Marauders - Always - Part One

The Augury Nest

"I know," Remus said, nodding.

Sirius shook his head and picked the box of records up from the table, carrying them down the hallway to the bedroom, muttering in anger as he went.

Remus slid a marker into the pages of his book and sat forward, dropping his legs from the edge of the coffee table with a sigh. Sirius was already pissed - he was only going to get worse with the news of the book Peter was harboring. He shook his head and dropped the book onto the table, bending forward and rubbing his eyes with exhaustion that hadn't even been extended yet. He got up and started down the hallway, intent on telling Sirius about what he'd found in Peter's room.

Sirius was in the bedroom, tucking the box of records safely in their place the low shelf on the bottom part of his nightstand.

"I wouldn't trust him if I was you."

Sirius looked up. Regulus's Portrait was sentient again, looking right at him with a frown.

"Oh look who's awake and talking now," Sirius said. "Have a good chat with Nymphadora, did you?"

Regulus's eyes burned from the sheet of parchment in the frame as he let the words die away, then he repeated, "You can't trust Peter."

"Peter?" Sirius snorted. "I mean he did a stupid thing, leaving a kid alone, but he's one of my best mates. He's just a stupid little fucker is all." He shook his head, finished putting up the records, and stood upright, staring at the portrait. "Where have you been? It's been days since you talked to me. You knew it was morning sickness the other day - how'd you know that? Lily's pregnant and I've been having --"

"I don't care if Peter is one of your best mates," Regulus's Portrait interrupted, frustrated, "He's lying and sneaking about, putting little kids in danger and telling them to lie to you and to your husband and he's reading --"

Sirius laughed, "Oh so now you think people who keep secrets and tell lies are untrustworthy?"

The Portrait loooked up at him. 

"Where was that attitude for the past - I dunno, Reg - seventeen years?"

"It was entirely different with me," Regulus's Portrait snapped. "I was forced into that life. I didn't choose it. I didn't go reading propaganda and searching for it. I didn't choose, I --"

"You DID choose it!" Sirius interrupted, "You chose it over and over all the time growing up, you raced down the stairs every time, begged mother and father to let you attend and --"

"I didn't! I was a child! I asked the Dark Lord to play fucking gobstones, I didn't know what I was getting into. I was forced to keep my eyes open, to see and --"

"You were always eager to --"

"-- being pushed into it --"

"--practically throwing yourself, wanting to be around Volde--"

"Don't say the fucking name! Do you not learn? I'm DEAD because you couldn't stop saying his name! When will you learn to --"

"You're fucking dead because you were a follower of You Know Who! Because you were always falling at his gods damned feet instead of choosing ME, your own brother. Because you CHOSE to SERVE him."

"I was forced into it because you were too weak and mother and father cut you loose. Always crying --"

"Spare me your fucking martyr speech, Regulus! Weak? Me? Fuck you. Try being fucking tortured every day for hours and told you're shit and you're not good enough and you're expendable and you should die for what you are. Try being the spare. Try being the piece of shit neither parent wanted, the disappointment, the stain, the one they could practice their cruciatus curses on. Try being the one pissing yourself on father's office floor and see how you like it, see if you think it's fucking weak then."

"W-wait. What?" the Portrait's eyes narrowed with concern, the jaw dropped a bit.

"You're the one that betrayed me, you're the one I never could trust. So don't talk shit about Peter because he made one little mistake when YOU turned your back on me again and again and again our entire lives, our entire childhood, when YOU mocked me and did just like them - torturing me, spreading rumors about me all over the school, stealing letters and blackmailing me, treating me like shit just like they always did, treating me like rubbish, being a little bastard all your life to me... then showing up when you need help, when you needed me, and expecting me to drop everything and just accept you, just trust you, just believe you were different."

Sirius picked the Portrait up.

"I'm sorry, I --" stammered Regulus from the portrait, but Sirius wasn't listening.

"How many of our secrets did you broadcast to all the death eaters? Huh? How many things did you run back and report to him? Was it worth it? Was it worth being killed by him? Was he everything you hoped and dreamed in the end? When he looked you right in the face and slaughtered you the same as he did to father? Just like Alphard said he would? Fuck YOU, Regulus... Fuck you."

And he threw the frame across the room as hard as his arm would let him.