wyoming_knott & isiscolo

Author: wyoming_knott
Title: Brothers
Assigned Characters: Sirius and Regulus Black
Challenge: "Isn't it funny how you never really screamed at my face / but your anger so unspoken and unchannelled permeates my essence to the point where I / don't want to see you, hear you, be anywhere near you - george, Special Ones


I couldn't decide whether to curse you or thank you for running away.

You left me, Sirius. Left me with Mother and Father and no choice but to be everything they expected me to be. Everything they had expected you to be. And it was... okay... for a while. Then school began again.

You were so clearly relieved to be gone. And so clearly despised me at school. I didn't understand. Slytherin and Gryffindor mean *nothing*; we were *brothers*! That should transcend everything. But it meant nothing.

I remember the last time we spoke at school. I wanted to make peace, but you shunned me. Mocked me. I finally understood Mother's actions. You were no longer the loving brother I once had. I no longer had a brother.

But House rivalries and bitter partings have no place here. We can be together again, like we were before everything went bad. I've missed you, Sirius.

Title: The Last of the Family Reserve
Author: Isis (isiscolo)
Rating: PG
Wordcount: ~1500
Notes: thanks to Fabula Rasa, Amanuensis, and Maeglin Yedi for beta.




We're all gonna be here forever
So Mama don't you make such a stir
Just put down that camera
And come on and join up
The last of the family reserve.
Lyle Lovett, "Family Reserve"


Sirius had never believed in a Heaven or a Hell. Certainly, when he rushed to the Ministry, his mind was not on his own fate but on Harry's, his only concern how he might help the boy he'd grown to love. He'd never before been in the Department of Mysteries, and he gave no thought to what lay beyond the blank faces of its myriad doors. He never considered what lay beyond the Veil.

Perhaps he should have.

##

It was almost like being fourteen again, at one of those horrid family affairs he always tried to get out of but was never able to. It could have been a picnic at his aunt and uncle's country estate, with Narcissa and her boyfriend Lucius idly watching as he and Bellatrix dueled in the dappled sunlight under the elm trees. Although when he was fourteen, Regulus would have been there too, sparring with Andromeda despite the difference in age and ability. And of course, when he was fourteen, Bellatrix hadn't been trying to kill him.

Well, perhaps that wasn't fair, Sirius thought. She wasn't shouting out Unforgivables; but he knew better than to depend on any familial affection where she was concerned. Better to depend on his own reflexes and abilities - and a little psychology. If he got her riled enough, she'd lose focus and control. That had been the way to deal with her when he was fourteen, at least, and it was likely to work now. If anything, the time spent in Azkaban would make her even more vulnerable to her emotions. After all, he should know.

He ducked her Stunning spell easily - she always did aim high - and laughed. "Come on, you can do better than that!"

He wasn't expecting that she actually would; but then came the jet of red light, and Sirius felt the spell penetrate him, paralyze him, the sudden burst of fear as he realized that he was hit, he was out of the battle, no longer able to help. Letting Harry down again, he thought with dismay as his body toppled.

And he fell.

##

"Wake up, Sirius! Come on, open your eyes!"

The voice sounded vaguely familiar, floating down gently, the tone belying the urgent words.

"Come on -- oh, you think you're still Stunned, don't you. Finite Incantatem. There. Can you move now?"

A male voice. Not Harry, not Remus. There had been a battle, hadn't there. Was it one of the Death Eaters? Had he been captured? He tried, tentatively, to move an arm. It felt…strange. Not with the residual stiffness that Stupefy always left behind; a different sort of strange.

Maybe it was best not to open his eyes.

"It's all right, Sirius. I'm here."

Sirius experimentally cleared his throat. Also strange. Like the sound that was coming out wasn't coming from his throat at all. "Who," he started; then paused, unnerved by the peculiar unfamiliarity of his own voice. "Who are you?"

A laugh. "Open your eyes."

It sounded a little like Regulus, which was absurd, impossible. No doubt it was because he had been thinking of Regulus and Andromeda when he was…he was…he had been fighting with Bellatrix, and she had hit him, and…

His eyes flew open.

"Welcome to the Otherworld," said Regulus, smiling.

##

"This is ridiculous," said Sirius. "I can't be dead. It was just a Stunning spell."

"Could have been," said Regulus. He sounded disgustingly cheerful. "But it's not something you can argue about, I'm afraid."

Sirius studied him. He looked…well, he looked like Regulus, nineteen and hale, his dark hair brushing the collar of the embroidered silk robe. Or at least it looked like a silk robe, like those that still hung in the armoires at 12 Grimmauld Place, moth-eaten and doxy-infested, a reminder of the glory days of the House of Black. The fabric shimmered, reflecting the cool light that came from everywhere and nowhere.

The Otherworld, whatever it was, had the appearance of a perfectly ordinary meadow. Like the one outside Hogsmeade, all flowers and green grass and rocks. Ordinary. But when he tried to focus on a single flower (that was asphodel, he thought, the white one there) his eyes slid away. When he tried to focus on the other people - the crowds he sensed at his back, behind a stand of trees, on the path that ought to wind through the meadow but which somehow he couldn't find - they slipped away, as insubstantial as mist.

He had never believed in a Heaven or a Hell; they were human constructs, Muggle constructs, something to cling to in troubled times by people who didn't have magic or friends or the shape of a large black dog to reassure them that this, too, shall pass. The ghosts at Hogwarts had been testimony to the existence of something beyond the mortal plane, but --

"That's it," said Sirius suddenly. "You're a ghost. I'm not dead. You're a ghost and you're haunting me."

"It's all right. It'll sink in, in time." Regulus smiled widely. "And that's all we've got here. Time, and each other."

"Each other?" He laughed, without humour. "I don't want any part of you, and you know that. I left you behind when I left that whole stinking place behind. Don't think I'm coming back just because I'm - I might be dead."

"You can't deny your family."

"I can, and I do!" He stepped forward; he was the elder of the two and had always been taller, and he used the extra height to his advantage, glaring down at Regulus. "My family, such as it is, are a prejudiced bunch of inbred imbeciles who did not have enough brains among them to resist the lure of that hate-spouting madman."

From behind him came a voice he'd not heard in the past twenty years - other than from a portrait. "I'll thank you to not talk about your family that way."

Somehow, her presence did what Regulus's couldn't. The fragile hope that it was all a dream evaporated, and he closed his eyes. Dead, after all. "Hello, Mother."

"Got yourself killed, I see." The sniff in her voice was audible. "I'm surprised it took you this long."

"It's nice to see you, too."

"Then you might consider showing some proper respect. After all, you'll be spending eternity with us."

His eyes flew open at that. A more dismal prospect he'd never heard; he turned to see his mother looking at him with satisfaction. Next to her his father stood, the same look of suffering in his eyes that had been there in life. Poor man, thought Sirius - his father had no doubt thought when he died he'd be free of it all. Free of his wife's imperious ways, of Regulus's inane prattling, of the embarrassment of Sirius's "unfortunate" sorting into Gryffindor and his rejection of all that his family stood for.

No. No.

"When I left home, I meant it. I'm not spending eternity with you lot." He looked from one face to the other; at his smug mother, his stern father, and finally at his brother, whose face shone with a strange avidity. "The Potters were more my family than you ever were. If I have to spend eternity with anyone, I choose to spend it with them." He felt a cool flood of relief at the thought of James. James, you're here, and I'm going to find you. He smiled, not caring if his family saw.

"It doesn't work that way," said Regulus. He reached out for Sirius, who batted his hand away.

"Who's to say it doesn't?" Breaking away from the three of them, he strode across the meadow. "James! James, are you here? Prongs, it's me!"

The shadowy figures at the edges of his vision seemed to waver and thicken. Slowly they drew nearer, encircling him, hemming him in. Walking through them was like walking through ghosts, chilling and uncomfortable, and as each came close he could make out the Black features. Some were unknown, some were familiar (there was grandma, and great-aunt Jocasta, and great-great-grandfather Phineas); legions upon legions, surrounding him, looking at him with scorn or pity or simple curiousity.

The legions pressed closer, and he gasped. "James!"

"Your friend made his choice when he married the Mudblood bitch," said his mother. Her voice was matter-of-fact, but her eyes shone with triumph. "He has his own family here. As you have us."

"No, I won't! James!" he called again.

Regulus stepped forward and took his arm. "He's not here, Sirius. But we are."

"We will always be with you," said his father.

"Always," echoed Regulus.

##

Sirius had never believed in a Heaven or a Hell. But now he knew: Hell existed - and he was there.