Odi et amo

Odi et amo

I hate and I love; how do I do this, perhaps you ask?

I do not know, but I feel it happening to me, and I am tormented.

-G. Valerius Catullus, Carmen 85

He was alone when he received the owl from Andromeda. He read it through once briefly, then one time more slowly, then he crumpled it up and tossed it into the rubbish bin and sat back against the couch. He did not know how he felt - he suspected he was in shock. He couldn't think. He managed to decide that he wished he hadn't received the letter, that the owl had gone astray or that Andromeda had not had the presence of mind to write to him at all. It was fine that it had happened, but he would have preferred not to have heard about it.

He would have to tell his friends, he knew, eventually. That could wait. Maybe he wouldn't tell them at all. Just so. It was an insignificant event - an insignificant enemy casualty that didn't bear reporting. When they heard about it, he would just say it had slipped his mind.

He willed it to slip from his mind now but it wouldn't go away. He had not been close to his brother but now he felt a curious obligation. He felt that he should be thinking about Regulus right now so he tried to recall a happy memory with the two of them. He could think of nothing. He had not seen his brother in four years, and that had only been a glimpse of him once during the summer in Diagon Alley.

He wondered what his mother was doing. Bellatrix would have come and told her in person, probably. His mother would keep her composure in front of Bellatrix, but after that she would cry. He imagined her sitting hunched over on her bed, clutching her arms about herself, tears streaming down her cheeks and convulsing with great gasping sobs. He felt nothing. He wondered if his father would cry and decided that he would, more than his mother. His father would sob openly at the funeral while his mother gazed stoically off at nothing.

He began to feel a little sick and thought he might throw up, but the feeling passed. He realized that he was huddled on the couch, sweating slightly, his breathing shallow, but didn't have the energy to force himself to relax. He should be sad, he thought, but then on the heels of that he asked himself, well, why should he be sad? Regulus was nothing and of no consequence to anyone. Really his death was more than he deserved. Regulus should have had nothing better than to die a statistic, a bystander in a wizard's duel or a bombing raid, deaths that left as little impact on anyone else as he had ever done in life. To think that somebody had actually taken the time to kill him seemed a strange anomaly.

Killed. Regulus had been killed. Sirius mulled it over. It didn't sink in. Killed. Killed, killed, killed. He wondered if Regulus had killed anyone himself. He doubted it. Regulus was too much of a bungler. He would have frozen up and some other Death Eater would have had to take over.

He fetched Andromeda's letter from the rubbish and read it again. Regulus had hadsecond thoughts about his allegiance, she wrote, tried to back out and was killed. She had found this out from Narcissa, who had hadit from Bellatrix. Andromeda's writing was sloppier than usual and the ink was smeared and smudged all over the parchment. He knew Andromeda would be grieving for Regulus and he grieved for her. She too had not been kind to Regulus in his life and Sirius knew that she was now repenting it deeply, her heart rent in half with unbearable guilt.

The thought that Regulus had begun to question his choice to become a Death Eater made Sirius sad briefly, but then he dismissed it. Regulus should never have signed up in the first place. The very act of joining the Death Eaters was so unbearably foolish that it invalidated any pity Sirius might have felt for him for realizing his mistake too late. He should never have joined in the first place.

He tried to reason with himself. People make mistakes, he thought. He was only eighteen when he joined. But Sirius had never been so foolish and short-sighted, not at eighteen or any other age. He felt no pity.

Chill swept through him all of a sudden. He pulled his knees closer to his chest and rested his head against them. He could think of Regulus clearly now. How Sirius had hated him! Weak little Regulus, sniveling through life from behind his mother's skirts; Regulus who at thirteen couldn't sleep with all the lamps put out, who cried like a baby at even the threat of violence or not getting his way, who tattled and whined like a child half his age. He had worshipped Sirius and it had made Sirius feel vicious. He wanted to cut Regulus, to hurt him, make him bleed. His heart would twist with glee when he saw the younger boy's eyes widen with hurt, and he wanted nothing more than to drive the knife home further, to dig it in and cut something vital, something that would make Regulus turn away at last and leave him be. Anything to make Regulus go away, he had thought - I'm sick of him stealing my Chocolate Frog cards and reading my letters and begging me to play Quidditch with him. I hate him. He's the last person I'd ever play Quidditch with, why can't he see that, why won't he just go away?

Well, he was gone now, Sirius knew. Had been gone for at least six years, really. Sirius' leaving home seemed to have finally been the last straw for Regulus - afterwards, he never spoke to or heard from the boy again. He had thought it just as well, when he thought of it at all.

Dead. Regulus was dead. What did he look like now? He had been decidedly undistinguished as a youngster, freckled and forgettable. Sirius vaguely remembered that in her more genial moments toward the boy Andromeda used to remark on how cute he was, which never failed to make Regulus giggle and look away. Sirius did not know. He had hardly ever spared a glance in the boy's direction.

He remembered he had a picture of Regulus in one of his photo albums and went to go look. He was with his friend Barty Crouch and was smiling hugely because Lily Evans was the one taking the photo and Regulus had fancied her. Sirius used to torment him about that something dreadful, always embarrassing him in front of Lily or taunting him about Lily's boyfriends or telling him how much of an idiot Lily thought he was and that she was only nice to him because she felt sorry for him.

Lily had always been terribly nice to him. She had stuck up for him in front of Sirius and James, talked with him smilingly when he came over to the Gryffindor table to pester them all, and always gave him a card and a neat, beribboned bag of sweets at Christmastime the same as she did for all her friends. After she and James started dating, Regulus was a sore point between her and Sirius, but he knew she had always assumed they would work their problems out someday and become wonderful friends. Through Lily's eyes he saw himself and Regulus, knocking back a few drinks and commiserating on girls or their family or the state of the world. He saw himself straightening Regulus' robes and patting him on the back, smiling gently, as Regulus prepared to walk down the aisle; saw them sitting together at Christmas as Sirius feigned delight at a particularly terrible record Regulus had thoughtfully picked out for him.

But even Lily with all her optimism and overflowing goodwill could not be fooled into thinking they would ever be reconciled once Regulus joined up with the Death Eaters. On first hearing the news, Sirius had sneered and remarked that he'd expected it. The confrontation that followed between he and Lily had been ugly. He remembered her screaming that it was all Sirius' fault, that if he had shown Regulus even the slightest kindness instead of always pushing him away he would be with them right now in the Order and that when Regulus was out killing muggleborns she hoped he would know that the blood was on his hands. She had not spoken to Sirius for two weeks afterward and they had not spoken about Regulus since.

He buried his head in his hands. The sadness Lily would feel when she heard of Regulus' death hit him like a blow to the stomach. The tears that would fall on the warm letter she wrote to Andromeda expressing her sympathies, the sorrow in her voice as she recalled Regulus' ready grin and excitability to James; it was real sadness, pure and good and uncomplicated. It was the sadness that Sirius should feel, but could not. It was too much, there was too much hate and hurt to just be sad. Too much memory.

He remembered ... birthday parties, shopping trips, spring mornings, winter evenings - he remembered screams and shouts and punches, teases and tears and threats. He remembered nasty nicknames, doors slamming in faces; he remembered all the lies and the cruel jokes and the mean words, all the times Regulus had been taken advantage of, the times he had cried. Sirius remembered all, and willed that he would not.

He longed to grieve as Lily would, to be able to cry and not fear that the guilt would eat him inside out. He could not cry, he could not, and why would he? He wasn't sad, he wasn't sorry. Regulus had made mistakes and had gotten what was coming to him, he made his own choices, he made his own bed and he would lie in it now but oh, he would lie in it forever and Sirius had no one to blame but himself.

He began to sob then, curling in on himself and slowly collapsing down onto the couch. He tried to bury himself within it, clutching at the harsh horse hair surface, gasping for breath and praying for release from this terrible white hot grief that was rattling his whole body, that he would never recover from. Oh, how he hated Regulus, he thought, for making him feel this way.