The Story of Regulus Black - Years 1-4

LXX. The (Practically) Disowned and the Missing

Regulus,
Do not ask about Corvus Black. You do not need to know who he is. Do not bring it up again, especially not with your parents. Please.
Have a good rest of the school year, write me if you need anything else.

Narcissa Malfoy

Corvus Black,
I don't really know how to start this letter. I suppose I should say hello? I don't know. I guess I'll just get right to it.
I recently discovered a picture of you with my father (Orion Black) on one of the walls of Hogwarts. Naturally, my interest was piqued. However, your name was scribbled off of the back of the photograph. Do you know why this is?
After that, I wanted to discover who you were. So, I went digging in some old Hogwarts yearbooks (I didn't know Hogwarts used to have yearbooks; do you know why they stopped?) and I found out that the man in the photo was you.
I asked my cousin, Narcissa Black (Malfoy now) about you, and she told me that I shouldn't be wondering. Did you do something bad? Have you been disowned from the family?
My mother is Walburga Black, if you didn't know, so I live in the house with the family tree. You aren't on it. You haven't been on it since the beginning, either, because there's no place where you've been blasted off (one person has been blasted off since, if you didn't know. My cousin Andromeda). However, I remember a branch that used to be on the family tree from when I was a child, and it isn't there anymore. Were you on that branch? Did you remove yourself? Why?
I've never heard either of my parents mention you before, but you looked close with father in the picture I saw of the two of you. Why aren't you close anymore? What happened?
Please write back. I would like to hear your answers to all of my questions.

R.A.B. (Regulus Arcturus Black, since you don't know)

Regulus sent that letter on Monday, 17 February, and he waited. He waited for days for a response to come. Wednesday passed with nothing. Thursday, nothing. Friday, not a single letter.

When Saturday came, Regulus was too nervous about the Quidditch match to truly give Corvus Black a second thought.

So, when Regulus was searching for the Snitch during the match itself and saw an owl flying overhead, he was suddenly very unexpectedly distracted. He looked at it, narrowing his eyes to get a better view, trying to see if it was Artemis with a letter for him.

It was while he was looking that a Bludger came straight for him, and he managed to just move out of the way - thanks to the alert of Gillian. He looked towards the direction that the Bludger had come from to see Mulciber with a rather smug look on his face, and Gibbons with an annoyed one.

He couldn't hear exactly what Gibbons had shouted at Mulciber, but from the way that his mouth moved, he thought that it must have been something along the lines of "stop aiming for our players and aim for the other team, you git".

The Bludger had been enough to pull Regulus's mind back into the game, and he caught the Snitch minutes later with ease. The stands erupted, Deacon cheering much more loudly than Francesco and Benji had expected.

Sure, Gryffindor had to root for Slytherin because, if Ravenclaw were to win, they would be bumped to last place for House Cup again. However, neither of Deacon's friends had really expected him to cheer that loudly.

After the match, Regulus hurried to the owelry. Artemis had not yet returned.

With a sigh, he trudged back to the castle and to his dorm room. When he entered the common room, however, he was swept into the middle of a post-match party. Regulus wasn't really in the mood for a party - he was much too anxious about his letter to Corvus Black - so he kept his head down and snuck away with ease.