I close my eyes, crumpling the scrap of parchment in my hands. For the first time, I wish the Dark Lord did not value my skills as an assassin quite so much. Or, that he did not feel the need to test us all so frequently.

Without glancing at the words again, I can remember them all.

‘If you kill Sirius Black, I will deposit 100,000 galleons into your Gringotts account.’

The handwriting was unmistakeable and the threat was clear. It simply stated: you must kill your brother. You must prove your loyalty. Money- ha! Money was merely an excuse, a cover-up. Without a question this was a test I couldn’t fail.

Ordering a firewhiskey, I muse a while.

--

Crouching outside some dingy pub in London, I am waiting for him. I saw him go in a few hours ago. Sirius had been visiting his werewolf friend and had come in for a drink afterwards.

My position is possibly the best and worst I could hope to be in. For one, it has an excellent vantage point, yet no one could ever see me, and it is precisely where he will vanish into the alley. On the negative side, it’s terribly cramped and uncomfortable.

Merlin’s arse, he’s taking a long time. He must be drinking a whole keg, I think, smirking. Suddenly, I recall a time in our boyhood when we still were speaking, enjoyed each other’s company... in other words, when we were kids that weren’t on opposite sides of a war. Once, after father had left on business and mother had went to her bedroom with a stiff glass of sherry, Sirius and I had stolen into the cellar and together, downed an entire bottle of Ogden’s finest. The headaches had been the devil himself, but worth it.

I shook myself, trying to rid my mind of the memory. He wasn’t my brother. He wasn’t. Sirius Black wasn’t my brother; Sirius Black had been disowned long ago.

A deep breath cleared my throat but not my head. While I waited, I thought some more, hoping for a respite from my mental and physical anguish.

--

I raise my wand threateningly, yet half-hearted. ‘Stand down, Sirius.’

‘Are you kidding me, little brother?’ he jeers, snorting. ‘The day you beat me in a duel is the day that Voldemort and Dumbledore decide to shack up. And besides, stand down? Who told you to say that?’

Sirius had always managed to remain frighteningly cheerful in the face of death. Scowling, I took another step towards him.

‘You know who I work for. You know what I’ll do to you.’
He barks out with laughter, shaking his head.

‘Crucio!’ I shout. The red jet of light bounces off the wall behind him and wipes the smirk off his face. Suddenly, Sirius looks rather like a puppy that’s been kicked by its master. In an instant, his wand is turned towards me, his face set grimly.

‘If that’s how you want to play, baby brother, it’s your damn funeral,’ he says, staring at me. I keep my wand aloft. This is it, I think, the time to finally break all connections with him.
We begin to duel, each of us parrying the other’s half-attacks cautiously. For some reason, I believe that Sirius couldn’t bear to kill me.

‘Avada Kedavra!’ The green flies towards his head like a net come to smother him. Sirius drops to the floor a second before he would have been killed, a second before I would have been his murderer.

Panting, he rises. There is something like betrayal in his eyes when he sees me breathing heavily, still standing there, and I try not to flinch.

Sirius opens his mouth one or two times before he actually speaks. ‘What was I thinking? I forgot, my brother killed himself at only sixteen and went to live with the devil.’
He’s now ready to vanquish the demon, me, everything he fights against. After all, I am only a Death Eater. I stumble backwards and fire one last purple beam, emotion pounding in my head like the worst of hangovers.
Not my brother, I think, not my brother, and I Disapparate.

--

I land with a thud in our old cellar, and without my usual grace, topple onto a rickety crate. Swearing, I look around. It’s far too dark to see anything.

I’m surprised for a moment that my mother hasn’t heard me crash into the room, but then I realise that it’s nearly one in the morning and she’s probably out cold from her sherry. How convenient. Because, for some reason, my mind seemed to be deliberately desperate to take me to this destination, back to the place that I had travelled to earlier in my bored musings. Not altogether a bad place (there were copious amounts of liquor, I noted, as I lit my wand), but an odd one.

Apparently, my subconscious either was feeling sentimental or wanted terribly to be inebriated.
Just as I lean down to pick up a dusty decanter of something that looks aged well, there is a loud crack and a shattering of glass. Someone else has Apparated into the cellar- and of course, no other someone than my dear brother.

Sirius always had a colourful vocabulary. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’ he finishes, to round out his chorus of cursing. He’s been cut up a good bit on his legs. Covering my mouth, I hold back a snicker. Something escapes, though, a little chuckle, and he turns.

‘You!’ he moans. ‘I should have known you’d be here!’ His wand is out in an instant and he flourishes it, sparks flying, but I sidestep the attack easily. When I return the favour, he can’t move out of the way. A quick Shield Charm just barely stops the spell.

He won’t know that it was only a Stunner I sent at him, not a Cruciatus.

‘Enough!’ Sirius says suddenly. The sound cuts through the air like a mug slammed too hard on the counter. We both hover their in the conflict for what seems to be an eternity before Sirius sighs and sits down on one of the crates.

Resigned, he begins to see to his wounds. I stare at him, trying to figure it out. Why wouldn’t he just attack me? Why wouldn’t he simply kill him, or at least Stun him? Maybe what I had always heard was true: he was a good person, under all the rude comments and bravado. Now I hesitated to attack him. Certainly, a better person then me. Guilt boils in my veins and almost forces itself out as another attack on my flesh and blood, but I try to calm myself.

‘You wouldn’t have killed me, anyway,’ Sirius mutters, lowly and probably not intended for my ears.

‘What?’ I ask.

‘You wouldn’t have killed me,’ he says, glancing up briefly. I register that we’re a lot closer together now. ‘You’re too much of a bloody coward to kill your own brother.’
Indignant, I start to say something, but he cuts me off with a wave of his hand.

‘You know it’s true.’

He’s finished bandaging up his leg and focuses his attention to my face instead. It’s a tad unnerving, having Sirius study me with a disgusted and bewildered look in his grey eyes. I gaze back at him, the silence itching in my ears.
Finally, he breaks it. ‘You’ve gotten older,’ he points out stupidly. I snort.

‘So have you.’

Awkwardness creeps back in momentarily, but Sirius, ever the conversationalist (or, rather, ever the one to be afraid of too much contemplation), reaches down and plucks two somethings off of the floor.

Bottles of mead. Ogden’s finest.

‘Here’s to forgetting this all, eh?’ he says, passing me the drink. I can’t believe he’s doing this. Perhaps, to him, this is just another battle in this never-ending war.

Does he always settle down for a nice carousal with his foes?

Giving up, I pull the cork out of my bottle. ‘To forget. To forgive, and forget,’ I add, joining him in a toast.

Forgiveness would be a blessing to my tortured mind, to know that maybe, just maybe, I was redeemable.

‘Maybe not forgive,’ he whispers. And he looks away as the glass clinks and I resolve myself to prove him wrong.


Author's Note: Thank you for reading my piece of junk. I love Regulus and Sirius, and I only kinda like this fic.