What if they all lived?

Chapter 13

Some harsh stuff here, bad thoughts

Saturday 23rd October 1971

Regulus Black

His mother was a very organized person. She never forgot anything and never got carried away by anything. His father had been ill for a month now. Healers say it is nothing to worry about, but, even though she never said so, mother worried. Her head had been a mess the last week, forgetting where she'd placed potions or papers.

 One day, looking for a misplaced document for the Ministry, she brought up an old box and started looking for them. In her quest of finding such papers she throwed every other paper in the box to the floor, they were annoying her. She eventually found it, but did not clean after herself. Regulus thought that she was waiting for Kreacher to do so, but she called on him and sent him away to buy some things for the next potion she was brewing, for father. She left to the ministry, document in hand and Regulus was left alone, well father was at home but he was sleeping upstairs.

 Curiosity got the best of him. It never did but he was bored out of his senses. He reached an arm and started looking through the papers. He found a stash of about fifty letters tied together with a deep blue ribbon. He recognized the writing. Thena. He untied them and found his brother's writing as well. He opened one of them. It wasn't from one or from the other, it was from both of them. He smiled to himself when he saw the little drawings on the edges that were clearly Sirius and he laughed when he found Thena writing on top of them telling him he is stupid.

Hello Regulus

His sister wrote in a particular morocco shade of ink that to him, missing her terribly, brought back a rush of color, all the thin cheerful hoarseness of her voice.

Regulus you better start writing back or I swear to Merlin I will kill, I know where you live, remember that.

Ignore him, but do write back please.

Ignore the please, we aren't asking, we are telling you to answer.

We are worried sick. Tell me, how is father? Is mother giving you a hard time?

Is that woman hurting you? I swear you better tell me if she is.

Sirius shut it, what if she reads this?

It was obvious that they were recording a conversation and that a quill was writing whatever it heard. His guts twisted when he realized that his mother did read this first and that they will probably get in trouble for it.

 It also hurt to realize that his mother hid this from him, she allowed Regulus to ask if they were okay and she would say it didn't matter. She allowed him to think that they no longer cared for him, that they found something way better in the inside of the castle and that they no longer needed their little brother to distract themselves. She allowed him to cry at night until he fell asleep, until his eyes were red and the skin around his eye burned.

Mad at her, he opened another letter. This one from Sirius telling him how awesome the Quidditch pitch was and how much he will love it and that he couldn't wait to be part of the team. The next one from Thena, telling him that he was an asshole for not answering. With tears in his eyes he remembered his sister's temper. He read them all, fast, so that he wouldn't get caught, then, taking advantage that he was alone, he got a quill and wrote them back. He sent a letter to both of them, using their fathers owl. The thing had not flown in so much, Regulus felt it would appreciate it.