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heliads · 8 months

Note

I’m not sure if you write for Marauders or not, but I thought I would ask. I’ve also never requested before, so apologies if I do this wrong.

My request is a Regulus Black x a female Potter reader where they fake their deaths to hide from Voldemort and destroy all his horcruxes in secret. Once they’ve destroyed all the horcruxes they reveal that they are alive to Sirius and James, and there is a cute reunion scene that’s really fluffy.

Again, sorry if I did this wrong. Thank you so much!!

oh i would do anything for the marauders (including writing for them)

masterlist

Night has fallen when Regulus Black tells you that he’s leaving. He waits until now, the final hour, as if hoping that the dark shades of midnight will hide what he’s planning from the rest of the world. Regulus will be found out, of that he is certain, he just hopes that he’ll have enough time to do some sort of good before he’s caught.

The smart thing would be to leave before anyone got word of his disappearance. Regulus is not smart when he comes to you, however, or so he admits when he shows up on your doorstep when you were just about to go to bed.

Regulus says that he’s leaving alone. It doesn’t explain why he showed up to say goodbye, or perhaps the thought of that solitude is the very reason for it. Regulus is alone except for when he’s with you. Every time that he was lonely, he sought you out. It makes perfect sense that now, when he fears the quiet abyss of death, he would want a farewell from you one last time.

You, however, are unwilling to let him go. It was hard enough having to endure the past few years estranged from him like another brother to let go. You’re a Potter, he’s a Black, and even though Sirius switched over to your side, Regulus hadn’t. Not yet. Not until now.

It had all but torn you to pieces, choosing loyalty with your brother James and his best friend Sirius when Regulus seemed so far away. Regulus had always been kind to you throughout your years at Hogwarts, the two of you closer than anyone despite how your scarlet school robes clashed with his emerald ones, and just when you swore nothing could separate you, he signed on with the Death Eaters.

Now he’s in front of you, telling you that he’s going to take down the Dark Lord or die trying. It seems like a fool’s errand, and a dangerous one at that. That’s what you tell him after you get over the shock of seeing him after such a long time, once you remember to invite him into your house and lock the door securely behind you.

The outside is blank and dark, but in your home, you’ve never felt more alive. You had wondered what it would be like to see Regulus after so much time, and it’s like you’re back at Hogwarts instead of in some small apartment close to your job. He’s here, and you’re here, and the thought that he’s about to go fling himself into the grasp of unwarranted death is unthinkable.

Perhaps that’s why you let it happen under only one condition: that you be there too. Regulus is a brother and you are a sister and the two of you understand each other, you always have. That’s why you know without a doubt that Regulus will not stray from this quest, even though you try to persuade him from it nonetheless. It’s why he knows better than to fight when you assert that he won’t be doing it alone.

You did try to talk him out of it a little, at least. Why would it be him of all people to try to take down Voldemort? When there are so many witches and wizards fighting in the cause, why should he be the one to die?

You had not gained much by way of explanation. “It’s my responsibility,” he had said simply.

Regulus would know about responsibility. Regulus, who joined the Death Eaters to appease his parents, who regretted the choice from the moment the inked skull appeared on his forearm. You’ve caught him staring at the accursed tattoo for hours, only when he thinks no one else is around. You know he only feels comfortable wearing long sleeved shirts so he doesn’t have to look at it and remember what he became.

It is his responsibility to save the wizarding world, and so it will be yours, too. Regulus isn’t pleased at first when you tell him that you’ll be going with him on the quest to hunt down the horcruxes, but you refuse to change your mind. When the moon hangs high in the sky later that night, you think he goes to sleep with a smile at the thought that he’ll have such a lovely traveling companion. He tells you as much when you set off, anyway.

He might as well be smiling about something, you won’t have much reason to do so until the difficult deed is done. You’re already leaving under terrible circumstances as is; in order to avoid detection from the Dark Lord and his followers, you and Regulus have staged each other’s deaths. When your friends come upon the scene later, they’ll believe that Regulus, a Death Eater, came by your home to kill you, a member of the Order of the Phoenix. You fought back and managed to wound Regulus enough to end his life, but not before he returned the favor for you as well.

It’s a horrific sight, the illusion of both of your bodies lying side by side. Your brother will find this out later, and be sick with grief. Regulus’ brother too, even if the taint of betrayal will make the whole scene wretched with wrongness. For now, though, you have no time to think of possible reactions nor the difficulty of what you are forcing your friends and family to endure. The only objective in your mind is how to destroy the horcruxes so that the war can be won.

Regulus knows of the first, a locket in a cursed lake somewhere deep underground. He takes you there first, and it takes him weeks to sleep off the aftereffects of that awful potion hiding the locket. Whenever you close your eyes, you see the rings of fire you had to conjure up to fight back the Inferi swarming from the lake, how they had emerged from the greenish lake ready to drag Regulus into the water the second he bent his head to drink.

Regaining the locket is an awful thing, destroying it more so. It takes the two of you several days before you’re able to do it for good, and all the while the accursed relic whispers lies in your ears, trying to convince you to abandon each other. When a wave of rage so strong it almost kills you makes you black out and slam the thing with the Killing Curse, it works at last. You’ve never used an Unforgivable Curse before. It takes surprisingly little willpower to do.

Regulus talks you through that. It’s easier to address the use of Avada Kedavra than the ugly truth both of you know, which is that there will be no guarantee that either of you will make it out of this infernal quest. It took everything in you to find and destroy the locket, which at least you knew about. What of the other horcruxes? How will you survive them, too?

The two of you travel across the country, listening in to wizarding news and doing your best to find out what the remaining horcruxes could be. You share space, you share secrets. You’ve never been closer to Regulus in your entire life. The thought that the two of you went a year or two without speaking after you left Hogwarts is unthinkable now. How could you breathe without him?

After dark, he lies awake, watching the light from a charmed lantern flit across the ceiling. He says, you don’t have to do this. Stay with him. Risk your life like this.

You prop yourself up on one elbow so you can get a better look at him. The furrows in his brow are more pronounced now, and the shadows under his eyes, which have been there since the day you met him, are now dark enough to look like the hollows of a skull. Of course I do.

As if the universe meant to reward your faithfulness, you’re blessed with a clue the next day. Regulus recognizes a Death Eater furtively walking down a street and follows him, overhearing the man tell one of his friends that Lucius Malfoy was apparently given some strange token of the Dark Lord’s. They’re both jealous that they weren’t given Voldemort’s refuse, apparently, but their complainings are like music to your ears.

Malfoy’s item is a diary, and it writes pages of frantic scribblings in an attempt to save itself before Regulus hits it with Fiendfyre which, strangely enough, works. Stranger still was trying to break into Malfoy Manor to find a journal, but all’s well that ends well. You got in, you got out, and although there are definitely some house elves under Lucius’ employ that will wonder why they heard voices in the dark that one night, no one is the wiser.

The next secret you hear is not an item but a place, the family home of the Dark Lord’s mother. The two of you comb the place relentlessly until you find an old ring buried deep beneath the earth. Just to be sure, you check it for curses, and after a great deal of difficulty, are able to remove the dark enchantment before destroying it for good.

You lie awake that night, musing aloud before you can stop yourself. “We only barely caught the curse on that one. What if the other ones were enchanted as well and we didn’t know it?”

Regulus sits up, brushing dark hair out of his eyes so he can look at you. “What if we’re both going to die because we didn’t catch something in time, you mean?” He asks.

You nod reluctantly. “I don’t want to seem like I’m losing faith, because I’m not, but– I worry sometimes, you know?”

Regulus stands, takes both your hands in his palms and kisses them. “I rely on your worries, Y/N. They keep us alive. And no, I don’t think we’re cursed. Not yet, at least. If we were, I could at least die with you. That’s worth something, isn’t it?”

You laugh. “That’s morbid, Regulus.”

“But true,” he muses.

He tells you he loves you the next day. It feels like it’s been a long time coming. You have never been one to declare love immediately, but it’s different with Regulus, always has been. If you were in the mood to be honest, you would admit that you have been in love with him for years, ever since the two of you were small enough to hide in your brothers’ shadows and find each other there. You have loved him since the start. You will love him until the end.

Taking down the next horcrux is almost easy, if such things were allowed to be said. You’re fuelled by the hope that this might be the end. Standing over the shattered bits and pieces of Helga Hufflepuff’s Cup, you almost believe it. It’s funny, you always thought that you would somehow be able to tell when you finally destroyed the last of the horcruxes, like you could feel it in the air or something.

You feel nothing when the cup is destroyed. It scares you. You and Regulus have been extremely careful to keep yourselves hidden, but you dare to poke your heads out of the shadows for a little bit to determine if you were successful or not. Although you hear rumors that Voldemort seems weakened, that his forces have started losing battles despite him being at the helm of the attacks, he is not yet dead.

It’s heartbreaking. After all of your efforts, your trials and tribulations, every injury and weakness the two of you have sustained on the quest to defeat the Dark Lord, it still isn’t enough. You listen, you spend weeks and then a full month waiting for information, but nothing comes. There is no sign that there are any more horcruxes, but Voldemort has not died. How could it be so?

You come up with a tentative solution in the end, which is to go to Dumbledore for advice. In a way, it seems almost childish– why should the headmaster have any idea what to do, other than the fact that he led your school where the two of you first met and studied? Then again, Dumbledore is the most powerful wizard of his age. If anyone would know how to proceed, surely it would be him.

Regulus agrees readily enough, recognizing the necessity that if the two of you cannot find a way to continue on your journey, it will never end, and before long the two of you are Apparating near familiar territory and walking up to the castle on foot. You disguise your faces with a simple charm; the two of you are supposed to be dead, after all, but all it takes is one glance at you and Dumbledore is smiling and telling you that he’s glad to see two such familiar corpses up and about.

You laugh, you can’t help it, and remove the charm once you and Regulus are safely in Dumbledore’s office and out of sight. After explaining your predicament, Dumbledore sits for a moment in contemplative silence and then says at last, “It must be the diadem.”

You and Regulus exchange glances, then look back at him. “What diadem?” Regulus asks.

“The diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw, of course,” Dumbledore muses. “Tom Riddle– the Dark Lord, if you like your pleasantries– was captivated by the magic of the four founders of Hogwarts. You have told me already of Hufflepuff’s cup, this is the expected companion piece. It must be somewhere within the castle, but where– but where–”

He clears his throat after a lengthy pause. “I give both of you permission to scour the castle for it. I will caution the staff not to look too closely at either of you. Take however much time you need, but I would urge you to hurry. More of us die by the day, and it would do us no good to have our friends fall as a consequence of our own dillydallying.”

You look up at him. “And what happens after we destroy the diadem? It must be the last horcrux, or the last one he’s created so far. Will that kill him for good?”

“No,” Dumbledore murmurs, “that will end the horcruxes, not the monster who made them. Once the horcruxes are gone, he will be severely weakened and search for however has been hunting down his creations. You two are lucky that you have not died already, you know. I have no doubt that he has already begun attempts to stop you from completing your goal.”

You shudder, remembering past encounters. Death Eaters had nearly caught up to you many times, and on numerous occasions, they had, requiring firefights of spells and hexes before you and Regulus could escape to relative safety.

Beside you, Regulus tenses, obviously thinking along the same lines. “How do we survive once we destroy the last of the horcruxes? How do we stay out of his sight?”

Dumbledore sighs, weary and heavy. “I will put a stop to him,” he says at last, and that is that.

You and Regulus conjure up your charms once again, disguising your faces to all students who happen to pass by. You look in towers and dungeons, empty classrooms and great halls. It’s a mad memory rush being back here, and it is difficult not to mix memory with your current situation.

When a few hours of searching pass by, though, and neither of you have found even the slightest hint of a diadem, your fond musings are replaced by desperate anger. This is your last step, surely, if you could just find the thing. It would all be over if you could merely find one diadem in one castle.

Regulus leans against a nearby stone wall, eyes cast up to the sky in a plea for help. “Where would a diadem be? In the Ravenclaw dorm, maybe?”

You shake your head. “Dumbledore said it wouldn’t be there.”

You pace back and forth, trying to wrap your head around the issue. What other sections of the castle are particularly known to Rowena Ravenclaw? You’ll wear a path into the carpet beneath your feet while you try and think, but nothing seems to work until the wall opposite Regulus suddenly shifts away, revealing a door.

You and Regulus stare at the room that has appeared out of nowhere. “Do you remember a hidden room near here?” Regulus asks faintly.

You shake your head. “James loved tracking down every secret passage, and he told me most of them, but I don’t think even he knew about this one.”

It’s nice to have a first. You smile to yourself, then take Regulus’ hand when he offers it and walk inside the mysterious room.

The chamber is packed to the gills with objects great and small. It occurs to you that even if the diadem is somewhere in here, it could take years to sift through all this junk. You and Regulus look at each other, shrug, and each take a corridor in which to search.

About half an hour has gone by before Regulus gives a shout. “Found it!”

You race over to his side, and stand, breathless, looking at the very same artifact that’s caught his attention. It’s old, dusty, and not particularly noteworthy, but it has this terrible feel to it that all of the horcruxes had in turn.

“This is it,” you whisper. One last shot. Then, the end.

Regulus lifts his wand, summons a tendril of Fiendfyre, which goes straight through the diadem, shattering it like glass. It’s silent for a moment, and then, when the last shard of the diadem falls to the ground with a quiet crunch, you’re both rocked backward by a boom like a cannon. This, at last, you can feel. This is it.

Dumbledore is waiting for you when the two of you emerge from the room. “I’ll take my leave of you,” he says, “and thank you.”

You nod. “What do we do now?”

For a moment, despite the burden that has now been placed on your old headmaster’s shoulders, despite all the lives that have been lost and those that will still be taken, Dumbledore smiles. “You can go home.”

Sirius used to stay the night at the home of you and your brother, you remember that from your school days. It would then follow that, with everything in peril and friends disappearing by the day, Sirius would be at James’ right now. It certainly saves a trip for you and Regulus. Dumbledore gives you their address before you leave, and he tells you to waste no more time.

As if there is anything in the world that you want more than to see your family. You and Regulus Apparate a street or two down from the house, then walk over, hand in hand. Before you know it, you’re waiting on the threshold. The lights are on somewhere in the back of the house; you can hear voices, then a shout of a laugh you remember as Sirius’. It’s more quiet than it used to be, a little more hesitant. He’s lost a lot, the elder Black brother, but he’ll gain some today, too.

Regulus squeezes your hand. “Let’s come back from the dead,” he says.

You smile at him. “That sounds good to me.”

The doorbell echoes through the house, ceasing all conversation. There are slow footsteps to the door, a pause as someone looks through the peephole, and then all of a sudden the door has been flung open and you’re engulfed in a whirlwind of a hug. Your brother is here, your brother is lifting you off the ground with the force of his embrace, and it’s been so, so long since you’ve seen him, but you’re back again, and everything is okay at last.

James’ eyes are as wide as saucers when he finally leans away to get a good look at you. “Y/N, you’re– I swear, if you’re a Death Eater using Polyjuice, I will hurt you so badly–”

You laugh. “I’m me, James. Just me. If you want proof, though, I offer up the memory of when you were a first year and totally in love with Lily and you had me–”

James cuts you off quickly. “Alright, alright. It’s you. God, it’s you.”

A figure appears behind James, and a quiet voice asks, “Regulus?”

James moves aside so Sirius can see his brother. Regulus stands perfectly still, says, “We tried to fix it, Sirius, we hurt him, the Dark Lord, we–”

Regulus told you years ago that he wasn’t that affectionate with his brother. It’s to be expected, of course, divisions between brothers rarely settle themselves sweetly. You suppose that’s why Regulus looks so stunned when Sirius reaches out an arm and hugs him. You’re not sure if he’s trying to crush his younger brother or just make sure that he’s actually real, but they both look vaguely confused when it’s over. Happy, though. Glad to be alive.

The news will come out later that week that Voldemort is dead. Dumbledore did what was promised and killed him. That means the war is over, and that means you can rest at last. You’ll get a place to stay with Regulus. The thought of leaving him now that the two of you can be together without fear is unthinkable. You don’t want to be without him, and thanks to your suffering on the path to destroy the horcruxes, you won’t have to.

Dawn breaks. And you think– you think this might be it. Not a harsh end, but a soft one. A quiet aftermath. You’ll live, and Regulus will too. That’s more than you expected during those months on the run. When the two of you went to sleep unsure if you’d wake up in the morning, your wildest dreams could not encapsulate the wonderful life you have right now. It is marvelous, and it is yours. That is all.

requested by @bookishirishdancer, i hope you enjoy!

harry potter tag list: @rogueanschel, @cameronsails, @neewtmas, @lovesanimals0000, @with-inked-solace, @sher-lokid7, @eclliipsed, @frenchgirlinlondon, @23victoria, @ilovexavierthrope

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