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THE DAYS AFTER went so fast, it was all really a blur for Regulus. Sirius' name was never cleared, he died and everyone still thought and believed he killed those people. But Sirius Black was no murderer, he was locked up for those crimes but he never dreamed of doing that to anyone. Regulus Black was the murderer, he knows the things he's done and why he's done them. He doesn't regret them, but he does think about them a lot. Regulus dwells on those thoughts now, as he sits in his brother's old bedroom in their childhood house, going over them, obsessing over the idea that it should've been him locked away for all those years. Not Sirius.
Sitting in the room, Regulus remembers the times when he and his brother were very young, before Hogwarts. When they would get into trouble and Sirius would take all the blame, even if it was Regulus who had done wrong, and after they would sit in Sirius' bedroom and Regulus would cry and apologise over and over again to his brother. It's not a feeling of reminiscence, more rumination. A pit of despair and guilt in his stomach.
He recalls when they would sit on this exact bed and Sirius would cradle Regulus with his hands clamped over his younger brother's ears to attempt to drown out the screaming matches between their parents and family downstairs. He wishes he could go back and cover Sirius' ears too, that he could go back and stop Sirius from taking the blame, taking the beatings, he wishes he could take at least a fraction of his brothers pain and put it inside of him.
He remembers when Sirius finally packed his things and ran from their house. He remembers being stood in his room, at only fourteen, pleading with his brother to stay. He had been present during the shouting and the insults, when Walburga had shrieked at the boy the leave the house and never return. She had belittled him into nothing, told him that he had been a burden his whole life, and that he would never become anything more than a coward that rebelled against their family.
Family. Regulus scoffs to himself. If you could even call it that.
But, whilst thinking about all the bad, he thinks about all the good that followed. Regulus thinks about when Maria had brought him into her arms that night he fled from his patents' house and welcomed him into their home without a second thought. The same way she and James had for his older brother two years before that.
He remembers walking into the living room, all so clearly, he remembers seeing the marauders and their friends all comforting and injured Dorcas Meadows after she had been splinched during a death eater attack. He remembers his brother and how he had stood up in surprise, seeing Regulus' dripping hair and the bag in Maria's hand, seeing the bruises on his little brother's face. He remembers how Sirius had brought him into a hug and Regulus had almost burst into tears, Sirius hadn't hugged him like that in years. But he did that night, and after, it was like they were brothers again.
