THE SECRET HISTORY , r . black

001. panic!

ONE:
HOGWARTS, DECEMBER 1977.

REGULUS BLACK NEVER QUITE figured out how they got away with it.

A body in the snow. It was in the Daily Prophet the next morning: Hogsmeade death sparks panic! Except, that wasn't exactly true. Because the body they found was an old drunkard, a man that could have been claimed by the cold or a simple gust of wind or even the final vengeance of a lifetime of alcoholism. Simply put, it was only a matter of time. Lorenzo had later called it a kindness.

No, it wasn't the old man's death that lit a flame under the cobbled foundations of Hogwarts, it was, more so, the rather disturbing finding that the man's withered flesh was torn open, his entrails decorating the virgin snow. Or perhaps it was that his eyeballs had seemingly rolled out of his skull, eyeballs that to this day, have never been found. Regulus liked to imagine they lived on in some perverse ghost story, passed from first years to first years and so on and so forth because if the dead man deserved anything, it was certainly to be remembered.

The point is, simply, that no one would have suspected anything but an unfortunate end to an unfortunate life if it hadn't been for the grotesque nature of the act.

"Disembowelment?" The students would whisper. "How obscene."

Despite the outcry, The Daily Prophet had got it all wrong. No one cared much for the murdered, but from that day on, everyone clutched their stomachs a little tighter. Of course, none of them had the slightest suspicion that things were about to get very, very much worse.

Regardless, it marked the first time they got truly lucky.

Though Regulus didn't exactly have the 'cleanest' record when it came to the immoralities of life, be it cheating or theft or a few lies to save his own careless back, there were undoubtable lines in the sand - or snow, depending on the time of year - that he would never, ever cross. Murder, he had long decided, was one of them.

Unfortunately, there were those at Hogwarts who could not say the same.

Even when the ice thawed and the body, which until that moment spent the night hidden in it's frozen chrysalis, had been discovered and plastered on the kitchen tables of the nation, Regulus remembers how truly little they seemed to care.

Looking back, with what he knew and what he never would, the truth was plain as day. The truth was wrapped in tweed, tied with a golden thread and fastened with a brooch but alas, the voice in his head sounded oddly like Elliot, the gift of hindsight rarely made a happy man.

He was hungover the day the news broke - Regulus remembered that much - because Evan Rosier had sweet-talked him into negating his prefect duties and holing up in the Slytherin Common Room with a rather large bottle of wine and absolutely no repercussions. In all fairness, it had seemed like a splendid idea at the time, if anything, an excuse to talk to the little blonde girl that kept making eyes at him across the potions classroom and besides, a little socialising never hurt anyone, even if the calibre of conversation was mediocre at best. But because Evan's party was a thinly veiled excuse for Evan to talk to Matilde Nott and the little blonde girl had managed to extinguish his interest the moment she opened her mouth, Regulus was bored by eleven. And so he drank. Because what else was he supposed to do?

He'd stumbled from his dormitory a little after nine, nursing a lingering nausea and forever thanking whatever entity lorded above that he had a free period the very first thing. He remembered the way the rain pierced the glass that enshrined them in the Great Hall. A dull, arrhythmic beating that was sure to drive him insane before he had even finished his toast. Toast. It was hot, Regulus remembered that. He'd burnt his tongue - maybe he did it on purpose. The rain. Something important about the rain. Or perhaps not.