Title: Home For Christmas
Characters: Regulus Black, Sirius Black, Random Veil Intake Person
Setting: Ministry of Magic and Sirius' place
Warnings: Vomit and references to hallucination/death
Summary: Regulus returned late on the 22nd of December a little over four years after taking the Drink of Despair and being drug under water by inferi.
Regulus Black returned four hours post business hours two days before Christmas and left puddles from the Veil entrance all the way to the main hall. It was not an optimum time to return--most personnel had gone home to their families, planned to have the twenty-third through Boxing Day off nearly a year in advance, and what skeleton crew was left to mind the veil didn't really seem enthusiastic about spending a lot of time with a teenager who smelled like something between old brine and waterlogged corpses.
"You should make someone's Christmas special!" A blonde woman with wide eyes and a reddish mouth drew the short straw and apparently thought it her mission to spread Christmas cheer around offering that he'd been dead four years, that this was nothing to be concerned about ("Happens all the time!"), and that Voldemort would not be calling on his services anytime soon. "Your brother's just gotten out of Azkaban..."
This is just a hallucination, Regulus decided because there was no other explanation. His stomach was rolling over a mixture of saltwater and potion, the uncomfortable "intake" chair wobbled and sent the room off center. If he could have caught his breath he would have--but every time he breathed he was sure he was going to vomit all over the imaginary Ministry Secretary. Or Greater. Regulus wasn't even sure what she was supposed to be except
fake.. "And your father died--about a month after you--but your mother is fine!"
People simply didn't come back from the dead. And they didn't drown in November and come back in December. Four years later.
Apparently sitting gobsmacked and attempting not to vomit while dripping all over the floor was a signal to send the new returnee...somewhere else because before Regulus knew it he was being pulled onto his feet and pushed towards a fireplace with a flick of Miss-Blonde's wand. "It's late for you, isn't it?" As though he were ten and not eighteen. "How about you use the floo and come back tomorrow morning."
Regulus wanted to ask,
Come back? because it felt so surreal he doubted he'd ever 'come back'. Die truly, maybe, but not find his way back into what must have been an imaginary section of the Ministry of Magic. Wishful thinking of someone drowning, maybe?
Moments later Regulus fell out of Sirius Black's Floo like he had never taken one before--all loose limbs and disorientation. He landed on his feet, stumbled sideways and grabbed onto the nearest wall before trying to right himself and falling the opposite way. It was the least graceful entrance Regulus would have ever wanted, dripping more putrid water around and topping it off with finally losing his stomach. He vomited up what felt like a vat of slat water and the entire basin of Drink of Despair. "It's just--it's just water." He explained to possibly no one at all and squinted at it. "'n Bile." And dark potion but Regulus thought he saw a child's toy near his sick and that only solidified his belief: this was a hallucination.
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