WHO: Peter & Regulus WHAT: Regulus remembers WHEN: 1st September WHERE: Hogwarts Express | Peter's House RATING|STATUS: PG-13? | Closed, In Progress
Returning to Hogwarts for a new year of school was always an anxious time for most kids; Regulus hadn't been able to sleep without potions for the past three nights and had chewed his fingernails down to the quick until they bled. He looked pale and grey with huge dark circles under his eyes, and he hadn't been able to keep anything he ate down. He was pretty sure that he was losing his hair as well, although that might just have been paranoia.
It wasn't so much the return to classes and homework and dorm rooms because that was actually something he was looking forward to. It was more the small matter of being a Death Eater in the midst of children, knowing that he was supposed to want to kill the Muggleborns in the younger years and the threat of the Dark Mark activating while he was at school, oh yeah, and the massacre on the train that he was supposed to allow to happen. That he'd warned Dumbledore didn't make much of a difference: if the message had gotten through and the plan was thwarted there was a chance he'd be blamed and punished and probably not survive that; if it hadn't gotten through then he would have to knowingly let mass murder happen.
He couldn't talk to anyone about this all either, not his parents who wouldn't see a problem, his brother or Peter who he didn't want to drag into all this. He went to sleep the night before the first day of school with restless anxiety, no idea that when he woke up it would be to an entirely different set of problems.
Regulus bolted upright out of bed gagging and choking on nothing, his hand clawing marks into his own throat as he fought against hands that weren't there. He struggled from under his blankets and catapulted out of bed to hit the floor, the impact forcing him to draw in a deep breath that led to him coughing and hacking. He was sure he had water in his lungs, that he felt cold dead hands holding him down under water and that even that was a relief from the pain he'd been in moments before. He sobbed for more than air, his body shaking hard; he looked around to see his room, warm and bright instead of the dark dankness of the cave he was sure he'd been in. He'd thought he was dying - he must be dead.
Kreacher popped into the room to wake Regulus for school, seeming concerned to find the boy on the floor. "Little Master is on the floor - is Little Master okay? Kreacher is here to wake Little Master for school."
"Kreacher?" What the hell was going on? "What are you still doing here? I told you to take the locket, you shouldn't be here." he said frantically. If the House Elf hadn't escaped with the actual locket then everything he'd done had been for naught. The Dark Lord would be too powerful to stop and this terrible thing that he'd been part of would never end.
Kreacher was cowering at the unexpected and unusual display of emotion from Regulus and seeing his fear made Regulus ache with regret. He remembered the catalyst for turning him completely against the Dark Lord and it was seeing his poor House Elf, who was ever faithful to the point of allowing himelf to be abused just on Regulus' orders, writhing and cramped with pain but still looking to him for approval. Kreacher was trying to respond to the insanity that Regulus had just shouted and the young Black shook his head and took a breath, appreciating his ability to do so more than he otherwise would. "It's okay Kreacher, you didn't do anything wrong." Regulus might have been young but he was smart and while he was still in shock about what could have possibly happened to change things he knew that denying the apparent truth wouldn't help. "What's the date?"
"It is being the 1st of September 1978 Little Master." Kreacher answered meekly, clearly worried about Regulus' strange behaviour but too unsure to say anything.
That didn't sound right, but if it was it meant that Regulus was out of temporal line by a year or so - that date was the date of the would-be massacre on the Hogwarts train, the one that he'd let happen, or would have if not for the Aurors on patrol. If he rememered correctly it was after that time that things got bad for him with the Death Eaters and his belief in them had all but drained. He'd figured out that Voldemort had split his soul into a Horcrux and once he'd been determined to do what he could to stop the megalomaniac before he destroyed the world they knew entirely.
It was strange; he knew things that were going to happen, or might happen he supposed considering that if he'd moved back in time somehow - assuming he wasn't dead and trapped in some kind of time loop or hallucinating or being tricked with magic - he had technically already changed the course of history. He could still feel the dead hands of the Inferi curling bruises into his flesh as he was tugged down into water, the acid battery burn in his throat from the potion he'd imbibed... he realised he was rubbing at his throat with his free hand and he forced himself to stop, forcing his senses to take in what was around him and be in their new present with him.
He was shaken and his head was splitting, the joint memories of this time of his life colliding, the differences subtle but there and all the more confusing because of their subtlety. He dressed and had his trunk already packed, said goodbye to his parents - it was a strangely sober parting because he knew that the path he had taken... was going to take?... meant that he'd likely never be able to see them again - and set off for the Hogwarts train all in a numb state of shock. His brain was working on two levels, the part that knew what to do working on muscle memory to move him around acting semi-normal, and the part of him that was temporally displaced and trying desperately to make sense of things.
He knew he had to get to the train and make sure that the massacre he remembered not-happening would still not-happen. He had to go to the train because that's what he did on the 1st of September, go to the train, get to Hogwarts. Well, he made it and he boarded, loaded up his bags and took his seat for the journey back to school, even if he didn't speak to anyone - though there was no difference from usual there - and was barely aware of time passing. His nerve broke as the train approached Hogwarts as the two halves of his brain collided finally, spurring him to frenzied action; he grabbed hold of his broom and his faithful Spook, secured safely in his cage, and made his way through the crowds of students to the back of the train where he exited through the door. He stood, trembling and white-eyed in the wind and set Spook free, joining the owl in the air as he straddled his broom and rose up, the train pulling away under him on its way to school one student short.
It wasn't the threat of being discovered as the Death Eater leak that had him panicking, it was the sudden realisation that he'd put himself into that kind of danger in complete isolation. He couldn't go back to his parents - if they didn't disown him and throw him to the wolves, he'd be putting them in danger just by letting them know he didn't believe in the Death Eaters anymore. He couldn't go to his brother - even if they hadn't been estranged he couldn't have put Sirius in the same kind of danger he could have put his parents, especially as Sirius could be seen as a blood traitor. He had no friends to go to at school and anyone else he associated with would likely drag him to Voldemort to be made an example of.
There was only one person that stuck out to him, someone who had been kind to him, who couldn't be connected to him and so wouldn't be a target like anyone in his family would be. He spoke to his owl who was perched on the end of his broom until he gave it somewhat desperate directions: "Find Peter Pettigrew."
Regulus had been aflight on his broom for hours, making his way from Scotland all the way back to London; the sky was dark, the night was cold and he'd long lost the ability to feel the sting of the rain that had soaked him to the bone because his face had gone numb. Spook had been protected by a charm that Regulus had attached to the owl to long ago to protect the bird from the elements when he was out delivering or retrieving messages. He hadn't had the presence of mind to do the same to himself - all he had with him were the clothes on his back and his owl and his broom and a focus on getting to Peter, nothing else in his head.
Spook had perched himself on a windowsill and seemed to be content to sit there watching his owner with those huge dark placid barn owl eyes. Regulus, shivering and soaked and pale and still not thinking, hovered his broom so that he could duck and wheel away if he had to, if this wasn't the right room, and knocked at the window.