The Slytherin Transfer

39: "Especially the filthy blood traitors."

Regulus helps me inside, pulling down his sleeve and using it to wipe his face before adopting a hard expression. For a moment, I see the similarities between him and his brother beyond just the physical. I see it in the way he pretends to be okay, keeping his eyes forward.

The family is waiting in the front hallway. Bellatrix is waking up, Druella is in her husband's arms, and everyone looks irritated and sullen. They turn at the sound of the door closing, and the irritation and sullenness changes to anger quicker than a cheetah on a motorbike.

"You." Walburga points a spindly finger at me as I clutch my injured wrist, "You bitch! You drove him out! You drove my first born son out!"

She's in my face, but I'm just as much in hers, her words angering me quickly.

"Oh, don't be so thick," I speak through the venom dripping from my tongue, "we all know that's on you, Walburga."

Suddenly, her hand connects with my cheek, hard and sharp. Silence falls in the room, and everyone inhales sharply at the sound of skin on skin. I spit blood on the floor and laugh dryly before looking her up and down and leaning in with a sneer.

"My dad hits harder than you," I growl, and she scoffs, looking taken aback as I push past her.

"You can't stay here!" She shrieks after me as I head for the stairs, "You better be going to pack your stuff!"

"As if I want to stay!" I turn at the bottom step and shout, "You pathetic group of incest-born freaks are nothing but a nuisance to this world! You're pretentious, and narrow-minded, and worth less than the dirt I've tracked into this house! So shut up! Shut up, because nothing you say means anything!"

I turn, the fury I've expressed nothing to what churns inside my stomach. The family is silent, and tears prick my vision that I only let fall when I'm safely in Sirius's room. I want to kick something, or punch a wall, but everything has already been destroyed. Instead I begin to pack my trunk, which is already pretty full considering I've only been here a few days. Eventually, it becomes too much, and I collapse onto Sirius's bed in a pathetic heap, still holding my wrist.

He's gone. He left me here with his hell bound family, and he didn't even look back. He left his brother, his fifteen-year-old brother, who has to go through all of this on his own. He doesn't even have a choice. He's doing this by himself because Sirius won't man up and help him.

I want to be able to cut him some slack. He's lived with his terrible mother and father for sixteen years. Sixteen years of torture. I know how it feels. I empathize, and yet all I can feel is anger. Anger because if my brother asked for help, despite everything, I would've given it to him. It's the same reason that when I got that forged note from Richard Deighton that said Josh wanted to meet me in the broom closet by McGonagall's office, I went. I didn't care how terribly he had treated me, he was family. He was family, and now it's too late. He's gone, but Regulus is still here, wanting to fight. I'm the one that stayed, and so is he. Sirius is the one that left.

He didn't stay. Not for Regulus, and not for me.

I sit on the bed for hours. I stare at the wall and try, try so hard, to forgive him. I try to see it from his point of view, but even then I can't bring myself to feel what he does.

There's a knock at the door.

"C-Cassidy?"

I stand up slowly and step over the mess of strewn clothes and splintered wood before grasping the handle and opening the door.

For a moment I think Sirius is back, but then I see the change of height, the lack of hair, and the larger nose. The few differences between Sirius and his brother are slight, but somehow vastly change him when they come together.