Harry Potter: Reborn as Regulus Black

Chapter 341: Chapter 341: Parents, Rules, and Useless Answers

Through the ground-floor corridor to Orion’s study. The door stood open, and Regulus walked in.

Fresh mail had piled on the desk since he’d left, at least two new stacks. Envelopes in every color, most sealed with wax stamps bearing family crests.

He didn’t stop to look. Straight through to the far wall.

The Black family portrait hanging there was dozing. A wave of his hand and it slid aside without a sound, revealing the stone door behind it.

Heavy. He pushed it open, stepped through, and it closed behind him with a deep thud.

The training room was modest, rectangular, rough grey stone on every surface. The ceiling rose high overhead, a few lamps hanging from it, the light dim but serviceable.

A duel was in progress.

A bolt of red light shot across the room. Disarming Charm. Decent aim, decent speed, heading straight for Sirius’s chest.

Sirius sidestepped left, dropping low, and rolled across the floor.

Not graceful. Shoulder hit first, one leg still flailing in the air, and when he came up he staggered half a step before finding his balance. In a real fight, a roll like that was an invitation to get hit.

But Hawke was pulling his punches, and Sirius had dodged it.

He rolled to his feet, wand rising for a counter, and then the door opened.

He turned. Regulus stood at the threshold.

Sirius’s expression cycled through several states in the space of a heartbeat.

Surprise first. He hadn’t expected Regulus now.

Then his body outran his brain. Right hand still gripping the wand, already lifting. Mouth open, eyebrows up, the corners of his lips pulling into a grin. An eager greeting already on his tongue.

"Regu..."

Then his brain caught up. He shouldn’t be this enthusiastic. The hand dropped. The expression shuttered. Mouth pressed flat, brows knitting back together, and he turned to stare at the wall with studied indifference.

There was nothing on that wall, but he stared at it hard.

Regulus stood in the doorway, watching his brother’s back, and felt secondhand embarrassment on his behalf.

Sirius was different from before.

He’d probably worked through some things on his own. Days of stewing after the Christmas dinner, moving from anger to silence to whatever this awkward state was. Something had shifted in between.

But knowing Sirius’s mind, spiraling into a knot was more likely than untangling one. Full clarity on his own wasn’t in the cards.

More likely, Orion had talked to him.

That thought surfaced something Regulus found quietly amusing.

He’d spent so long working out how to handle Sirius. What to say, what to arrange, what to reveal and what to hide.

But at the end of the day, Orion was the father. He wasn’t.

Talking to Sirius, shaping the eldest son’s path, calibrating how much to share and how much to withhold... that was Orion’s job.

He was the younger brother, carrying the Head of House’s worries, and he’d been doing it so naturally that it never struck him as odd.

His mouth twitched. He probably had something wrong with him.

The other person in the room had stopped too.

Gerald Hawke stood at the far end of the training room, wand lowered to his side but not put away.

Regulus stepped into the room and dipped his head. "Mr. Hawke. Sorry to interrupt."

Hawke’s expression wasn’t stern, but it wasn’t loose either. Professional neutrality, the face of a man on the job.

In truth, he wasn’t sure what posture to take with the thirteen-year-old in front of him.

After the Christmas dinner incident spread, Orion had briefed the family’s core employees in a unified statement.

Pure-blood families had a refined system for managing key staff. What you needed to know, you were told. Knowing let you do your job better, kept your judgment about the family aligned, and prevented you from reading too much into outside rumors.

Orion had always been thorough about this.

Nothing lengthy. A clean summary of events.

Regulus had clashed with Bellatrix at the dinner. He’d displayed power far beyond expectations. Bellatrix had been left broken. The estate sustained damage.

The phrasing was restrained, details sparse, but the takeaway was unmistakable: the House of Black had produced a remarkable heir.

The benefits of this approach were clear.

If core employees relied on outside gossip, their judgments would skew, and skewed judgment meant skewed actions.

Giving them the truth, or at least a curated version, beat letting them guess.

When Hawke heard all this, he’d realized something that made him a touch uncomfortable.

The first time he’d met this young wizard was last holiday, when he’d been teaching Sirius the basics.

He’d remarked to Mr. Black at the time that Sirius had exceptional talent, abundant magical reserves, limitless potential.

Sirius’s talent was real. But measured against his brother... one was in the training room drilling fundamentals, and the other had burned the Lestrange estate to the ground.

Worse, he’d said it with the younger Mr. Black sitting right there, across from Mr. Black, with the training room door open so Sirius could hear too.

The Blacks had probably found it amusing. As for Sirius, in hindsight, the memory could only sting.

Hawke kept the discomfort off his face, greeted Regulus with an easy nod, and replied, "No interruption, young Mr. Black."

A glance toward Sirius, still examining the wall, then back. "We’ve been at it a while. Was about to take a break."

It wasn’t even nine o’clock. They’d barely started. A break was generous.

Regulus didn’t comment. A polite nod. "Thank you for looking after Sirius."

Across the room, Sirius’s shoulders twitched.

His teeth bared in a grimace.

There it was again.

That tone. That phrasing. Thank you for looking after him. Identical to McGonagall’s office, the same air of apologizing on his behalf.

He’d been furious then. Who asked you to apologize for me? Are you my brother or my father?

The worst part was that he hadn’t done anything wrong that time. He’d been studying Transfiguration in earnest. And today, he’d been training in earnest.

So what gave him the right?

And now, again?

Hawke opened his mouth, looking at Regulus.

Hawke wondered privately: He’s thirteen. Sirius is the older brother. Isn’t this backwards?

Then he noticed Sirius still facing the wall, the atmosphere growing odd, and decided to steer the conversation forward.

A shake of his head. "Not at all. Sirius..." He paused, cleared his throat. "Has real talent."

A glance at Sirius. Eyes back to Regulus.

Regulus continued, same unhurried tone as before. "Where’s he at now?"

Sirius snapped.

He whipped around, baring his teeth at Regulus. The expression wasn’t polite. Mouth turned down, eyes hard. Not quite hostile, but nowhere near friendly.

He didn’t say a word. Just glared.

Regulus didn’t look at him. His gaze stayed on Hawke.

Hawke took in that face, then Regulus’s perfect composure, and decided to evacuate immediately.

"Clear improvement," he said, clipped. Before Regulus could ask anything else, he took a step toward the door. "Few things I need to see to. I’ll head out."

Regulus shifted aside, courteous. "Take care, Mr. Hawke."

"Mm." Hawke reached the doorway and gave Sirius one last look. "Term starts soon. See you next holiday."

Something flickered across Sirius’s face. Unreadable, even to himself.

Next holiday.

He hadn’t come back this time to stay. He’d come back to see. To see what this family really was, what Pure-blood really meant, what Regulus really was.

Next holiday, he didn’t know if he’d show up at 12 Grimmauld Place at all.

He glanced at Regulus, said nothing, and turned back to Hawke. "Goodbye, Mr. Hawke."

Hawke nodded and left the training room. The stone door sealed shut behind him.

Quiet settled over the room. Two people.

Regulus looked at Sirius.

Dust on the training clothes, a scuff at one knee, a sheen of sweat on his forehead, hair in disarray. Otherwise intact.

Sirius squirmed under the scrutiny, irritation plain. "What are you staring at?"

Regulus ignored the question, expression unchanged. "Talk?"

Sirius blinked. Then nodded.

Regulus turned, walked out of the training room, crossed to Orion’s desk, and sat down in the armchair behind it without a moment’s hesitation.

Sirius followed him out and saw this. One eyebrow rose.

That was Orion’s chair.

In a family of the Blacks’ standing, the study was where the Head of House exercised power. Documents signed here, affairs handled here, decisions made here.

The chair was an extension of that authority.

In some Pure-blood families, especially the fossilized old guard of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, that chair belonged to the Head of House and no one else. Even the heir wouldn’t dare touch it. The firstborn himself stood before the desk to speak.

Rules cold as stone. Blood meant rank here, never warmth.

Other families didn’t care. Small families, few children, fewer formalities. A study was a study. A chair was a chair. Whoever wanted to sit, sat.

Some didn’t even have a study. The Weasleys, for instance, where the sitting room served every purpose at once.

The Blacks fell somewhere in between.

This house wasn’t cold, exactly. The relationship between Orion and Regulus ran deeper than it appeared on the surface.

But Grimmauld Place was never warm. If pressed for one word, it was suffocating.

Etiquette. Protocol. Hierarchy. These things, mingled with the musty stench of ancestral portraits, formed the baseline atmosphere of 12 Grimmauld Place.

This was what Sirius hated. What he wanted to smash, to escape.

And now Regulus had dropped into that chair without a flicker of hesitation, leaning back, arms on the rests, posture easy.

Too natural.

Sirius felt something complicated stir in him. Pleasure, almost. His mouth quirked, then closed again.

The part of him that rebelled against every rule had been scratched in the right spot. Watching his brother do something out of line made him feel good on instinct, like someone had done a thing he’d always wanted to do but never had.

But a thread of something else followed, harder to name, because he knew Regulus wasn’t rebelling against the rules.

If Sirius sat in that chair, it would be deliberate. A provocation. A declaration. Your precious rules, and I’m stomping on them.

Regulus wasn’t doing that. He’d sat down.

Not challenging anyone’s authority. Not testing anyone’s boundaries. He’d probably found the chair comfortable and taken it.

The difference bothered Sirius in a way he couldn’t articulate.

He shook his head, tossing the tangle of thoughts aside, and dropped into the chair opposite with exaggerated carelessness.

He tipped it back, body sinking in, legs stretched long, feet nearly reaching the desktop.

Nearly. He had that much sense. He didn’t put them up.

Regulus had offered to talk, but he didn’t speak first. He watched Sirius.

Sirius didn’t speak either. The two of them sat face to face, separated by a desk heaped with correspondence.

Regulus studied him.

It was similar to right after he’d come home. The posture loose, almost theatrical, as if he’d pulled himself out of the scene and was observing everything from the outside, caring about none of it.

Regulus was certain now. Orion had spoken to him. About what, he didn’t know, but the results were decent.

Sirius couldn’t take the staring anymore. He was about to open his mouth when his gaze snagged on Regulus’s left shoulder. Something had flickered there and vanished.

He blinked. Looked again. Nothing.

Then a small dark red shape emerged over the right shoulder. Eight legs gripping the collar of the robe, half a body poking out, eight amber eyes swiveling in unison toward Sirius.

His attention derailed completely.

Chin lifting. "What’s that?"

The corner of Regulus’s mouth turned up. "A spider."

Sirius bared his teeth, annoyed.

By the lake. In the corridor. Regulus pulled this same trick every time.

Ask him anything and he’d hand back the most technically truthful non-answer possible. Not a single word wrong on the surface, not a single word useful underneath.

Infuriating. And, somehow, relaxing.