Disclaimer: I do not own any Harry Potter characters, settings, or plot devices; I just fangirl both Black brothers something awful.

Author's Note: Good grief; am I really starting this? For those of you who don't know, this is the second in the Double Trouble series; 1993 has already been written and posted, and it details what happened after Sirius's escape from Azkaban and what, exactly, Regulus is doing here. For those of you who do, welcome back; I hope this instalment can live up to the last (although I appreciate this chapter is rougher than I wanted it to be. Frankly I'm surprised I got it up this week.) Cheers! — Loki

Regulus Black had long since decided that Tuesday was undoubtably the most useless day of the week. After all, Monday existed because the weekend had to end sometime, Wednesday was the middle of the week, and Thursday and Friday were at least on the downhill trend. Tuesday, on the other hand, just sat there, a mere stepping stone to Hump Day.

He was dimly aware that this evaluation had been aided in school by his class schedule, which always seemed to hold History of Magic with Gryffindors— the most useless class he could think of— on Tuesday mornings, and Astronomy on Tuesday nights, when he didn't see the point in taking a class to learn the names of the stars when he'd been christened after one.

On this particular Tuesday, Regulus had spent most of his working hours being shouted at from the other end of a phone line, and at the grocer's on the way home, the clerk and customer in front of him had expanded his broken French vocabulary in colorful and interesting ways. Still, while the new words would come in handy if Sirius ever got bored enough to experiment with the power cables, they weren't the sort of thing he'd use in public. Neither of these things really had anything to do with the day of the week, and if Regulus had been in a better mood he would have admitted it. But right now it was easier to think that Tuesdays were cursed.

And when he'd finally gotten home, Sirius was nowhere to be found.

Regulus had been looking forward to ranting at someone who would just laugh and tell him not to take things so seriously. Sirius's philosophy seemed to be that all the little things in life— from undone homework to missing keys— would work themselves out eventually, and when he was in a comparatively good mood the attitude seemed contagious.

"Sirius?" he called on his way through the door.

No answer.

Regulus shrugged, stuffed his keys into his coat pocket— he wasn't going to add missing keys to the list of minor annoyances that summed up his day— and made his way into the kitchen. Since he'd yet to see hide or hair of his brother, he tried again. "Sirius!"

When there was still no answer, he whistled in case he was a dog and in an ornery mood. Sirius the dog always came to a whistle; it seemed to be built into his shape.

The patter of paws entirely failed to reach Regulus's ears, and Regulus shrugged, put the groceries away, and got dinner out for the hippogriff. Sirius still hadn't shown his face, and Regulus supposed he must have gone out again.

In itself, this wasn't unusual. After twelve years in Azkaban, Sirius was not going to allow himself to be cooped up at home. As he'd pointed out, the people who knew he was an Animagus numbered seven: Regulus, Albus Dumbledore, Sirius's old friend Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew— who was a long way off had he any survival instincts— and three kids, so it wasn't as if the dog couldn't wander around the village without comment by any local wizards.

There were, after all, a few of them: Since Regulus was too nervous after their brush with the Ministry at the end of the last school year to get the Daily Prophet delivered, Sirius had gone looking for trash bins he could nick them out of. The one he'd found belonged to a vacationing English family with three pre-Hogwarts girls, all of whom had caught Sirius at the bin and decided he was the most wonderful thing on four legs.

Sirius was probably over there now, basking in their attention and looking forward to the comedy of errors that would inevitably ensue between Regulus and the girls' parents, who thought he was a Muggle, when Regulus came to retrieve his "dog."

Still, it was a beautiful day with a few hours of sunlight left, and Regulus didn't think that he should ruin the girls' fun just because he'd had a bad day. Instead, he went into the back bedroom, which had been converted into a makeshift home for Buckbeak the hippogriff.

Buckbeak seemed happier to see dinner than he was to see the man carrying it, but he also had no objections to being patten on the flanks and complained at while he ate. Or perhaps it simply took a former Death Eater not to mind being glared at from above a wickedly sharp, currently bloody beak.

". . . and now I think Sirius is off news-hunting again," Regulus announced, "and I'm always afraid that he's going to show too much intelligence while he's goofing off. . . ." His finger's absent attention had brought the rats in Buckbeak's steel gray tail to his attention. "And someone needs to take a brush to you, from the looks of it. Sirius can do that after I drag him home. Speaking of which. . . ." He checked his watch. "It's after seven. I'd better go over there."

Buckbeak flicked his tail in reply, as if to tell Regulus to stop bothering him and get going. Regulus shook his head and obliged.

The walk to the Parkers would normally have been a pleasant one. After all, if it hadn't been a bit hot outside, it would have been nearly perfect weather, and while it was rather hard on the poor man, Regulus did find Mr. Parker's attempts to cover all his and the girls' slips into the more comfortable magical world rather amusing. And with the World Cup going on, he wouldn't put it past Cassie, who was apparently Quidditch crazy, to try discussing it with him, much to her father's horror.

Even today, his irritation had lessened a bit by the time he paused to shrug his coat off.

By chance he slung it over his left shoulder, which gave him a good look at his left forearm, and his breath caught in his chest. It was back.

Well, if he were honest with himself it had never really gone away, only faded and lost its shape, until it looked like a series of splotchy burn scars, which he had passed it off as for thirteen years. Muggles and wizards alike didn't know to look for it, and except for a moment the previous year when Sirius had asked about it, he'd ceased to think of it as a mark. It was just an old scar from a past act of stupidity.

Now it was more.

It wasn't clear yet, thankfully. Even on a deserted street, he didn't want something like it out openly. But he could tell what it was. The vague shape of a skull, and a twisted line, which would eventually harden into the contours of a snake, curling from and around it.

"Damn," he muttered. This didn't seem as if it was nearly enough, and he thought about adding in a few of the newly acquired French swearwords, but eventually he decided that nothing could possibly be enough and left it at "damn."

And to think that Regulus had been stupid enough to hope the man was dead.

After a few minutes of shocked silence a bird squawked in the trees, dragging Regulus back into reality. He couldn't simply stand there, staring at his branded arm. He shook his head, pulled his coat back on, and continued over to the Parkers'.

Trenton Parker was seated on the garden bench with a book in hand and his wand behind his ear, which was not a wise idea for any number of reasons. Regulus could almost hear Dolohov, who was as paranoid as he'd heard Alastor Moody had become, asking at the top of his voice if Mr. Parker wanted his brains blown out. To which Bella would probably have replied yes, apparently he did, and proceed to assist him to that end.

Regulus shuddered and tried to push the Dark Mark out of his mind.

The other reason it was stupid was much less morbid— it wasn't exactly something he could easily explain should a Muggle ask him about it.

"Excuse me, sir, but have you seen Snuffles?" he asked.

Mr. Parker jumped, reached immediately for his wand, and after a moment set it casually beside him as if it was nothing more than a stick. "Mr. Fox?"

"Reg," Regulus muttered, but he shook his head. Since neither was completely comfortable with each other, it was no surprise they were still referring to each other formally, even though Regulus knew all three of his daughters well enough to have mentally put them into Houses.

"I think I saw Amanda playing with him a few minutes ago."

"Good. I don't mind that he comes over here, really," Regulus added, "I just wish I knew how he got the door open without anyone catching him." He really did wonder this, and today he resolved to ask Sirius about it when they got back home. Anything to keep his mind off of his arm.

Mr. Parker shook his head. "And I thought cats were the great escape artists."

"Oh, they are, all right," Regulus told him. "Trust me, just because I've got a dog right now doesn't mean I'm not a cat person." He shook his head, put his fingers to his lips, and whistled.

Nothing happened. Usually Sirius snapped out an irritable bark when he was called, as if to remind Regulus that he didn't have to come, he was only continuing the ruse that he was a pet. Even when he didn't, Regulus could often hear him moving.

"He'd better be out of earshot," Regulus muttered. He was in no mood to put up with Sirius being ornery right now, especially when he wasn't entirely sure he was going to tell his brother the truth when Sirius inevitably asked what was making him so short.

As he spoke, however, Sirius appeared, with six-year-old Amanda Parker hanging onto his ruff. The girl was holding a green ball and the massive black dog was shooting Regulus a look of utmost reproach. Still, Sirius shook the girl off as gently as possibly, licked her cheek, and padded over to his brother. "There you are," Regulus murmured. "I've been looking all over for you."

Sirius simply cocked his head in a canine shrug.

Regulus rolled his eyes but nodded to the little girl, smiling slightly. "Thanks for looking after him for me."

Amanda nodded.

Sirius started to head towards home, and Regulus bid the two a hasty good bye before following his brother down the path.

"I just want you to know that your claim that I would find out nothing interesting or useful by nicking Daily Prophets had no basis in reality," Sirius announced as he emerged from Buckbeak's room and wandered into the kitchen, where Regulus was. "Because even if this doesn't prove useful, it's interesting."

"Mind letting me be the judge?" Regulus asked mildly.

"Mad-Eye Moody's the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts," Sirius announced, sitting down at the kitchen table with a vague smile on his face.

Regulus glanced back and rolled his eyes. These were the times, when Sirius was grinning like a maniac and determined, for no coherent reason, to prove Regulus wrong, when the change in the man over the last few months was obvious. His form had more or less filled out again, so he looked less like a skeleton or vampire, and it was amazing how normal he looked thanks to jeans and another haircut (Sirius had fought him on the latter, but Regulus had insisted). And the change wasn't only physical— time and distance were working their own brand of magic, and it wasn't only a single-minded hunt that was keeping Sirius grounded in reality as it had been when he'd first escaped. "I can think of several completely noncommental reasons for Moody to be teaching," Regulus informed his brother mildly.

"Such as?"

"It's probably the same reason that Dumbledore hired a werewolf. People think the job is jinxed, so you can no longer expect sane, normal teachers to take it. And, well . . . Alastor Moody already thinks something's out to get him. If the job really is jinxed, at least he's prepared."

"Or Dumbledore might want an Auror at the school for some reason or another this year. We've been— or at least, I've been— hearing some pretty strange rumors about Voldemort lately."

"Or maybe Azkaban messed with your head and you're getting as paranoid as Moody or Dolohov."

Sirius snorted and rolled his eyes, but as Regulus turned back to the stove, he heard his brother say quietly, "I wouldn't blame you if you were even more afraid than most to see him come back, Reggie. Really I wouldn't."