About Face

About Face

He knew it was stupid, but being cooped up in the place like this made him want desperately to do something reckless and dangerous. Anything to break the monotony, really. He wasn't quite the idiot to go outside, not when Dumbledore was keeping such strict tabs on him (for his own protection, ha!), but he desperately wanted to do something other than just clean the fucking place.

Everything was so fucking familiar. The wallpaper hadn't changed, the furniture hadn't moved--last week, Sirius had found an old note from James that had been hidden behind the sideboard almost twenty-five years ago--and the house still smelled of boiled cabbage and Dark Arts.

He had to do something.

"You go ahead," he told Molly as she ushered the kids out of the drawing room for dinner. "I want another go at removing that tapestry," he lied.

She nodded curtly and shooed everyone out in front of her. Harry shot him an inquiring look, but Sirius motioned for him to move along.

As soon as their voices had receded down the stairs to the kitchen, he strode over to the writing desk, which immediately began to rattle. With only the slightest hesitation which he immediately denied had even happened, he turned the key and wrenched the drawer open.

In the moment before the boggart took form, a dozen possibilities flashed through his mind. Dementors? Voldemort? Harry, dead? What would it be?

The answer took him totally by surprise.

* * *

Regulus looked as if he hadn't aged a day. Of course, Sirius told himself firmly, that's because it's a bog--

"Sirius," said boggart-Regulus. "Sirius, you should have helped me. You should have come when I asked you to--you could have saved me. You know that, Sirius, you know it's true."

All thoughts of boggarts vanished immediately. Sirius replied, "You're dead."

"Yes, I am," said Regulus. "I'm dead, and it's because you wouldn't help me. I needed you and you didn't come." He took a step forward, his handsome face sad. "If you had, I'd still be alive. I wanted to turn sides, I wanted to make the right choice, but I didn't live to get the chance."

A mixture of rage and humiliation was boiling inside Sirius. "How was I supposed to know you were telling the truth?" he roared. "You go off and join the Death Eaters, what am I supposed to think?"

"I'm your brother, Sirius. Your brother. I never lied to you."

"You lied to me all the time," Sirius immediately responded, but then, with a pang, he realized that it wasn't true: Regulus had always told him the truth, no matter how painful. Especially if painful. Regulus had used the truth as a weapon.

"All right," he admitted, "you never lied to me." The barely smug look on Regulus's face was too real. "But it could have been anyone, trying to trap me... Voldemort was after Lily and James, we knew that, and I was their best mate! For all I knew, some other Death Eater had signed your name to that owl!"

"You know that's not possible," said the apparition. "You checked that owl for every possible forgery."

Sirius had.

"And you used every possible de-hexing procedure."

Sirius had.

"But you still didn't come. You knew I was in trouble, and you didn't come."

Sirius hadn't. He hadn't come -- his brother had needed him, and he hadn't come. The owl had flown in through the window of Sirius's new flat just as he'd been unpacking boxes and settling in, reveling in the joy of his own place. He'd checked it for curses, hexes, and forgeries, but it had been genuine, and it had been desperate:

S-- I need your help. I need to get out of this, and I need to get out fast. I know things, certain things, that Dumbledore needs to know. Please come. I'll be at Flourish and Blotts at 4. --R

And Sirius had thought, No. He'd thought, Regulus deserves whatever shit he's gotten himself into. He can go to Dumbledore himself. And Sirius had looked around his new flat with its boxes and packages begging to be dealt with, and had tossed the note onto the fire.

"It's all your fault," boggart-Regulus said.

The wound split; the tears came. As heavy, raw emotion hammered into him, Sirius wept with the knowledge of his crime. He shook with the horror of having sent his baby brother to his death. Shame chlled his guts, and tears heated his cheeks.

Perhaps ten seconds, perhaps ten minutes passed.

Sirius wiped his eyes and looked up into the face of his brother, which was as young and babyish as he remembered it. "You're not real," he choked. "You're a boggart."

He shakily drew his wand and imagined Regulus in a dress. "Riddikulus!" he cried.

"You can't make me funny," said the boggart. "It's too true."

Sirius thought of every time Regulus had tripped, or been tripped, on his way down the stairs.

"Riddik--" he tried, but the spell died on his lips as the boggart merely shook its head.

"We were friends, once," it said.

It was true. It was perfectly, painfully true. They'd pulled pranks on Great-Uncle Orpheus and taunted Andromeda about her freckles. They'd stolen Grandmother's wand and ordered the house-elves to do impossible things. They had explored Diagon Alley and celebrated birthdays together.

At one point, Sirius had loved his brother.

And it was not funny, not funny in the slightest that Regulus was dead and that it was Sirius's fault.

"I can't do anything," he whispered to the boggart. He closed his eyes and wondered what happened when the boggart won. "I can't make you funny."

He thought about the immense irony of it all. Sirius Black, condemned murderer, Azkaban escapee, afraid of his own brother? Afraid of guilt?

Afraid of making mistakes.

He waited for something to happen, for icy fingers to close around his hands, or for fear to overtake him so intensely that he simply fell down dead with the strain of it.

But nothing happened. He opened his eyes again and saw the boggart still standing there, just watching him with that implacable reproach in his eyes.

And then Sirius knew what to do.

"I'm sorry," he said to his brother. "I'm so sorry. I screwed up badly."

With a barely audible puff of air, the figure of Regulus Black vanished and a trail of smoke whisked away into the writing desk's drawer. Sirius stepped forward and slowly pushed the drawer closed. He turned the key, and the lock caught with a soft snick.

It was done.