Information

Regulus
Legacy Name: Pyukumuku

The Angelic Montre
Owner: Monologue

Age: 14 years, 4 weeks

Born: March 27th, 2010

Adopted: 14 years, 4 weeks ago

Adopted: March 27th, 2010

Pet Spotlight Winner
July 30th, 2021

Statistics

• Level: 20
   
• Strength: 50
   
• Defense: 50
   
• Speed: 34
   
• Health: 40
   
• HP: 40/40
   
• Intelligence: 84
   
• Books Read: 81
• Food Eaten: 0
• Job: Planetarium Assistant

To the Dark Lord...

Regulus Black is the second son of one of the most powerful families in wizarding Great Britain. Having already previously secured an heir, his parents weren’t as pressured to ensure that another son was born, but when he had arrived on a lovely day in July, what blessings! An heir and a spare in the main family, and three lovely pureblooded daughters in the branch family—the House of Black had more than adequately secured its future. His was a strict but fairly normal childhood in a pureblooded House: he was doted upon by his aunts, indulged by his cousins, teased relentlessly by his older brother, and taught his place in the world by his parents well before his first tutor was invited to step foot into the parlor to teach him Latin and history and magical theory.

He was ten when Sirius went off to Hogwarts, and his parents’ pride was immediately turned to astonished outrage when the Hogwarts owl had swooped in bearing a letter from Professor McGonagall. “I have the great pleasure of informing you that your son, Sirius Black, has been sorted into Gryffindor House,” it had said, like it did for every other newly sorted Gryffindor child. Their parents had been bitterly disappointed, but as the months went on and Sirius’s grades came in—nothing less than a string of O’s—they’d resigned themselves to the inevitable. There were a handful of respectable families who still traditionally sorted into Gryffindor, and contrary to the snide remarks of Grandmother Irma or the newly married cousin Bella, it was not the end of the world. It would simply be harder to keep the Black heir from associating with riff-raff, but Blacks had always loved a challenge.

Nevertheless, it was crucial for Regulus to Sort well. Orion and Walburga Black had only so many resources to deal with one wayward son, and Regulus had always been the easier child to manage. The family would be much relieved if the next letter they received announcing the results of Sorting was from the highly decorated Professor Slughorn, if Great Aunt Cassiopeia and Aunt Lucretia’s teatime musings were to be believed.

But did it really matter, though? Regulus had no sooner turned eleven and received his acceptance letter when cousin Andy did the unthinkable: she breaks off her engagement with Thaddeus Selwyn. To further rub salt in the wound, she’d run off with a Muggle-born wizard—a Mudblood. Regulus had never seen anyone cry as much as Aunt Druella had when the news broke. Sirius, who had hung back in the shadow of the stairwell to eavesdrop on the adults long after they were supposed to be in bed, claimed that a great shouting match had occurred between Father, Uncle Pollux, and Gerald Selwyn, the ex-fiancé’s father. The Selwyns had eventually left in a huff, there was an anguished scream, followed by a great thundering crack that seemed to rock the house to its very foundations, and the next morning Father had gathered them all solemnly in the drawing room, where their cousin’s face was a scorched black thing on the prized tapestry. She had been stripped of her inheritance and sizable dowry. They were not to speak of her ever again.

Regulus’s Sorting comes and goes like the inconsequential thing it is in the grand scheme of things.

School passed as it should. Sirius is strongly encouraged to join the Quidditch team after their parents received one too many stern letters from McGonagall about his impish behavior. He performed well enough that Regulus is met with absolutely no resistance when he, too, asked for a racing broom as soon as it’s allowed. He becomes the youngest Seeker to fly for Slytherin and ends up taking a flying dive off his broom in his first official match, but at least he had caught the Snitch. Sirius calls him a fast little menace and actually looks pleased about it, and then at the last match of the year he’d sent a Bludger his way that dislocated his shoulder.

Then there was cousin Cissy’s engagement to the Malfoy heir whom neither Black brother could stand, culminating in an opulent wedding the summer Regulus turns fourteen that’s dreadfully boring to sit through. She’d looked a dream in shimmery satin and delicate lace though, dripping with expensive jewels that would have drove a niffler mad. It’s the last family event that Regulus spent with his brother and genuinely enjoyed, between sneaking golden flutes of champagne when their mother wasn’t looking and breathing snide comments about Lucky Lucy to each other when their mother was out of earshot.

Fourteen also marked the first Christmas where Sirius had bugged off for nearly the entire Christmas holiday to stay with the Potters, infuriating their mother. The only time they managed to cross paths before school resumed was at the Midwinter Gala because every pureblooded family worth their salt attended. For his fifteenth birthday, Sirius gives Regulus a copy of Advanced Theoretical Charms that he’d been eyeing and then promptly washes his hands of their family the week after. This time, Regulus is present in the drawing room when their mother blasts Sirius off the tapestry and collapses in a pile of silks upon a chair to weep bitterly, leaving only the golden embroidery of his birth year intact.

According to Mother, Regulus is to believe that he never had a brother; that he is and was the sole heir to the House of Black. According to Father, legally disinheriting a son—and a firstborn son at that—is far more difficult a process. It is far easier, the heavy tome of Old Magikal Law claimed, to simply shift the order of inheritance for sons should the need arise. In the blink of an eye everything that was once entitled to Sirius was now Regulus’s, and what was once set aside for Regulus—a third of his father’s estate, funds to set up a separate household for himself, and a modest vault on top of all that—was left to Sirius. Mother, too blinded by grief to remember the old inheritance laws, had blasted Uncle Alphard off the tapestry in an irreversible fit after he and Father had hashed out an agreement to close the second vault and just pass Alphard’s inheritance directly to Sirius. There’d been a spectacular row about that, but the damage had been done.

He falls in love. It’s inconvenient. Mother starts obsessing with restoring the family honor. There’ll be a marriage, of course, because that’s the tried and true method, but cousin Bella and her whole family are in some new order or other. Was it not their right, as pureblooded families with long and illustrious ancestries, to stand at the top of the great magical order? “Surely,” cousin Bella had said, poisonously sweet, “Mama and Aunt Walburga don’t want the wives and mothers of other respectable pureblooded families to bear the same shame and humiliation that our family has faced. Is it not our duty, as the most renowned family of them all, to set a good example for our peers?”

There was nothing to it. Regulus takes the Mark because he loves his family and he’s proud of his heritage. He takes it because he had hurt when Sirius had abandoned him. He takes it because he wants Mother to be the Mother of his childhood again. For a few blissful months, it feels like he succeeds.

Father shows him the private study in the library that only opens to the head of the family and his heir. It’s filled with terribly wondrous things. He sits meetings with boys that he grew up with and listens to a voice that’s so icy smooth that it makes something primal in him scream. Father teaches him to be mindful of all the little details and so he is, taking his father’s curse-breaking training to heart, and he hears things and sees things that shouldn’t ever be wished upon another person.

Yet Mother says: “You are doing so well, my son,” and it’s enough—it has to be enough to see how his efforts have rallied his mother’s spirits. His best friend’s cousin, a sweet girl named Cecelia, comes of age for betrothal talks. Aunt Druella acts as the matchmaker, but it’s his mother and Mrs. Estella Rosier who animatedly do all the talking. Cecelia just turns red in increments while Regulus fiddles with his teacup, wishing he was in an empty classroom charming bubbles to the delight of a different giggling voice. But it’s impossible now—a match good enough for a second son was unacceptable for an heir.

“Bury your wants,” Mother says, “Duty above all else.”

The Dark Lord requires an Elf. There are few things that Regulus regrets with the magnitude that he did now. He tries to be kind to Kreacher, but in a short ten months he hurts Kreacher not once, not twice, but three times. His father dies, and he has never felt so alone.

He goes to the cave. He wonders if the brother he doesn’t have socially but still has legally will be proud of him. He wonders if his mother will remember how he tried to make her happy and how he tried to be true to the family’s legacy. Hopefully, Aunt Druella won’t be too inconvenienced that there will now, without a shadow of a doubt, be no wedding. Cecelia Rosier can’t marry a dead man, after all. She shouldn’t be forced to marry a foolish man either, and what was more foolish than stealing from the Dark Lord?

But Blacks always loved a challenge, didn’t they? And was Regulus not as ambitious as the rest of his house? Was it not his duty as a Black—as the head of House Black—to set an example for his peers? After all, mortal men should not dream of becoming gods.

He is eighteen, and he drowns.

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