Harry Potter: Reborn as Regulus Black

Chapter 315: Chapter 315: It’s Over, Time to Go Home [bonus]

Calling the fire back was far slower than letting it loose.

Regulus looked around. Nothing remained.

No walls. No roof. No columns. No entrance hall.

In short, Lestrange Manor was gone.

The windows that had been lit, the corridors with their warm glow, the ballroom with its crystal chandeliers, all of it gone.

From splendor to ruin, with one family quarrel between.

Regulus stood a while, then started out.

Two steps in, Orion came walking from the other side, and father and son met at the border of the ruin.

Orion’s first move was to look him over, head to foot.

The Fiendfyre had only just died, the ruins still hot, the char crust crackling underfoot. Regulus had been inside too long. The fire had burned down to that and still the boy hadn’t come out, so Orion had come in to see.

He found Regulus on his way out, restored to the way he’d looked on arrival. Calm, composed, no different from the man who’d walked in.

Only a little worn. Less color in his face than usual, a faint bruised shadow under his eyes.

Orion came over and asked nothing. Not about the Fiendfyre, not about where Bellatrix had gone, not about what he’d done alone in there so long.

He reached out and clapped a hand on Regulus’s shoulder, hard, the palm lingering there a moment.

Regulus gave a nod and said nothing either.

Orion turned and walked out. Regulus followed.

Moonlight lay over the lawn beyond the manor. Stepping out, Regulus glanced back.

On the way in, the manor’s face had been whole. Stone walls, an iron fence, lamps kept lit by magic, two centuries of pure-blood weight laid out for show, every trapping in its place.

Now there was only a stretch of uneven black ruin where that had stood. Even the iron fence had warped, baked into bends by the heat, leaning crooked at the edge of the lawn.

Narcissa and Lucius stood at the lawn’s edge.

Her face was pale and her balance off, her weight tilted slightly toward Lucius, fingers resting on his arm.

Lucius stood straight, one hand propped on his serpent-headed cane. He gave a nod when Regulus emerged from the direction of the ruins, restrained enough.

Sirius leaned against a tree, arms crossed.

At the sight of his brother, his body leaned forward, a foot already swinging out, then he stopped. The foot came back. He settled against the trunk again, harder than before, as though using the tree to hold himself up, his eyes locked on Regulus, unblinking.

Walburga stood beside Narcissa, watching him come out, something tangled in her gaze.

Of everyone tonight, she was likely the most shaken. She wanted to ask whether Regulus was hurt, whether Bellatrix was alive or dead, who had set that Fiendfyre and who had called it back.

But her lips only moved twice, with no sound behind them.

Regulus had already switched back. Voice, expression, stance, the thing in his eyes, all returned to what they should be.

He looked at Narcissa first.

"Cousin Narcissa, I’m sorry." He walked over, his voice carrying real apology.

The apology was genuine. He was close with her, and to see her frightened like this tonight did sit wrong with him. "I gave you a fright."

She looked at him, her lips trembling, saying nothing, her eyes rimmed red.

Then she hesitated, opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, a careful probe in her voice. "Bella..."

The one who had tortured Bellatrix, who had made her scream, who had smiled watching her writhe, and the one standing before her now apologizing, were the same person. ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com

She wasn’t sure how to face both of those faces.

"Taken away," Regulus said with a small nod, his voice settling, his expression easing a little. "Alive."

She understood what taken away meant. Who else could carry Bellatrix off at a moment like this needed no saying.

Her expression shifted, her lips trembled again, and she didn’t press.

Lucius narrowed his eyes a fraction beside her.

The Dark Lord had come in person, had come, and had gone. Which meant the whole of tonight, start to finish, had been seen by the Dark Lord’s eyes.

His gaze slid sideways over Regulus. This man stood here, whole and unmarked, which meant the Dark Lord had no intention of holding tonight against him.

Or rather, the reckoning wasn’t aimed at Regulus.

His eyes were still narrowed when Orion’s gaze swept across from the side. Not heavy, no feeling in it, only landing on Lucius’s face with precision and resting there a beat.

Lucius’s eyes relaxed and went back to normal.

"Tonight’s matter needs careful handling." Lucius watched Regulus, his tone proper. He tapped the cane lightly against the ground. "If it suits you, the Malfoys would call on you at Grimmauld Place."

Every word offered help. The line to take with the Wizengamot, the classification at the Ministry of Magic, the story for the pure-blood circle, all this cleanup needed someone to manage it, and the Malfoys were willing to take part.

But at its core it was investment.

Bellatrix, crippled by a twelve-year-old Black. Lestrange Manor burned flat. The Dark Lord carrying Bellatrix off in person, yet making no move against the House of Black.

Put it all together, and behind Lucius Malfoy’s eyes the weight of the Blacks in the pure-blood circle was already being recalculated.

To draw close now was far more shrewd than fawning. Bet early rather than late. Low cost, high return.

Regulus nodded, his reply spare. "The House of Black welcomes you any time."

He glanced at Narcissa, his eye catching on the hand Lucius had under her arm. "Go home and rest well, cousin. Tonight shouldn’t have gone this way."

She nodded, eyes still red, her fingers loosening from Lucius’s arm. She made to come over, but her body had barely leaned out before she stopped, and her fingers settled back, tighter this time.

Sirius hadn’t spoken through any of it.

He leaned against the tree, watching Regulus talk with Narcissa and Lucius.

His brother spoke proper words in that proper tone, the same as at the dinner table in Grimmauld Place, the same as in Professor McGonagall’s office, the same as every Regulus he’d ever seen.

That was the part that unsettled him most.

If Regulus had walked out still wearing that cracked-open state from before, he’d have known what to do. Rush up, grab him by the collar, demand what the hell had happened, what that thing had done to him.

But Regulus was exactly as always.

Where had the other one gone?

The one who’d stood smiling over Bellatrix on the ground, laying spell after spell on her until she screamed, eyes lit wrong, the whole of him giving off something that made you want to step back, where had he gone?

The same as that time in the training room.

When Orion and Regulus had fought their match in there, he’d felt this exact thing. The figure moving at impossible speed, eyes too calm for an eleven-year-old, that final instant when the darkness came down.

Then the fight ended, and Regulus stood there, turned back into the unhurried, easy, proper younger brother again.

He couldn’t tell them apart.

Last time it was the Regulus in a fight against the everyday Regulus.

This time was worse.

The Regulus from before, and the one standing on the lawn now apologizing to Narcissa, were they the same person?

If they were the same, then which was real?

Was the one from before real and this one an act?

Or was this one real and the one from before the act?

If the one from before was an act, who was it for? Who put on a face like that, and to what end?

And if the one from before was the real one, then when had Regulus become that? Or had he always been that, and Sirius simply never knew?

He couldn’t tell. He truly couldn’t.

His head was a tangle, his chest tight.

He wanted to ask, but there was no asking here. Narcissa was present. Orion and Walburga both stood close.

Back home, then. Or back at Hogwarts.

His fist clenched and loosened, loosened and clenched, and in the end he said nothing.

The Black family Apparated away.