royal_venant | (no subject)

(no subject)

Who: Regulus and Sirius (siriuslydementd)
What: A brother on the run, a brother coming out of hiding, a chance meeting between the point that intersects between the two
When: Sometime in 1984
Where: South of France, portside town
Rating/Warnings: idk - we'll see where it goes

Hide where a wizard or a witch would never think to look.

The answer to that puzzle had saved Regulus’ life some four and a half years prior. It had taken him longer than he cared to admit now to work it out. But it was clever.

A setting sun glittered off the water in this small port in the South of France, still hot against the sunburnt patches on Regulus’ cheeks and across the bridge of his nose.

As soon as the seiner was snug against the dock, Reg hiked his beat up rucksack over a shoulder and carried everything he owned off the vessel.

A man still on the boat called to him and waved to him farewell, and Regulus waved back, sure he would never see this man, nor the other crew, again as he did not plan to travel back this way again and the boat would be out to sea again before dawn, headed back east along the coast. But the crew were used to this life and had not shed a tear when Regulus had announced he would be getting off the next chance they docked.

Gulls still squawked over head, water slapped against hulls, a few dogs wandered the walkways above the water, fisherman and other sailors alike called out to each other as boats pushed off or docked. This was not a sleepy port, but neither was it a bustling tourist destination.

The plan: grab food, then head north.

He checked off the first part of his plan not far into the port at a food stall just about to pull in its product. And after paying for the food and stowing his purchase away inside the sack, he headed towards the edge of the town.

Regulus bet he could still make good time before pitch dark forced him to stop for the night.

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One of those dogs has been living as a stray in this town for some time. What no one in the town knows, of course, is that he isn't really a dog, but a human who can transform himself into a dog. He'll accept food that folks leave out for him, but he doesn't get too close, or allow himself to be befriended. He can't afford a slipup. He knows that the one thing keeping him from being found even here is the fact that no one is looking for a dog. He's relieved to see that Remus is keeping that secret, although Remus has more than a little to fear from the Ministry himself.

Once Padfoot gets over his shock at seeing someone who looks just like his dead brother (shock which, thankfully, won't show on his canine face) he weaves his way through the crowd to get closer to the man, but not too close. He follows from a distance, doing his best to make it look like he's wandering a random path and not actually following.

Then he manages to get close enough to catch a whiff of the man's scent. Yes, he also smells like Regulus...

He's full of questions, but he can't risk showing his face here, not even long enough to get the man to follow him. So for now he'll just follow the man, and see what chance presents itself.

Regulus didn't pay much mind to the stray animal population of the port town. Every port had them, dogs, cats, rodents. Some ports even had stray roosters and no one cared if they wandered into their home or shop. But those were usually mundane animals he didn't have to be concerned about.

So he didn't even notice when a black, scruff dog started following him. Regulus left the town without any suspicion that ciricumastances had finally conspired to let him cross paths with someone that could see through his disguise.

Regulus trekked down the winding country road long past the last rays of sunlight sliding behind the line of the horizon. He wasn't afraid of the night, not this far away from home and the old things that used to paralyze him. He knew the rumors weren't entirely accurate - Voldemort was only partially vanquish - but he was fairly certain he woudln't be running into any partial Dark Lord in this part of France.

When his stomach growled too incessantly to keep ignoring, he finally turned off the road and hopped over a gate into a vinyard. And when he felt certain enough he was far enough in to be concealed from the road he dropped his pack and squatted down to pull out his food.

It was then that he felt the uneasy prickling on the back of his neck. He reached for the torch in his pack and stood, spinning around. His wand was magically concealed up his sleeve and his right hand itched for it, but this could just be that he'd misjudged how stealthily he'd entered the vineyard and the property owner was coming to confront him. Magic now could call down all sorts of inconvienent notice he didn't want yet (part of the equation to survival he'd figured out some four years before), and if he could difuse the situation without needless attention of the magical world, he'd try that first.

"Who's there?" he called out. And then after a pause, "I'm just passing through."

He had followed the man into the vineyard, jumping the fence surprisingly softly for a dog of his size. He's had a lot of practice at moving silently, since if he does otherwise, he risks being found. He sticks to the shadows to avoid detection and settles in for the moment.

Then there's the final piece of confirmation, not that he really needed it. This man also sounds like Regulus. That leaves him with just one conclusion: this is Regulus.

Regulus who has been dead for years.

He scans the area, breathes deeply, and notices no hint of anyone else in the vicinity. He'll risk it, but only in a certain way. He's still going to keep a piece of information to himself. It's his one guarantee of having a way to hide.

He shifts back into his human form, still dressed in his tattered Azkaban uniform. He could steal something else, but that just seems like a good way to draw unwanted attention to himself. People pay more attention to an unknown thief than a stray dog.

"Aren't we all," he says as he steps out of the shadows, his voice raspy and hoarse from disuse. He remains alert, ready to flee, and has never been more glad that he can use magic without a wand, because he may need that ability.

Regulus is struck silent for a moment. It was very apparent he was not expecting his estranged brother to materialize out of the dark.

"Sirius?" he finally spit out inelegently before he remembered himself.

Regulus may have 'died', but maybe he'd been careless and people had figured out the ruse. And at the time of Regulus' 'death' he'd been a known Death Eater. Was this an ambush waiting to happen? The Order had just as much a reason to go after him as the Death Eaters might- if the Death Eaters even knew of his betrayal. Would they know about the fake in the cave by now?

Of course, there were other questions, to like: why did Sirius look like shit? Didn't he have Uncle Alphard's money?

But first things first.

He glance to either side, looking for others that might come out of the darkness.

"What are you doing here?" by the time he ask this, he'd schooled his voice into something even.

"I could ask the same of you." He's not the one who's supposed to be dead, after all. Theoretically, he could go anywhere in the world, and it would be less of a surprise to see him there than it would be to see a supposedly dead man. Plus, he'd really rather just not have the attention on himself right now.

"The last I heard, you were dead. But you're obviously not."

For the briefest moment, Regulus' mouth twitched at one corner. For years he'd wanted some concrete proof that his plan had worked - that the magic he'd performed actually had resulted in everyone thinking he was dead. And even that wasn't all that conclusive.

"How long have you been tracking me?"

"Since you got off that ship in the harbor." You know, the one with all the Muggles. Among whom he has apparently been living for awhile. Which is something he never would have expected of his younger brother. Or any other member of the family other than Andromeda, honestly. "That is not how I would have expected you to travel."

Regulus thought back over the evening and could not remember seeing anyone dressed like Sirius in the port. Which begged more questions. How? Was there a trace put on Regulus? An instance of international cooperation? Was Sirius’ current appearance a disguise donned for tracking him?

But why wait until the middle of the vineyard to reveal himself? Why even reveal himself first at all, Regulus had given Sirius so much of an upper hand?

He skipped over Sirius’ implied questions - estranged, yes, still brothers, though, and Regulus knew everything about the port and how he looked now must be utter confusion for Sirius. Regulus could step back and see how it didn’t add up.

“Are you here to bring me in?” To what, exactly, Regulus wasn’t sure. Due to the circumstances of cover on the run he’d heard very little of ‘home’ beyond that Voldemort was ‘dead’, nothing about the Death Eater trials and imprisonment - or in Sirius’ case, no trial but straight to imprisonment. But surely, if the Order had won, then nothing good awaited Regulus when he returned, which was why he had a plan for that.

“Are there more with you?”

Now it's time for Sirius to be confused. Does Regulus think he works for the Ministry? Why would Regulus think that...unless he hasn't been paying attention to what's been happening in the news? Surely the news of his escape has even made its way through the Muggle world.

"I'm alone." If the Ministry were here, they would probably be more interested in hauling him in than Regulus. He knows he's on the top of their list. "Why would I take you somewhere?"

"Old allegiances and all that," Regulus said.

Things were not adding up and the answers were doing fuck all to make anything clearer.

And could Regulus really blame Sirius? It's not as if Regulus had left any eleventh hour retraction to be read post fake death. He'd just let either side fill in the story that best suited their needs.

Maybe he needed to speak up before misunderstandings lead to something he'd regret.

"I'm not with them anymore. I don't support Him. We don't have to keep fighting, you and I."

Well now this definitely doesn't fit in with what he knows of his brother. The brother who had always seemed to work so hard to please their parents, to be what a Black was supposed to be. But now he's not all of those things?

Well. He supposes that might have something to do with them not feeling that Regulus was cut out to be a member of their organization.

"You're not one of them?" He's not sure he believes that.

"No, I'm not," Regulus confirmed. It would make sense that Sirius didn't believe him. He had comitted himself wholly when he was a foolish sixteen year old. The news clippings pinned to his walls, the purist ideology he freely spouted even as young as when Sirius still lived at home. Regulus had been all in.

And had almost instantly regretted it. It had just taken him the better part of almost two years to find his way out.

"I couldn't guess what the rest will think when I finally return. I didn't tell anyone I defected- I don't think I actually can defect no matter what I desire. I'm not stupid." Not about that, at least. "But if I get a say in it, I'm not one of them anymore. Not since before I... faked my death."

"I'll be damned." If this is true, and for some reason he wants to think that it is, that perhaps his brother isn't as lost to him as he once thought he was, then he has to change his view of everything he thought was true.

Then he starts to laugh, a harsh, barking laugh, filled more with disbelief than mirth. "Oh, if Walburga had known what her precious Regulus was up to."

After a moment Regulus shrugged, even cracking a bit of a smile himself. He hadn't devoted too much energy contemplating what his mother thought these past few years. What had been the point?

"She'd probably burn me posthumously off the Tapestry."

Regulus couldn't decide if Sirius had accepted the truth or not.

"Sirius, why are you out here, then? If you're not taking me back home?"

"Who wants to be on that thing anyway?" He sure doesn't. Andromeda had been lucky to be removed from it when she married Muggle-born Ted Tonks. It's an ugly reminder of everything he doesn't want to be reminded of. He's sure that being disowned would have come with removal from the tapestry -- though with Regulus' supposed death, he'd inherited the house anyway.

Why he's here is a lot harder to sum up than what Regulus had just told him. But he's starting to feel like maybe he can trust Regulus after all (or maybe it's just wishful thinking, wanting to be able to confide in someone, and not wanting to have to be on the run on his own anymore). He's still got his big secret either way.

"I'm out here because I can't go back to England. Running across you here was just happenstance."

Regulus snorted softly, sure there was some kind of story behind his brother's expulsion from a whole country.

"What did you do to get kicked out of England?"

At this point his face takes on a -- pardon the expression -- more serious tone. Even a bitter one. "I didn't do a thing. The Ministry just thinks I did."

"Alright," Regulus said.

At no point did Regulus think anything close to the truth. At it wasn't that Regulus opperated under some misplaced delusion that his brother was a saint. Regulus didn't even think his brother was wholly a good person (if personal opinion was to be the weight of true justice here). It was just that the general, current consensus of one Sirius Black would be unfathomable for Regulus: Sirius would never betray James Potter.

And he'd been on a boat for weeks - not the same boat even. And an ocean had been part of that voyage. The only news he was keyed into pertained to weather. And honestly, it wasn't as if the crews he'd lived with as he'd made his way back to this part of the world cared about matters such as who was and wasn't guilty of murder - half of them might have actually been ones themselves.

"I'm hungry," Regulus said and crouched back down to finally get to that supper he'd been putting off. He wasn't being deliberately dismissive, he just didn't really consider this topic to conceal the depths that it did.

And he figured they could keep talking while he grabbed his food.

"So what did you not do?"

He watches Regulus reach for his dinner and the rumble in his stomach reminds him that he'd been so preoccupied with not losing track of Regulus that he hadn't thought to consider his own dinner. Undoubtedly there had been food available, he just had neglected to eat any of it. But that's a matter for later.

"Betray James and Lily and then blow up a street and kill a bunch of Muggles."

By this point in Regulus' life, almost five years living among muggles, he wasn't so easily to stop short. He'd seen quite about over the years.

That happened now.

"What?"

"That's what the Ministry thinks I did." Because apparently Regulus didn't figure out what he meant the first time he said it. "My face is hanging on more walls than anyone else in the country right now, so it's better for me not to be there."

That didn't really explain much for Regulus. There were many missing dots between one fact to the other.

"But why? Why would the Ministry think that?"

That's the 64,000 Galleon question, isn't it. He can feel his hard-won sanity slipping away as he thinks back to that night, and he threatens to devolve into the same maniacal laughter that made everyone think he'd done it that night.

"Because Peter did it and then faked his death so that they thought I'd killed him too."

If he ever finds Peter, he will commit the crime he was imprisoned for.

Regulus did not understand the timeline here.

"With what proof?"

This time he does laugh. The ridiculousness of the situation has left him no choice.

"What makes you think they had proof?"

"So they just imprisoned you without even proving you were one of You know Who's followers?"

"Yes." How many times does he have to repeat himself, Regulus? "They arrested me, threw me into Azkaban and told everyone they'd caught a dangerous Death Eater."

He's trying to figure out the logic of the world he'd been absent from for five or so years.

"But there's a very easy way to tell if someone's a Death Eater or not."

Sirius is confused now. "What are you talking about?" The Order knows a lot of things, but the inner workings of the Death Eaters are not currently one of them.

Regulus wasn't sure if performing magic around his brother right this instant was a good idea - the man seemed, understandably, skittish. So he hesitated.

But maybe it might be useful information to help Sirius' case? Maybe if they could have this solid evidence?

First Regulus had to cast a spell to give them some light, because it's not like the Mark glowed. With a small light hovering at the height of his shoulder, he started tugging at the cuff of his left arm to release the button. Then he pushed up his sleeve, revealing his inner forearm, his eyes glancing at the jagged scar he'd made the night he'd had to pay the blood price to enter the cave, but he didn't pause to explain, but hastily put the tip of his wand to the skin and spoke the spell that brought the writhing tendrils of black bleeding to the surface to form the Dark Mark.

"All of us have it." Us, the devoted, the followers of Voldemort.

He glances around them nervously when Regulus casts a spell for some light; while he doesn't much care about the Ministry's rules right now (he's certainly got bigger problems than being caught using magic around Muggles), it won't do to have someone see them and get some sort of authorities involved. Muggles know who he is, too, and that information would get back to the Ministry.

He calms a bit when he sees that there's no one around to see them and wonder at the random light.

He sees the scar and is about to remark on it when the Dark Mark appears instead. He recoils at the sight. "What is that?!"

Regulus didn't expect Sirius to have a positive reaction to the Mark, but he realized he'd expected at least some recognition of what the Mark represented. He assumed the Order had some idea of the Mark... But maybe only the upper leaders knew?

He took a breath. "It's the Dark Mark, just... on my arm. We all have it, it's how the Dar- He summons us and how..." Regulus paused. He looked over at Sirius and tried to assess how much he could reveal, but landed on going for broke.

"It's how I know He's not dead."

Maybe Dumbledore knows. Sirius doesn't know what Dumbledore knows. There was a lot that didn't get shared with the Order, and even less with the Ministry. It doesn't matter what Dumbledore knew though, as Sirius hadn't been given a chance to talk to him. Or to anyone else.

"You mean if the Ministry knew about this, I could have proved that I'm not what they think I am because I haven't got one?"

Not that he would have even been given that chance, he's sure. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time and the Ministry was so eager to show they were being effective that they didn't bother looking for any actual proof. Or even giving him the same trial they'd given to the actual Death Eaters.

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