Story Notes: Super tired and stressed lately. Didn't have it in me to throw together a whole chapter for any of my stories like I really should have. Felt bad for not uploading anything in like a week. Found this snippet in a random folder and decided to share. G'night.

Summary: Harry has a conversation with Regulus.

Warnings: None. Although a brief reminder that this isn't really a story in the strictest sense of the word and all chapters share only a loose continuity.

What Once was Heaven is Zenith now

Things had never been quieter at Grimmauld Place. Regulus found himself completely alone more and more these days as Sirius had retracted on his word to him and begun to leave the house on Order business. The Dark Lord had tipped his hand at the Department of Mysteries nearly six months prior, and although there had still been plausible deniability at that time, there was no hiding his antics since Regulus's theft of his gauntlet horcrux. Lord Voldemort was on the rampage, scrambling frantically to—Regulus assumed—gather his remaining horcruxes and perhaps create some more. So while the reaction had been delayed, Sirius was officially off the hook with the Ministry at this point.

Regulus found it a particularly bitter taste to swallow that it had ironically been his own actions that had brought about this newfound threat to what little stability remained in his life. More than once, Regulus found himself admitting that if he could take it all back, he probably would. To him it would be worth keeping mum about Voldemort's horcruxes if only to extend Sirius's imprisonment at Grimmauld.

But now his brother was off gallivanting with the rest of his Order friends and while he had tried to talk his way around this issue, Regulus wasn't buying it. He had been lied to. Sirius had promised he would stay home, and now had realized that wasn't possible. It was nothing more than a pipe dream. It simply wasn't realistic that one of Dumbledore's more talented, able-bodied wizards sit at home babysitting his brother all day when he should be off actually doing something.

Sirius never told Regulus what he did, either. Well, he usually tried to lie about it, describing routine scouting missions and recruitment work, but Regulus knew it was bullshit. Sirius recently had seemed to realize that he wasn't fooling his brother and so had simply stopped trying to explain himself all together. Though he did still refrain from returning home until his was completely healed from whatever escapades he had been a part of, and while Regulus hated the extra waiting, he was grateful that he had yet to see his brother injured.

And Regulus had felt himself growing increasingly restless. He wanted out of the house but did not dare venture outside. Sirius would know if he had left. He had warded for that the morning after Regulus had returned with the horcux last summer. And as upset as Regulus was with Sirius, he did not want his brother to be distracted for Regulus's safety during Order business.

These feelings grew worse and worse until they finally hit a crescendo around the end of September. Then Regulus suddenly...stopped. It were as though something in him had snapped and he no longer seemed to care for his situation one way or another. Where for the last few months he had felt upset and antsy, now he was calm. He took to spending the hours of his day and night lounging in the library, or stretched out on his parents' balcony, staring at the stars. What did any of it matter? Sometimes he would read random chapters from casually selected books or make up his own constellations in the sky. He drew pictures (something he found he was surprisingly good at) and scribbled down short stories and poetry (something he felt he was much less good at). He was careful to hide all his artistic endeavors from Sirius on the rare occasions that the man returned to Grimmauld Place. Not because he was ashamed of them (he didn't much care what Sirius thought anymore) but simply because he was loathe to talk to Sirius about much these days and didn't want to start a conversation. He also didn't want to have to listen to the forced, fake praise that his brother would likely vomit out if he ever caught sight of any of Regulus's works.

So when the fireplace downstairs roared to life in the early hours of the evening on October 31st, Regulus assumed it was merely Sirius checking in to make sure his little brother was still sitting at home, well-behaved and docile.

Regulus, who was lazing about on the drawing room settee, debated dashing upstairs to pretend to be asleep in bed and thus avoid talking to Sirius, but decided against it. Part of him enjoyed how uncomfortable Sirius was around him lately—for Regulus's aloof apathy seemed to frighten his brother a little, and Sirius seemed increasingly wary of leaving Regulus alone for long stretches of time, though this didn't stop the bastard from doing it. A small smile flickered onto Regulus's face as he relished the idea of Sirius's guilt over Regulus's obvious mental degredation.

It was a great surprise to Regulus then, when he saw Harry Potter wander into his drawing room, not Sirius Black.

"Mr. Potter..." Regulus eyed the sixteen-year-old calmly. He pushed himself up into a sitting position and tossed his book onto the end table.

"Hi, Reg," Harry said with a smile. From the look of things he had come straight from classes. He was still in his school uniform and even had his bookbag slung over his shoulder.

Regulus frowned, wondering if something was wrong and Harry had come looking for Order assistance.

"Sirius isn't here right now," he said apologetically. "If you're looking for him, you'll likely have a long wait. He's off with Lupin somewhere. You'd have better luck going back to school and badgering Severus about where he's run off to..."

But Harry shook his head. He let his bag slide to the floor and then took a seat on the couch across from Regulus. The last few rays of 7:30 sunshine came bleating in through the bay windows and cast half of the boys face in an odd glow. "I know Sirius isn't here. I came to talk to you, actually."

Regulus tilted his head. "Me?"

Harry nodded. "I hope you don't mind. Are you busy?"

Regulus laughed out loud. "What the hell do you mean by that?" he snapped. "I've nothing to be busy with! I've just been sitting here. I'll likely die sitting in this house, you know. I don't even have the blasted house elf for company anymore."

Harry frowned. Carefully, he started to ask, "Where is—?"

Regulus waved his words away. "Can't be trusted, Sirius said. Had him shipped off to Hogwarts actually, where Dumbledore could keep him complacent under some really powerful magic. He's probably making your dinners every night," Regulus added bitterly. "I tried to tell Sirius that Kreacher would obey my orders over anyone else's, but he seemed not to believe me. Appeared to think me a liar who was willing to sacrifice the safety of this house and the entire Order just to have someone to talk to."

Harry shifted about uncomfortably.

"I mean I probably would have, to be honest," Regulus admitted idly. "But in this case there really was no need. He could have remained at home; there truly is no danger that he would disobey me, the favorite son of his favorite master. Now he's been sent away for however long this ungodly war is going to continue...and he's not young, you know. I worry that he'll die one night, a hundred miles away from his home," Regulus finished gravely.

"Maybe if you talked to Sirius again he'd understand," Harry suggested.

Regulus smiled pityingly. He was unwilling to argue with Harry at the moment. Obviously Harry's Sirius Black was a very different creature to Regulus's own. A reasonable and understanding person who served as a connection rod between Harry and his own past. A conduit for Harry's desire to meet his own deceased parents.

"What did you come to ask me about, Mr. Potter? It must have been something important for you to have snuck away from school."

Harry blinked, and then appeared to gather himself.

"Do you remember being dead?" He asked earnestly.

Regulus didn't answer right away. And when he did, he chose his words carefully.

"No," he said. He crossed one leg over the other and leaned back a bit in contemplation. "For me it was as though all the years between the moment of my death and my reawakening had never happened."

Harry nodded, his expression resigned as though he had been expecting that answer, yet still a little crestfallen.

"At least at first."

Harry's eyes darted back to Regulus's own. He leaned forward eagerly, but didn't speak. He trusted Regulus to keep talking.

"I've done my fair share of research into the magic that brought me back, and it seems that it certainly rewound the conscious memories of my spirit back to the point of my death. Yet it does not seem to have the power to fully erase them. Somewhere in the subconscious recesses of my mind, I'm confident that I do still have recollections of where my soul came to rest after my death."

"Do you have proof of this?" Asked Harry in fascination. "Or are you just theorizing?"

Regulus scratched at his neck. "There are times, usually in dreams, when I remember a great deal. By the time I awake, these moments of revelation have usually faded to mere memories of feelings, or sometimes a few phrases of dialogue, though I struggle to place who said them to me."

"Have you told anyone about this?" Harry asked.

Regulus shook his head immediately, a look of exasperation on his face. "Of course not. I have not desire to be laughed at. Nor do I wish to be psychoanalyzed by my brother's overbearing werewolf friend, who will inevitably liken my experiences to some sort of plea for comfort from my big brother, a psychological trick of the mind and little else. And I certainly do not want my very sanity questioned by that red-headed nightmare your friend calls a mother. I don't want word of my...I suppose for lack of a better word I will call them visions, to travel around the Order of the Phoenix like a piece of primary school gossip."

"Sirius wouldn't—"

"Sirius would tell Lupin, who would tell Dumbledore, who would then tell everyone else possibly as an underhanded attempt to force me to open up to his lackeys or possibly just for the hell of it, I don't know."

Just as Regulus had avoided correcting Harry on his opinion of Sirius's double nature, so too did Harry refrain from telling Regulus how he couldn't see Professor Dumbledore behaving less than admirably.

Instead Harry asked quietly, "But yet you told me?"

Regulus raised an eyebrow. "And are you not the one person who would believe me? You've yet to ask me what any other person would have by now. How do I know what I see and feel while I sleep is not merely a sequence of bizarre dreams?" Regulus smiled at the look on Harry's face, a look which suggested that question had not even occurred to the boy. "You understand the fundamental difference between your dreams and the visions you have during your moments of connection with the Dark Lord. Therefore you can trust my judgment implicitly in a way that those who have never experienced anything beyond normal dreams simply cannot."

After a pause, during which the last of the sunlight disappeared and Regulus lazily lit the lamps with his mother's wand, Harry finally asked, "Tell me more about what you saw, won't you Reg?"

Regulus smiled. "It's not exactly pleasant," he admitted. He found himself more than willing to talk, though. Though he prided himself on being a very private person, he had disliked keeping these particular ideas to himself. "It's frustrating, after a sense. Part of me is so sure that what I see while I sleep is so very clear and informative. When I wake, I feel as if I can remember only vague snippets of what was once the memory of a very interesting conversation.

"There are colors, most of them over-saturated, and distinct feelings. Melancholy, sadness, but all of them linked to some source of great joy. There's always contentment, and the feeling of being held. Most nights when these memories choose to take me, I feel very warm. And there are sounds. The sounds probably survive the most unscathed. When my experiences started coming back to me, which was several months ago, all I could remember were sounds for a good while. The rest has been getting slightly clearer as time goes on."

"Sounds...like voices?" Harry asked.

"Voices with no distinct words," Regulus admitted. "The sound of laughing and sometimes of crying. Inhuman noises that my mind pairs so frequently with a blurred, calico color scheme that I am certain my dead soul ended up reunited in some part with Olivera, the cat my father gave me when I was very young. You must think that foolish. That a cat would be regarded in the afterlife as equal to a wizard."

"Perhaps because to you she was," Harry suggested. Regulus cast him an odd look.

"What brought this question about?" he asked. "Sirius is not probing into my personal affairs vicariously through you, is he?"

"No," Harry laughed. "I was just...curious...lately."

"Did you want to know if I'd reunited with all my family? So you could take my words as affirmation that you would someday meet your parents?"

Regulus's words weren't cruel or judmental. Like Harry had claimed to, Regulus honestly just wondered.

"And just how did you come to that assumption?" Harry asked. Regulus only smirked.

"You're likely missing one hell of a Halloween feast up at the school."

Harry closed his eyes and nodded. "Surely you're at least partly right," he admitted. "And I guess I can appreciate you giving me some hope."

Regulus smiled. "I suppose giving someone a modicum of hope that they might one day experience the profound is as good a way to spend my evening as any. Merlin knows I have nothing else to do with my time." Regulus slumped like a man resigned to his fate. Harry looked at him with some sadness.

"I should warn you that Sirius was due back last night, which if his previous escapades are anything to judge by, means he'll be returning tonight, providing he's not dead in a ditch somewhere," Regulus scoffed flippantly to avoid admitting any real worry over Sirius's tardiness. "I know he'd never dream of punishing you for anything short of premeditated murder, but I'd imagine you don't want to get caught by him."

Harry chuckled. "Yeah, Sirius probably shouldn't find me here. He might let word slip to Professor Lupin or Ms. Weasley and then I really would be in trouble."

Harry stood up, scratching nervously at his arm and looking like he hadn't quite gotten all of what he'd come looking for, but had run out of things to say.

"I'll not be going anywhere," Regulus said as if stating the obvious. "And I'd not ban you from ever broaching this subject again with me...Harry."

It was the first time Regulus had ever called Harry by his first name, and Harry would be lying if he denied his excitement. Here was Regulus Black, a hero of the first wizarding war, and the only person to ever come back from the dead, willing to open up to Harry of all people when he was normally so reserved and guarded.

Perhaps Regulus felt some level of kinship for Harry because they were both connected to Sirius, or maybe even because Harry survived the killing curse, making him the closest thing to a peer that Regulus had. They were both wanted by Voldemort, that was for sure. In the end, Regulus supposed he might have just been happy that he'd found someone else to tether him to this present-day world. That there was someone beyond Sirius who might actually...know him. Regulus was by no means cured of his apathy, nor his depression, but he felt a little better, like he knew there was a horizon out there somewhere, even if he couldn't see it just yet.

It was childish, but in that moment, Regulus felt there like maybe Harry Potter was the one person he might willingly show his artwork to. Maybe some other evening, he would.

"I'd better go back to school then," Harry said somberly. Regulus stood up and the two shook hands. Before Harry left, he said one more thing, and with such sincerity that Regulus was given pause.

"He just wants to fix the world for you, you have to know that. He loves you, you know?"

Regulus closed his eyes, a swirl of guilt and anxiety making its way down his spine.

"Yes, Harry. I know."

signed/Ten