He Who Laughed Last

He Who Laughed Last

I

Regulus Black had spent most of his life listening at keyholes - hours on end spent squeezed into the cramped space between the living-room and the stairs, listening to mysterious conversations behind closed doors, being hushed sharply by Sirius every time his shoe scuffled the banisters. Adulthood could scarcely break him of the habit.

And so, on a cold, grey, misty October morning, he found himself standing, half-crouched, with his ear pressed to a rusty keyhole, listening to voices within and deciding within himself how best to aid in the Dark Lord's fall.

There were, of course, two voices. One of them belonged to Severus Snape. The other was high and cold and chilling and was not a voice he had ever hoped to be eavesdropping on. He knew that, if he was found out, this voice would be the same one that hissed the orders for his destruction.

Oh, he would be found out. Most certainly he would. But not before he wished it.

"You will do this for me, Severus?" the voice said, and it had a sibilant, hissing undertone, which sounded somehow green and slithering and made Regulus think of snakes.

Regulus stepped back at that moment to suppress a sneeze - it would not do to have weeks of careful planning ruined by mis-timed exhalation - and missed the answer, but it did not matter - he knew what the answer would be. He did not know anyone who would dare to answer with a 'No', although some might dream of it for years.

He listened, and planned, and waited, and wondered about Gryffindors.

II

Regulus had been named for a relative, of course, as a less-favoured younger son - some old, rich uncle, in the hope that said uncle, who was aging and childless, would be more favourably disposed towards him financially. (It had not happened.)

He had asked his mother what his name meant, once, when he had been younger and less wary of her presence. (He could not bear, now, even to look for long at her snapping black eyes, lest she discern his feelings about his 'noble cause', or the plans he was making to rid himself of it.) She had never answered - simply shot him a cold glance and informed him that he need not care - but he had found out, by stealing his father's books and sitting up, late at night, with a candle - that Regulus was the brightest star in Leo, the Heart of the Lion. He liked that meaning of the name far better than he had liked the uncle it was first given to.

When Sirius was sorted into Gryffindor, he wondered if it might be an omen of sorts. When his turn was coming, it was all that kept his spirits up - he would whisper to himself, when no one was about (for Sirius would laugh in that way of his, and his parents would not understand), that the Heart of the Lion would prevail.

He was Sorted into Slytherin.

His parents sent him an owl of hearty congratulation and pride, which Regulus tore up and threw away. The look on Sirius' face was enough of a cross to bear.

III

Sirius left for good when Regulus was fourteen.

His mother had seethed with rage, spat, cursed her blood-traitor, filthy Gryffindor son, and sworn that he would never set foot across her threshold again.

Regulus had seen it coming, seen it in the insolent look in Sirius' grey eyes, seen it in the increasing coldness in the brief family meetings, in the tension that stretched, almost tangible, in every room, and snapped taut like a wire when anyone spoke.

And when Sirius sent him a letter, emblazoned jauntily across the top with 'The Most Modern and Ignoble House of Sirius Black, Toujours Poor', he threw back his head and laughed wildly, like Sirius would have done.

IV

He looked into the eyes of the Muggle-born girl who cringed at his feet. Lovely blue eyes, like the sea on a sunny afternoon - a tropical sea somewhere, where coral waved underwater and the waves lapped lazily at the shore.

"Go on," a voice hissed in his ear - lovely cousin Bellatrix, who at age ten had tormented rats and at age fourteen had used an Unforgivable. "Do it."

The girl looked up at him with lovely, pleading eyes. He knew her by sight - Ravenclaw, a year or two below him. He wondered if she recognised him.

He raised his hand, shaking, unsteady, and his voice when he said 'Crucio!' was not his own.

He turned away. He could not bear to watch.

V

The locket dangled in his hand, glinting softly, seductively. He idly watched the firelight play across its surface and wondered who had died for it - who had seen, perhaps, this same golden light glinting off something in a feared hand, and seen green light rushing like death on invisible wings.

He felt sick.

Tremblingly, uncertainly, he placed the Horcrux between some Wartcap powder and a particularly nasty poison of his Aunt Araminta's. He looked at it - and laughed, laughed like a madman, laughed like Sirius, laughed even though the world was about to explode around him.

Sirius, he thought, with a small smile. Top this.

With a gallant little toss of the head, Regulus Black (really, the last Black now) turned on his heel with a swirl of his cloak, walked out into Muggle London's grey, cold streets and waited to die.

end