Bluebells
It had been such a simple mistake, Regulus thought. All Gloria Greengrass had done was to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
She had stepped into the clearing just when Bella had been questioning him about his loyalty, about his value, about what he had actually done to gain a place in such a prestigious organisation so young, and why had he somehow managed to avoid killing anyone since his first kill? Didn’t he enjoy it? Was his loyalty with his brother?
“No, of course not,” he had said, furiously.
“And that intelligence of yours,” she had said, tapping her cigarette against the tree. He had watched the ash fall. “I’d like to test it.”
“Does this have the Dark Lord’s approval?”
“Of course,” she had purred. “I want you to murder someone. I want you to murder someone without using the Killing Curse, and not get caught. Try to get someone else arrested for it.”
“And if I don’t?” He had not been sure what he meant. Bella had arched an eyebrow.
“Are you saying you’ll refuse?”
“I’m saying I might fail.”
“You’re a Black. Blacks never fail.”
That was when they had heard the crack of a foot on a twig and looked across to see Gloria Greengrass, heavily breathing as if she had been running, the sunlight lighting the strands of her hair so they looked like twists of white hot gold. She was staring at them in horror, having heard enough of their conversation to come to a single conclusion.
“You’re both Death Eaters,” she had said, frowning.
Bella had looked straight at him and nodded to Gloria.
Regulus had seen Gloria drop the ring. Gloria was two years younger than him, but he had always thought she was bright. It had been rather slow to call them Death Eaters, but whether she had spoken or not, there was nothing she could have done; from the moment Bella saw her, she was as good as dead. But she had dropped the ring. She had loved that ring; she would never lose it. Therefore, if it was found, people would know that something had happened in that small part of the woods.
Regulus had wondered afterwards why he did not pick it up. He thought that perhaps he wanted to get caught, because even then, he had already begun to plan how he was going to kill her, and how he was going to get away with it, and he was disgusted with himself at how easy it was. How simple it seemed. Why not introduce some chance?
He had Imperiused her to not scream, to not run, to stay still. He had then picked a few leaves from the hemlock growing at their feet and forced her to chew and swallow them. He had ordered her to go back to her brother, at which point he had ended the curse.
Bella had asked, “Is that all?”
He had replied that he had only just begun. They had heard the footsteps of someone else and both had Apparated, Regulus to the top of the hill, just besides the picnic blanket where Gloria was talking to her brother and Helen Clearwater. Regulus had hid behind the tree and waited for them to go, as well as for Winston Flint to cross the field and reach the formal garden.
From behind the tree, Regulus watched her lie down. Her chest was still rising and falling. Regulus thought about Apparating there and then, as he knew the poison would kill her. She had maybe ten minutes to live. But he felt as though he ought to watch. He watched her begin to gasp. He watched her sit up and try to speak, to scream, but no sound came out. He watched her body writhe, heard her breaths become short and ragged until suddenly, they stopped.
Regulus was sure no one would be paying attention, but cast a Disillusionment Charm upon himself just in case.
As gently as he could, so as not to leave bruises, he positioned her body so it looked as if she had been, and still was, merely sleeping. He placed one of Bella’s hairs in her pocket, and some cigarette ash on her belly, then Apparated to the house.
After her body was found, and Regulus had been interviewed, he went to the Malfoy wine cellar, in need of a drink. There he found Winston Flint, drunk and talking wildly about Gloria, and their one kiss. As much as Regulus wanted to pin it on Bella, he knew that was hopeless, and here was a perfect alternative.
He left Winston briefly and found Bella. He asked her to make him a Portkey out of the house and another back, for an hour later. Illegal Portkeys were a speciality of Bella’s. He had then borrowed some of the Polyjuice Potion he had earlier noticed in Rodolphus’ luggage, as the Lestrange couple had been planning on staying the night. He had called his house-elf, Kreacher, and asked him to get one of Fabian Prewett’s hairs. Kreacher achieved this by pretending to be polishing the frames of a painting as Prewett walked past, blaming Prewett’s sudden burst of pain on the cleaning liquid he was using.
Regulus had strolled into the Ministry and managed to make Gloria look like she had been abused. He shuddered at the memory, but it had been important. He had not expected someone to come in, but taken it in his stride, before returning to the Malfoy Manor as if he had never left. He had gone straight to the wine cellar, where Winston had been throwing up in the corner. Regulus helped him to a bathroom, where the Auror, not Prewett, but that other one, had found them both.
Over the next week, he had talked to Winston Flint, becoming his confidante, planting the notion in his brain that he had hurt Gloria, but had been so disgusted with himself that he had excised it from his memory. The night in the pub after the funeral had just been the final of several such insinuations.
So when the poor boy made the same mistake as his girlfriend, of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, it was simple enough to convince him that he had murdered her but forgotten. Severus Snape had erased all memory of ever going to the Lestrange Mansion in Winston, but not, at Bella’s command, in Florence Parkinson. Florence had slept with Bella’s husband, and Bella was punishing her with exquisite cruelty, giving evidence against Winston being the cherry on the cake. Regulus could see the beautiful elegance of it, even if the idea disgusted him.
He had left nothing to chance, except the ring. But chance had played in his favour, and what initially had been seen as a boy wanting to retain a remnant of his first love, had then been taken as proof that he had murdered her.
Regulus Black had managed to get Winston Flint, an innocent man ” no, worse, an innocent boy ” life imprisonment in Azkaban.
Well done me, he thought bitterly.
That had been July 1978.
In April 1979 Regulus awoke, gasping for breath. He had been drowning. He could remember the cloying sensation of water flooding his mouth, hands squeezing his throat and his other limbs, the pressure above his head until the bliss of darkness.
He looked round. He was surrounded by bluebells. In fact as far as he could see there were just bluebells, but they seemed to peter out in the distance replaced by empty white space. Frowning, he stood up and looked around. In every direction countless bluebells, but above him only a dull white sky and behind him by a few metres, two gravestones. He walked towards them and knelt in order to read the inscriptions properly.
They both looked fairly new. The first one had a name he didn’t recognise but, with a cold sinking feeling, he recognised the date. The second one had the words “Gloria Greengrass” inscribed upon it.
He pulled three blades of grass from the ground and plaited them together before placing them on the top of the first grave stone. He picked a few bluebell flowers, feeling the sap oozing out as he squeezed the stem between his thumbnail and forefinger. Catching the delicate flowers in his other palm, he placed them delicately on top of Gloria’s grave. His hand remained on the cool stone. He should leave. Could he leave? He’d been drowning and now he was here. He must be dreaming.
It was a beautiful place and, he thought, he didn’t mind dreaming about it. Maybe he had been brought here to die. But who had brought him here?
For some reason this did not concern him anywhere near as much as it normally would. Instead, looking round, he thought that this was a beautiful place to die. Beyond the graves and surrounding them, the bluebells danced in the same gentle breeze which rustled the leaves of the trees around him. He hadn’t noticed the trees before. Maybe they hadn’t been there.
He noticed the sunlight. Or rather the light, as through the trees branches, which definitely hadn’t been there a moment before, the sky looked not a cloudy nondescript off-white but a blazing pure colour that shone through the branches in shafts of pure light. He just couldn’t see the sun.
Surely if he was dreaming he would invent a sun?
It was, he now realised, very like the woods in Malfoy Manor. That had to be where he was, and the near-death experience he had had whilst drowning had temporarily dulled his senses. That would explain it.
But who had brought him to the place where he had killed for the second time?
He had had to do it. He’d had no choice. No, Regulus interrupted his thoughts angrily. He was not an animal. There was too much tooth and claw in the world, but somehow humanity managed to rise above it. Or some of them did.
Humans were not animals, defined to act by the desperate desire to eat, to breathe, to have sex. Animals did not have a choice in their actions. Humans always had a choice, no matter how horrific it seemed.
He had made his choice and he had no regrets. Gloria had been far too young to die, but for him to remain ostensibly loyal, she had had to die. His loyalty to the Death Eaters had been brief. It had just taken the look in the eyes of the first person he killed to change his mind.
That had been earth shattering. In fact, thinking about it, it had been as disorientating as the drowning. Suddenly his judgement about the world around him had been proved wrong, and he had been plunged into a world the most basic tenets of which he no longer understood. And, worst of all, Sirius had been right, damn him. Sirius had been right.
Regulus did not like regrets. He had made his choice and all he could do was use the choice he had made thus far for the better. He could do one thing he knew Sirius would be incapable of, which was defeat the Dark Lord from within.
Sirius would never, could never, know of his change of heart, but that, Regulus thought, was part of his penance. It had taken months before he could sleep without seeing the last pleading look of the first person, the person who he presumed was the soul named on this grave, he killed every time he closed his eyes.
It was just that Muggle and Gloria. Two deaths. Two tears in his soul. There would be no more and, with the Horcrux destroyed, something he was sure Kreacher would do no matter how difficult it was, the next person to get within shooting distance of Voldemort would kill the bastard. But it wouldn’t be him.
His thoughts were interrupted by Bella’s voice. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, but he was proud of himself for not having jumped at the sound.
“Why are you here?” she said, speaking very slowly and as if she was expecting an exceptionally good answer. There was the faint hint of boredom, as if he was not even worthy of her full wrath. She could only be a few feet behind him.
“It’s important,” Regulus said, softly and without turning round. He could smell the smoke from her cigarette, interfering with the sharp smell of the bluebells. He stood up, saying, “It’s important to honour the dead.”
Why did he say that? He’d had no choice in being here, he did not know who had brought him here. Maybe it was Bella. But then why did she ask? Somehow, despite his confusion, he felt very calm. Maybe it was the birds which had started to sing.
“The dead?” she laughed harshly. “Why should we honour them? They have failed. They have lost.”
“I sometimes think they’ve won,” Regulus replied, still speaking in the same calm tone. “For all worldly suffering to end, what bliss that must be.”
“You are talking rubbish. Death will not defeat the Dark Lord. Have you so little faith in him?”
“None at all,” Regulus said, smiling a smile Bella could not see but could hear. He laughed. He felt younger than he had since before Sirius left home. He turned around to face her. She was leaning against a white birch tree, the solid black of her robes at odds to its peeling cream bark. Bella looked““odd. As if she was not really there, but it was a half remembered image of her. Her body seemed a vague outline, as if it was underwater, but her face and the expression of acute disgust, was in clear focus.
He smiled. “Bella, I’m not going to fight you and I’m not going to run. Just kill me. Kill your eighteen-year-old cousin as he walks away.”
He expected her to kill him there and then, but her face had changed from anger to confusion.
“Oh, poor Bella.” He laughed again. “You don’t understand at all, do you? There are better things than power and dispensing death and I will not do it any longer. I’ll pick up my sins and walk, slowly. I welcome death with open arms.”
He turned around and walked through the bluebells. They were gorgeous and this was a beautiful place to die. He expected to hear her scream the Killing Curse, or to see the flash of green light in the corners of his eyes before he died.
However there was no sound. The birdsong seemed to be getting louder as he walked further from the graves, and the wind was singing louder and louder. The sunlight was getting brighter, but he was still calm, albeit mildly confused. In fact he thought it was beautiful. The sunlight was getting so bright that he could not see where he was going, indeed he could see no more trees and he seemed to be walking in an empty white space, except for the verdant grass and the deep blue bluebells at his feet. Otherwise, there was nothing else there.
Suddenly, out of the whiteness, Bella appeared in front of him, her expression contorted in an animalistic snarl as with one hand she grabbed his chin and the other his hair, yanking his head to one side and digging her nail into his flesh.
She hissed into his face, her spit landing on his cheek, “Then you deserve to die!” before knocking him backwards hard. He expected to feel the breath knocked out of him when he hit the soil but instead he kept falling. He could see Bella looking down on him but she seemed to be standing on nothing, a wisp of black surrounded by an immensity of white.
And still he was falling although, actually, he could not be sure whether he was falling or rising. Looking across his body, he couldn’t quite see the tips of his fingers or his feet, as they were overwhelmed by the white light““it was so bright.
And then he realised. He was dying. He had probably been dead for a while, since before he saw Bella, since the moment the water filled his lungs. He laughed and was enveloped by the light.
In London, Bellarix knocked on the door of Grimmauld Place. When it eventually opened she did not bother stepping in but explained to her aunt and uncle that their son had reneged on his duties as a Death Eater, and they had been forced to deal with him accordingly.
She wasn’t sure exactly who had dealt with Regulus, but it didn’t matter. It was a pity, she supposed, that such an intelligent boy had strayed but it was his own fault. They had offered him the world and he had turned it down. She did not understand the look of horror, quickly replaced by deep sorrow, on her uncle’s face. He should be pleased that the brat had been disposed of, not upset.
For some reason he felt obliged to report his son missing, in the vain hope that she had been lying to him. Fabian Prewett poked his nose in again, questioning Bellatrix heavily, but nothing could be proven.
Nothing could ever be proven.
Tooth and Claw by welshdevondragon
Chapter Notes: Final chapter- once again a huge thank you to Soraya :) She's brilliant.
Chapter Endnotes: Was that ending too weird? The original ending would have meant I needed an AU warning- Soraya suggested going into the afterlife, which I immediately thought was a brilliant idea. I think I had way too much fun writing an afterlife scene for someone who doesn't believe in it, but it certainly exists in Potterverse so I'm keeping it.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it and please leave a review :)