Work Text:
The throne room of House Black had been built to humble men before they ever opened their mouths.
It did so with height first.
The vaulted ceiling arched like the inside of a cathedral, ribbed in black stone veined with silver, each carved beam crossing overhead like the bones of some ancient beast laid bare. Long banners fell between narrow windows of coloured glass, each one bearing the sigil of the royal house: the silver star, the crowned serpent, the moon-white hound. Beneath them, braziers burned with perfumed oil, the smoke rising in thin pale ribbons that sweetened the air without ever quite disguising the iron smell of armour, polished steel, old wax, damp wool, and too many bodies packed too close together under the watchful eye of power.
The second thing it did was silence.
Not fully—there was no such thing as full silence in a room this large—but the kind that pressed on the skin. The kind that made a cough sound like sacrilege. The kind that caused noblemen to lower their voices, petitioners to tremble, courtiers to smile with all the strain of men standing at the edge of a cliff.
The third thing it did was remind everyone exactly where they stood.
At the far end of the chamber, upon a raised dais of black marble, sat the royal family.
King Orion Black upon the central throne, all angles and severity, dressed in velvet dark as midnight, a silver circlet set upon his brow like something meant less for ornament and more for warning. Beside him sat Queen Walburga, draped in black and emerald, her jewels flashing cold fire at her throat and wrists, her face composed into the beautiful, terrible stillness she wore as other women wore perfume.
At the king’s right sat Prince Sirius Black, heir to the throne.
At the queen’s left sat Prince Regulus Black, youngest son of the house.
All four seats had been carved from the same dark stone, though the royal pair’s thrones rose highest, and the princes’ were slightly lower, enough to communicate hierarchy while preserving the theatre of lineage. Each throne was backed in silver filigree, shaped like curling brambles and stars. Each armrest ended in the head of a hound with bared teeth.
Sirius looked like he would have preferred to be mauled by one.
He was slouched so low in his throne that only breeding and expensive tailoring kept him from looking entirely indecent. One long leg was stretched farther out than protocol allowed. His fingers drummed restlessly against the carved stone arm. His dark hair, too long for court, spilled untidily over the collar of his doublet and into his eyes. Every few moments he tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling as though considering whether death might descend from it if he glared hard enough.
It had been three hours.
Three hours of petitions, disputes, inheritances, tithes, grievances over grazing rights, grievances over taxes, grievances over marriage contracts, grievances over river access, grievances over grievances. Three hours of men with bad teeth bowing too low and women with too much perfume weeping too loudly and minor nobles pretending they had not rehearsed their humility before polished glass.
Sirius had been born for this room, had been told so from the moment he could stand straight enough for formal dress, but at present he looked as though birth right was a personal insult.
Near his throne stood a servant in dark livery trimmed with the silver of the royal household, a wine ewer in one hand and a folded cloth over the other arm. He had been placed there because the heir to the throne required attendance. He remained there because Sirius, in defiance of every sensible instinct, had developed a habit of keeping him close.
Remus Lupin stood with perfect composure.
He was not a courtier. That much was plain in the careful restraint of him, in the quiet economy of his movements, in the fact that he had none of their peacocking grace and all of their observational intelligence sharpened into something finer, more dangerous. His hair was fair brown, his face lean, his mouth usually on the verge of a smile that rarely made it all the way to his eyes. There were old scars at the edge of his collar and one across the back of his hand where it wrapped around the silver handle of the ewer. He carried himself too well for a man born to service and too cautiously for a man who had ever been allowed to forget it.
Sirius liked that about him.
Among other things.
Among far too many things.
Without moving anything below the shoulders, Sirius tilted his head toward Remus and muttered from the corner of his mouth, “If one more man comes forward to explain the tragedy of his neighbour's sheep crossing a ditch, I’m going to fake a seizure.”
Remus did not look at him. “Your Highness, that would be undignified.”
“I’m willing to suffer for art.”
“Generous of you.”
Sirius exhaled loudly through his nose. “God, I hate court.”
“Yes,” Remus said. “This remains shocking news.”
“I mean it.”
“So do I.”
Sirius turned his head just enough to glare up at him. “You’re enjoying this.”
“No,” said Remus. “I’m enduring it silently, which is different and, incidentally, what you are meant to be doing.”
“I have endured seventeen full years of this family. There should be a medal.”
“There will likely be a crown.”
“That is not an improvement.”
At that, Remus’s mouth twitched. Barely. A tiny betrayal.
Sirius saw it immediately and smiled with wicked satisfaction.
There it was. There you are.
He would have said it aloud if his mother were not sitting an arm’s reach away.
Walburga Black had not looked at him once in the last quarter hour, and that in itself was a danger. Sirius knew every gradation of his mother’s displeasure the way sailors knew the sea. There were storms that announced themselves with thunder and lightning and glorious destruction. There were others that came in stillness, in the unnatural flattening of the water, in the pause before everything tore loose.
He straightened a fraction, enough to keep from being hissed at in front of half the kingdom, and forced his attention forward.
Another petitioner was being dismissed.
The chamberlain struck his staff once against the stone.
“By leave of Their Majesties,” he announced, voice carrying high through the chamber, “the court will take a brief interlude before the afternoon petitions resume.”
There was a rustle through the room, controlled but immediate. Courtiers shifted. Nobles leaned toward one another in murmured conversation. A group of musicians at the lower edge of the hall adjusted their instruments. At the centre of the cleared floor, where petitioners had knelt all morning like sinners before an altar, servants moved swiftly to make space.
Entertainment, then.
A reward, perhaps, for not throwing himself bodily down the dais stairs.
Sirius rolled one shoulder and muttered, “Finally.”
King Orion sat as if carved from the same material as his throne. Queen Walburga folded one gloved hand over the other, cool and expectant. Regulus, until that point still as a painted saint, seemed to come alive by imperceptible degrees.
Sirius noticed because Sirius noticed everything about his brother, even when he wished he did not.
Regulus sat straighter.
Not enough to be remarked upon by anyone less accustomed to him, but enough. His fingers, which had rested neatly upon his lap, tightened once against the dark fabric of his doublet. His chin lifted. His lashes lowered and rose again. A faint colour—subtle, but real—touched the high line of his cheeks.
Sirius frowned.
A troupe of performers entered from the side archway with all the tinkling noise and exaggerated flourish of practiced charm. Two musicians in motley, one woman in ribbons carrying knives, another jester in bells and painted gloves who bowed so low his cap brushed the floor. They spread out across the centre of the hall while a murmur passed through the spectators, relieved for something easy, something bright, something that did not involve land disputes.
Then one more stepped forward.
Sirius, who had been prepared to hate him on sight simply for not being sleep, paused.
The man was young.
Perhaps not much older than they were—twenty at most, perhaps a year older, perhaps a year less. Dark curls tied badly at the nape of his neck, the sort that escaped no matter what one did with them. He wore no bells, no painted smile, no absurd cap. His motley was darker than the others’, rich crimson and black, with leather bracers on his forearms and high boots meant for balance and quick movement. There was a scar along one jaw. He carried himself like a man who found the crowd amusing rather than intimidating, which, in the throne room of House Black, qualified as either bravery or idiocy.
Or both.
He bowed low, though even the bow had insolence in it.
When he straightened, he was smiling.
Not at the king. Not at the queen.
At the room.
At all of them as if he were the one indulging their attention.
Sirius’s mouth tilted despite himself. Huh.
Beside him, without taking his eyes from the floor below, Remus said quietly, “That’s the one.”
“The one what?”
“The one your brother has been waiting for.”
Sirius turned.
Regulus was staring.
Not politely. Not with mild interest. Not with the detached approval expected of a prince during a court entertainment.
He was staring with the sort of fixed, helpless concentration usually seen in poets, lunatics, and men already halfway into trouble.
He leaned forward just slightly on his throne, enough that the gold embroidery at his shoulders caught the light. His mouth had softened. There was a flush spread delicate and unmistakable over his cheeks and the tips of his ears. His gaze tracked the performer with such naked intensity that for one deranged moment Sirius thought surely the entire court could see it, surely even their mother must turn and notice the disaster blooming two feet away.
But Walburga’s attention remained on the troupe in general, cool and appraising.
Orion did not move at all.
No one else appeared to be watching Regulus.
Sirius stared at his brother for another long second, then snapped his head toward Remus.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
Remus’s eyelids lowered a fraction. “Language, Your Highness.”
“Don’t ‘Your Highness’ me. What do you mean, that’s the one?”
“The jester.”
“I can see he’s a jester.”
“Performer,” Remus corrected.
“He’s juggling axes in the king’s hall.”
“He does other things as well, I imagine.”
Sirius looked at him incredulously. “You know who he is.”
Remus finally glanced at him then, calm as winter. “Yes.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me my brother’s developed a fixation on a man whose employment includes throwing blades for applause?”
“You did not ask.”
“Why would I ask that?”
“You ask a great many things that are none of your business. It seemed statistically inevitable.”
Sirius made an outraged noise under his breath. “Remus.”
“Mm.”
“Who is he?”
Remus watched the performer below take one axe, then two, feeling the weight of them in his palms as the room’s attention tightened. “Barty Crouch.”
Sirius blinked. “Crouch?”
“The son of the late court fool.”
Sirius looked back down.
Now that Remus said it, he could almost see the resemblance—not in feature, perhaps, but in posture, in the ease with spectacle, in the manner of a man who understood that courts consumed amusement the way wolves consumed meat: greedily, and with no gratitude once finished.
“The old king’s jester?” Sirius said.
“Mm.”
“I thought he died.”
“He did.”
“That’s a grim career path.”
“For some,” Remus said. “For others, it is hereditary.”
Sirius huffed a laugh despite himself, but his gaze returned at once to Regulus.
His little brother had not moved.
God.
He looked besotted.
It was not a dramatic thing. Regulus was too well-bred, too self-contained for dramatics in public. That was Sirius’s realm, not his. But whatever he felt, he felt it with all the silent concentration of prayer. He watched Barty Crouch as though no one else existed. As though the hall had emptied around him. As though the air itself had narrowed to one figure in black and crimson, one easy smile, one pair of hands spinning polished axes through the light.
“Oh, no,” Sirius muttered. “Absolutely not.”
Remus shifted his grip on the ewer. “You sound distressed.”
“He cannot be serious.”
Remus looked down into his cup as though considering whether it required filling. “On the contrary, he appears very serious indeed.”
Sirius shot him a look. “This is not funny.”
“It is a little funny.”
“My brother is—” Sirius broke off as one of the axes spun high enough to catch the light from the upper windows in a hard silver flash. “What in God’s name is he doing?”
“Juggling.”
“With axes.”
“Yes.”
“In front of the throne.”
“Yes.”
“And Regulus is blushing at him.”
“So it would seem.”
Sirius pinched the bridge of his nose. “He can’t. He absolutely cannot.”
“Can’t what?”
“Look at servants like that.”
Remus turned his head slowly.
It was not an exaggerated movement. It was very measured, very quiet, and for that reason all the more devastating. He did not raise his brows. He did not smile. He simply looked at Sirius in a way that suggested words were no longer required because hypocrisy had entered the room dressed in princely velvet and was now attempting to lecture others on decorum.
Sirius held the stare for all of two seconds before muttering, “That’s different.”
Remus’s expression did not change. “Is it.”
“Yes.”
“In what way.”
Sirius opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again. “In—many ways.”
“Name one.”
“I—”
“Go on.”
Sirius glared. “Don’t do that.”
“I am only asking for clarification. You seem very certain.”
“It’s not the same.”
“You are a prince,” Remus said softly. “I am a servant.”
Sirius lowered his voice instantly. “Remus—”
“Your brother is a prince,” Remus continued, still in that maddeningly even tone, “and the man he is staring at is a performer in royal employ. I confess, I am struggling to locate the vast moral distinction.”
Sirius’s ears burned. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“I mean—” He cut himself off again, furious at language for failing him while Remus remained composed enough to be unbearable. “It’s dangerous.”
Remus regarded him for a beat. “Ah.”
“There,” Sirius said, latching onto it. “There. You see?”
“I see that you have found a more flattering word for the same thing.”
Sirius leaned closer, keeping his face arranged in the particular expression of bored aristocratic disdain that allowed one to hiss treason with minimal notice. “I am not talking about appearances.”
“No?”
“No. He’s Regulus.”
Remus waited.
Sirius gestured minutely toward his brother with two impatient fingers. “He doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t know how this works.”
Remus’s mouth flattened slightly. “You think he does not understand that a prince cannot openly take a jester to court.”
“I think he’s never wanted anything he wasn’t told he could have,” Sirius snapped in a whisper, “and now he’s sitting there looking like he wants to climb down from the dais and let that lunatic throw knives at his throat if it means getting his attention.”
A sound suspiciously like a suppressed laugh escaped Remus.
Sirius turned on him. “Are you laughing at me?”
“I’m trying not to.”
“Well, stop trying.”
Below, Barty Crouch had indeed moved on from axes to knives.
Of course he had.
The musicians shifted into something quicker. He tossed one blade from hand to hand, then sent it spinning overhead in a silver blur before catching it behind his back to a scattered ripple of admiration through the hall. He grinned at the sound, wicked and pleased with himself, and bowed with theatrical flourish before drawing two more knives from the sash at his waist.
Regulus looked one heartbeat from divine revelation.
Sirius stared, appalled.
“This is a catastrophe.”
“You are dramatic.”
“He’s in love.”
“I think that may be premature.”
“He’s practically glowing.”
“He is flushed.”
“He’s leaning forward.”
“He is interested.”
“He has never leaned forward in his life, Remus, he was born sitting upright and judgmental.”
That, finally, earned him the full twitch of Remus’s mouth.
Sirius felt an unreasonable flash of triumph at being able to draw it out of him, even here, even now, with his family within striking distance and half the nobility watching the floor below.
Then Remus said, low and dry, “Perhaps he finds the knives compelling.”
Sirius gave him a flat look. “You’re enjoying this too much.”
“I am enjoying that you are scandalized by behaviour you have been enthusiastically participating in for months.”
Sirius nearly choked. “I have not been—”
“Your Highness,” Remus said, and that title in his mouth could be soft as mockery, “you have had me smuggled into your chambers twice through the west gallery, once through the library passage, and once—memorably—through the chapel crypt because you said and I quote, ‘No one ever checks for sin under the dead.’”
Sirius stared ahead with the desperate stillness of a man attempting not to visibly die at court.
After a moment he said through his teeth, “Keep your voice down.”
“I am.”
“You are evil.”
“I am practical.”
“You are impossible.”
“Yes.”
Below, Barty set the knives moving.
It was not juggling, not exactly. Not the cheerful market-square version meant for children and drunks. This was faster, tighter, more intimate with danger. The knives flashed between his hands in patterns that seemed casual until one realized casualness at that speed was another word for death. He spun them, crossed them, let one arc alarmingly close to his throat before catching it by the hilt. Gasps fluttered through the hall. Someone laughed nervously.
Barty smiled wider.
He liked frightening them.
That, more than anything, made Sirius understand.
Regulus had always possessed a terrible weakness for beautiful things with teeth.
The realization was so immediate and so unpleasant that Sirius muttered, “Oh, he is a Black after all. Wonderful.”
Remus let the cloth slip from one arm to the other. “A devastating discovery.”
Sirius watched his brother with narrowing eyes. “How long has this been going on?”
“I’m not certain what qualifies as ‘this.’”
“How long has Regulus been making eyes at a jester?”
“I have never seen him make eyes.”
“Remus.”
“I have noticed him watching.”
“How long?”
“A fortnight, perhaps.”
“A fortnight?”
“Perhaps a little longer.”
“And you said nothing.”
“It did not seem my place to report your brother’s silent pining.”
“He is a prince.”
“So are you.”
“Again,” Sirius said, “different.”
Remus did not even bother looking at him this time. “You really ought to develop a less transparent lie.”
Sirius sank farther into his throne, then caught his mother’s profile in the edge of his vision and straightened again with a mutinous sigh.
Barty’s performance shifted once more. One of the other entertainers rolled out a narrow wooden target painted with concentric circles. Another servant—braver than Sirius would have been for whatever coin he was paid—dragged it upright and held it steady.
Barty took up a set of throwing knives.
Regulus visibly stopped breathing.
Sirius noticed because the rise and fall of his chest simply ceased. His whole body had gone still in that dreadful way of his, all intensity turned inward until it sharpened him.
“Merlin save us,” Sirius muttered. “He likes him.”
Remus said, “Yes.”
“He really likes him.”
“Yes.”
“He likes him enough to die stupidly.”
“That is, historically, how liking tends to work in this family.”
Sirius laughed once, short and humourless. “That’s not funny.”
“No,” Remus said after a beat. “It isn’t.”
There was something in that answer, some darker current under the dry calm of him, that made Sirius turn.
Remus’s gaze was not on the performers.
It was on the far side of the hall, on the line of guards beneath the banners, on the nobles whispering behind jewelled fingers, on the shape of the room itself. His face remained composed, but Sirius knew him too well now not to see what lay beneath it. Awareness. Calculation. The endless, ingrained knowledge of rank. Who could speak. Who could not. Who would be believed. Who would be broken.
Something twisted in Sirius’s chest.
His voice, when he spoke next, had lost some of its bite. “I’m not wrong.”
Remus looked back at him.
“No,” Remus said quietly. “You’re not wrong.”
Sirius swallowed.
Below, the first knife flew.
It struck the target with a hard, satisfying thud, dead centre. Applause broke through the hall in a brief, approving wave. Barty bowed extravagantly, one hand across his chest, one hand extended as though offering the success to the throne itself, though the glint in his eye suggested he offered very little to anyone without laughing at them for taking it.
The second knife landed beside the first.
The third split the space between.
By the fourth, even Orion’s attention sharpened.
By the fifth, Regulus looked as though he had forgotten his own name.
Sirius rubbed a hand over his face. “This is intolerable.”
“You don’t have to watch.”
“I’m not watching him, I’m watching Regulus.”
“Yes.”
“Because he’s being obvious.”
“Only to someone looking for it.”
Sirius glanced sideways at his brother again. Regulus had parted his lips slightly without seeming to notice. His fingers curled against the armrests. There was a brightness in his dark eyes Sirius had seen only a handful of times in his life: once when Regulus was eight and held a falcon for the first time; once when he was twelve and Orion had allowed him to sit in on council; once when Sirius had smuggled him onto the castle roof in summer and Regulus had looked up at the stars and gone strange and quiet with wonder.
It made something old and difficult stir in Sirius’s chest.
He knew that look.
He knew, too, what happened to things Regulus loved in this house.
His gaze slid toward their mother.
Walburga watched the entertainment with cool approval, but Sirius knew that if she turned and caught even a sliver of what was written openly across Regulus’s face, the whole thing would be over before sunset. Barty would be dismissed from service if he were lucky. Disappeared if he were not. Regulus would be watched more closely. Coached. Corrected. Pressed harder into the shape expected of him until whatever soft impossible thing had begun blooming in him strangled for lack of air.
And Sirius—Sirius who had spent half his life clawing against that same golden cage—felt suddenly and violently that he could not bear it.
He leaned toward Remus again. “Does Regulus know his name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Has he spoken to him?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re very useless.”
“I’m not your spy master.”
“No,” Sirius said. “You’re much worse.”
Remus gave him a sidelong glance. “How flattering.”
Below, Barty took one of the knives between his teeth, grinning around the blade like a devil out of a chapel fresco. There was laughter from the younger courtiers. Even a few older lords smiled despite themselves.
Regulus’s face turned a deeper shade of red.
“Oh, Christ,” Sirius whispered. “Look at him.”
“I am trying not to.”
“He’s doomed.”
“Perhaps not.”
“He’s my brother. That alone should terrify any man with working instincts.”
“True.”
“And Mother will murder them both if she finds out.”
“Also true.”
“And if Father notices—”
“Mm.”
Sirius cut himself off.
The king had not moved, but then Orion Black did not need to move to be felt. His stillness was a force of its own. If Walburga was the sharp edge of the house, all visible glittering cruelty and cultivated fear, Orion was the deeper thing beneath it: law, order, lineage, punishment made impersonal by certainty. Sirius had spent his life defying his mother. He had never once mistaken his father for someone safe.
On the floor, Barty bowed again as the applause rose, then signalled for the wooden target to be carried away. For a few brief moments there was no weapon in his hands.
Regulus did not look relieved.
If anything, he looked more stricken by the absence of something to watch.
Sirius exhaled sharply through his nose. “He’s got it bad.”
“He appears interested,” Remus said.
“Interested,” Sirius repeated. “Interested is how men look at wine. That is not how he’s looking at him.”
Remus was silent for a beat.
Then, softly, “No.”
Sirius turned to him again.
There was no mockery in Remus now. No dry amusement. His face had gone thoughtful, and the thought there landed somewhere low in Sirius’s body with dangerous warmth. It was not often Remus let sincerity show this clearly. He treated tenderness like contraband: hidden, handled carefully, never displayed where others might seize it and use it against him.
When he did let it through, it ruined Sirius.
Sirius looked away first.
“Don’t,” he muttered.
“Don’t what?”
“Get all perceptive.”
“I haven’t done anything.”
“That’s the problem.”
Below them, one of the musicians struck up a louder tune while another performer cartwheeled across the cleared floor to general applause. Barty moved to the edge of the troupe, wiping one of the knife hilts with a cloth as if half-attentive to the rest. His smile had settled into something easier now that the most dangerous part of his act was done.
Then, while turning one blade idly in his fingers, he looked up.
Straight to the dais.
Straight to Regulus.
Sirius saw it happen.
So did Remus.
Regulus, poor doomed fool, froze as though struck.
Barty’s grin changed.
Only slightly. A fraction. But the insolence of it warmed into something more private, more pointed. He tipped the blade once in a salute so swift it might have passed unnoticed to anyone not watching for it.
Regulus’s entire soul appeared to leave his body.
His eyes widened. The flush on his face became catastrophic. He did not smile—Regulus almost never smiled in public, not really—but something happened around his mouth, some helpless softening, some startled break in all that princely control, and for one impossible second he looked his age. Younger, even. Young enough to be wounded by beauty. Young enough to be foolish in the purest way.
Then he dropped his gaze at once, as though lowering his eyes could undo the fact of being seen.
Sirius stared.
“Oh, he saw that.”
Remus murmured, “Yes.”
“He saw him staring.”
“Yes.”
“And he—did he just flirt with him?”
“It would seem so.”
“In front of the throne.”
“Yes.”
“In front of our parents.”
“Yes.”
Sirius let out a breathless, disbelieving laugh. “That man has a death wish.”
“Or confidence.”
“No one should have that much confidence in this room.”
“Yet here we are.”
Sirius could not help it. He looked back down at Barty with renewed interest, sharper this time. The jester had returned his attention to the performance, but there was a looseness to him now, some secret amusement. He rolled a knife across his knuckles and caught it with unnecessary flourish, his mouth curled as though he had just gotten away with theft.
Perhaps he had.
Perhaps the theft was happening in real time.
Sirius frowned.
He did not know whether he wanted to strangle the man or shake his hand.
“Does he know who Regulus is?” Sirius asked.
Remus turned his head slowly. “He is seated on a throne beneath twelve banners.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I suspect he understands that the pale, exquisitely dressed young man beside the queen is not the under-scullion.”
Sirius scowled. “You are irritating on purpose.”
“It saves time.”
Sirius looked again at Regulus.
His brother had regained some of his composure, but not much. He sat straight as a blade, gaze fixed resolutely upon the troupe as a whole now, clearly attempting to appear normal. The effort would have worked better had the tips of his ears not remained crimson.
Sirius knew then, with the certainty of a man seeing a carriage about to lose a wheel on a mountain road, that this was not a passing fancy. Regulus did not do passing fancies. He did not do half measures. Everything in him ran deep and silent. If he had attached himself, even in imagination, to this dangerous grinning fool of a performer, it would not fade because Sirius scoffed at him or because court moved on to another entertainment tomorrow.
It would burrow.
It would grow roots.
It would become a problem.
And perhaps because he loved his brother more than he often knew what to do with, Sirius’s first instinct was irritation rather than fear. Fear required admitting there was something to lose.
He leaned closer to Remus again, his voice low. “I should stop this now.”
Remus did not say anything for a moment.
Then: “How?”
Sirius opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again. “I could—warn him.”
“You could.”
“Tell him to get sense.”
“You could try.”
“He listens to me sometimes.”
“Does he.”
Sirius thought of every argument he and Regulus had ever had. Thought of cold bedrooms and colder corridors. Thought of childhood alliances broken under parental hands. Thought of Regulus at ten trailing after him with questions; Regulus at fourteen drawing away; Regulus now, beautiful and sharp and so much more like their mother than Sirius could bear unless he remembered all the ways he was not.
“He used to,” Sirius said.
Remus said nothing.
Below, the troupe had shifted to a comic routine. One performer faked outrage, another stumbled theatrically, the musicians changing time to match the slapstick rhythm of it. Laughter drifted through the hall in little pockets. The pressure of court loosened.
Not enough.
Never enough.
Sirius watched Barty move at the edge of the act, sharp-eyed even while grinning, ready for his next cue. There was a wildness in him. Sirius distrusted wildness in other people partly because he recognized it.
“Maybe I should have him sent away,” Sirius said.
Remus’s answer came quick and flat. “No.”
Sirius turned, startled by the force of it.
Remus’s face had gone still in that dangerous way that meant he was angry enough to become very quiet. “Do not punish him because your brother looked at him.”
Sirius bristled. “I wasn’t punishing him.”
“You were considering solving the inconvenience by removing the lower-ranked party. It has all the familiar hallmarks.”
“That’s not fair.”
Remus held his gaze. “Isn’t it?”
Sirius felt heat crawl up his neck. “I only meant—”
“I know what you meant.”
The words were soft. That was worse.
For a brief, terrible second, the noise of the hall seemed to recede. Sirius no longer saw the throne room, the banners, the nobles, the performers. He saw only Remus in torchlit shadows, hands braced against stone, saying my lord like a mockery before kissing him like a sin. He saw scars beneath linen. Saw the carefulness with which Remus moved through the castle by day, always one misstep away from somebody else’s power. Saw, too, the ease with which Sirius himself forgot that his impulses, however justified they felt in his own chest, could become commands the world obeyed.
He hated that.
He hated that Remus had to remind him.
He hated more that Remus was right.
Sirius looked forward again. His voice, when it came, was rougher than before. “I know.”
Remus did not answer.
After a moment Sirius said, quieter, “I know.”
This time Remus glanced at him. Something in his expression softened, though only slightly.
“Good,” he said.
Sirius swallowed and forced some sharpness back into himself because vulnerability in this room felt like stepping naked into winter. “You’re insufferable.”
“Yes.”
“And sanctimonious.”
“Sometimes.”
“And smug.”
“Often.”
Sirius’s mouth twitched. “I hate you.”
Remus adjusted the angle of the ewer in his hand. “That has not historically been your preferred line in private.”
Sirius almost laughed aloud.
He bit it back so hard it hurt.
“You’re trying to get me killed.”
“No,” Remus said mildly. “Only corrected.”
“That’s worse.”
The troupe finished to applause.
They bowed low, a scatter of bells and ribbons and careful smiles. The musicians scraped out a final bright flourish. Courtiers clapped because they were meant to, nobles because they were relieved to clap at something without political consequence, and the performers smiled as people smiled when applause meant bread.
Barty bowed last.
His eyes flicked up once more.
Not to the king. Not to the queen.
To Regulus.
So brief. So light. A private insolence hidden inside public ceremony.
Regulus did not return the look this time. He had locked every inch of himself back into place by sheer force of will. His posture was impeccable. His face serene. Only someone who knew him would have seen the strain in it.
Sirius knew him.
And suddenly, unexpectedly, he wanted to laugh.
Not because it was funny. Not really.
But because it was absurd and impossible and so very Black.
Of course Regulus would fall silent and hard for a knife-throwing jester with madness in his grin. Of course the object of his affection would be just reckless enough to notice and interested enough to answer. Of course it would happen in the middle of court with their parents three feet away and half the kingdom bearing witness without understanding what it saw.
Of course.
He rubbed at his mouth as though to hide the shape of it.
Remus noticed.
“What?”
Sirius glanced sideways at him. “Nothing.”
“You’re smiling.”
“I am not.”
“You are.”
Sirius lowered his voice. “He’s doomed.”
Remus blinked. “You’re pleased about this?”
“No,” Sirius said. Then, after half a beat: “Maybe a little.”
Remus studied him. “Why.”
Sirius looked again at Regulus, at the line of his jaw too tight with restraint, at the careful stillness that meant his thoughts were racing fast enough to trip over themselves. He remembered Regulus at seven asleep in the solar with ink on his hand. Regulus at eleven refusing to cry when Walburga cut down one of his hawks for disobedience in the mews. Regulus at fifteen standing in their doorway saying nothing, everything already ruined between them and neither of them knowing how to bridge it.
Then this—this bright foolish wanting written on him like dawn.
Sirius exhaled.
“Because,” he said quietly, “he looks alive.”
Remus was still for a moment.
Then, very softly: “Ah.”
The chamberlain struck his staff once more, calling the hall back to order. Servants moved, clearing the floor. Petitioners shifted into place for the afternoon hearings. The brief spell broke like glass.
Regulus straightened further, gathering himself with princely precision.
Barty Crouch disappeared with the troupe through the side archway, a flash of crimson and dark curls swallowed by stone.
And yet the room had changed.
Or perhaps only Sirius had.
He sat back in his throne, no less bored by court, no less restless, but newly alert to the strange quiet drama unfolding two seats away. He could feel it now as one feels weather building far off over water. A pressure in the air. Something not yet visible to others but moving all the same.
He muttered, “He’s going to do something idiotic.”
Remus, without looking at him, said, “Almost certainly.”
“I should stop him.”
“You should not.”
“I’m his brother.”
“Yes.”
“That means I am, by sacred duty, required to interfere.”
“That explains a great deal about you.”
Sirius ignored him. “He’ll sneak out.”
“Possibly.”
“He’ll try to find him.”
“Possibly.”
“He has all the subtlety of a candle in a crypt when he wants something.”
Remus turned his head just enough to murmur, “That may also run in the family.”
Sirius shot him a look that failed utterly to conceal his amusement. “I am subtle.”
“You once kissed me against the armoury wall while two guards were changing shift.”
“They did not see.”
“One of them dropped his spear.”
“He was clumsy.”
Remus’s mouth twitched again. “Naturally.”
The next petitioner approached the throne and knelt.
Sirius barely heard the beginning of the complaint.
His attention had split in two: half on the floor below where law and inheritance resumed their tedious procession, half on the prince beside his mother who looked outwardly composed and inwardly aflame.
After several minutes, during which Sirius endured a dispute over milling rights and contemplated hurling himself into the sea, he heard the faintest movement beside him.
Regulus had shifted.
Not much. Only enough to lean the slightest bit toward him without turning his head.
Sirius kept his eyes front.
“So,” Regulus said under his breath, smooth as polished marble, “I assume that was why you kept making strange noises beside me.”
Sirius nearly choked.
He turned his head a fraction. “You heard me?”
Regulus’s gaze remained fixed forward. “I am not deaf.”
“You were staring so hard I assumed all higher thought had ceased.”
For one glorious moment, the corner of Regulus’s mouth almost moved.
“Apparently not all higher thought,” he murmured.
Sirius blinked.
Then grinned slowly. “Oh, you wicked little creature.”
Regulus’s cheeks coloured again, though he kept his face composed. “Be quiet.”
“No, no, this is extraordinary. You did hear.”
“I heard enough.”
“And you said nothing?”
“It seemed unwise to draw attention to the heir muttering like a drunk novice during court.”
Sirius leaned just slightly closer. “You are aware he noticed you.”
Regulus went perfectly still.
Ah.
There it was.
Sirius, delighted despite himself, savoured the silence for a beat before continuing in a velvet murmur, “Yes. That got your attention, didn’t it?”
Regulus said nothing.
Sirius’s grin sharpened. “He looked at you.”
“I am aware.”
“Oh, you are aware.”
Regulus’s jaw tightened. “Sirius.”
“No, say it again. Say ‘I am aware’ as though your soul did not nearly leave your body.”
A dangerous note entered Regulus’s voice, very soft. “Would you like me to remind Mother how frequently you ask for the same servant to attend your chambers?”
Sirius went silent at once.
Beside him, Remus did not move, but Sirius could feel the blast radius of his suppressed reaction.
Regulus kept his gaze forward, serene as a saint in stained glass.
After three full heartbeats Sirius muttered, “You wouldn’t.”
Regulus replied, “Wouldn’t I.”
Sirius stared at him in disbelief.
Then—because there was really nothing else to do—he gave a short, breathless laugh and leaned back in his throne.
“Well,” he said. “That’s new.”
Regulus remained perfectly composed. “You are not the only one capable of observation.”
“No,” Sirius admitted. “Apparently not.”
Another pause stretched between them.
Then Sirius asked quietly, “Do you know his name?”
Regulus’s lashes lowered once. “Yes.”
“God.”
Regulus did not answer.
Sirius studied his profile. Beautiful, cold, controlled. Too much their mother in stillness, too much himself in whatever flickered beneath it. Sirius could not remember the last time they had spoken like this without drawing blood.
He lowered his voice further. “What are you going to do?”
At that, Regulus’s throat moved in a small swallow. He did not look at Sirius.
“Nothing,” he said.
Sirius smiled faintly. “Liar.”
Regulus’s fingers tightened against the arm of his throne. “Says you.”
A laugh threatened again. Sirius killed it before it could rise, then said, more gently than either of them were used to, “Be careful.”
Regulus went very still.
For a second Sirius thought he might ignore him entirely.
Then, in a voice so quiet it barely existed at all, Regulus said, “You too.”
The words hit harder than they should have.
Sirius looked at him.
Regulus did not look back.
The next petitioner droned on about grain storage. Orion asked a question. Walburga made a note to the chamberlain. Court resumed its stately crawl through the machinery of power, indifferent to the pulse beneath it, indifferent to the fact that kingdoms could be governed while boys still blushed at dangerous men and brothers still tried, badly, to protect one another from the same fire that had already caught in their own lungs.
Sirius sat very straight for a long moment.
Then, without turning his head, he murmured to Remus, “Did you hear that.”
“Yes.”
“He threatened me.”
“Yes.”
“I think I’m proud.”
“That’s one word for it.”
Sirius’s mouth curved. “And he knows about you.”
“Yes.”
“He’s known for how long?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“You couldn’t say,” Sirius repeated. “That is a servant’s phrase for ‘long enough to be embarrassed for you.’”
Remus kept his eyes on the petitioners below. “A useful phrase, then.”
Sirius was quiet a moment.
Then, soft enough that only Remus could hear, he said, “Was I that obvious?”
Remus took his time answering.
When he did, his tone was careful and calm and almost unbearably kind.
“Only to someone looking,” he said.
Sirius looked down at his hands.
At the rings on his fingers. At the signet that marked him heir. At the gold that caged and protected and named him all at once.
Then he looked at Remus.
Remus remained in his place beside the throne, still as any servant ought to be, one hand on the ewer, the other folded behind his back. No one in the room would have thought twice about him. No one, perhaps, but the prince who had built a private world out of stolen glances and hidden doors and fingers that brushed too long while pouring wine.
Only to someone looking.
A warmth, painful in its sweetness, spread through Sirius’s chest.
He looked away before it could show.
Below, the hall moved on. Another complaint. Another judgment. Another bow.
But Sirius no longer hated the afternoon quite as much.
There was trouble in the castle now. Bright trouble. Sharp trouble. The kind that smiled with knives in its hands and made princes forget how to breathe. The kind that slipped beneath doors and under skin and into the blood before anyone wise enough could bar the way.
The kind that ruined lives.
The kind that made them worth living.
And beside the queen, under the eye of the court and the weight of a crown not meant for him, Prince Regulus Black sat silent and burning, while somewhere beyond the chamber doors a jester with reckless eyes and a wicked mouth vanished into the labyrinth of the palace, carrying with him the knowledge that for one impossible, glittering moment, a prince had looked at him like prayer.
Sirius saw all of it.
He saw his brother trying not to unravel.
He saw the danger.
He saw, too, the hunger.
And with bitter amusement and a tenderness he would rather have died than name, the heir to House Black turned his face back toward the endless pageant of the court, listened to the droning petition of another forgettable lord, and thought, with something close to affection and something closer to dread:
Well.
This was going to be a disaster.