What if Regulus hadn't died? (Part One)

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CW: swearing and slight gore

Dark brown curls sunk below the surface of the dark water, splaying weightlessly around the boy's pale face. It almost blended in perfectly with the faces of the undead creatures coming up to make him could join their ranks.
But his eyes were fiery, like smoke still carrying hot embers, and their eyes, their eyes were nothing but lifeless voids deep in their skulls. Skulls that had long since been empty of any chance of independent thought.
Colourful lights flashed under the eerily undappled surface of the lake, and the boy burst out of the water. His loud rasping gasps were an an abrupt and unwelcome interruption to the deadly blanket of silence.
Life, where life does not belong.
His dark brown curls were now midnight black and plastered to his forehead, they dribbled water down into his eyes. His hand was clutching at the side of stone island, sharp stones dug into the soft flesh of his palm. Beads of red dotted the uneven backdrop of black rock, just as it had done at the entrance. His feet still trailing in the water and his other hand still free, he was far from safe. He had merely afforded himself a few more lung fulls of oxygen.
He swung from the single-handed grip and kicked one of the surfacing inferi in the face. Only to find, to his disgust, that the dead flesh slide off its skull like well cooked chicken slides off a bone. "You are fucking disgusting." The boy muttered to himself and as he struck out at more of the dead flesh and found another curious phenomenon.
Now that its muscle was gone magic alone could not animate the body. The bones simply hung there, limply, as if they were the part of the skeletons used for muggle Halloween decor. "Well that's interesting." He raised an eyebrow curiously and quickly gripped at the rock with another hand, kicking at the creature who tried to seize his ankle.
He heaved himself back onto the island and shot flames from his wand with a loud cry of "INCENDIO!" The boy watched the unnatural things slither back into the water with cries of their own, and sighed with relief and a shock so profound that he had not quite processed it yet. He scrambled to his feet as fast as he could and ran towards the little boat in which he had arrived.
He slipped onto the bench and slumped against the back of the boat as soon as he felt the magically steered movement. This was so far from over, so, so far, but all he needed to do right now was get out of that cave. And he hadn't even thought he would be able to do that when entered the creepy Merlin-cursed rock formation. But as the boat bumped gently against the opposite 'shore' of the lake, he was almost able to convince himself this wasn't a dream. Almost.
As the blood from the numerous gashes on his palm dripped onto the rough stone and activated the dark magic that would bring forth the doorway, he almost believed it. While the salt air stung at his wounds before he could heal them and the cold English air ripped through this wet clothes, the fog of shock almost broke. But not quite. So this is what he repeated to himself like montra of a drowning man he had just evaded being:

I am alive.
Alive.
Alive.
I am Regulus Acturus Black and I am ALIVE!!!

He staggered to the cliff's edge and look down upon the precipitous climb three orphans had taken so many years ago.
And he laughed.
He laughed a laugh that sounded like Bellatrix Black-Lestrange's, one of Voldemort's proudest supporters, and flipped his fingers towards the sky. Belting out all the precious air he had been so desperate for only a few minutes ago, he bellowed into the screeching wind.
"FUCK YOU, TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE!"
And he laughed

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