sirius said, his voice rough. “After – after losing – James and Lily –” His eyes dropped to the floor and he breathed raggedly for a moment, before he pulled his gaze back up to Remus. “My heart was broken,” he said fiercely, “and there was nothing in the world I wanted more than to be in London with –” Once again he broke off, pressing his lips together, looking almost in pain. “But I was going…I can’t describe it, I felt I was going mad as soon as I returned to this house. I wasn’t fit for the world anymore. And Regulus needed me. And he went on needing me, and it only got worse, and now I’m afraid of what he’ll do next. There’s some kind of madness in him,” Sirius whispered. “And now I’ve gone mad too, locked up in this evil house. All my family were, and now it’s happening to me.”

Remus’ heart ached. That had always been Sirius’ fear, unspoken but not well hidden, that he would become like his family despite his desperate struggle to be as unlike them as possible. How badly Remus wanted to assure him that of course he wasn’t mad, and of course he was nothing like his parents.

But what did he know? He hadn’t seen Sirius in a dozen years. Empty reassurances from someone with no grounds for offering them would offer little consolation.

Instead, though it was a flimsy, second-best kind of help, he said, “Tell me about Regulus. What is it that’s wrong? And why now more so than before?”

Sirius lifted his head, but rested one hand against the side of Remus’ knee. A part of Remus thrilled at that touch, despite knowing very well that Sirius meant nothing by it. Sirius had always been free with his physical expressions of affection, roughhousing with James or flinging an arm around Remus as they talked, and perhaps that was still true even after all these years apart.

“He talks about things that are…impossible. But he believes them utterly. Dark artefacts he insists he has to destroy… He doesn’t seem to know that Voldemort is gone, Remus. He still thinks the ‘Dark Lord’ has got to be taken down, and that he’s the only one who knows how to do it. But when I press him on what he means, he goes silent. He does strange experiments, dangerous things, and lately he comes over in violent fits of frustration when they don’t go how he wants. I’m afraid he’ll do something terrible. Or that I’ll do something terrible to stop him.”

He gazed up at Remus, his eyes so piercing that for a moment Remus couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. Just when he thought he might burst with the longing to do something foolhardy – perhaps reach out to touch that altered yet still so very dear face –

Sirius leapt to his feet and said in his low, enthralling voice, “Let me show you something.”

He rushed to one of the library’s shelves, his fingers scanning along it until they reached a small book tucked more deeply within the shelf than the others.

Remus, watching his graceful movements, was awash in memory.

He’d always admired Sirius, certainly – with all his passion and all his beauty, how could Remus not? But as for anything more than that…Remus hadn’t allowed himself even to think it. Oh, there’d always been something there, some electric, undefined current between him and Sirius. As much as James and Sirius were best mates for life, chosen brothers who fiercely watched each other’s backs, it was Remus and Sirius who often laughed at the same joke before anyone else even knew there was a joke, or stayed up through the night talking, long after all the others in the dorm had gone to bed. Talking until Remus’ eyes burned with tiredness but still he didn’t want to give up that feeling of being alone in all the world with Sirius, the two of them sprawled at either end of a wide window seat, looking out from Gryffindor Tower as the hush of dawn broke over the Hogwarts grounds.

But Remus had always had the clear impression that Sirius didn’t want it to be more than that. Maybe Sirius had had his own fears about allowing himself to get close – the same way that Remus as a werewolf, a Dark creature, didn’t wish to inflict the dangers and hardships of his life on anyone else. Or perhaps Sirius simply hadn’t felt the pull as strongly as Remus did.

No, it was useless to speculate why their friendship had never taken on a dimension beyond friendship. It hadn’t, that was all. There was no use in ruminating on bygones.

Sirius brought the book he had fetched from the shelf back to the two armchairs by the fire, this time sitting in the other chair and handing the book across to Remus. It was very old, bound in black leather with ornate, raised detailing along the spine, and surprisingly heavy for its small size.

“All the Black family history, it’s all in there,” Sirius said. “But don’t look at any of that, it’s awful. Just read the poem on the first page.”

Carefully, aware he was handling a relic, Remus opened the cover. On the first page of parchment, written in faded ink by an ornate hand, were four stark lines:

The House of Black, eternal glory,
Never shall be felled by foe,
Unless some son’s unhallowed story
Cast his heart to depths below.

Remus looked up to see Sirius intently watching him as he read. “Practically the family motto,” Sirius growled. “Eternal glory! Never to be felled by foe! Our parents used it on us as a dire warning, making sure we knew our lineage would be glorious forever, as long as we didn’t do something to screw it up.” He leaned forwards in his seat, elbows perched on his knees, his eyes burning once again. “But what if it’s not just some mouldy old bit of doggerel? What if it’s a prophecy, and Regulus is the ‘unhallowed’ one who’s going to do something so awful it brings this whole place crashing down? Or what if I’m the one?”

Remus looked into Sirius’ gaunt face and asked, “How can I help?”

He’d meant it as a staunch expression of support, but the words came out more plaintive than he’d intended. He was moved that Sirius had thought to seek out him of all people after all these years, but he also deeply doubted he would be able to provide what Sirius needed. If there had been a dangerous creature in the attic or a spell gone rogue and in need of containment, then Remus might have brought his expertise to bear. But he knew nothing of pure-blood families and ancient curses.

“Just be here,” Sirius said urgently. “I don’t know what will happen next, but I have such an awful feeling. Can you stay, even for a day or two?”

Remus thought of Hogwarts, where he’d requested a few days’ leave from work. Family emergency, he’d said and Dumbledore hadn’t questioned him, although he knew perfectly well that Remus no longer had any family living.

But even if Dumbledore hadn’t granted permission, could Remus have refused Sirius now? When he was staring at Remus with such terror, but such faith that Remus could shield him from what he believed was coming?

“Of course,” Remus said. “Of course I can stay.”

“Excellent!” Sirius cried, and leapt to his feet in one of the sudden, mercurial shifts of mood that Remus was coming to recognise were characteristic of him now. “Let’s have some music, then, to pass the time.”

They spent the rest of the day together in a fashion Remus could only call surreal. Sirius did indeed sweep away the cloth covering the grand piano that stood along one wall of the library, sending up a tremendous cloud of dust, and took his place before the keys.

Remus had vaguely known that Sirius could play – it was the sort of skill all sons of noble houses seemed to accrue effortlessly – but he’d had no idea he played so well. Sirius was a sensitive musician who poured himself into his playing and Remus listened in awe, transported by the music and by the passion behind it. If ever a person had believed in the melody he produced, it was Sirius.

But as the afternoon passed, Sirius grew increasingly edgy. Finally he admitted that, although he was loath to be such a poor host as to leave Remus alone, he needed to excuse himself for a time to check on his brother. But he insisted that Remus had the run of the house, should go wherever he liked, and Sirius would find him again in a bit.

So, while Sirius departed for Regulus’ rooms in one far wing, Remus explored, trying to fathom this place. He still struggled to reconcile the vivacious friend he’d known at Hogwarts with these solemn rooms and endless dark corridors.

There was a grand ballroom that clearly hadn’t seen the flicker of candlelit chandeliers or the whirl of dancers in many long years. There were drawing rooms and sitting rooms and parlours, so many spaces devoted to entertaining guests, yet all were cold and unwelcoming. Each room Remus peered into left him feeling keenly his status as an interloper.

Sirius had suggested Remus fetch himself something to eat, so he descended a staircase barely illuminated by shuttered wall sconces, to the basement kitchen. Here below, the sconces burned a little brighter – the house-elf Kreacher must have decided it was necessary to compromise on the house’s dour aesthetic in order to be able to see about his work – but it was still a grim and chilly space, with its cold stone walls. Remus thought of the cheerful Hogwarts kitchens, with elves always bustling in and out, and felt a moment of surprisingly stark pity for the disagreeable Kreacher, bound as he was to this place along with Sirius and Regulus.

From the larder, Remus gathered some cheese, nuts and a loaf of bread. He saw unexpected items, too, on a small table to one side of the room: a tiny heap of some fine, white powder sat next to a squarish glass phial of elixir, as though someone had walked away in the middle of gathering ingredients for potion-making.

Difficult, though, to say who was least likely to be devoting time to brewing potions: Sirius, the house-elf, or Sirius’ supposedly deranged brother. Perhaps Remus was wrong and these were simply items for cooking.

Remus looked up at the sound of an irritated grunt from the kitchen doorway. The house-elf himself had appeared and was eyeing Remus with suspicion.

“The master’s guest makes very free with the hospitality of the House of Black,” Kreacher grumbled in his froggy voice. He didn’t make eye contact with Remus, but again appeared to be speaking to his knees. “He pokes his nose where it does not belong, oh yes. My poor mistress, if she could see her house, overrun by lowlife scum!”

Remus was not terribly surprised that an elf loyal to a family such as this one would consider him scum, half-Muggleborn and werewolf as he was, but “overrun” did seem a bit strong when there was only one of him. Still, the kitchen was Kreacher’s domain, and he was indeed trespassing on it. “I was fetching something to eat, but I’ll take it back upstairs with me,” he said. “Thank you for your hospitality, Kreacher.”

Remus thought he saw the elf blink at him in confusion as Remus turned and ascended the stairs to the main part of the house.

There, he managed to find a room that was a little less forbidding than the rest: a small parlour on the ground floor, so far to the end of one wing that it felt as if the rest of the house had forgotten it was there. A rug on the floor softened the bleakness, and two chairs were pulled up beside the narrow windows, where weak afternoon sunlight filtered in. Here Remus sat to eat his bread and cheese.

Sirius found him soon after, as evening fell, and joined him by the windows. They talked desultorily, Sirius propping his head against one hand and his elbow on the windowsill, and for the first time in all this strange day the years fell away and conversation came easily. They might have been back in the common room at Hogwarts, talking into the night for no better reason than that they were young and carefree and thought they had all the time in the world.

The autumn dark had long since swept across the desolate countryside outside the window, and Sirius had lit the wick of a little lamp that stood on a narrow-legged table beside Remus’ chair. A comfortable lull fell between them, then Sirius said, an uncharacteristic hesitance in his voice, “And…Harry? Is he well?”

Remus thought of the boy he’d at last begun to know, in the scant time since he’d taken up the teaching post at Hogwarts. He couldn’t help but smile.

“Yes,” he said honestly. “Despite everything, I think he is. He has friends, he seems happy… He also has a remarkable propensity for getting into scrapes, but with the help of his friends somehow he always gets back out of them again.”

He glanced at Sirius, expecting news of his faraway godson would gladden him, but stopped short at the sight of the pain twisting Sirius’ face.

“I should have been there for him,” Sirius whispered. “Damn it – Remus, I know I failed Harry. I should have been there all these years. James and Lily expected me to look after him. And I meant to, truly I did. There was nothing that mattered to me more. But then there was Regulus, and this cursed house … I can’t explain it, how my thoughts started twisting as soon as I came back here. It must be the house that causes it, what else could it be? But soon all I could see was how I’d failed everyone I loved. It’s still true, it’s what I think about every day. That I can’t be trusted. And I thought surely Harry would be safer if I stayed well away.”

Remus’ heart was breaking at the anguish in Sirius’ face. He wanted to offer a thousand reassurances and didn’t know where to begin. “Oh, Sirius –”

The door to the small parlour where they sat burst open.

Though Remus hadn’t seen him in a decade and a half, the man who stood framed there could only be Regulus. He had Sirius’ striking features and Sirius’ dark hair, likewise gone long and unkempt, but his eyes held a caged wildness that Sirius’ did not. Seeing Regulus, Remus understood why Sirius was so afraid for his own grasp on sanity. Sirius wasn’t mad, or at least Remus didn’t think so. But looking at Regulus’ frantic fervour every day, seeing himself in the reflection of his brother… Remus shivered, thinking of the two of them pent up alone together, for years, feeding on each other’s worst fears.

Regulus grasped the doorframe to both sides of his head. “The Dark Lord will rise again,” he intoned in a harsh rasp. “Though his body lies dead, his soul waits these many years, scattered, kept secret and safe. Who will gather up the pieces and destroy them? Who will conquer the Dark Lord once and for all?” His hands reached convulsively for his own throat, and Remus caught a glimpse there of something that glinted, a thin line of golden chain that looped around Regulus’ neck then disappeared beneath his robes, obscuring whatever object hung from it.

Sirius lunged forwards, casting one despairing look of apology back at Remus. “What are you doing here?” he hissed at his brother. “I thought you were in your room. Back to bed now, go!”

Sirius bustled Regulus out of the room, calling back to Remus hurriedly, “I’ll come back – wait here – sorry –”

Remus waited there in the small parlour, in the little pool of lamplight and the greater darkness that surrounded it. In his mind, echoes of Regulus’ words clanged like a dreadful prophecy. Regulus had sounded desperate…and utterly certain that the words he spoke were true. But perhaps that was simply a sign of how fully he’d lost his grip on reality?

Sirius soon returned and flung himself back down in the chair opposite Remus. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really sorry. I thought he would keep his distance.”

“You don’t have to apologise. Sirius, do you think he –” But Remus stopped himself.

What, exactly, did he plan to ask? Do you think he might be right about Voldemort returning? That was nonsense, certainly, an aftereffect of Regulus’ time with the Death Eaters, which must have been a scarring experience for someone as young as Regulus had been then. And Sirius looked so weary. Twelve years of having to listen to wild pronouncements about long-dead Voldemort rising again – Sirius undoubtedly knew how to handle this situation better than Remus did.

“Do you think he’s going to sleep now?” Remus asked instead.

“Yeah,” Sirius said, sounding tired. “And we should probably do the same. I’ll show you your room.”

He led Remus up staircases and along corridors, until finally they stopped in front of a door of dark wood.

“My room is just down the hall, if you need anything at all during the night,” Sirius said, and pointed. “I mean that. I’m sure I’m supposed to tell you to bother Kreacher if you need something, but don’t do that. Get me.”

For a moment as he said that he looked so young, as if even after all these years he expected his mother to burst from behind a tapestry and berate him for his breach of etiquette.

“I’ll do that,” Remus assured him. “Please don’t worry about anything.”

Still Sirius hesitated, not yet saying good night, and Remus found himself hesitating too. He’d thought Sirius gone from his life forever. As strange as this whole day had been, there was a part of Remus that didn’t want it to end.

At last Sirius darted forwards quite suddenly and grasped Remus’ hand. “Thank you for coming here,” he said, his voice gone husky. “It means the world to me.” For only a fragment of a second, he pressed Remus’ hand to his chest. Then he dropped the hand and stepped away. “Good night. I’ll see you in the morning. Sleep well.”

Without looking back, Sirius turned and strode down the dark corridor to his own bedchamber. Remus watched him go, and watched the door swing shut behind him.

It was mercurial Sirius, nothing more than that, Remus reminded himself. Sirius had always been grand in his gestures. The warm clasp of his hand was an expression of worry over his brother and of gratitude at having another person in the house at last; it was not to be taken as an indication that he had missed Remus with the same raw fierceness with which Remus had missed him.

Remus turned away, from both the man and the thought, and entered the bedroom in front of him.

His impression of the room was grim, for all that it was appointed opulently. An enormous bed framed by four posts of dark wood dominated the space, and the other furnishings too were heavy and dark. The walls to Remus’ left and right bore embroidered tapestries worn thin with age.

The one to his left showed a party of wizards hunting, though the beast they pursued couldn’t be seen within the dense woods. Being a wizarding tapestry, its tiny figures moved, forever harrying their unseen prey through a forest of green and brown thread. It made Remus feel vaguely ill to watch.

To his right, the other tapestry was a finely rendered portrait: a father with a cruel, proud smile and two dark-haired sons kneeling before him in absolute fealty. The figures in this one remained mostly static, but the father seemed to glower down at Remus, as if reminding him how little he belonged in this place. Though Remus knew the tapestry dated from a far earlier age, he couldn’t help but see in it a representation of Sirius, Regulus and their father. Sirius and his brother, forever locked into the impossible expectations of their family.

Remus squared his shoulders, quelled his flights of fancy, and reminded himself that he’d faced far worse things than a night in a comfortable bed but an unwelcoming house. He could easily pass a few nights here for Sirius’ sake.

His travelling case stood beside the bed; Kreacher must have fetched it from the library. Remus changed his clothes and slid between the cold sheets.

Sleep was a long time coming. Being here, seeing Sirius again, was causing Remus to revisit things he’d successfully shunned from his mind for the past twelve years. Banishing all thoughts of their former friendship had been a desperate act of survival. It had been too painful to dwell on Sirius’s abrupt departure from Remus’ life during those unbearable days of fresh grief. It had felt like the worst possible betrayal.

No, not the worst. Never the worst. That claim went to Peter, the traitor, who’d offered up Lily and James’ lives to Voldemort. Some things Remus could not forgive. Yes, he could summon pity for Peter, who’d always needed a strong friend to follow, Peter, who must have lived throughout the war in a terror the rest of them had failed to recognise. But Peter had let his fear drive him to the bully for protection, and had considered his friends’ lives a fair price.

No, no forgiveness for Peter.

The catastrophic loss of James and Lily. The betrayal of Peter. And then, just when Remus had most desperately needed Sirius, the one person who understood his deep grief, Sirius was gone.

Brought to his knees by loss upon loss, Remus had taught himself to survive by pretending that Sirius, too, was dead or in Azkaban. Unreachable, never to return. Sirius had chosen to remove himself from Remus’ life, and it was no use wondering why. Remus had had friends, and then he did not, and he must carry on.

That had been his life, an often bleak and pinched and lonely one, but it was a life, despite the odds. He’d managed to keep surviving. Until Sirius’ letter dropped beside his plate in the Hogwarts Great Hall and overturned the life Remus had painstakingly built for himself out of the ashes of the man he’d once been.

It was deep in the small hours of the night when Remus finally drifted into an uneasy rest, between the four dark posts of his borrowed bed in the House of Black.

He awakened in the pitch blackness, jolted to awareness by a great noise.

Remus bolted upright in bed. Had it been a crash? A scream? Both? He scrabbled through his half-asleep memory, trying to reconstruct what had awoken him.

He grabbed his wand – kept close at hand, always, beside the bed – and murmured, “Lumos.” Then he threw on his robe over his nightclothes and dashed to the bedroom door, still assessing from which direction the noise had come.

Somewhere downstairs, it seemed to him. So Remus ran for the nearest staircase, wand in hand.

On the ground floor, he found them all: Regulus, sprawled out flat on his back on the floor, near the stairs that descended to the kitchen. Sirius, approaching from the other direction at a run, also in clothes hastily thrown on and with a look of horror on his face. And Kreacher, who glowered at them all, then disappeared with the loud crack of Disapparition as well as, strangely, a sound like the clinking of glass bottles knocking together.

Sirius fell to his knees beside his brother. “Reg, what’s happened, what’s happened?”

Remus skittered to a stop a few feet short of them, uncertain whether approaching any closer would be helping or intruding.

“Sirius,” Regulus gasped. His voice was faint. “I’m dying. Very soon –” He gave a rending cough, and Sirius shook with fright at the sound.

But how could Regulus be dying? He’d been walking about the house just that evening.

“Promise me!” Regulus cried with clearly fading strength. “Wall me up, down in the crypt with the ancestors, as soon as I’m dead. The very moment my breath stops.” Even as he said it, Regulus’ breath stuttered for a terrible moment, then started again raggedly. “Swear to me, Sirius!”

“Reg, no!” Sirius cried. “Why would you want that? Bad enough you had to live here all these years, you can’t possibly want –”

“Promise me!” Regulus gasped, his hand reaching out convulsively for his brother’s.

Sirius’ hand found Regulus’. Sirius’ back was to Remus, but Remus saw how his shoulders shook. “I promise.” Sirius’ voice was barely more than a whisper.

“And then get away,” Regulus rasped. “Get out of the House of Black. As soon as my tomb has been walled shut, you must get away.”

Regulus’ breath rattled once more, then went still.

“Regulus!” Sirius cried. He felt frantically for a pulse at his brother’s wrist, then his neck.

He turned and looked up at Remus with desperation, and Remus needed no further bidding. He flung himself down beside Sirius and searched Regulus for any sign of life, but found none. At last, he could do nothing but turn to Sirius and say, “I’m sorry.”

Sirius fell against Remus’ chest and sobbed. Remus, too stunned to know what else to do, brought his arms up around Sirius and held him. Sirius felt bony and fragile under his hands, and the wracking sobs seemed as if they would tear him apart.

“Sirius…” Remus said helplessly. “Sirius…” What could he say: Don’t cry? It’s all right? It wasn’t all right. Sirius had given up his whole life to the cause of keeping his brother safe. And now his brother was dead.

Instead, he simply held Sirius as he sobbed, both of them on their knees on the hard floor, until finally the sobs abated into something less raw, a shuddering instead of that wild, heartbroken keening. As the shuddering, too, lessened, Remus swept strands of hair from Sirius’ damp face and, summoning courage from he knew not where, pressed a gentle kiss to Sirius’ temple. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

For a moment, Sirius pressed his cheek hard against Remus’. Then he straightened up and said in a voice that only wobbled a little, “He wants to be interred in the ancestral crypt.”

Remus didn’t have to ask to know it would be a grim place, full of Black family pomp and Black family mottos. “Where is it?”

“Here,” Sirius said. “Beneath the house.”

Moving a little unsteadily, Sirius rose to his feet, and Remus hurried to join him. Sirius gazed down at his brother’s body, splayed on the floor before them.

“I hate to think of him there,” he said softly. “With our awful ancestors. I don’t understand why he –” Sirius’ voice choked to stop. Instead, he continued roughly, “Will you help me move him?”

“Of course.” Remus felt in his chest the pain of seeing Sirius suffer like this. “Or if it would be easier for you, perhaps Kreacher could…?”

“I don’t want that elf anywhere near him!” Sirius bit out savagely. “He had something to do with this, I’m sure of it. And it’s not like he would come now if I called him, anyway. He only ever listened to Regulus.”

Accusing Kreacher in the same breath both of loyalty to only Regulus, and of possibly having had a hand in Regulus’ death, made less than sense. But now was not the time to say as much. Remus said only, “Show me where we need to go.”

Sirius swept his wand out from the sleeve of his robe. He whispered a levitation spell, his voice only a little unsteady, to lift his brother’s body from the floor in preparation for taking him to his resting place. As Regulus’ body rose, though, something flat and white fluttered down from the folds of his robe to the floor.

Instinctively, Remus bent to pick it up: It was a letter, a piece of folded parchment, with Sirius’ name scrawled across the front.

“Sirius –” Remus said.

Sirius looked to see what Remus was holding, and blanched at the sight of a letter written by the hand of his brother so newly dead.

“I can’t,” he said, shaking his head hard. “Would you keep it? For now?”

So Remus tucked the letter, with utmost care, into the inner pocket of his robe.

They made a mournful procession, down into the deepest vaults of the House of Black. Sirius went first to show the way, then came Regulus’ body carefully levitated between them, then Remus followed to be sure the body didn’t encounter any obstacles along the way.

Of all the roles in which Remus might have ended up being of use, when he answered Sirius’ plea to come and help him, how he wished it didn’t have to be this.

They descended a long, steep stair. This one extended far deeper below the house than the stairs Remus had taken before to reach the kitchen. When they finally reached the bottom, they traversed a narrow, arched passageway. It was clammy and cold down here, and completely dark. Remus held his illuminated wand high, so they could see to walk.

At last they came to a heavy iron door. Sirius murmured an unlocking spell, then pushed it open. It groaned in protest, scraping against the stone floor.

The Black family crypt extended further than Remus’ wandlight was able to show. It was a narrow space and low-ceilinged, but enormously long, with niches closely spaced along both sides containing heavy stone coffins. Many of the coffins had tightly shut lids and bore ornate plaques proclaiming the occupant’s name. Some bore only blank metal plaques but not yet any name.

Sirius stopped in front of one of the empty coffins, and Remus saw how he braced himself. Then he said gruffly, “Here.”

Together, they levered the heavy lid open. Together, they lowered Regulus’ body inside. In the warm light cast by Remus’ wand, such a contrast against the cold stone, Regulus’ face still looked rosy and alive.

Remus bit his tongue against asking Sirius if there were some ceremony or ritual he wanted to follow, some slight way they could make up for the fact that Regulus had lived in secret all these years and now, in death, wouldn’t even get a public funeral. But he didn’t ask. Sirius knew best how he wanted to honour his brother.

In the end, Sirius only gazed down into the coffin hewn of unforgiving stone and said, “I’m sorry, Reg. There’s something I should have done differently, but I don’t know what it was.”

Hoping his impulse to comfort wouldn’t make things worse, Remus reached for Sirius’ hand. Sirius squeezed back, hard.

Then, together, they lowered the heavy stone lid over Sirius’ brother.

With his wand, Sirius etched words into the smooth metal plaque affixed to the coffin:

Regulus Arcturus Black
1961–1993

Then Sirius replaced his wand in his robe and turned away.

They retraced their steps in silence. Out of the crypt, closing the iron door behind them. Through the long arched passageway, up the steep stairs, until they stood again on the ground floor of the house, hardly less bleak than the vaults had been.

Dawn was approaching and the sky ought to be growing light soon, but a storm was rising outside. Through the nearest window, at one end of the corridor where they stood, Remus could see tree branches whipping and ponderous clouds gathering, making the nearly moonless sky appear to hang heavy and low. Inside the house it was, if possible, even more grimly dark than before.

And Sirius, standing beside Remus, appeared otherworldly, transformed by grief, his already gaunt face rendered untouchable.

Remus wanted to help and didn’t know how. He reached back into his own past and thought of the terrible days after James and Lily, when life as he knew it had ended, when all the world around him was celebrating Voldemort’s downfall and Remus stood alone in his grief. What had he needed most then?

It was simple, really. He’d only wanted someone there, so as not to have to face it alone. He’d wanted Sirius to still be there, the one friend he’d thought would never leave him.

Sirius hadn’t been able to be that friend to him. But it was far too late to hold a grudge about such things after all this time. At least Remus could be the friend Sirius needed now.

He reached out a hand. To embrace? To console? He knew only that he needed to be present for Sirius, if comfort was what he wanted.

Sirius’ eyes were dark and hooded, raw with grief. But something flickered there, too, as Sirius looked at Remus looking at him.

Slowly, Sirius lifted one arm, reaching out to meet Remus’ hand.

Before their fingers could meet, a tremor jolted the house, the force of it flinging them against opposite walls of the corridor. Remus scrabbled for purchase, sliding halfway down the wall before he got his feet beneath him again.

He glanced to Sirius, wondering if this upheaval was something normal in this strange house. But Sirius stared back, wide-eyed.

The building jolted again beneath their feet and the floor itself slid perceptibly sideways, as if the very foundations of the house were moving. Plaster crumbled from the ceiling, obscuring Remus’ sight.

“What’s happening?” Sirius gasped.

The whole house shuddered, beams somewhere in its framework groaning as they ground against each other. In a room above them, some heavy object crashed to the floor.

“Do you get earthquakes here?” Remus managed, as the next lurch of the house sent him careening once again into the wall. He groped for something solid to hold onto, but there was nothing, just the smooth expanse of the wall.

“No, never! And even if it were an earthquake, we wouldn’t feel it. This place has got every possible protection cast on it.”

Sirius, too, was barely keeping to his feet as the floor again moved beneath him. All around them, now, they could hear objects falling and furniture toppling. From beneath came the ominous scraping of stone against stone, the implacable progress of the foundations coming undone.

“Then it may be the house itself collapsing,” Remus said. “We have to get out.” Sirius, bracing himself against the opposite wall with both hands, looked at him blankly. “Sirius, the house sounds like it’s about to come down around our ears. We need to get out.”

Remus grabbed Sirius’ hand and pulled him: down the corridor, around a turn, following his instinct for where the front door must be. The house shrieked and shook around them, the floor pitching them wildly side to side as they ran.

Finally they reached the door. Remus flung himself forwards and wrenched it open, exposing them to the world beyond.

It was a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night. Thick clouds hulked low around the house and a first few squalls of rain were lashing down. Faint light glowed in the small space between the earth and the clouds, rendering everything it touched faintly luminous. With the strange light reflecting everywhere, it was impossible to say whether it was the clouds that were glowing or the house itself.

They tumbled down the front steps, half running and half falling, leaving the door flung wide behind them. Through the darkness, Remus saw the smaller figure of Kreacher out ahead of them, running away from the juddering house across the desolate land, and he was glad to see the house-elf had got away. Kreacher shouldn’t have to die with the house in which he’d served, if it really was about to come crashing down.

Still urging Sirius on by the hand, Remus led the way until they were a safe distance from the house, beside the tarn. Its still, dark waters made an eerie contrast to the heaving form of the House of Black. The house was truly shaking now, pitching visibly on its foundations as the strange, luminous clouds swirled low around it.

“I don’t understand,” Sirius whispered. “I don’t understand.”

Remus felt something rustle inside his robes, and only then did he remember the letter. Regulus’ letter.

Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew the folded parchment and stared down at it. Oddly, the sight of the letter jolted another remembered image into Remus’ mind: a jumble of powders and elixirs, set out as though in preparation for potions-making, seen in the basement kitchen before Kreacher had shooed him away. Remus remembered, too, the unlikely clink of bottles – or was it potions phials? – as Kreacher Disapparated from the spot where Regulus lay dying at the top of the stairs up from the kitchen. And for reasons he could not yet call entirely rational, Remus felt with sudden urgency that Sirius must read his brother’s letter immediately, before the house came down and all was lost.

“Sirius,” he said hoarsely, thrusting out the letter. “I think you need to read this.”

Sirius looked down at the letter and up at Remus, panicked grief in his eyes. “I can’t. I can’t bear it.”

Remus started to protest, then thought of the time they would waste in arguing and stilled himself. He couldn’t explain his dreadful sense of urgency, but nor could he shake this feeling that the entire House of Black was about to collapse into the ground and that Regulus, buried beneath it, was – what? What precisely did Remus suspect?

“May I read the letter and tell you what it says, if there’s anything in here that you need to know right now?” he asked hurriedly.

Sirius hesitated, then gave a tight nod. He turned away, fixing his gaze again on the sight of his ancestral home crumbling. Even as he looked, a chunk of stone from high up on the façade smashed to the ground beside the front steps. Lightning cracked above the highest cupola.

With unsteady fingers, Remus unfolded Regulus’ letter and read:

Sirius,

If you’re reading this, it means I’m dead. I hope to hell it means the house is gone, too, crumbled to dust like it should have done years ago.

I had to do it. It’s too much to explain in a letter, but I’ve got a piece of the Dark Lord’s soul I was able to steal all those years ago. This isn’t the only piece, but it’s the one I was able to get. The Dark Lord isn’t truly dead, no matter what your Order of the Phoenix may think, and he won’t ever be truly dead until all these pieces of his soul are gone. I’ve made it my life’s work to destroy this one. It was better, safer, for you that you not know about it until it was gone. But the truth is this: I wear a piece of the Dark Lord’s soul around my neck every day, hidden inside a locket. I’ve kept it close until the day when I could destroy it.

But I’ve tried everything, and even this fragment of the Dark Lord’s soul is too strong for me. There’s only one thing left to try and I’ve got to do it. The whole weight of this evil house collapsing down on top of it ought to be enough to crush the locket and destroy the soul inside it. You know the old poem about the House of Black and eternal glory as well as I do: If a son of the house does something truly terrible, casts his heart down into the depths of this place, then he might stand a chance of bringing the House of Black crashing down around him.

I figured a brother making his brother murder him would be terrible enough to count.

Because I wasn’t dead. Maybe you’ve guessed that by now. It was only a Draught of the Living Death that Kreacher helped me brew. I made you close me up living in the tomb, to bring this house down on top of me and crush the locket I wear, so the Dark Lord will be mortal once more.

I hope you can forgive me someday.

With love always, your brother,
Regulus

“Sirius!” Remus shouted, almost screaming it. He thrust the letter into Sirius’ hand. “He’s not dead. We have to go back in for him.”

Sirius scanned the parchment, then he moved faster than Remus had ever seen him move, sprinting back up the steps of the house with Remus close at his heels.

The house thundered around them, slabs detaching from the ceilings and walls and crashing around their feet as they ran the endless corridors. Plaster dust from the ceiling blurred Remus’ vision and a chunk of falling woodwork clipped his shoulder painfully – but he knew he was lucky it had been only wood, and only his shoulder. In one spot, an entire section of the first storey had dropped down to the ground floor, leaving a gaping hole in the ceiling. For a dizzying moment, Remus peered up into it as they ran past, two levels of the building visible to him at once.

Only when they reached the top of the steep flight of stairs that led down to the vaults did Sirius stop, abruptly, and spin around to face Remus.

Coughing and waving away the whirling plaster dust that filled the air, Sirius gasped, “You don’t have to come. Remus. Go back outside where it’s safe.”

Gaunt and pale, his unkempt hair full of dust, Sirius was heartbreakingly beautiful to Remus in that moment. All his life Sirius had been forced into terrible choices, trying to protect both his friends and his family, despite knowing he couldn’t do both. Yet here he was, still trying to send Remus to safety, even as he himself prepared to plunge into the quaking foundations of the house to rescue his brother.

And Remus? All he’d ever wanted was not to have to stand alone. Surely the time had come for both of them to no longer face their most terrible decisions alone.

In reply, Remus surged forwards and pressed a kiss to the beautiful curve of Sirius’ lips – a brief kiss, but one that held all his passion in it. “I’m with you,” Remus said fiercely, as he drew back. “Let’s go find your brother.”

Sirius stared at him, amazed. Then he nodded, hope in his face for the first time, and he turned and plunged down the long stairs.

They ran along the arched passageway, its floor strewn with fallen rubble and its walls shuddering. The clamour of the disintegrating house was different down here, muted but also lower in pitch, a deep thrum of destruction all around and above their heads. They ran with their wands held high to light the way, stumbling over blocks of fallen stone.

Sirius spoke the unlocking spell and wrenched at the iron door to the crypt, but it didn’t open. He threw a look of panic to Remus.

“The angle of the floor must have shifted,” Remus panted. “Here.” He pointed his wand at the floor and cried, “Aequo.”

This time, the door moved, groaning on its hinges, and they dashed through.

Sirius skidded to a halt in front of Regulus’ coffin. It was half-obscured by debris and dust, and the low ceiling creaked ominously above them.

“Evanesco!” Sirius shouted and the debris Vanished, leaving the coffin lid clear. Sirius pried it up and Remus rushed to help him. Together they were able to lift the heavy lid and fling it down beside the coffin.

Regulus looked just as they had left him. Unmoving. No sign of breath. But there was still that faint blush to his cheeks that had seemed so alive when they closed him in the coffin, and Remus cursed himself because he should have known. For Sirius’ sake, to save him this heartbreak, somehow Remus should have known.

“Wake up!” Sirius gasped, shaking his brother’s shoulders. “Regulus, wake up!” He slapped his brother’s face, once, then again harder, but still Regulus didn’t move.

“We’ll carry him out if we have to,” Remus hurried to say, because Sirius’ eyes were wide with panic and his breath was coming fast and shallow. “A levitation spell again, or we’ll make him feather light, I’ll carry him if necessary –”

But at that moment, Regulus stirred. First only his hand clenched convulsively. Then he groaned, and his eyes wrenched open.

“No!” he cried, when he saw Sirius’ face above him.

“We’re getting you out of here,” Sirius declared, his panic falling away now that he saw his brother awake. “Whatever you thought you were doing, we’ll find a better way to do it. But you’re getting out of here. Now.”

He slung his arms under Regulus, catching him beneath both armpits and hoisting up his upper body. As he did so, something fell free from Regulus’ hand, tinkling as it landed on the floor of the coffin. In the light from their wands, Remus saw a flash of gold. Sirius shifted his weight, bracing Regulus in one arm so his other hand could reach down to retrieve whatever had dropped.

“NO,” Regulus said, and his tone carried such cold command that both Sirius and Remus froze. “Do what you like with me, but leave it there.”

Sirius’ hand drew back and the object remained where it lay: a gold locket on a thin chain that now pooled on the floor of the coffin, glittering in the light of their wands. Remus felt a strange, twisting fear as he looked at it, and he didn’t think it was only from what he’d read about this object in Regulus’ letter. The thing itself seemed to exude a cold malice.

Sirius shifted Regulus back into both his arms and hoisted him the rest of the way up from the coffin. Remus lifted Regulus’ legs, then set them down on the floor of the crypt. Still weak from the potion he’d ingested, Regulus struggled to find his balance. Watching him, Remus was acutely aware of how the floor was heaving, and of the thundering as more and more rooms of the house above caved in. It was only luck that they hadn’t yet been crushed, and there was no more time to waste.

With Regulus shuffling unsteadily forwards and leaning most of his weight on Sirius, Remus followed behind, holding an illuminated wand and ready to catch Regulus if he stumbled. They made painfully slow progress out of the crypt, through the wide-open iron door and back along the arched passageway. The noise of the collapsing house was tremendous now, too loud for them to speak at anything but a shout. Remus could only hope their way out was not yet blocked.

They’d reached the foot of the long, steep stairs when an enormous crash reverberated from somewhere above and very near.

“Get back!” Sirius shouted.

They darted back from the stairs, Sirius dragging Regulus. The air was a chaos of dust and debris and Remus could barely see, but he heard Sirius grunt as something struck him. Remus reached out in terror, trying to find Sirius in the maelstrom of dust without losing the wand he held in his other hand, their only light source.

“I’m all right,” Sirius growled, his voice hoarse now from the grit flying everywhere. “Just a graze.”

Remus’ groping hand found Sirius’, and Sirius squeezed back in reassurance.

“Regulus?” Sirius’ voice asked, with a note of fear in it.

“I’m fine,” Regulus said. His voice came out weakly, but it was nonetheless a reassurance. Remus could faintly make out their shapes now: Sirius crouching low to the ground, shielding the slumped form of his brother.

“I’m going ahead, to see if the stairs are still passable,” Remus said. “Both of you stay here, I’ll be right back.”

The walls to either side of them shuddered again even as he said it. Even with the light of his wand, Remus bumped his shins painfully against slabs of stone blocking his path. The dust that filled the air obscured everything and made breathing a struggle. Remus held his robes up over his mouth and groped his way towards the stairs.

When he reached the stairs, he found them blocked. Hopelessly and completely filled in. The entire ground floor corridor must have caved in, sending a wave of debris tumbling down the stairs to the basement below. As Remus stood there, staring in horror at the blockage of their only exit route, the house shook again, sending him reeling on his feet and crashing into the nearest wall. He spread his hands flat against the wall to both sides of him, struggling for purchase, and wondered how long it would take before the already-collapsed upper floors compressed the rest of the way down.

As fast as he could, he fumbled his way back to Sirius and Regulus.

“Sirius, the stairs are blocked. It’s all caved in. With enough time we might be able to shift or Vanish enough of it to get through, but is there another way? Can’t we Apparate out?”

Sirius laughed, a horrible, hopeless sound. “Are you kidding? With all the protections on this place? You’d have better luck trying to Plot it on a map.”

Remus could feel the panic rising inside him, starting deep in his gut and rising steadily upwards to clench around his throat, but he told it sternly it had no place here. Sirius needed him. He would find a way out.

Between them, Regulus coughed feebly and said, “Sirius, you’re an idiot, you know that?” Even weakened and having to strain to be heard over the noise of the shuddering house, Regulus sounded infinitely calmer than the man Remus had heard making wild pronouncements earlier that same day. There was a sense of relief in his voice, as of a great weight lifted. “You always thought you were cleverer than everybody else, but sometimes you’re stupid about the most obvious things.”

Sirius gave a splutter of indignation, but before he could get any words out, there was an unmistakeable crack. Out of the dust-strewn darkness, a froggy voice said, “Master Regulus gave very clear instructions not to give away the deception about the potion and the pretending to be dead, but now that Master Regulus is no longer pretending to be dead, may Kreacher have permission to save him?” And then, in a very un-Kreacher-like tone, “…Please?”

To Remus’ amazement, Regulus started laughing. It was weak, and had a slightly hysterical edge, but he sounded like a man glad to be alive.

“Yeah,” Regulus said. “Kreacher, you are the most extraordinary house-elf any wizard could ever ask for, and I’ve asked you to do things no elf should have to do, but yes, you have permission to save my life. But you have to take Sirius and his friend, too. No getting out and then pretending you accidentally forgot them.”

“As Master Regulus wishes it,” the elf said stiffly. Before Remus had time to think, he felt a bony, small hand close around his wrist, and the yank of Apparition, and then he gasped in a breath of clean night air and felt the welcome patter of cool rain on his face.

They were standing outside by the tarn, on the side furthest from the house, in the night wind and the gathering rain. Kreacher glowered at all three of them, then with a last deep frown of disapproval and a crack, disappeared again.

Sirius turned to look at the house, and Remus stepped up to stand beside him.

Much of the building had crumbled, leaving only a skeletal framework still standing: some of the external walls, a few of the windows, a wide main staircase that now jutted up to nowhere. A single turret teetered atop one far wing that was the only section of the ruin still somewhat intact.

Though it was hidden behind what remained of the house and dimmed by the clouds rushing past, Remus knew the waning crescent moon hung low in the eastern sky, just ahead of the dawn that would soon be breaking. Even obscured as it was, the moon cast a faint, eerie glow around the House of Black. With the scudding clouds, the rain streaking down and the glow of the moon, the sight was wild and terrible.

Behind them, Regulus rasped, his voice raw, “Let it crumble. Merlin, please, let it come down.”

Remus turned to look at him. Regulus stood, unsteady still and listing to one side, but staring fiercely across the tarn at the house before them. Remus thought of the gold locket that had tumbled down into the coffin as they’d lifted Regulus up, and the way Regulus had described the thing inside it: a piece of the Dark Lord’s soul I was able to steal all those years ago. Not hard to fathom the desperation in Regulus’ gaze. Could even the crushing weight of an entire building destroy an object so powerful and Dark?

In front of them, the remains of the house trembled. Deep booms reverberated across the water each time another part collapsed. Rain whipped into Remus’ eyes as he watched, powerless to help or hinder, able only to bear witness.

With a tremendous crash, a fissure formed down the middle of the ruin. As they watched, the crack gaped wider, splitting the house in two, until all at once the crescent moon burst into sight through the expanding gap. Its radiance reflected in the waters of the tarn, a strange doubled light illuminating the horror of the scene.

The two halves of the house’s vast skeleton wrenched further apart with a shrieking of wood against wood, stone against stone. Then with a last, tremendous crash, the entire bulk of it came down, the upper storeys smashing into the existing wreckage and driving it deeper into the ground, the whole house collapsing down and down upon itself in an endless tumult of sound.

When the noise finally stopped, the house was no more. Only a levelled field of wreckage showed where it had stood.

Trembling, Regulus said, “It’s gone.”

Sirius wheeled around to look at his brother, and Remus looked at them both.

“The locket,” Regulus clarified, his voice still weak, but unyielding. “I wore it long enough, I know what its presence feels like. It gets in your mind and messes with your thoughts. It tells you it would’ve been better if you’d died all those years ago, instead of escaping with the Horcrux only to try and fail for years to destroy it. It tells you it’s no surprise you’ve failed, because you were always a failure, and you were always weak. And even if you can see now the mistakes you made when you were young and stupid, it’s too late to do anything about them, which means you’re less than worthless.” Abruptly, Regulus heard what he was saying and stopped, a faint blush colouring his wan cheeks in the moonlight. He concluded gruffly, “Anyway, that’s what it always said to me; I’m sure it’s different for other people. It takes your worst thoughts and makes them worse. I know the feeling when it’s anywhere nearby, and it’s gone now.”

With the rain whipping down, plastering his dark hair to his forehead, Regulus looked at once like both a lost little child and a weary old man, beaten down by the terrible burden he’d carried alone for so long.

“Regulus –” Sirius said, and then abruptly he wrapped his brother in a furious embrace. The two brothers clung to each other as though it were the only thing keeping them safe from the storm overhead.

Over the roar of the wind, all Remus could make out was Regulus saying over and over, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and Sirius retorting, “What are you sorry about?”

Slowly, the rain and wind lessened. Dawn was nearly breaking, and the eastern sky behind where the house had stood was tinged with faint pink and gold in the widening gaps between the clouds.

“It’s true, then, the things you wrote?” Sirius asked, as he gently released his brother from their embrace. “That was a piece of Voldemort’s soul in there?”

Regulus nodded forcefully. “And there are more of them, these Horcruxes. These soul-vessels. Tell that to your Order lot, if they’re still around, that the other ones need to be found.”

This last part he’d addressed to Remus, his dark eyes burning. Then he turned away again.

“Sooner or later, he will rise again,” Regulus went on, staring hard at the beginnings of a sunrise now gaining force and colour in the eastern sky. He stood hunched under the weight of his own words like an ancient Seer. “And if he’s not mortal, if he’s still got his soul safely hidden away, it’s going to be just as bad as before.”

Remus shivered at Regulus’ sepulchral tone. It had been the only truly good thing about these long, lonely twelve years: knowing that the world was free of Voldemort, and that children like Harry could grow up without the shadow of war looming over them. Now Regulus’ words seemed to summon it all back.

With a startling crack, Kreacher reappeared in their midst.

“Master Regulus!” he boomed in his unmistakeable froggy voice. “Master Regulus is not well. He has been out in the rain. He has taken the Draught of Living Death and has not yet consumed any antidote. He needs rest and a warm meal. Kreacher has arranged accommodation in the village, and Master Regulus will please come with Kreacher now.”

Sirius goggled down at the house-elf. “Kreacher, you went into the village?”

Kreacher swivelled and fixed a disapproving look on Sirius. “Yes, Master.”

“You do know they’re Muggles there, don’t you?”

“Kreacher does whatever is necessary to serve the House of Black,” Kreacher replied stiffly. “Kreacher will see Master Regulus to safety.” Then he gave the tiniest, most perfunctory bow imaginable in Sirius’ direction, so small it looked more like he might be trying to flick an only slightly irritating gnat off his nose.

Remus didn’t know whether to be amused or horrified that even when their house had just collapsed into rubble, Sirius and Kreacher’s interactions had changed not a jot.

But then to Remus’ surprise, Sirius said, “Keep him safe, Kreacher. I’ll come find you there soon, to make sure he’s all right.”

“Yes, Master,” Kreacher replied again, but his tone was no longer quite so cold. Then the elf grasped Regulus’ arm, pivoted a neat half-turn, and the two of them were gone.

In the sudden silence, Sirius turned to Remus.

The sun was nearly up now, the eastern sky awash in reds and golds and brindled with wisps of cloud. Sirius had a gash down one side of his face where something must have struck him when the basement stairs collapsed, and his wet, dishevelled hair was plastered about his head, but the morning light warming Sirius’ too-pale face was a welcome sight.

“Remus,” he said. “You impossible, extraordinary –” All the intensity of his grey gaze was fixed on Remus, and yet Sirius’ words cut off, as if he didn’t know how to go on. When he spoke again, his voice had dropped lower. “What have I ever done that could possibly deserve the help you’ve shown me tonight?”

There was a time when Sirius wouldn’t have needed to ask that. A time when any of them, the four Marauders, would have followed one another on a desperate rescue mission into a collapsing house without a thought.

But there were no longer four Marauders. There was only Sirius, standing in front of him. And Sirius deserved a true answer, one equally as true as the bond those four long ago friends had shared.

“You didn’t have to do anything, Sirius,” Remus said, his voice hoarse with the overwhelming truth of it. “You only ever had to be yourself.”

But Sirius’ eyes widened and he turned away, gazing again across the tarn to the scattered debris where the house had stood. “Remus,” he said, his voice nearly breaking. “I will never be able to explain to you how sorry I am for having left you, after –” He broke off with a harsh intake of breath, but then he drew himself up sharply, spun to face Remus again and said fiercely, “– after we lost James and Lily. I can see every time I look at you how terrible, how lonely it must have been. You know now why I had to come back here, but that doesn’t make it all right. I left you, Remus. When we were all that was left, I left you.”

There was so much pain in Sirius’ face as it contorted with remorse.

And there’d been a time, once, when Remus might have wanted that. Angry, grieving and alone, in his darkest moments he’d sometimes wished for Sirius to suffer as he suffered. He’d wanted Sirius to feel just how badly his abandonment hurt.

But there was no part of Remus that wanted that anymore.

“It’s over,” he said instead. “All that is long over.” Softly, hardly daring, he stepped closer to Sirius. “We can’t go back and change any of that. All that really matters is: what do you want to do with your life now?”

They were standing close now, so close that Remus could reach out and touch Sirius if he chose. And Sirius’ eyes were still so wide, as if the whole world right now astonished him and he couldn’t stop looking at it. But all he was looking at was Remus.

“I – I don’t know,” Sirius said. “Isn’t that incredible? All this time I thought I knew how things were. I thought Regulus needed my protection, but I think he’s going to be fine, now that this is gone.” He waved one hand wildly, attempting to encompass what had been the House of Black and all it stood for. “And, Remus, that locket! If it’s true how Regulus described it, how it twists your mind, then it must have affected me, too. Which means I haven’t lost my mind, I’ve only been listening to that thing telling all the worst things about me. I think, without it, I’ll be able to see more clearly again. And maybe…maybe this means I don’t have to stay away from people to keep them safe.”

“You could see Harry,” Remus said softly, though he knew already that Harry was who Sirius meant.

“I could see Harry,” Sirius agreed, his face bright with wonder. “And I could…come back. To everything. To the work we used to do. If it’s really true what Regulus said, that there are more pieces of Voldemort’s soul out there, then someone’s got to look for them. And tell Dumbledore about this one. There’s work to do!”

Remus smiled to see Sirius brimming with the passion Remus remembered so well, lit up with a sense of purpose. Protecting those he cared about, fighting the darkness of Voldemort: these were the things Sirius had always done best.

If that was all this ever was, if all that came of seeing Sirius again was the chance to see him so alive, that would be enough.

But this time, it was Sirius who held out a hand.

“Remus,” he said, and the way Sirius said his name was still the best thing Remus had ever heard, full of warmth and affection and a lurking swirl of deeper emotion. Remus had thrilled to that sound when they were young, and the power of Sirius’ voice over him clearly had not changed. “After all this time,” Sirius went on, “after how I’ve failed you – I don’t know why you would want to, but if you’ll have me –”

For a moment Sirius’ eyes fixed beseechingly on Remus, but then his words tumbled on, as if he were afraid to let himself hear what Remus’ answer might be.

“There will be so much to do! I’ll need to make sure Regulus recovers from poisoning himself with that potion and that he’s got somewhere safe to live. Maybe he won’t even need to hide anymore – what he did today would prove to anyone which side he’s on. But after that, I’ll be starting over completely. I want to learn about everything that’s gone on in the years I’ve missed. So much to do, Remus, not to mention hunting for these soul-vessels of Voldemort’s! First, though, I need to see Harry. Maybe I can visit Hogwarts. Or Hogsmeade. Does he get Hogsmeade weekends now?” Sirius slowed suddenly, pain again flitting across his face. “If you don’t think he’ll hate me for never being there before.”

“I know he’d love to meet you,” Remus said firmly. “And he certainly won’t hate you. But Sirius –” He reached for Sirius’ hand, the one Sirius had at first extended but then had ended up gesticulating with as he spoke. “You don’t have to do it all at once. We’ll figure these things out.”

Sirius looked down in surprise at their joined hands, then up at Remus.

Oh, it was hard to find the right words. Remus had had so many years of practice at hiding sentiment away from the world’s eyes, keeping pain and loss decorously out of sight. He had hardly any practice at all at this opposite thing, bringing out the words that would make Sirius understand how he felt. Cautiously, still not sure he was managing to say what he meant to say, Remus added, “And I’d like to be there, for all those things. If you’ll have me.”

Sirius’ wide eyes were enormous in his gaunt face. He seemed nearly to have stopped breathing. “Do you mean that?”

These words, on the other hand, were not hard to find at all. “I have never,” Remus said, “meant anything more.”

Sirius’ hand tightened on his and he drew Remus closer, until they stood nearly chest to chest. Remus could see how Sirius’ shoulders rose and fell with rapid breaths, and he imagined he could almost hear the racing of Sirius’ heart. Perhaps it matched Remus’ own, which felt liable to rush right out of his body.

“You will never know how hard it was, back then, to leave,” Sirius breathed.

“I have some idea,” Remus said, feeling how these words still caught in his throat, unaccustomed to being spoken aloud. “It was hard to stay.”

Sirius’ face clouded again with pain.

Remus shook his head. “No. No more apologies for what’s past.” That, too, he was sure about. “And you don’t seem to realise – this will be a whole new life for me, too. If you’re…if you’re part of it now.”

All those years of loneliness – no, they couldn’t be erased. But they could be put away in the past where they belonged, to make space for something new.

“I always wanted –” Sirius began, his voice nearly a whisper, “– even when we were at school, you know that, don’t you? I didn’t trust myself. All that darkness in my family, in my past… You deserve better than that,” he concluded fiercely.

“Sirius,” Remus said. “So do you. You deserve everything.”

Sirius gave a giddy, disbelieving laugh and stepped, if possible, even closer. With disarming hesitance he asked, “Can I –?”

In answer, Remus closed the last distance between them. One hand still clasped Sirius’ hand in his; the other, he wrapped around Sirius’ back and pulled him in until their bodies met – drenched from the rain, filthy from the grit and dust of the house that had collapsed around them, but warm. There was such unbelievable warmth to being pressed close against this man he had adored and admired and missed for so long.

Sirius’ lips met his, first gently, then with increasing urgency. How impossible, how astounding, after all this time. Remus closed his eyes, clung hard to Sirius, and let the feeling of it carry him away, the wild warmth of Sirius’ mouth against his own.

Time passed; who knew how long?

Sirius gave a little shuddering sigh against Remus’ lips, and Remus opened his eyes to the sight of Sirius smiling at him, a gorgeous smile of joy too big to be contained. The sun was peeking above the horizon now, and the first warm light of the day shone full on Sirius’ face.

“Hello,” Remus said, delighted and amazed all over again at the sight of Sirius before him.

Sirius laughed, a rich chuckle that started somewhere in the depths of him and bubbled its way up. “Hello, Remus.” He grinned, fond and merry and so lovely. Despite the ravages of time, Remus still found Sirius breathtaking.

Sirius’ laughter faded to a gentle chuckle and a soft-eyed look.

“Fancy meeting you in a place like this,” he said, and there was some of the old happy mischief about him. “Whatever possessed a nice boy like you to visit a place as awful as the House of Black?”

Remus found Sirius’ hand again and squeezed it. “Someone very dear to me asked me to come. I couldn’t say no.”

Sirius’ voice dropped lower, rich and seductive. “And do you plan to stay here long, visiting this dear friend of yours?”

“No,” Remus said. “I plan to take him away from all this as soon as he says the word.”

Sirius smiled again, but there was a hint of sadness in it. Still holding Remus’ hand in his, he turned to face the ruin of the house and for a few moments simply stared at the strewn rubble of what had been his family home. Then he said softly, “Goodbye, you evil old thing. And good riddance. A son of Black bested you after all. He cast his heart to depths below, and you are no more.” He turned back to Remus with a fierce, proud smile. “It’s true, in the end, what the poem said: the house wasn’t felled by any foe. Regulus did it all himself.”

“And you saved him,” Remus reminded him. “So he didn’t have to die to do it.”

Sirius gripped Remus’ hand hard. “Yes,” he agreed. “We saved him.”

“Or to be fair, really Kreacher saved us all.”

Sirius shot Remus a look of consternation. “That’s true, isn’t it? Am I going to have to start being nice to that irritating elf?”

“Probably so,” Remus said drily. “He did save your life.”

“And the lives of the two people I care most about,” Sirius said, almost absently, as though such a thing came easily to him to say. It sent a thrill of warmth through Remus’ stomach. “I suppose when you consider that, being civil to him when he bangs on about the glory of my ancestors is a small price to pay.” Suddenly, he caught Remus by the shoulders and spun him around in delirious circles. “All right, let’s go!”

“Go where?” gasped Remus, happily dizzy.

“Wherever you say. First to the village to make sure Regulus is all right, but after that… Anywhere.”

“I’ll need to return to work,” Remus said, “and you wanted to talk to Dumbledore. Perhaps you’d like to come to Hogwarts?” He waited with bated breath for what Sirius would say.

“Harry’s at Hogwarts,” Sirius said, his voice gone dry. His hands tightened on Remus’ shoulders.

Remus reached both hands up to cover Sirius’ hands with his own. “Harry’s at Hogwarts, yes. The world is ready for you to come back, Sirius Black. What do you say?”

The grin Sirius gave him was dazzling. “I’m ready.”

They both looked once more at the wreckage where the house had stood. All that remained now was the sullen field of rubble beyond the dark, still waters of the tarn. With time, the wind and the rain would wear away even that, until perhaps nothing stood beside the tarn but a patch of grass and wildflowers. The House of Black, with its prejudices and terrible secrets, was gone. The dangerous locket it had contained was destroyed.

Sirius gave a small but satisfied sigh, and turned away.

Then, hand in hand, they set out walking away from what had once been the House of Black.


~The End~

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

End Notes:

If you’re familiar with Poe’s story “The Fall of the House of Usher,” you’ll know I’ve ranged freely from the original, taking the premise and basic narrative structure as well as some story and character elements, but weaving them into a quite different tale. (And one that was, ultimately, more about Remus and Sirius and who they are, and the backstory of the Harry Potter world, than it was about the themes in Poe’s story.)

I want to give credit here for a couple of phrases I used directly from Poe’s original:

–describing Sirius’ (i.e., Usher’s) lips having a “surpassingly beautiful curve” – because how perfect is that?

–describing the setting just before the final denouement events as “a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night” – because what a lovely phrase

There are also, of course, so many nods to “The Fall of the House of Usher” throughout the fic (Sirius’ piano playing is because of Usher’s musical talent, the Black family poem replaces Usher’s many-versed paranoia poem, etc. etc. etc.) It was so much fun fusing the extremely gothic sensibility of Edgar Allan Poe with the extremely dramatic character of Sirius Black!

I also ended up making a playlist for this story, songs to capture this sensibility of “lovers too long apart but finding their way back to each other at last.” (The songs form an arc from the “being apart” to the “together at last.”)

The Fall of the House of Black playlist

1. Alone Apart – The Swell Season
2. Beautiful Child – Fleetwood Mac
3. Rules & Regulations – Rufus Wainwright
4. I Fell in Love with a Dead Boy – Anohni (formerly Antony & the Johnsons)
5. True Love – Eivør
6. The Valley – k. d. lang (cover of Jane Siberry)
7. Let Me Fall in Love – Markéta Irglová
8. 1st Song – Peter Piek
9. Another Believer – Rufus Wainwright

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