Harry Potter One Shots

Debitum Naturae

All rights belong to the author, notmydaughter

He swims in the ocean, treading water and examining the different fish that swarm around him. They are blue and red and green and yellow and every other color, and in so many different shades. Regulus tries to scoop them up in his hands, but they only swim away.

He keeps pursuing them, going out a little deeper, being carried subtly but surely by the tide, until he is out in what he thinks must be the middle of the ocean. The beach looks so far away; Sirius was supposed to be watching him but must have been distracted by something because no one seems to be there. Regulus screams. As he does so, water streams into his mouth. The salt pierces his mouth and he hurries to spit it out, but before he knows it more is in his mouth and he is sinking, sinking, sinking.

Desperately trying to swim, he makes it several meters before his arms give way, tired of fighting the tide. For the first time in his life, he faces his own mortality, and it makes him cold inside, as if he is already underneath the ocean in a sandy grave. He lets out a shiver, but it does not keep him afloat. Now, he is falling and there is no strength left to carry him up.

He seems to be sinking slowly, so slowly that it is almost comical. He opens his eyes for a split second and sees the fish surrounding him, and he is envious of their movement, their ability to breathe here in the water.

Then he sees a hand and then an arm, and it wraps around his body and pulls him up. He sees Sirius's dark hair and worried face, and he laughs with relief and with terror, but mostly with love.

The swim back is a blur; all he can think about is the fact that he is not dying, that he will live to build that magnificent sandcastle he had been planning on and eventually go to Hogwarts and get a job and get married and have children and continue the Black line. On the beach, Sirius throws a towel around him and shakes him, hard.

"What were you thinking?" he demands, terror still in his voice. "You can barely swim, and you're out that deep, way over your head? Reg, you can't do that, understand me?"

Regulus nods, though in truth he would agree with anything that Sirius says.

Sirius continues, paying no attention. "Look, think about what would happen to me if you drowned, yeah? Mother and Father would likely drown me, I reckon..."

For a moment, the bitter, dark side of Regulus wonders how Sirius could turn the attention of a near-fatal accident away from the potential victim and towards himself, before he remembers that Sirius is his brother and his savior and his hero.

Sirius must have seen that flash of darkness over his brother's face. A slightly guilty look crosses his features. "I was so, so, scared," he says roughly. It is hard for him to say something this honest and raw, but he does, and Regulus loves him for it. He cracks a small smile. "Did I forget to mention that?"

Regulus flings his arms around his brother and forgets entirely about death and the ocean.

secundus

He and his mother are wandering the streets of Knockturn Alley. She is in a storm of a mood, her expression dark, a warning sign to any shopkeeper who would dare to attempt to sell something to her. Perhaps because of this, they are not bothered, or perhaps Knockturn Alley does not recruit its customers the same way other places do.

Regulus has never been here before, and he is honored that at ten he has been deemed old enough to visit. It is strange; his parents pay him and Sirius little mind at home, but in the outside world they are overly protective, as if afraid of how they will be perceived as parents by the rest of the Wizarding community.