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"Reg?" James called, voice ringing empty through the forest.
He took another step forward, back towards the camp. It'd only been, what? An hour since he left? Not long enough for anything to really happen—no reason for Regulus to actually use the mirror for anything important. James told himself as much—that the mirror had been glowing solely because Regulus was spiteful, because he'd wanted to come along and James hadn't let him, because he'd been selfish, because he'd wanted to confront Sirius by himself.
Still, he felt a panic in his chest. The possibility that something really was wrong.
He called the name again when he entered, feet hitting the floor in loud thumps that seemed to shake the entire tent. "Regulus?"
The name echoed.
The tent looked abandoned, though Regulus' notes were still strewn across the wooden table, the mugs still left out from the day before. Even the covers were pulled up from the bed, cast aside carelessly, as though waiting for someone to come back to the bed.
And yet no-one was there.
He still searched the border of the wards, patrolled the outskirts of the forest. He'd even sent his patronus, to search outside the forest, beyond the wards, though it felt futile. Regulus wouldn't go off on his own like that—he'd want to have a place to land.
Which meant there were only a few options as to where he could've gone. There were so few places that Regulus truly had access to. The only places that James could remember him having warded access at was the Safehouse—which James had granted himself, and Grimmauld Place.
As impulsive as leaving in the middle of the night might've been (which—James wasn't really one to talk), Regulus wouldn't be stupid enough to go back to Grimmauld, no matter how desperate he'd been to see his brother. Which first left the safehouse.
When he approached it, though, the lights were off, shutters half-open, half-closed, just as they'd left it that day, retrieving the translation book. Just to check, he scanned the site for any indication of humans.
Empty.
His mind started spinning, thinking first of Regulus, off alone somewhere that James couldn't find him. Alone, somewhere where they'd no doubt judge him first by the mark on his arm, next by his last name. His heart thumped, mind racing over possibilities of where he could've gone.
It only hit him when he apparated back to camp, the stag-horned knife dug deep into his palm. Headquarters.
It was possible—James had to let him into the wards when he apparated them inside, he just hadn't done it consciously. Usually, when they brought Death Eaters to Headquarters (which wasn't often, as it was still a home, above all else), they brought them straight to the Ministry afterwards. Only, Regulus hadn't gone to the Ministry. James had apparated him back out.
Headquarters. That was where he had to be. It was only fitting, too, that they go there. James had to pull the Order together, anyhow.
When he got to the Manor, the shutters were open, lights on. His parents had always been more comfortable in the night, unlike James, who rose early in the morning. There'd been too many times in his childhood when he'd woken before his parents, crawled into bed to wake them too, his mother muttering, too much, Jamie, rolling over to cover the light from the window with a spare pillow.
The lights almost sent a wave of relief over him. Almost—because he couldn't be sure who was inside, who was truly at the source of it all.
He wandered through his mother's garden, and knocked on the door, fist beating against the cold wood, echoing into the emptiness around the house. It'd always been quiet, here.
