Regulus Black the Potions Master

Chapter 3

It was by accident in a way, Regulus was in a meeting with his Slytherins, something that had become routine in his life. The brunette gathered the students from his house once a week and talked with them about different subjects, from his time as a Death Eater to the subjects the children were studying. All this to try to change the minds of these young people, so manipulated by everything they heard and saw in their families.

Regulus has been trying to show them the truth about Voldemort's evil, and all the terror of war. For those who know how to save them from the same fate that Regulus had.

It was during one of those nights that something hit his mind.

"Did he torture you?" William Prince asked, a questioning frown on his porcelain face.

"Yes," Black replied.

"But you're a Pureblood," another student said.

"Do you think that stopped him?" he asked. "The Dark Lord has marked us." He believed himself superior to all, even the purest of purebloods. I was the Black Heir, as pure and noble as possible, and yet I was expected to kneel at your feet and accept the Cruciatus — His eyes swept the room — What do you think being in the Dark Lord's service would entail?— he asked.

He knew the answer, of course: Muggles suffering, Muggle-borns expelled, purebloods dominating the rest of magical society. It hadn't occurred to them that they would be hurt along the way.

"The Dark Lord was not afraid to treat pureblood faithful lives as expendable," he said. He preached the purity of blood only when it benefited him. He...

The thought hit him all at once, the pieces coming together in his mind. Locket of Slytherin, emerald S badge gleaming in the light. The lengths the Dark Lord went to for his protection, making such a priceless historical item his horcrux, suggested a great deal of personal attachment, especially considering the man's arrogant and self-absorbed nature.

More than that, he had never heard of the Dark Lord discussing his blood status, only capitalizing on his followers' beliefs about the superiority of pure blood. But if he was of Slytherin descent, as the evidence suggested, then why wouldn't he flaunt it? Being Salazar Slytherin's heir would convince many others to follow and join his cause. So why didn't he use his ancestry to his advantage?

He preached blood purity, he thought, but what if he wasn't pureblood?

Regulus lightly shook his head, filing that clue away for another day. He had Slytherins to influence; it wouldn't do to be distracted, and he wanted to give his full attention to that topic of interest.

He was too tense to sleep, so instead he went to Grimmauld Place to unravel the tiny thread his thoughts had spun during his lecture. It was dark and gloomy, though Kreacher's attentions meant that not a layer of dust had collected on any surface. Taking care not to disturb the portraits that lined the walls, he hurried past the music room and library and picked up a selection of extensive books on genealogy.

The Slytherin bloodline, as it turned out, died out with the Gaunts in Britain. They had been one of the Holy Twenty-Eight, but a joke in pureblood inner circles, regarded as inbred brutes even by blacks. Despite their impressive ancestry, their foolishness and overindulgence in material possessions meant that the gold they possessed had been lost to them generations before the last of the Gaunts – Morfinus and Merope – was born.

If the Dark Lord was indeed a descendant of Slytherin, he was a Gaunt, most likely a son of Morfin and Merope. But Morfin never had children; crazed by inbreeding and the influence of his dysfunctional childhood, he was twice in Azkaban for messing with and murdering Muggles, dying in prison during his second sentence.