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Regulus sits at the Slytherin table, pushing at the crumpet on his plate half-heartedly.
It’s a bad day. Regulus knew it was going to be a bad day as soon as he woke up that morning. At this point, he’s expecting it. Every day this month so far has been a bad day.
He presses his knife down into the crumpet, basically mutilating his breakfast to pieces. He’s not very hungry, but then again, he never is.
The table around him is lively, chattering about inane things as people do, and Regulus is the only one in a noticeable low mood. His friends, if he can call them that, have learnt over the past month to stop trying to engage him in conversation.
His friends: various other pureblooded Slytherin boys who are around the same age. Rosier, Crouch, Mulciber, Avery, etcetera... A carefully curated gaggle. Their most recent topic of fascination concerns a certain blood supremacist that Regulus has little interest in.
The thing is, he doesn’t actually hate the other boys. Hatred is a strong emotion, and Regulus hasn’t felt strongly about anything in a long time. But the matter is that he finds the whole lot of them mind-numbingly boring.
It’s the only thought going through his head whenever he’s in their presence, like a scratching record. Bored, bored, bored, bored, bored- He doesn’t feel a genuine connection with a single one of them.
Regulus zones back into the situation going on around him and turns his head to look at them all.
Evan grabs Barty by the head, shaking him and pointing at the pimple beginning to form on his forehead, while the other boys roar with laughter.
(He feels like a spectator of a Quidditch match. Like he’s sitting in the stadium seats, looking into the field where the players fly around, engaged with the game. He feels- not entirely there.)
In Barty, he once thought he found a mutual confidante.
They’d talk about the shitty world they lived in: and how politics, history, the economy, and society all intertwined to form an ugly coagulated mass of problems. The discussions and debates were eye-opening and nothing at all like the rigid lectures his parents would give, that allowed no room for counter arguments. It was, dare he say, fun.
But then he found out that was all Barty spoke about. Barty would often rehash previous conversations, coming to the same conclusions over and over, with no new material to discuss. He was a man made up entirely of logic, and very little other.
He watches them tussle, Barty wrenching himself free eventually and making a loud remark that had the other boys kicking him under the table.
Barty’s jokes are all so stale, that Regulus often has to force a laugh. In recent days though, he stopped even pretending to find him funny.
The other Slytherin boys are more hopeless and airheaded. They always say so many words, yet never actually say anything meaningful at all.
There is no substance to their persons, and Regulus can’t remember whether he ever even liked them in the first place.
He must have, once upon a time. Maybe as a young and stupid first year.
But he isn’t a first year anymore, and he finds himself acknowledging it every day with a growing feeling of dread.
Eventually the student body begins to stand up and leave the great hall for the first lesson of the day, Regulus among the crowd.
__________
Another day, another crumpet first thing in the morning.
He presses his knife -a standard Hogwarts low grade silver- into the crumpet, and watches the butter seep out disgustingly and drip down onto the plate, to form an oily puddle. When he releases it, the crumpet soaks up some of the butter back up again, a bit like a terrible, soggy sponge.
His ‘friends’ are yet again sitting around him, but Regulus is already tuned out of the conversation.
(Sometimes he phases out of reality itself, lost somewhere on the edge of his body and his mind.)
He finds his eyes straying to Sirius, who is grinning along to something Peter is saying. Sirius then laughs animatedly, throwing his entire head back and slamming a hand down on the table.
Regulus can’t actually hear him, over the noise in the great hall and the buzzing in his own head, but the intimately familiar sound of his brother’s laugh echoes in his ears, anyway.
Sirius has always been more. More charismatic, more handsome, more of a man, more of a son.
To Regulus, Sirius feels like the sort of person who clings on to the reins of life as tightly as he can, plunging headfirst into the various experiences life has to offer.
Simultaneously, he also gives off the impression of a man not holding on to anything at all, instead wandering into opportunities completely by chance, and moving through the world as he pleases.
Regulus can’t imagine how it feels to be free in that kind of way.
He has always seen his own life as a slow train crawling along a track - a perfect future lies ahead of him, and day by day he crawls closer to it. It is a future many sons of the House of Black have fulfilled, and he is expected to conform to the railroad in a similar way.
And in the end, he will. He knows he will.
That is the fundamental difference between them, and it is why the similarities between the brothers end at their surnames.
Regulus will follow the path chosen for him; Sirius will not.
It has been a long time since they spoke with each other. But as Regulus stares at his brother from across the hall, he finds himself surprisingly not jealous.
For all of his life, Regulus’ admiration of Sirius was always tinged by jealousy.
After all, Sirius was the heir, and he was a perfect fit for the position. He carries with him an easy confidence and an unyielding stubbornness, and despite all of Walburga’s complaints, she was proud of her own prideful son.
But then Sirius ran away and everything went to shit.
Regulus had spent a long time being angry, but his rage died down eventually. He doesn’t even have the energy to concentrate nowadays, let alone to be angry.
Now, he thinks he’s fallen to an entirely new low, as he stares at Sirius and doesn’t even feel jealousy or admiration. Only an overwhelming apathy towards everyone and everything.
He does, however, feel his cheek begin to ache under where it rests on his palm, elbow on the table. His mother would scold him for the posture, but she isn’t here, so he doesn’t move even when his neck begins to hurt.
But that is the extent of Regulus’ rebellion, if one could even call it that. It is safe to say that Sirius’ rebellion extends slightly further than his own.
“Dude,” Evan says, elbowing Regulus and bringing him back to the present, “Why are you glaring at him?”
“I’m not,” Regulus replies, going back to pushing his crumpet around his plate.
A heavy silence settles around their portion of the Slytherin table, and the feeling of all their eyes boring into him makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand.
“...You gonna eat that?” Evan asks hesitantly.
Regulus gets up, hoists his school bag onto his shoulder, and not a single one of them utters a word of protest. He didn’t expect them to, naturally.
__________
“Reg,” comes Sirius’ voice from an alcove, catching him as he leaves the great hall.
He almost groans. Regulus has been leaving breakfast early for a number of days in a row, on account of not wanting to stay at the Slytherin table, where only dark thoughts plague him.
And now, the dark thoughts apparently still stalk him even outside of it.
Regulus steels himself, before turning around to face Sirius.
“What?” he asks sharply.
“You-” he breaks off, unsure of what to say, and then steps out of the shadows, “You’ve been- off. Lately.”
Regulus just stares at him in disbelief. He even squints his eyes at his brother, and looks around for any signs of a prank. Is that seriously what Sirius stopped him for?
“Oh my God, don’t be a prick,” Sirius sighs, even though he wasn’t raised Christian. Funny that, how Sirius picks up language from his blood traitor friends so easily. “Can’t a man be concerned for his brother?”
“Pardon me, but I was under the impression that I didn’t have a brother.”
That does it. Sirius’ face closes off, and turns dangerous. It’s the exact same look Walburga gets, when she’s about to deliver her final blow, and Regulus braces himself emotionally for the bite back.
“Right, my bad. Must be a stranger staring at me every single fucking morning, then,” Sirius spits.
Regulus’ jaw clenches of its own accord.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about-” he begins.
“Of course you don’t,” Sirius interjects.
“But, if your ego is so inflated that you’ve begun to delude yourself into thinking that I care, then I highly recommend you do some damage control, brother.”
Regulus regrets the words before he even finishes saying them, when he sees the flicker of hurt on Sirius’ face.
He doesn’t mean half of what he says nowadays, but it’s easy to slip into his role. He’s chosen his future, as a Black scion, and he intends on following it to its bitter end.
“Oh so it’s brother again, is it?” Sirius mocks, “Make your bloody mind up.”
But Regulus recognises it for what it is, because he knows his brother too well. Behind the thorny words, Sirius is still, still, extending an olive branch after all this time.
(Even if Regulus doesn’t deserve it.)
“I have, Sirius. My mind is made,” Regulus says, softer than before as he loses the facade.
“Oh, you have, have you?” he returns, but he’s lost his footing in the face of Regulus’ sincerity. He sounds lost, and entirely unlike himself. It’s disquieting.
He’s a good man, and Regulus knows that it’s why he had to leave the family. Regulus doesn’t hold it against him anymore. How could he, when Sirius had only been trying to survive?
“Yes.” He takes a step back, and searches Sirius’ face. He can’t bear to look at him, but he savours this final moment anyway. “I wish you the best of luck, Sirius.”
“Reg-” his brother says, but doesn’t continue.
What Sirius doesn’t understand, is that Regulus’ survival looks different to his.
Regulus can’t run away, but he can stick to the rules. He can do everything right, follow every custom and every tradition, and pray that by the end of it all he’ll get to die happy. Even if, by that point, he doesn’t deserve to.
“I’m sorry,” Regulus says, because he doesn’t know if he’ll ever muster up the chance to say it again.
As he walks away, he can hear Sirius say something faintly, but the doors of the great hall sweep open and drown his voice out before Regulus can make the words out.