This Spiral Dance

Chapter 2: A Reflection Of Yesterday

Regulus Black entered the main Hogwarts Hospital ward, looking placidly around with an air of aristocratic boredom and frowning slightly as he discovered it to be completely empty.

A noise from his left made him turn aside and he finally saw Poppy Pomfrey exiting her office, barely pausing in mid-stride to acknowledge him with a nod and a concise salute, which he promptly returned.

Regulus was used to ignoring her formality - the woman had never quite forgiven him for a quite cruel prank he and few friends had pulled in his younger years on a Hufflepuff Muggleborn - but it was a surprise that Severus had allowed her to precede him. The man in question was of a maddening punctuality, inferior only to the meticulous care he reserved for his practices, be they spells or potions. Since last summer, when Regulus had been selected to begin the treatment, the other man had always underlined the centrality of his role by anticipating Poppy and following every action of hers with avid, if unobtrusive, interest.

During the whole of the previous summer, when Regulus had been basically coerced to stay at Hogwarts (absolute bed rest with this harpy as guardian, a mostly unpleasant experience), the other man had not missed one day of accurate monitoring...even now that Hogwarts was open to students and his "patient" was back at Grimmauld Palace, when Regulus came for his weekly check-up, Severus was always already here waiting for him.

So why was today different?

Eyeing Poppy with curiosity as she placed three vials and one jar on the worktable closest to the seat Regulus was presently occupying, he kept glancing around for any hint of anything misplaced and found nothing.

Eventually, he came back to watch the older, rounder woman while she carefully measured out his dosages, pouring the different potions into different small cups. He had learnt to recognize the vials by now; the thick orange concotion was vulgarly called "the gift of Anubis" because it influenced the mental state of patients, either sharpening or weakening the mind depending on the patient's general condition and the dosage. It was a compliment to Severus Snape's ability, both his capacity to brew the potion and the fact that he had just obtained the Ministry permission to attempt it, since it hovered on the border between Light and Dark Arts.

The ruby potion beside that was an experimental brew that suppressed chronic pain, midway between a Forgetfulness Potion and the Draught of Peace; it could easily cause addiction, as Regulus had experienced during the first months he had used it, and it required a careful test of the dosage because its effect varied in response to the user's metabolism.

The third potion, of a discouraging glowing yellow color, was a Gregory's Unctuous Unction, treated in some way Severus would not be complimented into revealing. As for the jar, it contained - Regulus had found out by covertly investigating the documents in Poppy's office during a very warm August night - a deceptively transparent ointment based on belladonna, aconite, valerian, and bubotuber pus. It gave him the shivers to imagine what effect their incautious combination would be able to induce in an unsuspecting subject.

As if she could sense the direction his thoughts were taking, the mediwitch paused in her movements for a moment to explain concisely, "Severus won't join us today. He asked me to tell you he will visit you on the weekend, but I will monitor you today." It was obvious that his lack of trust in her ability rattled her and it explained her why her behaviour was so twitchy today, whereas she had tolerated him admirably well during the summer.

"What is keeping him, if I might ask?" Regulus ventured, maintaining a mask of unconcerned neutrality. He received a strangled snort as his answer.

"Detention with half of the second-year Hufflepuffs."

Regulus gave no outward sign of his thoughts while he drank his medicines and began unfastening the buttons of his robe. Severus hated teaching and it was a fact he rarely bothered disguising. Although his reasons were obscure to the other Slytherin, there were few doubts that, if such a route had been practicable, Severus would have enthusiastically applied his talent to a more profitable and gratifying way to sate his thirst for improving and researching spells and potions. His recent research project was the closest he would get to satisfying the passion he had fed on since their school days, and now...the man was shoving it aside, even if temporarily, in favor of tormenting Hufflepuffs?

Poppy interrupted the awkward silence between them while she massaged Regulus' spine with the ointment, a peculiar hesitation in her forceful hands more than in her tense voice. "He looked as if he had a remarkable amount of distress he needed to vent on his students."

Looking into her aged, imperious visage, Regulus detected a concern she wasn't bothering to hide from him. Why? It occurred to him the mediwitch could actually be convince...that he and Severus were friends?

Nodding emotionlessly, Regulus refrained from acting on a sudden, random impulse to rub his left arm. It was a nervous habit he was trying to keep under control. Perhaps, from an outsider's rosy perspective, the situation was exactly as it appeared; after all, Severus had contacted him personally to request his participation in his study - in itself rather strange, if one considered that Sirius had not violated his self-inflicted exile after the war. He and Regulus shared poor youthful choices and a closed temperament which had enabled them so far to avoid open conflicts with each other; also there was the fact that they had attended Hogwarts during the same period.

Her assumption, seemingly ridiculous, could be justified. But Poppy couldn't know what Regulus had done, whereas he was confronted with the evidence of his mistake every time he closed his eyes.

Those pitch-black eyes, so much like Severus', terrified and yet pleading even while the man's thin mouth uttered foul curses as a younger Regulus hesitantly raised his wand to him, the sounds of all the other Death Eaters jeering and inciting him to his first kill, his hold tightening around his wand as he resolved to shut out the grimace of horror on his future victim's face....

The way Regulus had gloated, giddy on the rush induced by Dark magic. You never forget your first kill, Severus. There's nothing like an Avada Kedavra. You should have heard that ugly Muggle muttering threats with his last breath.

The unmasked, unexplainable fury in his ex-housemate's expression as the older Death Eater bellowed, "He was mine! Mine to kill, mine to torture!"

It had all happened years ago, but if Regulus couldn't repress those unbearably sharp memories and stop them from cutting him into shreds in his gloomier moments, then he was certain there was no chance Severus could do the same. The first man he had killed...Snape Senior, the Potions Master's estranged father.

You owe me this. Severus had said to Regulus the first time he had demanded to be let into Grimmauld Palace, after he had smacked a thick envelope of parchments containing a detailed description of his studies in his face. They had not talked about it since then, but Slytherins didn't just forget and forgive and Regulus was surprised to feel a fugacious pang of regret at that thought.

Noticing the odd glances Poppy was sending in his direction, he purposely blanked his features and looked down while his fingers fastened the buttons of his distinguished robe of their own accord.

If he squeezed his eyelids shut the whispered, disbelieving confession of his cousin Narcissa echoed in his ears, as distinctly and clearly as if she was saying it today. "Lucius had said Severus' origins were tainted, but can you believe his mother was that estranged Prince? Your sacrifice was his father."

He could take in all over again his shock at realizing the creature he had killed the night of his initiation, whose blood had sealed the Dark Mark on his arm, had been not just somebody's parent but the father of a man whose magical skill and proud resilience before insults Regulus used to reluctantly envy. Only then had Regulus finally understood the full implications of his action. The Muggle had had a name, Tobias Snape, and the being that he had been taught to consider as merely a human-looking animal had truly walked and breathed and shared a life with a blood-traitor witch. Until an Avada Kedavra put a stop to that.

So Regulus had begun to question himself, to search for answers where he didn't suspect he would find them; later on, when he discovered the Dark Lord, he humiliated himself. His quest seemed to have revealed a whole new, senseless world. The Dark Lord and Severus Snape, the two most powerful wizards he knew of, were half-bloods and yet the purebloods seemed reluctant to broadcast the inferiority of their power and honor. Lord Voldemort was insane; the Death Eaters' crusades were revolting more often than not, and Regulus had never been able to look Severus in the face again without feeling a murderer's shame rather a soldier's honor.

It was like spiraling out of one lifetime and straight into another one where nothing had meaning except the awareness that he had been wrong about everything.

Regulus smiled bitterly to himself, sliding out the Hospital Wing with a formal goodbye to a disgruntled mediwitch. One single lapse of judgment and you were tainted forever.

"Regulus!"

To his credit, he tried to not turn at the sound of that feminine, throaty voice calling his name. He remembered perfectly well his decision to ignore her if he happened to casually meet her along Hogwarts' corridors. But she had the gall to surprise him in that moment of absent contemplation and habit had him turning toward the faintly echoing sound with instinctive swiftness.

She reached him with her light, resolute steps and he watched her approach with the same helpless, morbid interest he would reserve for a Giant Squid that was strangling a unicorn.

Charity Burbage was no extraordinary beauty, with her not particularly striking features and her common wavy brown locks, but it was easy to forget that when the distance between them was little enough to allow him to admire the light dancing in her hazel eyes. It wasn't fair: he had met her often during his deluded boyhood and he had considered her as less than nothing - only the half-blood reject his older brother paraded around to upset their mother for a very short time.

Now she was simply (yet there was nothing simple about it, was there?) Poppy's niece, the modest and gentle witch who had sacrificed her summer to help her aunt maintain secrecy about Regulus' recovery in the castle by assisting him when he was going through withdrawal.

Charity was the one who read to him to distract him when his body convulsed and he went into a cold sweat during his rougher nights, the one whose tired but triumphant gaze announced to him that they had managed to make it until dawn once again. She was the product of the one happy union between a pureblood and a Muggle he had ever heard of, who still had more grace in her little finger than all the proper witches he had known in his lifetime.

She smiled shyly up at him and Regulus prayed he wasn't blushing.

"Good evening, Charity," he greeted her formally, saying her name with nothing more than effortless politeness, but it didn't seem to matter to her because her smile widened in a goofy grin, leaving him to cope with an uncomfortable warmth he didn't know what do with.

"To you too." She shuffled her feet, looking very innocuous and very attractive. "I couldn't wait to tell you: Dumbledore offered me a job. I'll be the next teacher of Muggle Studies!"

She laughed nervously, which warmed him all the same, before adding, "I suppose it was unavoidable since I hang around Aunt Poppy all the time. He must have guessed it was either employ me or kick me out by force."

"I'm certain it was no bother. You have many beautiful qualities."

The flush rushing to her cheeks made him feel better and grateful that living with a thunderously bipolar mother had at least taught him how to sweet-talk females regardless of his emotional state.

Hating himself intensely, Regulus cleared his throat and added, "I-I have to go now."

Her radiance seemed to be somewhat diminished by his announcement but Charity just nodded understandingly, as if it was natural that he would prefer returning to his gloomy seclusion in a spectral, empty manor rather than talking to her in these ancient corridors.

"I'll bid you goodbye then, until the next time."

"Goodbye." But he was only few steps away when she called him back.

" Maybe it would be simpler if I owled to you next time I can't wait to tell you something."

"Probably." At this point, Regulus was certain Miss Innocent Burbage was using this tactic of surprising him on purpose; it did work wonders to push him into doing the opposite of what he would do otherwise. Who did she think she was, a Slytherin? "You know the address, I think."

She nodded and he eventually left, uncertain whether he wanted her to keep her unspoken promise and of his unwise acceptance of it. Nothing real could ever happen between them, but this unspoken fantasy that lingered in his head every time he met her was an irresistible act of self-indulgence. It brought him comfort in spite of its concrete impossibility...or maybe because of it.

Regulus had already idealized someone once - Sirius, so full of fury and determination, so uncaring about parental disapproval and expectations - and he knew idols never lived up to their expectations. They were bound to fall, and when it happened you were never quite as prepared as you fancied.

He had experienced that feeling only twice but that was enough to convince him a third time would most definitely not be the charm. The first time was when he had sat in Sirius' old room and realized that his older brother had truly moved out without saying goodbye to him; ever since Sirius had acquired James Potter as his best friend, he had decided he could afford to leave his little brother gathering dust among the ideals they had never shared. Giving up on him because it was simpler to begin a new life with another family. In spite of their differences, the boy Regulus had been was not expecting to just be...left behind.

The second time was the morning of his hearing as a Death Eater, when the Wizengamot had, considering his disability and his desertion, deemed it sufficient punishment to sentence him to house arrest of less than six months. Sirius had confronted him with accusing glares, a supportive and tense Potter behind his back.

It seems our name still means something if they can let you off so easily.

You don't know anything about it, brother.

I thank the gods for that.

The siblings had had no further contact since then, and Regulus couldn't find it in himself to wish otherwise. There was a part of him that wanted to explain to his big brother how different he felt now and ask for his acceptance.

But too many things had been done and said to be able to remedy the damage already done.

Maybe Regulus Arcturus Black was a wizard born to see all his beliefs disproved and his certainties destroyed: almost since his cradle, his parents had taught him that being a Black was the highest honor he could hope to deserve and that he was justified in looking down on certain inferior creatures...yet at the last, these creatures had saved him whereas those teachings had almost driven him to his death.

It was Kreacher, his faithful house-elf, who had saved his life; and it was Severus Snape, half-blood wizard and son of a man he had killed, to whom he owed his improving health.

Perhaps it was fitting that the first woman he fell in love with was of impure birth.

Let it never be said he was unable to appreciate the irony of his situation.