REGULUS

Sirius sat with a cigarette between his lips, staring at the sea as the sun was preparing to set far off over the curve of the island's shore, where the sea stretched off to infinity beyond the edge of where the land came to an end. His hair hung stringy and clumped up by the salt water in strands down his back, a towel flung over his shoulders. He was straddling the end of Remus's lounge chair, his hands rubbing Remus's feet.

James sat in the sand, hugging his knees, a cigarette between his finger tips, smoldering. He'd dried his hair with his wand the moment they'd gotten out of the water and Sirius had laughed and called James a prick because he was obsessed with keeping his hair perfectly windblown at all times. James had only grinned - a wide and crooked thing, broken in all the right ways - and run his hands through his perfectly fluffy mane with an air of the arrogance he was known for. Now, he plunged his toes under the sand and wiggled them, watching the granules slide over the tops of his feet, carefully not watching my brother massage Remus's own feet.

"So where's the old ball and chain anyway?" the cigarette bounced as Sirius spoke, the tip glowing with embers he hadn't shaken off yet.

James answered without looking up. "How am I to know? We're on a break, aren't we?"

I looked over at him. "You broke up with Lily?"

James didn't answer, didn't look at me. After a few moments, Sirius said, "They're on a break." A muscle tightened in James's jaw and he raised the cigarette to his mouth. Sirius looked over at me and met my eyes, a clear warning not to ask for more information until it was proffered by the source.

James lowered the cigarette, "I reckon she probably went on that stupid holiday with her folks... the one she invited me on. Got pissed I didn't want to spend a month at sea with Pigtunia and her reproductive hormones." He tapped the cigarette so that ash fell from the end and blew away in the breeze, little red sparks that smoldered out the moment they hit the sand. "For a muggle, that woman is the witchiest person I've ever met... and where she goes that fucking walrus is never too far behind." He shook his head.

"I still can't get over the fact her sister thinks you're Snivellus half the bleeding time," Remus said quietly. His eyes were closed, enjoying the work Sirius was doing to his feet. Sirius grinned and pressed his thumbs all the harder against Remus's arches and he inhaled sharply, letting out a grunt of appreciation.

"You have hygiene, it really shouldn't be that hard to tell you apart," Sirius snickered.

James shrugged. "She just doesn't care to pay attention. Which is fine. I don't really want her caring." He took another drag from the cigarette. I couldn't help but stare at the way his lips closed around it, the way his cheeks hollowed as he inhaled, and the smoke streamed out through his nostrils as they flared. He squinted, his nose pinched, glasses off so they wouldn't be lost in the water, and I wondered how blurry things looked to him when he wasn't wearing them. "There was no way I was spending so much time with Piggy and the Walrus at any rate."

Remus murmured, "If you didn't call them Piggy and the Walrus might help your relationship with them a wee bit."

"If she wasn't a bitch to Lily and I would help the relationship, rather," James snorted. "It isn't as though I call them Piggy and the Walrus to their face, though if she keeps being so horrid to Evans I might do."

"I will pay premium prices for tickets to that event," Sirius hooted, pausing the massage to knock the ash off his cigarette.

"Can I have a smoke?" I asked him.

"No, fuck off," he answered.

"Why?"

"Because you're an actual child and children don't fucking smoke," he answered.

"I'm not a child," I answered. "I'm of age."

"Then get your own fucking cigarettes."

"At what store?" I demanded, waving my palms to indicate the empty beach.

Sirius grinned, "Looks like you're shit out of luck, little brother."

"They're horrible for you anyway," murmured Remus without opening his eyes, "I keep telling Sirius he needs to quit but he never listens to me."

"I'm already a shoddy mess, it's too late for me." Sirius took a long drag to emphasize his point, then blew the smoke in my direction so the puff of grey cloud hit me in the face, smelling slightly of mint and a great deal of tar. "You're still innocent."

I snorted.

James held out his half cigarette toward me, offering it up to share, and I took it, smirking at Sirius, who laughed and said, "Fuck you Potter, defying my parenting wishes." James shrugged and watched, half smirking as I raised the cigarette to my mouth. He'd bit on the filter a bit so it was a little misshapen and damp from his mouth and as I raised it to my own lips, my heart thumped at the thought that James Potter's mouth had just been on this cigarette, just before it was about to be on mine.

I took a drag and the smoke seemed to rush into my mouth and the dry heat of it hit the back of my throat hard, sending me into a coughing fit as the smoke filled my lungs unexpectedly fast. Sirius laughed as I hacked and thrust the cigarette back at James, whose eyes were glinting with amusement - he'd clearly intended exactly that to happen.

"Smooth, Reg," Sirius teased. Even Remus had opened his eyes and was chuckling. "You smoke often?"

I slammed my fist against my chest, my throat burning as I coughed.

"First day with his new lungs," James joked.

Sirius put out his own cigarette against a rock in the sand, dropping the butt, and swiveled around in Remus's lounge chair so that he now sat between Remus's legs, leaning back into his boyfriend's chest. Remus's arms wrapped around his sides and Sirius held their hands together against his abdomen.

James took another drag off his cigarette and I tried not to think about the fact that my mouth had been where his was now, too.

The moon was rising over the water now, near to full but not quite.

Sirius tilted his head to look up at Remus, whose eyes followed the moon over the sea. Remus shivered a little. "It's getting cold," Sirius said, though the air was still warm - we were, after all, practically on the equator, it never really got cold around there. "Let's head back and make a fire," he suggested. It was clear he was thinking more for Remus than for himself, but James didn't say anything, just nodded and pushed himself up from the sand, gathering the towel he'd been sitting on and shaking it out.

I followed them back along the path that led through the dunes and reeds to the cabin that sat just at the edge of a dense crop of trees and foliage, elephant ear-shaped leaves hanging languidly, waving slightly in the breeze. The sand sparkled white and silver under the moon and Sirius had pulled Remus's arm around his shoulder, walking slowly as Remus moved with all the grace and agility of a geriatric. A lot of grunting and whimpering emitted from him, wincing as his knees made audible cracks as he climbed the two steps up to the level of the cabin, where a ring of mismatched lawn chairs and blankets surrounded a fire pit. Sirius deposited Remus into one of the chairs as James jogged into the cabin, returning a moment later with his glasses in place and both our shirts in his fist, as well as his wand. He threw my shirt to me and pulled his own over his head, shaking out his hair with his palm again once he'd got it on.

Sirius waved his wand and the tinder made it's way into the pit. It was James who lit the fire, though, with a muttered spell. The fire glowed perfectly the moment he'd set it, orange and warm and flickering against over his face.

Sirius's eyes were mischievous. "Anyone want some fire whiskey?"

"God yes," Remus said and James nodded. I wondered if I was going to be considered too much of a child for the whiskey, too.

Sirius bounded into the cabin.

"Alright, Rey?" James asked across the fire pit as he sat down on the chair next to mine, seated at the edge of it, bent forward so his elbows were against his knees and his hair hung over his forehead.

Remus nodded, "Yeah, great. Just my furry little problem as usual." He forced a pained smile.

"What are you lot going to do for the full moon?" I asked.

"We'll go into the woods," Remus replied, waving a palm at the jungle-like trees that loomed beyond the cabin walls.

"You'll want to stay inside, though," James smirked over at me.

Remus nodded again.

Sirius came back out then with bottles of firewhiskey in his fists and he sank onto a low seat, holding one bottle between his knees to wrench the cork off before hovering that bottle across the fire to James, then wrenching off the other, taking a long swig of it and passing it on to Remus. Remus took an even longer swallow of the stuff than Sirius had done, and James offered the bottle he held to me first. I took a sip and handed it back to him, our fingers brushing. Sirius was taking a second pull before lowering the bottle, which reflected the fire, and he declared, "Ah there we are, there's that edge off." He grinned and smacked his lips and tilted his head back, a dog warming by the fire.

I had to admit, the warmth of the whiskey in my belly did help a bit with that whole letting go thing that I'd been struggling with.

I tilted my wrist again, looking at the way the silver puckering reflected the fire.

I had kept my jumpers pulled tight over my wrist when I'd returned to Hogwarts after the winter holiday, my fingers tight around the hem to hold it in place. I panicked if it slid up for even the slightest moment, even if I was only surrounded by my cousins who were most certainly the sons and daughters of other Death Eaters in the Dark Lord's circle of them. I did not want any whispers getting out around the school, didn't want to be known as a Death Eater... I feared being caught. My heart raced whenever I saw it with my own eyes - still as stark and fresh as the night Voldemort had put wand to skin and burned the shape of his insignia onto me. Branded - like livestock. The snake in the tattoo writhed, lifelike over the place where the skin was so thin I'd once been able to see my veins through it. They were covered up as the snake undulated through the vacant stare of the skull, winding her way through to push out of the mouth, fangs bared and tongue flickering like a threat.

Nagini, he called her, that snake he wore about his neck like a twisted king's robe.

But as the weather warned, my jumpers were becoming more and more unbearable.

"Roll up your sleeves," suggested a Hufflepuff girl in my Potions class whose teal hair shimmered the same color as the brew in her cauldron.

"I'm fine," I answered, despite the sweat that dotted my forehead.

"You look like you're ready to black out, rather," she replied with a shrug.

I'd shifted away.

Come May, it was unbearable, the jumpers too warm for the rising temperatures and the Dark Lord's temperament was forever setting it to burning, wrenching me out of sleep and setting me to running to the nearest prefect's toilet, where I could lock myself away to cry in privacy as the pain shot up my arm from the Mark. I clutched onto the sink basin and screamed into the bowl of it, a charm on the door to keep my racket inside. I stared into my own eyes, blood shot, the tear tracks drying on my cheeks, and knew I had to do something.

"Kreacher, I command you to take me to Sirius's flat in London, and tell no one where you've brought me," I commanded the house elf one day, after having summonsed him to the woods near the Shrieking Shack during a Hogsmeade weekend. The old elf had nodded obediently and taken hold of my arm, disapparating us away to the grime and grey of the city.

The Mark was burning even as I climbed the stairs to the flat and banged on the door.

Sirius had looked surprised when he opened the door up and stared at me, wand raised. He stared at me for a long moment, then asked, "The name of the man in the portrait that made up the wall of our clubhouse in Mother's attic?"

"Cadmus Peverell," I said, my voice tight with the pain in my wrist.

Sirius nodded and stepped back, allowing me to enter the flat. "What are you doing here?" he demanded as he closed the door and set the locking charms back on it behind me.

"Get it off me," I cried, thrusting my wrist out, letting my sleeve ride up, letting the Mark show.

He stared at it with a pained expression, appraising it. "Gods damn," he murmured as the snake slithered around the skull. The skin around it was red like an infection, the Mark itself black and angry looking. Sirius took my wrist in his hand, holding it like an artifact he was inspecting.

"Please," I begged him, tears cresting the edges of my eyes now, and I let out a whimper as the pain flared. "Please, get it off me."

He looked up at me and our eyes met and I could see the pain in them reflecting my own anguish. I thought of a time when we were small when we'd been chasing one another around the house and I'd tripped on the stairs and chipped my front teeth on the edge of the step three up. I'd screamed in pain then, too, and Sirius had been screaming right alongside me so that Mother wasn't sure at first which of us had been hurt. Sirius had always had a way of taking on my pain.

"I don't want you to feel it alone," he'd said that night when we'd gone to play in our clubhouse, my teeth nearly back to normal after Mother had used her magic to right them - though I'd always had a bit of a chip to the right one after that. "I wanted to feel it, too, so you knew we'd make it through it together."

I wondered if he was thinking that again as he faced me in his living room.

"What the hell is he doing here?" Remus's voice had cut through the moment as he'd come 'round the corner of the hallway, carrying a cup of tea, a newspaper under one arm.

Sirius had looked up. "How do you remove a Dark Mark?" he'd asked.

Remus stared at us for a long moment, then replied, "It isn't easy."

"But you know how to do it?"

James Potter appeared behind Remus then, carrying his own cup of tea, balancing it as he walked, one palm splayed beside the cup as though that would help at steadying his hand. He passed around Remus, who stayed frozen in the doorway, looking apprehensive. James came over and put his cup down on the coffee table, only sloshing a small amount of tea onto his saucer with a muttered, "bollocks," as it spilled.

"I mean, it would be very painful," Remus said.

"What would be very painful?" James asked, looking up. His eyes landed on my Mark and a look of surprise crossed his face. He looked up at me. "Hullo, Regulus."

"Get it off, please," I begged, looking between the three boys with desperation. "I don't care how much it hurts. I don't care if you have to sever off my whole arm. Just - just get it off me."

"It has to be burned away," Remus's voice was low, and he finally came the rest of the way into the living room, putting his mug more gently on a side table by the fireplace, not spilling a drop. James was sopping up his spilled tea with a cloth he'd shaken out of his wand and pressed to the table. He licked tea off his fingers as he looked at Remus, listening to the prescription. "The spell is one that literally... melts the flesh... and I'm not entirely positive it won't leave... residue. After all, it's rather hard to counteract such dark magic. That sort of thing is deeper than skin, usually."

"Melt the skin?" Sirius asked, paling.

Remus had nodded and sank into the chair beside where he'd landed his tea. He crossed one leg over the other.

"Do it," I begged. "Anything."

Sirius looked at me uncertainly.

"I'll do it," James said, and he stood up, wiping his palms over his shirt.

It was like a cruel echo of Christmas night - instead of Cygnus's parlor, it was my brother's flat. I sat on the couch, Sirius beside me, his hand firm on my shoulder and forearm, holding out my wrist in place of my Father, Remus staring on instead of the Death Eaters, and James standing before me. His brown eyes stared into mine as he held the book Remus had magicked from the shelf, turned to the page for the spell that Remus thought might work. James said, "Sorry in advance."

I nodded, gritting my teeth.

Sirius's knuckles were white as he held me fast.

James raised his wand. "Necroardeat," he whispered.

Blinding pain had shot through me and I'd shouted, screaming out.

James paused.

"No!" I cried, "Don't stop, don't stop, do it. Do it. Get it off of me! Please!"

He'd set his jaw with determination, nodding, then set the spell again and I could feel the magic searing my skin, could feel the it melting just as Remus had suggested it would do, closing my eyes. I felt strong fingers lace themselves through mine as the wand pressed and shifted over the Mark. "Squeeze my hand as hard as you need," James's voice was low and cut through the pain. I squeezed so hard I thought I might break the bones, and his face swam before me, fading in and out of black tunnel vision that opened and closed my consciousness. James's brown eyes stared deeply into mine.

"I'm sorry," he repeated, speaking low so that his voice was nearly lost beneath my screaming.

When it was over, my wrist was a mess of mottled, bright red skin.

"It'll scar something nasty," Remus murmured, holding up a tub of some sort of ointment.

Somehow I was laying across the couch. I had no memory of having moved.

Sirius was perched on the seat cushion beside me, a worried and sickened expression on his face as Remus's fingers scooped some of the ointment out of the tub and smeared it over the raw skin. I winced and let out a cry - the cool ointment hurt as it went on, and I could smell essence of murtlap in it, drawing infection out. It hissed and bubbled and Remus waved a wand to wipe the first layer of it away before applying more.

James sat in the chair Remus had been in before they'd started burning the Mark away, his eyes vacant and unfocused, hair hanging over his forehead, damp with sweat.

I watched as Remus applied the ointment.

There was little left of the Mark, little left to know it had ever been there.

I looked at James, reaching over with my free hand to touch him, to get his attention. He looked up as my fingers grazed his knee, his eyes searching mine with worry.

"Thank you," I said.

James was watching me now as I stared at the place where the Mark had been.

"...and as far as I am concerned the entire Ministry can fuck itself, they're no better than You Know Who and his army of bigoted dicks," Sirius was saying, his voice drowning on as he went on one of his long rants against the governments. "Neither has it entirely right, and it's murder on the rest of us who just want to live our fucking lives without their hypocrisy dictating how things ought to be... That compensation they're offering werewolves is an insult to injury, laughable at best!" He swallowed down more of the whiskey, "And fuck them and their new laws, these collection laws... Just because one night of the month --"

Remus was flushed and staring into the fire, listening as Sirius went on and on.

James nudged me with the bottle of whiskey he held.

I shook my head, not wanting any more. The couple sips I'd had was enough to turn my belly warm and to take away the sharp edges of my problems, but some part of me wasn't sure I was ready to completely let go yet.

James took another sip.