Diptych

Chapter 1

The worst thing about being the youngest member of the family was that everybody eventually left him. At first, it was barely noticeable. Uncle Alphard didn't show up nearly as often anymore, and when he wrote to Sirius, he didn't always write to Regulus. Being little at the time, he put it down to the fact that he couldn't read very well, that Sirius could do magic already and had more to talk to him about. Even into his teens though, he knew that Sirius was Alphard's favourite, that he'd been written into his controversial will where Regulus wasn't, was sent trinkets from his travels and postcards at every stop. Then it was Andromeda. When her face was burned from the tapestry, he still hadn't started Hogwarts. He didn't understand why she'd leave her family for somebody Regulus had never even met, or why they all hated him with such fervour in return. All that Regulus knew was it was another person absent from his life, another person who'd disappeared without so much as a 'goodbye'. He was left with her sisters instead, Bellatrix and Narcissa, whom he loved but who had never been quite as nice to him as Andromeda always was.

Then came Sirius. Having watched Andromeda disappear from his life so abruptly, Regulus had grown up wondering who might be next. Would Narcissa do something unspeakable too? Would one of his parents die while he was young, like his first owl had in his second year? He'd cried a lot then, and his mother had told him to stop being ridiculous, that they had plenty of money to replace the bird. Whenever he thought of their deaths, he felt a horrible sickness settle in his stomach, as though thinking about it alone would be sure to bring it about, and knowing that he'd never be able to bear the guilt if it did. It would happen eventually though, he knew that. The one person he'd never considered leaving him was Sirius. He was his brother, barely older, they were bound to spend their entire lives in tandem. But then he did leave. He left in the night, furious tears obscuring his vision of the brother he left behind, the brother he didn't even consider asking to go with him. Sirius was leaving to get away from their family, and that included him. He made it plain at school that he wanted nothing more to do with him, and that was when Regulus' knowledge solidified, the knowledge that he would always really be alone, that everybody left eventually and it was only really a matter of when.

And sometimes it hurt. Sometimes he looked around at seemingly happy families at the platform or walking up Diagon Alley, and wondered if they carried the same ache within them, if they were as broken as Regulus' family was. Sometimes, he'd watch Sirius across the Great Hall and wonder if his brother missed him, if he ever thought of him at all. If he did, he certainly made no sign of it. Sometimes he'd feel an unexplainable urge to distance himself from his friends, to grieve them before they decided to leave, so that he wouldn't have to later. When they'd write letters in the summer, he'd be too slow to respond, wonder how long it would take for them to forget him altogether. If people tied to him by blood could do it so easily, how hard could it be for them? Sometimes it snuck up on him, and hurt as much as it had when his owl died, a great void opening within him that he didn't know if he'd ever be able to fill. But sometimes it didn't.

Sometimes, it only bothered him in trivial ways. Like when it was his birthday, and there wasn't anybody left at home to be treated like a child with him. There was no 'children's' table anymore, to keep them from beneath Walburga's feet. Sirius and Andromeda had long gone, and Bellatrix and Narcissa had grown up, married. Regulus sat alone in a corner as he watched Narcissa laugh, circled in the arms of the man she'd agreed to marry in her seventh year, and he wondered if it would last. They'd never divorce, of course. Regulus didn't even know what that word meant until his sixth year when a muggleborn boy had begun crying at the breakfast table, announcing between wails that his parents were going to divorce. At first, he'd assumed that was some far-off place, and thought the tears were quite reasonable. He knew better now. But just because Lucius and Narcissa couldn't divorce, that didn't mean they'd always be happy as they seemed to be in that moment.