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PROLOGUE

Prologue

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

July 21, 1976

Regulus honestly didn't know what he had expected to see once he'd returned from his short, but completely necessary visit to the Rosier Manor. Maybe he had expected to see his parents sitting side by the side in the living room, his mother's piercing gray eyes judging everything and anything around her just like always. Maybe he'd expected to see either of his two cousins in the house (in his mind, he could very clearly picture Andromeda running about the house, her laugh bright as the morning sun that shone above their heads).

But one thing was quite clear, however.

He would have preferred anything to having to witness his elder brother running frantically around the house like a man on the run, pushing one thing and another into his trunk. He mumbled something inaudible under his breath, and it was only when Regulus cleared his throat as he stood by the front door of the house that he did notice him for the first time that fateful day. When his brother looked away from him almost as if the shame, Regulus felt quite like he'd been pierced in the heart thousand times. For nothing was worse than having the confirmation of what he had known for certain for a very long time was going to happen one day even if he'd waved the thought away in quite a few moments of desperate denial. Today, it seemed, was the day Sirius would leave their home for the good.

"You are leaving today?" Immediately, he felt idiotic for even having to ask him. Of course, he was leaving. There was absolutely no reason whatsoever for him to stay. In fact, it was probably the best for his brother to leave. Much less they try to make him join their cause.

It better be him than Sirius who could never tell a lie to save his life. Regulus, however, was quite a different story. He'd been telling lies back and forth from the first moment he had learned how to speak when he was a little boy. Therefore, it would only be logical for him to the one they would try to force their noble cause. After all, he thought with disdain; he was their favorite son.

"You could come with me, Regulus. It could be just like the old times. Don't you remember how happy we'd been then? We could be just like that again." His brother sounded hopeful, even as if he had somehow convinced himself that he would actually agree to this foolish proposal.

"Nothing could the same anymore, big brother." Regulus told his brother more sharply than he had previously intended and smiled sympathetically at him as if to comprehend the unnecessarily blunt way he'd phrased his previous sentence. Rosier's influence on him, for certain. "Everything had changed."

Regardless of how much some part of him may wish he could go back to the simpler times when he could laugh and play without having to worry about the consequences of his actions, he couldn't afford such a fancy anymore.

There was a bloody war going on outside and people were dying about every day, dropped dead on the street one after another like flies. And more importantly, if not for this family, then for those he loved and cherished, he had a duty to fulfill.

A duty that didn't involve following his brother to the other side of the country like a simple fool and playing childish games, forgetting all about the responsibility he owed to everybody else.

"I wish there could be another way." And then the door split open with a loud snap, and his brother disappeared down the street with his trunk in the hand, a sight that would forever haunt him for the entire summer. Regulus took a painful breath down his throat, forcing the traitorous tears back where it dutifully belonged and forcing a sweet, innocent smile on his face, stalked up the stairs towards his room.

"You think you're so special because you have that stick of yours to play with, and that boarding school of the freaks where you attend with the rest of you freaks. You think you're special because you've somehow managed to fool our parents into believing you are better than me. But guess what, little sister? You really are not." Petunia uttered the words with the same amount of unfair cruelty she always did, those same steel-blue eyes gazing back at her coldly from across the living room of their small house.

"You are still the same scared little girl you've been when you were nine. Don't you remember, Lil? You used to tug at my shirt so tight that I feared it would tear every time Ashley Gibson so much looked your way. You didn't think you were special then, now didn't you? You thought you were a freak. Why don't you go back to the way you've been then, little sister? Things were so much easier in my life back then."

"I am not a freak." Lily spat the words with an amount of confidence she didn't quite feel, lifting her head up high in the air bravely. "And I don't think I am special. I just want to live my life in the peace, thank you very much. It's bad enough there's a war going on about outside. I have enough to worry about without having to add your flare for dramatics in my life, Tunia."

Petunia chuckled lightly under her throat like the matter of a war was something to laugh about. "Why don't you leave then if you can't stand my flare of dramatics then, sweetheart?" She probably didn't even believe her when she'd told them about them war.

Probably thought it was just some crazed talk she had invented in order to get an attention from her parents. It seemed that regardless of what may try to do, her sister always expected the worst of her.

So, maybe it was about the time she should stop trying to fix them. Maybe it was time to accept the fact that they could never go back to the way they used to be back when they were naïve little children regardless of how much she may try and live her life once and for all. She'd wasted enough time trying to make this work, anyway.

"This is my house." She blatantly told her sister, almost daringly. "Why don't you leave instead if my presence here bothers you so much?"

"Maybe I will. Maybe instead of waiting for the summer to end, I will leave right now."

"Petunia, I didn't actually mean–,"

"Of course you didn't. You forget that as much I loathe your presence in my life, I do know you better than you know even yourself, sweet little sister. I know that you always act on your emotions first before even bothering to think if it would be the right choice. You would always wear your emotions on your sleeves, even when you were little. But none of that matters now." Petunia said, almost regretfully. "I am leaving, and there's nothing you or our parents could say to make me stay."

"It's a little earlier than I had planned for, but I could stay at the hotel near the college for the rest of the summer. I have something saved in the bank from my part-time job payments I did last year. And yes, sweetheart, I actually did work a time in life unlike certain ungrateful little redheads. Therefore, much unlike yourself, I actually do have some money to be able to afford a stay in the cheap hotel." And with that she stalked out of the living room with the loud tap of her new high heels, and toward the end of the hallway into her room.

Lily sighed under her breath in the defeat, and fell down on her knees into the floor, the floor rough against her butt. It seemed that regardless of how hard she might try, everything in her life was doomed to fall apart. She'd just hoped this term would prove to be somewhat different from the last one. She didn't need another disastrous term.