Sonechka

He claws his hands out and tries to drag himself up and out of skeletal limbs gripping him and pulling him to his watery tomb.

He’s so angry. Life should have been waiting in abundance for him. He had opportunity after opportunity he should have been able to explore. His life was only just beginning but now it’s meeting its end.

He could have been a poet or pianist and trained his love of the arts. He could have fixed things with his brother and apologised - he could have hugged him once more. He could have escaped his parents and their abuse. He could have had fun in his freedom, flirted with James, read books with Remus, celebrated Christmas.

He could have lived. He was meant to live.

He is 17 and has dies feeling unloved. He lived alone and died alone, wishing he could have made some happy memories with his brother.

In another version of reality, Regulus Black had kept his mission to the cave a secret to protect all those he loves. But as the danger rises and skeletal hands grip at his ankles and try to drag him back to the water, he casts his patronus with hundreds of memories of his brother, his James and all his friends.

He finds himself in the pages of the Iliad and the sonnet love declarations of Shakespeare.

Remus usually reads to learn but this time he’s doing it to understand, to feel and to empathise.

He was his star. The warmth of the common rooms and quite constant comfort of noise in the Great Hall. He was his own personal Judas but he was also his saviour. He was a scared child desperately begging for love and a fiercely independent young adult trying to really live for the first time in his life without the expectations of others.

He was the love of his life and the lover he would follow to death. He was pomegranate seeds that promised eternity that Remus would feast upon without hesitation. He was peace and home and a calm that Remus would feel even during the full moon.

It was the kind of love that would drive poets mad. The kind of love to start and end wars. It was innocent and desperate. It was necessary and wanted. Remus would yell his love for Sirius until he heard the echo of the declaration come back. Echo into infinity and never end.

As soon as he and James start dating, Regulus beings duels outside of class with Snape whenever he finds out he’s started a fight with James.

He makes sure he eats even when he’s not hungry and watches his quidditch matches with a quiet, thrumming anxiety when any action gets too close to James.

Regulus always wonders why if protective tendencies started to develop away from the oppressive house he and Sirius grew up in it isn’t aimed at Sirius.

But anytime he sees his brother in danger he feels himself revert back to a scared child, worried to make any punishment worse with his interjection.

He wishes he could be brave but the old fear of his mothers cold hands and his fathers well aimed wand makes him want to hide. He’d die for his brother, but the oppression of pain keeps him quiet and tiny.

Anyone would know why it was a blessing to see James. He was pretty and handsome and always so happy. It was infectious, Regulus had to fight and fight and fight not to just grin because James was. He had pretty privilege and didn’t even know it. Sweet and innocent and fun and bright - sun incarnate.

Touching James was like burning. Warm and delightful but dangerously tempting to step closer till the flames that surrounded the boy engulfed you. James made touch casual. Happy to hug anyone; slap a hand on a shoulder; a tired head on the shoulder. But Regulus monopolised his touch. He found James’ hands linger and rest on his waist. A sly finger on his cheek, brushing off an eyelash. Holding his hand and playing with his fingers. To touch and be held by James Potter was to be touched and held by a God, Regulus thought. There is no other way to explain such perfection.

James Potter never smelt of one single thing. He was a teenage boy who played sports, so unfortunately, sometimes that was for the worse. But most of the time he would smell so good. His jumpers from home smelt of turmeric and ginger and dried basil - James’ mum used to dry off their cloths in the kitchen and the smells of his childhood and family followed him always. Sitting near enough to him, near enough to breath in the spice and sugar of him, made Regulus feel like a part of the exciting world that conjured James Potter.

Everyone across hogwarts would probably be able to hear James. He was unapologetically loud. Gleeful laughs and his loud chatting would linger in hallways like ghostly echoes of a happy life being lived. Regulus would chase empty corridors to follow the sound so comfortable and tender. If moths were drawn to flames they were stupid - to be drawn to anything but James’ laughter and joy would be stupid. And his whispers, the secret words that he would pour into Regulus ears were siren songs, honey-sweet promises. ‘Drown me in them and I’ll die happy’ Regulus would think staring up at the smiling boy resting him on his legs, ‘Orpheus and Eurydice, me and you, where I hear your voice I’ll follow.’

And Regulus held the secret of what it was like to taste James Potter. To feel his lips against his own and know what he tasted of. All the sugar sweetness and gentle spice that was addictive against his tongue. Regulus would starve himself to consume the taste of James, to define its changing feeling. All the joy and happiness and sunny warmth of his lover. Ambrosia and nectar and James Potter. Regulus would fight anyone, anything to steal a taste from his lips as many times as he could.

James' need to help everyone around him was fueled by a deep desire for his friends to stay safe. The responsibility pushed down on his shoulder and morphed a caring quality into an unhealthy codependency and need for attention.

And Regulus could amuse him most of the time. Giving James attention was never difficult because his love and happiness deserved praise that Regulus was forever eager to give to him. But Regulus needed alone time and wished that James didn't see it as a sign of rejection every time he asked for it. Wished that James' need to keep everyone happy wasn't such a double-edged sword that stabbed him with blame anytime he thought he messed up.

James had to swallow the bitter pill that Regulus needed to be by himself sometimes. Not because he had done anything, not necessarily because Regulus was sad. Sometimes Regulus just needed space and James was really trying to respect that. Tried not to linger outside the closed door Regulus would sometimes shut himself in. Tried not to blame himself for failing him, or messing up. Because he hadn't. Regulus has said so, promised he hadn't done anything wrong.

And Regulus needed to learn that he couldn't allow his anger to adapt into silence. He couldn't lock in his feelings and ignore his problems and the people who loved him and wanted him to be okay.

The last time Regulus gave the silent treatment was when he fell back into the old jealous thoughts he felt as a child: thoughts of the happy and perfect James Potter drawing his brother away from him with his siren song laughter and lightness. He couldn't look at James and refused to speak to him for five days until Remus knocked at his front door.

Remus who was calm almost all of the time, stood red in the face and swallowed down the yells of anger that sat in his throat to tell him that James had fallen asleep on his and Sirius' sofa crying in confusion, sure that he'd done something wrong and Regulus was going to break up with him.

And that broke Regulus' vow of silence as he raced across London to collect his sad sunshine and try and explain his way through days of silence and stained feelings that stuck to him and corrupted him in bitterness.

And James sat and listened to him. He told him that he could be angry whenever he needed to. That Regulus' feelings were real and something that needed to be experienced rather than ignored.

But he couldn't deal with suck extreme solitude when they were so close to each other. Couldn't help but feel sick when his questions and attempts to talk were completely ignored and returned with silence.

It made him sick and sick and sick.

His lungs laughed at him and suffocated him and his thoughts jeered and blamed and reminded him of all his failures, of his incapability to help.

So they agreed to communicate. To talk and to listen and to give space. To respect each other and the individual needs.

But as soon as he saw the water, all he could feel were the hands around his ankles, the sinking weight of his thrashing body pulled against the water. He ran out of the room and used spells to clean himself instead.

It was three months after James had started dating him that Regulus managed to get back into the bath. The water was calm and James’ arms were a strong anchor, refusing to let him disappear below the water. There was no creature James wouldn’t fight for Regulus. If he was drowning, they were both drowning.

Remus has lived a life of quiet content and homely pleasures. He was always comfortable but the silent weight of money, of it always being so scarce, pressed down on his shoulders.

He wouldn’t ask his parents for anything more than books and jumpers for Christmas. He would understand when he was younger why his parents would have to say no to buying him toys and he saw how much it hurt them to have to say it so he stopped asking. When their toilet broke and they had to fill the back of it with a bucket for three months he never said anything in fear of upsetting his parents.

He loved his parents because they always tried and did their best.

And he loved his friends too. Loved James’ unlimited generosity but something in him convulsed slightly at the ease of which he could empty his pockets, especially for others.

He loved Sirius more than anyone else but the difference of how they were raised was startling. Sirius almost didn’t see money as a currency - he had far too much of it growing up to appreciate any small sum of cash.

To Sirius money was a key to get him things he already owned. Wanting something was not something that Sirius experienced growing up, at least not in the material sense. His parents kept their children’s hearts empty but their pockets full.

And even now, after leaving behind the rich legacy of his family, James’ parents gave and gave and gave to Sirius in a way that Remus’ parents never could for him.

So every time he picked something up off a shelf to briefly admire it and later be given it by James or Sirius, he would smile and thank them but flush in embarrassment and sit in shame on the way back to their dorm room.

He felt silly that sometimes he’d cry a bit before going to sleep, shoving the gifts from his friends under his bed because he could t bear to look at them. He felt different again, felt estranged and lacking. He felt jealous and uncomfortable.

The wolf inside him made him feel out of place in his skin and his second hand clothes were too small to cover it, long grown out of.

Remus knew that his friends didn’t think any differently of him. They’d support him no matter what. But he hated himself for having another fault, another vulnerability that they thought he needed help with in the first place.