Regulus Black | POV
I still remember the day the Dark Lord asked for an elf to assist him on a task.
I volunteered Kreacher without hesitation.
At the time, it felt like devotion. Duty. Proof of loyalty.
I told myself it was an honor.
That decision unmade me.
I had believed, truly believed, that following the Dark Lord would bring salvation. That the pure-bloods, trampled and diluted, mocked and restrained, would finally reclaim what was rightfully ours. Our customs. Our rituals. Our way of life. I believed we were fighting a necessary war, a revolution that would sweep away decay. And revolutions, I told myself, demanded sacrifice. Pain was the price of change.
Then I saw Kreacher.
Not a symbol. Not a tool. Not a disposable creature.
Just Kreacher. Broken. Crumpled. Writhing.
My unlikely friend.
In that moment, my beliefs did not crack. They dissolved.
The raids I had participated in, the violence I had justified as "necessary," the screams I had learned to ignore, all of it suddenly felt hollow. Meaningless. Not grim necessities of war, but acts of cruelty performed because cruelty had become easy. Habitual. Almost indulgent.
I had steeled my heart before. Told myself this was how the world was remade. But standing there, watching what blind loyalty had done to someone who trusted me, I could no longer lie to myself.
Why did we support the Dark Lord?
We claimed it was to protect our customs, our beliefs, our rituals. To ensure we would never have to hide from Muggles again. To restore order, dignity, supremacy.
But was that truly what we were doing?
Or were we merely vandalizing the world in our own image? Spreading fear because it thrilled us? Breaking things because power demanded proof of itself?
Yes, the Ministry is rotten. Stagnant. Corrupt.
That much is undeniable.
But as the thought took root, another followed, colder and far more damning.
Is that not a mirror of us?
Is our society any less stagnant? Any less corrupt? Cloaked in tradition, drowning in old blood and older grudges, mistaking decay for heritage and cruelty for strength.
We claimed we were saving the wizarding world.
But standing there, with Kreacher's pain burned into my memory, I realized the truth I had been avoiding.
We were not fighting for salvation.
We were becoming the very rot we swore to destroy.
And as the realization settled in, cold and inescapable, I found myself stranded in confusion.
I am Regulus Arcturus Black.
Heir to the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black.
Raised to be a Noble. To be superior. To know my place in the world.
Yet I could see no path forward.
The Dark Lord no longer appeared as a savior but as a beacon of death, fear, and carnage. And I… I was one of his instruments. A polished blade wielded in the dark. The Mark on my arm burned like a brand of ownership, a glaring testament to what I now call Glorified Servitude.
I had wanted to be a pioneer of a new age, an agent of Change, an agent of prosperity.
Instead, I had become an agent of chaos.
My parents do not understand. Or perhaps they simply do not care. Maybe they never loved me as a son at all. In their pursuit of a perfect heir, an immaculate emblem of nobility, my needs, my doubts, my dreams were irrelevant. I learned early that affection was conditional. Earned through obedience. Maintained through silence.
So I complied.
A dutiful son, desperate to be loved. Desperate to be seen.
I followed their doctrine, and in doing so, I am helping to usher in the doom of wizarding civilization itself.
For all our scorn of Muggles, they are not weak.
They possess no magic, yet they wield weapons capable of erasing cities. Their ingenuity, their relentless curiosity, has driven innovation at a pace we mock and yet secretly fear. By every sober estimate, in another decade or two they will surpass us. Not in raw power, perhaps, but in adaptability. In scale. In resolve.
And we will still be arguing over bloodlines, when our every existence could be in jeopardy.
We, who can bend reality with a wand, have chosen stagnation. We cling to tradition until it calcifies, mistaking backwardness for purity, inertia for dignity. While the world races forward, wizardkind stands still, content to rot beneath the weight of its own arrogance. Yet, fact remains that disregard of traditions would also lead to death of wizardkind, magic is rooted in our veins and as we disregard traditions the very magic might leave us. We are no longer innovating, no longer improving, we are just stagnating.
If this path continues, our end will not come by Muggle hands or Dark Lord's decree.
It will come quietly.
Through irrelevance. Through decay. Through the slow, unremarkable death of a civilization that refused to change, even when it held magic in its grasp.
And as I drowned in that melancholy of inevitability, I sought refuge where many Blacks before me had fled their doubts. In firewhiskey. In noise. In the crowded, echoing halls of Black Manor, where voices overlapped and laughter rang hollow against ancient stone.
It was there that I met my godson, after a long time.
His enthusiasm struck first. Bright. Sharp. Almost reckless. His curiosity followed soon after, probing and unrelenting, and in it I saw ghosts of myself and of my brother, reflected like fragments in shattered glass. For one hour, perhaps less, I felt something dangerously close to happiness.
The next hour, his tongue exasperated me beyond measure. Too clever. Too bold. Too willing to say aloud the thoughts others carefully buried.
By the end, I was uncertain.
Afraid.
My godson is a Seer.
Not the theatrical kind who dresses riddles in nonsense, but something far more unsettling. His revelations aligned too closely with my own private conclusions, with fears I had never dared to name. When he spoke, it was as though he had reached into my chest and drawn out thoughts I believed were mine alone.
And then he said it.
That I would commit suicide.
The words did not strike like a curse. There was no shock, no outrage, no denial. Only emptiness. A vast, hollow stillness that swallowed sound and thought alike.
Is that truly how I end?
Do I crumble beneath the weight of expectation, uncertainty, and decay? Do I break so quietly, so thoroughly, that death feels less like an act of despair and more like a release?
I had faced Dark Lords and sworn oaths in blood. I had branded myself for a cause I no longer believed in. Yet nothing frightened me as much as that single possibility.
That I might not be defeated by enemies or hunted down as a traitor.
But simply… give up.
And in that emptiness, staring into a future foretold by a child who saw too much, I wondered whether fate had already tightened its grip around my throat, waiting only for me to stop resisting.
But the day did not end in revelation or resolve.
It ended with slammed doors.
I had to storm out of Grandfather's study, his composure finally cracking under the weight of Sirius's careless tongue. Sirius would never understand. He had never been subjected to Mother's relentless expectations, her acid words, her suffocating obsession with perfection. Some burdens are invisible to those who were never forced to carry them. Well, truth be told, Sirius always rejected them, which he never could.
Flashback
As Corvus departed with his grandfather, I remained behind, trapped in the familiar triangle of blood and bitterness.
Grandfather sat in his chair, composed as ever, fingertips pressed together, elbows resting lightly on the armrests. It was his thinking posture. Dangerous things usually followed.
Sirius broke the silence first.
"So what now?" he drawled. "The brat is either a hybrid Seer or a walking spyglass who can track us even when we're taking a dump. And that Lestrange kid…" He snorted. "Far too clever for his lineage. His father's as dull as a troll, his mother as volatile as a hypogriff. How they produced something that sharp is beyond comprehension."
Grandfather did not look amused.
"Bellatrix was not always like this," he said calmly. "Extensive memory charms. Prolonged exposure to the Cruciatus. That is what shaped her into what you see now. She was once more like you. Hot-headed, yes, but fiercely protective of those she loved."
Sirius recoiled as if struck.
"I refuse to believe she is anything like me."
"Believe what you wish," Grandfather replied evenly. "It does not change the truth. In any case, we have matters more pressing than your ego. Such as survival. And the general preference not to die."
I leaned forward then, compelled to speak.
"I agree with Grandfather," I said quietly. "We have more important concerns. I also heard Corvus say something… unsettling. That the Dark Lord would vanish for fourteen years, only to return afterward."
Both of them looked at me now.
"As far as I can tell," I continued, "the Dark Lord is not the sort to hide willingly for even four years, let alone fourteen. Which means whatever happens to him in the next three will remove him from the board entirely. Long enough for the world to forget him. Long enough for us to act."
Sirius scoffed, but I did not stop.
"And I agree with my godson. Whatever must be done, must be done after the Dark Lord falls for the first time."
Silence followed. Then Sirius laughed, sharp and unkind.
"Do you have a single original thought left, Reggie?" he sneered. "And what's this rubbish I'm hearing about you committing suicide? I always knew you were a coward."
The words landed exactly where they were meant to.
I bit my lip, tasting blood. Not from fear. From restraint.
I stood.
"Grandfather," I said, voice measured to the point of coldness, "I must take my leave. I have other commitments."
I paused at the door, my hand resting on ancient wood.
"I wish you luck," I added softly, "in your endeavor to combat darkness."
Then, with a glance back at Sirius, I finished,
"And stupidity."
I closed the door behind me, leaving echoes, old ghosts, and a family that had never learned how to listen.
____________________
Days slipped by, heavy and slow, until the year turned upon itself and renewed its mask. With it came my godson's birthday.
I sent him gifts chosen with care, perhaps with hope. First editions of Spellman's Syllabary and Rune's Dictionary. A handful of volumes from the Black Library, books whose margins carried the dust of generations. And lastly, a broomstick.
Something light. Something fast. Something that could still outrun fate, if only for a while.
His reply came not by owl, but by raven. Dark wings, sharp eyes.
Corvus pointed me to a book.
And within its pages, I found the word that changed everything.
Horcrux.
So this was the secret of the Dark Lord's immortality. Not legend. Not divine favor. But fragmentation. An incomplete ritual, a precursor to Lych transformation.
A method whispered about with revulsion, deemed too crude, too self-mutilating, too profane even for families like mine, who have never shied away from darkness.
Suddenly, so much made sense.
Why the Dark Lord seemed increasingly unhinged. Why his presence felt less human with each passing month. Why his cruelty no longer felt calculated, but compulsive. A soul divided is not merely weakened; it is distorted.
Did he take Kreacher to that cave to hide one of them?
The answer rose unbidden, cold and certain.
Yes.
As I began to plan an expedition, assembling resolve piece by fragile piece, another revelation arrived from my Seer godson.
It contained a few lines, that made me afraid and disgusted.
He has five. Destroying one will not end him. It will only warn him, and he will hide the others more securely. Wait till his first fall, if possible, consult Lord Black.
I stared at the words for a long time.
Five.
Not one sin. Not a desperate gamble. But a system. A design.
In that moment, I understood the scale of what I faced. Not merely the Dark Lord's deathlessness, but the depth of his preparation. His patience. His certainty that the world would never dare to oppose him in the ways that mattered.
Shall I consult my grandfather?
The question lingered in my mind like a held breath. There were few paths left to me now, and fewer still that did not end in silence or blood. If anyone could hear what I was about to say without flinching, it would be him.
"Kreacher," I said softly.
The elf appeared at once, spine bent, eyes bright with fierce devotion.
"Could you please inform my grandfather that I wish to have an appointment with him?"
Kreacher bowed so low his long nose nearly brushed the floor.
"Yes, Kreacher will follow Master Regulus's command right away," he croaked, pride and purpose trembling in his voice.
With a sharp crack, he vanished.
I remained where I was, alone with my thoughts and the weight of what I intended to ask. Consulting Grandfather was not merely a request for counsel. It was an admission. A gamble. Perhaps even a confession.
But if I was to walk into the dark knowingly, then I would do so with my eyes open… and with at least one truth spoken aloud.