3,012.
Chapter 2
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Seventh year, Regulus cuts her out.
She's reasonably certain he's in the Death Eaters now, has seen him clinging to his wrist at the breakfast table when he believes no one is looking.
Poppy still has her own shit to do (orchestrating a break-in of Gringotts being the tippy-top of her list) and no time to really worry about her... ex? No, that's not right. They weren't even dating, he can't be her ex. They'd just been using each other to blow of their frustrations.
While no actual sex had happened, oral had. Both ways.
Sometimes she still wonders how Regulus had felt, between her thighs with mudblood mess coating his lips.
But no they're both off doing their own thing and Poppy's finally feeling confident enough to go after the Horcrux that will, one day, lead to Regulus' death.
They might not have parted on the best of terms (they'd had a screaming match in a silenced corridor, threatened each other on what would happen should the other come within ten feet of them, and they hadn't spoken since) and Poppy still can't remember what they even… well, not 'broke up' over, but she can't recall what drove them apart.
What they had… well it probably wasn't healthy for either of them and she's certainly got better things to focus on, but…
But it'd been enjoyable while it lasted, she guesses.
Maybe someday she'll manage to connect with another person enough for a boyfriend, but right now she's making do with her wand and transfiguration. Magic makes some things so much easier.
.
Searching through the records of Wools (which was due to be torn down soon and replaced with office block buildings) had been easy now that she's seventeen and legally allowed to use her magic. Finding the location of the beach Lord Voldemort had visited as a child was easy.
Finding the entrance to the secret cave wasn't as easy, but she still managed.
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Poppy hadn't been expecting to find another person there. She hadn't expected to find Regulus, clearly in the middle of his attempt to steal the Horcrux.
Maybe the Horcrux is already gone, she doesn't know.
All the redhead can do in that moment is stare because well- she'd been aware Regulus would die stealing the Horcrux, she'd been aware he died in 1979.
She just… she'd expected that to happen at the end of the year, not the start. If she'd put off this Horcrux hunt until summer as she almost had done… She'd have returned to Hogwarts for second semester and she'd never have seen him again.
It's a daunting thought.
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If she's honest with herself, Poppy's not completely sure how she manages to get Regulus and herself out of there.
Dolly, the Hogwarts Elf she'd recruited for her schemes years back, dutifully helps her no doubt. But the point is Poppy just can't remember how it all happens.
Only that it does.
Regulus has ingested that horrible potion, the one Poppy hadn't been able to find in all of her reading in the Room of Requirement. Probably a Voldemort concocted one; it'd certainly mean no one could bring an antidote with them, not unless they got a sample of it to test against, and given how the bowl had been charmed…
Poppy shakes her head, forcing herself to focus as she trudges up the drive to her home. She's got Regulus' arm thrown over one shoulder, dragging his half-conscious body along with her.
He's so out of it he's moving on instinct alone which is good, well for her anyway. It's not like she can float him up her distinctly muggle neighbourhood.
It's also a blessing that Lily moved out last month, that she went and moved in with James Potter. They're getting married next month, Poppy recalls. She still has to find a dress for it, and talk to Dumbledore about getting let out of Hogwarts for a day to go to the ceremony.
Irritating.
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"Poppy dear, is everything okay? You're looking a little peaked."
Blinking long and slow, Poppy relaxes back into her chair, trying to ignore the burning of the wand that's strapped to her forearm, the wand that's not her own.
She might have saved his life, but she's not stupid enough to leave Regulus chilling upstairs in her room with his wand.
He's still a Death Eater.
Having a change of heart towards Voldemort because of those Horcruxes doesn't magically fix him of his pureblood superiority complex, doesn't take away his potent hatred for muggles.
Like hell she'll risk leaving him armed and dangerous in her parents' house.
"I've got an assignment due when I get back, potion's work, so I've got one on the boil upstairs."
"Don't disturb you, Petal, got it."
Her father winks and Poppy's hard pressed not to smile back, instead turning her attention back to the food on her plate.
She wonders if it's strange for her parents, to have both elder daughters off living their own lives and be left with the youngest.
The one who'd always been a little too strange, a little too smart, a little too… odd.
She'd never quite fit in with the rest of them; Petunia had been average, a regular muggle of the times (if one were to do as she requested and ignored that period she'd spent as a hippy over her fifteenth summer) and Lily had been the bright extrovert.
Poppy, well, Poppy's not.
She's as introverted as they come, a happy little loner and she's better for it. She'll be able to keep her sister alive, through sheer hard work and determination.
No one will harm Lily Evans while she has a say in the matter.
"I better get back upstairs," she murmurs, scraping the last of the spaghetti from her plate and smiling at her parents. "the world waits for no dessert, after all."
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Regulus Black doesn't except to wake up, not really.
The vertigo, the weakness in his limbs and the blurring vision can be explained. What cannot be explained, however, is his environment.
It's muggle, painstakingly muggle.
He blinks once, long and slow as he takes in his surroundings, but even as the lines and colours continue to spin, it's still muggle.
Muggle.
Regulus jolts up, trying to get away from whatever filth he's laid upon, only for his legs to tremble and crumple, sending him crashing to the floor.
The flooring doesn't consist of highly polished floorboards, isn't covered with a rug older than the living generations of the Black family altogether. The carpet's cheap, Regulus doesn't recognise the material in the slightest and he's already itching at the thought.
Grunting, he pushes his hands beneath him, forcing shaking limbs to cooperate and get him standing, to get the rich layer of his leather shoes between him and this chinchy covering that's trying to pass off as carpet. He manages, though a supporting hand ends up on the bed. Cotton covers, cheap, nowhere near the luxury he lives and breathes, though this room is warmer than his own home.
Merlin, his head is pounding. Where is he, what even happened?
A low cough has Regulus snapping to attention, hand reaching for a wand that's not there. Why the fuck isn't it there?!
He's quickly side-tracked from that issue (only proving his mind isn't all there) by the appearance of the last person he was expecting to see.
Then it all comes flooding back.
"Evans? No, you can't be my afterlife," Regulus moans around the fuzz in his mouth. It's clinging to his teeth, overgrown fungus; he's been in this cesspool of filth for far too long.
"Like you could be so lucky, Black." To be sentenced to eternal damnation with only her for company? Lucky is not the word he would use.
She walks into the room, the door swinging shut behind her in the wake of her wand arching.
And suddenly the lack of wand reasserts itself with full forced fury. Every memory of every last one of their confrontations flares, a blistering reminder that he's defenceless right now. All he has is-
"Kreacher!"
The panicked cry has Evans stopping in her tracks, bottom lip sucking in as she fails to hide her sudden confusion.
Despite himself, Regulus watches her mouth, recalls a time when it'd been sucking on other things, back when he'd been delusional enough to believe the war wouldn't touch him and he could afford that one sinful little thing.
"Oh. If it's a house elf, it won't answer. I warded this place to the high heavens the second I turned seventeen. That includes house-elves; I'm not an idiot."
She sets her wand down on the side; a quick calculation shows he won't make it to the weapon in time to avoid her retaliation. That it's free of her grasp does make him feel marginally better though. Only marginally so.
"What am I doing here." He stressed that word, though it's already apparent just how out of place he is. This is not his world; he doesn't belong here, he's above this.
"I saved your pasty pale ass. You're welcome." Saved his-
She was there. What the fuck was Poppy Evans doing anywhere near that place?!
She's frowning, hip cocked to a side but not stupid enough to fold her arms. That's what he not likes or respects, but acknowledges about Evans. She's well aware of her status as a mudblood and she's developed incredible paranoia as a defence. All the others, even older Evans, just floats through life and just reacts when their betters put them in their place.
This Evans though, she's looking for it. And she always leads with a pre-emptive strike.
Were her blood not mud, perhaps that tie would be green instead of yellow.
"What were you doing there," Regulus seethes out through gritted teeth, retracting his arm away from Evans' bed, eyes scanning the room.
It's the domain of a madman: notes pinned to every wall, dripping down from the ceiling in drives and drabs, floating and twirling with seamless magic. There's everything in here, spell theory to ancient ruins to transfiguration. Even spell crafting, if he's reading the left wall right. There's no order at all, intricately woven detail that fade like a flash of lightning off the page ends; short of actual legilimency, it's the closest representation of Evans' mindscape he could ever imagine. A mess, basically.
"…I'm going to guess for the same reason you were almost making that place your grave. I've taken up thieving it seems. Congratulations, one of your little predictions from way-back-when came true."
Fucking hell, he can't even remember half the shit he ever said to her throughout the years; he stopped keeping track after the first month of the first year. There were more important things to focus on.
Evans' powers the conversation on with all the grace and force of a charging hippogriff.
"I saved your life in there, so for my life debt is that you're not gonna speak to anyone else about my presence there, or what I was doing."
The Magic closes in around him before Regulus can even think to deny her. It's a heavy pressing weight, settled stiffly upon his shoulders. One he won't get away with shaking free.
Not unless he wants his head to roll right off with it.
How dare this uppity little mudblood trap him. How dare she take a sacred tradition such as a Life Debt and use it to encage him like this.
Rage curls deep in his stomach, each deep breath filling his lungs with scorching fury.
Evans' hair tumbles down over one shoulder, falling in careless waves to rest across her slender curves.
It's a painful reminder of just how tired he is.
Here in this land of scum filled squalor, he finds himself disarmed and with a mind that's still swirling, bubbles in a never emptying sink. Just constant twisting and draining, until there's nothing but clear, colourless waters left. See-through, transparent.
Regulus hates this feeling.
He hates that Evans is the only sense of the familiar he has here. Hates how he clings to her presence like a drowning man to a shark.
The sharp look to those blues makes the descriptive that much more graphic, that much more appropriate.
"Get some rest. We might not get along, but until you can stand without shaking I guess I'm taking responsibility for your sorry ass."
He wants to say something witty, something about how she wishes he'd taken care of her after one of their sessions had left long pale legs shaking.
His mouth is dry and tongue uncooperative.
The words won't pass his lips, exhaustion heavy upon his tongue.
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Regulus takes the bed; there's no power upon this earth that'd see him sleeping on the floor of a muggle hut.
Chapter 2. I think the main POVs will be Poppy and Regulus, though we may have other characters drop it every now and then.
Thanks for reading,
Tsume
xxx