WARNING: This story contains SPOILERS for "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows". Leave now or forever hold your peace.
Disclaimer: All characters herein are the property of Joanne Kathleen Rowling, who I am not.
Summary: Regulus was raised as a lord in the making, which, oddly enough, included a code of ethics. Regulus, Kreacher, and the motivations for betrayal.
"Mama, I'm bored."
Walburga turned from her writing desk with an exclamation of annoyance. "Regulus, how many more times must I say it? You are not to bother Mama while she is writing!"
Regulus blinked wide grey eyes up at her. "But Mama—"
"Do not argue with me, Regulus! If you have nothing to do, go play with Sirius."
"Sirius doesn't want to play with me," Regulus replied mournfully. "He says I'm annoying. Am I annoying, Mama?"
"You are annoying me at this very moment," she said tartly. At the look on her son's face, she softened. "If Kreacher is at liberty, you may play with him."
"Did Mistress Black call for me?" As always, Kreacher appeared as soon as his name was mentioned. It was the mark of a good servant that he did not require his mistress to shout in a vulgar manner when she required him.
"In a manner of speaking. Have you finished the tasks we discussed?" At the house-elf's nod, she continued, "Then take Master Regulus away and amuse him for an hour or so."
"As Mistress wishes."
Regulus followed Kreacher out of the room docilely enough. At six, he was scarcely larger than the elf. Fortunately for Walburga's sanity, he had not yet reached the age at which a preference for the company of even such a devoted servant had to be quashed. He rarely played with his brother, and while Sirius, such a self-sufficient Black, felt no lack in that, Regulus was not so strong. He demanded company, Walburga's if there was no other choice.
At least he was not foolish enough to bother his father with requests for amusement. Orion had little patience for children, and Regulus was too young to handle his sole means of dealing with them, treating them as miniature adults. The child was much better off with Kreacher.
"Kreacher, am I annoying?" Regulus asked, busily constructing a small castle out of charmed blocks under the house-elf's careful eye.
There was only one proper answer to this. "Of course not, Master Regulus."
"But Sirius says I am and Mama says I am and I don't know about Papa but I think he says I am too."
Kreacher made no reply. There was none to make. He didn't think the boy was particularly bothersome, not compared to his brother, but saying so would be contradicting his master and mistress.
Fortunately, Regulus had the typical attention span of a six-year-old: something under thirty seconds, unless it was particularly slimy or made a lot of noise. "Can the castle have a moat, Kreacher?"
"If you want one, Master Regulus."
Regulus was nine when he had his first real fight with Sirius, on his brother's first Christmas holidays home from Hogwarts. It was a tense holiday at its best, with their parents steadfastly refusing to talk about Sirius's time at school, devoted to ignoring the Erumpent in the parlor, while Sirius told story after story, constantly mentioning the Gryffindor common room or the Gryffindor house points or the Gryffindor Quidditch team. He spent half of Christmas Day confined to his room without any of his gifts, which did nothing to defuse the situation, as even Regulus could plainly see.
On Boxing Day, Regulus gave Kreacher a copy of the family portrait, trying awkwardly to imitate his father's lordly attitude at giving gifts to dependants. Sirius gave Kreacher a kick and a command to stay out of his room.
"Leave Kreacher alone!" Regulus yelled from the hallway where he had been passing.
Sirius snarled, "Why should I?"
"Because it's mean, and unfair, and—and conduct unbefitting a Black!" This was the worst condemnation Regulus could think of off the top of his head, one he heard all too frequently.
"I don't care!" Sirius shouted back. "If being a Black means I have to put up with Kreacher babbling all the time, then maybe I don't wanna be one anymore!"
That was when Regulus hit Sirius, the one and only time he threw the first punch against his brother. Sirius hit him back, of course, and he was bigger and stronger than Regulus. Besides, Kreacher's peculiar magic had them hanging powerless in the air within seconds. However, it was the first time Regulus struck his brother, and that meant something neither of them quite understood.
They never told their parents what had started the fight. Sirius was convinced with eleven-year-old certainty that making excuses was cowardly, and Regulus was not about to blame Kreacher. He knew better than that.
Regulus was sitting at his cousin's table, trying not to grimace at the slight chill of the soup. It was an elegant meal, certainly, all that could have been expected of a family dinner, but he did wish it was permissible to use a Warming Charm in polite company. He hated cold soup.
Next to him, Sirius seemed not to notice the chill, but that, Regulus thought, was typical of him. His brother never seemed to quite grasp the subtleties of any situation.
With the next course, Regulus was almost jealous of his brother. He would have given a great deal to be ignorant of the mixture of undercooking and overcooking in evidence on his plate. He was never fantastically fond of vegetables, but when he ate them, he preferred them as raw as possible. The limp legumes in front of him were the precise opposite of his tastes. Still, refusing to eat would be an insult to his cousin's table, and he was more terrified of Bellatrix than of any other person, even his father.
At least he could count on his cousin to say at least part of what he was thinking. Narcissa was almost as afraid of her sister as he was, but she hated Bellatrix more and generally managed to work at least one implicit insult into any conversation they were forced to have.
"Tell me, Bella, how did you manage the contrast in temperature between the meat and the vegetables? The effect is certainly interesting."
Bellatrix, of course, only laughed. Regulus wanted to shrink back into his seat when she laughed, but he refused to show his fear in front of them all. "That's house-elves for you, Cissy. I'm sure you'll find out in time that no nonhuman can really duplicate human preferences in food. I've often thought that Muggles might make better bound servants than..."
The conversation turned to tiresome political speculation, and Regulus ceased to listen. That was why he was the only one to see the sudden fierce look Bellatrix sent the house-elf who was watching nervously from the kitchen or the expression on the elf's face once she turned away again. She looked terrified, but satisfied with something.
It was simply not true that house-elves could not make human food as well as humans could. Regulus knew that for a fact: his every meal at home was evidence of it. He spent the rest of the meal wondering why nothing was cooked quite right.
He managed to tactfully ask his mother the same question, once they were at home again. Walburga looked her most imperious. She had never quite taken to Bellatrix; their tempers had a way of amplifying each other until it required the combined efforts of the rest of the family to prevent a public quarrel.
"You must not disregard the feelings of servants, Regulus," she told him. "There are many subtle means of expressing dislike for one's employer, should one accept the consequences as inevitable."
Regulus took one year of Muggle Studies, out of curiosity. He wanted to know more about the people he saw from the window of his family's town house every day. He wondered how people could possibly survive without magic.
The answer, he discovered, was: poorly. Professor Darton was scrupulously accurate in his description of the elaborate means by which Muggles attempted to make up for their great deficiency. He was also something of an expert on Muggle history, and when he realized that Regulus was genuinely interested in such a thing, he lent the boy several fascinating books on the subject. Magical history was beginning to pall on Regulus by that point, since he knew most of it through voracious reading over the summer, and he found the books on Muggle history a welcome change, even if he did have to read them in the library to avoid his less intellectual Housemates.
"You take Care of Magical Creatures, don't you?" he responded when people with more blood than brain demanded to know why a Black was taking Muggle Studies.
"That's completely different!" they inevitably said.
"Of course. There are more Muggles in the world than unicorns, for one thing," Regulus rejoined. After that, most of them left him to his amusements as long as he pursued them tactfully out of sight.
His mother was more interested in him that usual when he came home, wanting to make sure that Muggle Studies was not the first step down Sirius's path. Partly to reassure her, he did not take it again the next year. He had gotten the information he wanted already, anyway.
It was, he concluded after some further reading on his own time and expense, simply beyond belief what Muggles would get up to, left to themselves. The sheer number of wars in the past century alone was shocking, and as for their medicine, it was hardly up to St. Mungo's standards of efficacy. It was no wonder their average lifespan was so short.
It would be better for everyone if witches and wizards came out of concealment and took charge, Regulus decided. They could not possibly run the world more poorly than Muggles did, after all, and his reading suggested that many of the nastiest of the recent wars were a result of a general lack of a proper, trained, aristocratic leadership. A decent system where everyone knew what was owed to whom ought to put an end to all the violent, vulgar jockeying for position.
"I require the services of a house-elf," the Dark Lord said. A smile twisted the corners of his mouth at the universal shock of his followers. "You are the rightful lords of the world; surely one among you has a servant whose loyalty to yourselves and to me is beyond question."
Regulus, seventeen years old, felt the whispers around him. He wondered how many of the men and women around him even knew the name of their house-elves, if they still had them.
This particular circle, this particular meeting, consisted of a single representative of each pureblood house of Britain. He knew Bellatrix was there, ostensibly to represent the Lestranges but really because there was no group of the Dark Lord's followers so select that she could not be there. Lucius Malfoy was there, head of his family; and Nimue Darton, most efficient member of hers; Leah Dearborne (née Cantor) and her estranged husband Saradoc, her for her family, he for his; Severus Snape, the last Prince even if only half-blooded; and more he could not recognize while masked. They represented half the magical aristocracy of Europe, and they knew it.
Regulus had been a part of this particular circle for five months, since his father's death. He was the youngest person there.
He was also the only one with a house-elf who could be trusted absolutely, who deserved such an honor for years of devotion, who would seek no loopholes in any order Regulus gave.
"I have," he said.
He was in his room when he heard the crash, and he was halfway to the stairwell before he realized that the sound had not come from the ground floor. Instead, it came from above him, where there was no reason for anyone, even Aurors, to go, except—
"Kreacher!" he gasped and ran for the house-elf's room. If something had gone wrong, if the Dark Lord was for some reason displeased, he did not want to think of what might be waiting for him there.
What he found assuaged at least some of his fears. There was no angry Dark Lord, nor was there any sign that the wards on the house had been breached. There was only Kreacher, lying on the floor, writhing in pain and screaming.
Regulus wasted valuable seconds staring in shock. Only his mother's voice, calling, "Regulus? What's wrong?" snapped him back to life.
"Nothing, Mother!" he called back, sending a Silencing Charm after the words. She would not hear the screams, which could only be bad for her in her fragile state. Then he dropped to his knees beside the house-elf. Unable to think of anything else to do, he commanded, "Kreacher, stop screaming!"
The noise stopped abruptly, but Kreacher was still visibly in pain. Regulus had never felt more useless in his life. "Is there anything I can do?" he asked helplessly.
"Water…Master…" the elf rasped. Regulus conjured a goblet from the kitchen with thoughtless force, then held it for Kreacher to drink. The water seemed to help; Kreacher calmed enough that Regulus was willing to risk questioning him.
"What happened, Kreacher?" he asked.
"Master Regulus told Kreacher to go with the Dark Lord, and Kreacher went, because Kreacher is a good house-elf who listens to his master."
Regulus knew he should not ask. The Dark Lord undoubtedly would be angry if he knew that Regulus was inquiring into his actions. However, the part of his mind that knew this was pushed far behind the much larger part that needed desperately to understand why his faithful servant was suffering such pain. So he asked.
"What did you do for the Dark Lord?"
When he understood, once the full story was coaxed inch by inch from Kreacher's trembling lips, he was no longer frightened. Instead, he was angry.
The Dark Lord had left Kreacher to die. He had abandoned everything he owed to a loyal servant and rewarded service with suffering and betrayal. Moreover, he had made Regulus do so too. He had made Regulus a party to it all, because Kreacher was Regulus's servant, and Regulus owed him protection he had not given.
"Stay here, Kreacher. If you feel well enough by then, fix dinner for Mother. I will not be dining at home. Tell her none of this."
He left London entirely, Apparating to an abandoned house he had explored once with Andromeda, after she had gotten her Apparition license but before she had run away. No one would bother him there; even if someone was looking for him, only he and Andromeda knew he had ever been to this place.
There was a stone seat in what had once been the garden, surrounded by vines and half-dead bushes. Regulus sat there and tried to think through the swirl of anger tightening in his chest.
He had never wanted this. He had followed the Dark Lord loyally because his family demanded it, but mostly because Regulus thought the world would be so much better for everyone if the wizards just took care of things for the Muggles, as proper lords should. He had believed it, and now he had no idea what to believe.
The Dark Lord had no scruples about abusing a servant's trust and clearly did not expect anyone else to differ from him. He had forgotten or chosen to forget what was owed from lord to vassal as well as from vassal to lord, what Regulus had never forgotten. And Regulus, himself, was a vassal of the Dark Lord. It forced him to wonder what he would be asked to give without receiving his due in return.
Suddenly, all the little doubts that had been creeping at the back of his mind for a year surfaced at once. Killing Muggles was pointless when they did not even know who was responsible. It was no conquest that way. As for the war among the wizards, Muggle-borns were of course a cut below purebloods, but treating them like Muggles was a bit much. But then, if this was how the Dark Lord treated his servants, it should be no surprise.
Regulus was not going to allow this to happen. The Dark Lord was taking the duty and glory of purebloods and turning it into a mockery of everything Regulus had ever believed. He had to be stopped. Somehow, he had to be stopped.
Regulus thought the hardest thing he had ever done was swallowing the first cup of poison. He was wrong. Swallowing the second was harder, because he knew what was coming. Each successive cup was harder still. Only the persistent thought kept him going, the lesson he had learned on his mother's knee: Never, never order someone to do what you are unwilling yourself to do. He had ordered Kreacher to do this, whether he had known it or not. He would do it. He had to do it, so that he at least would know that he had not shirked every duty of a Black.
He wanted nothing more than to stop, just for a moment, but he knew he could not. If he did, the bowl would fill again, and he would have to begin once more. He could see so much, faces dancing in the air. His father drifted before his eyes, calling Regulus a shame, a shame on the Blacks and all purebloods. His mother only laughed. Sirius, too, and Andromeda, Narcissa, his cousin Mordred, even Bellatrix, they were all there, watching, hating him. Then there were the other faces, the ones he had no names for, the faces he had never been able to sleep without seeing. He had killed them, he had killed them all, and all for nothing, for a lie he had been all too willing to believe.
He was vaguely aware that he was crying.
At last it was done, all the potion was gone, and though he knew what would come, Regulus could think of nothing but the bliss of cool water. He had all but forgotten Kreacher in his pain, but the idea drifted into his mind that he could tell Kreacher to take him away, he could still escape—
There was no escape, not from this. This was his sacrifice for all the obligations he had forgotten or refused to honor. This was his duty, and his penance.
As rotten hands dragged him into the black-glass lake, Regulus made no sound.