This is Home | Marauders Era

V. Fidelius

CW: suicidal thoughts

Everyon were waiting in the living room, a mixture of standing and sitting as they waited anxiously for Fleamont Potter and Sirius Black to return, hopefully with a safe and healthy Regulus Black in tow.

Safe and healthy was certainly not the word that they would use to describe Regulus.

It was a bit shocking at first. Just a crack in the front yard, a short series of gut-wrenching screams that echoed through the neighborhood and filled the ears of the living room's occupants and had them all standing at once. They gathered, and they stared out of the living room window at the scene that was unfolding on the Potters' front lawn.

Regulus was screaming, and he was writhing in pain as Sirius tried desperately to keep him in a standing position, and then, he was gone. His screams stopped, and his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and his entire body fell limp. Sirius struggled to hold up the weight of his brother (who, to add onto the problems, had grown a few inches taller than Sirius), and then he couldn't. Regulus fell to the ground, and there was a moment where the entire world seemed to freeze. No one was moving, no one was speaking, no one was even breathing. They were all stuck in that moment of time until they weren't.

Euphemia Potter was the first to react.

"WHAT ARE YOU ALL DOING JUST STANDING THERE?!" She demanded, already rushing toward the front door.

That was all that James Potter, Gideon and Fabian Prewett, and Alastor Moody needed. They rushed after the frantic woman, Albus Dumbledore trailing behind slower than the rest.

Sirius Black was panicking. His lungs weren't accepting the air that they were being offered, his vision becoming dangerously blurry as he dropped to his knees and rolled his brother onto his back. He looked at the dangerously shallow and unsteady rise and fall of his chest, and he looked at the bloodied and bruised face of his brother, and he felt himself panicking.

"Regulus?" His voice was weak, far-off sounding even though the words were coming out of his own mouth. "Regulus, wake up," he had his hands on Regulus's shoulders, shaking him and trying desperately to wake him. "Regulus, wake up. Wake up. Wake up, wake up, wake up!"

Someone was grabbing his shoulders. They were holding onto his shoulders, and they were speaking into his ear, and they were trying to pull him away from Regulus. And Sirius was shouting, and he was thrashing, and he was trying desperately to get this person off of him as he tried to stay with his brother. Because he needed to stay with his brother; the last time he had let him go, Walburga Black had come and taken him back.

He could see the blurry silhouettes of people as they crowded around Regulus and tried to help him. Sirius could feel himself becoming lightheaded, hyperventilating and struggling to get back to Regulus because he couldn't be dead. But his chest had stopped moving and he looked inhumanly pale, and Sirius had a sinking suspicion in the pit of his stomach.

"MUM!" The voice was directly beside his head, but it sounded as though there were miles between him and the mouth that was speaking the words. His limbs were becoming heavy, and he felt like he couldn't breathe, and he was staring at Regulus and trying desperately to find any sign that he was even alive at all. "MUM, HE'S PANICKING!"

He didn't hear the response, because everything in the world was suddenly black.

Euphemia Potter watched Sirius Black lose consciousness in the front yard, and she cursed in front of her son for the first time in quite a few years. James looked a bit shocked at first, but neither of them took the time to mention it. The Prewett twins had picked Regulus up, and they were moving him into the house so that Madam Pomfrey - who had been summoned via Patronus and was expected to arrive in mere seconds - and Euphemia Potter could figure out what was wrong and heal him. Alastor Moody was taking in his injuries and noting down the most noticeable ones on a pad of paper. Albus Dumbledore was standing on the front stoop, watching the scene unfold and speaking to a Patronus that was being sent to an unknown person. James Potter was muttering a string of frantic words as he hoisted Sirius up with a grunt and began carrying him back to the house.