REGULUS

The sunlight was blinding. Maybe that's why I couldn't see the ending from the beginning. That time was like an evening lit by a golden sun that was only ever fated to go down. After all, things that thrive in the dark can never stay in the light... can we? But like the water that pushed against the shore, for a moment, at least, I was clear and blue, unstable, and fathoms deep.

I lay on the beach, watching the sun play on the water and across the slowly tanning torso of James Potter as he went, ducking in and out of the waves, splashing water at my older brother. Sirius let out a shriek of laughter as James rough housed with him, splashing him and leaping at him from behind - a cry of "Geronimo!" echoed over the roar of the sea's waves as they went crashing, and James's arms buckled around Sirius's torso, pinning his arms down, and tipping him with ferocity into the cresting water. They plunged under, disappearing in the blue, a mass of kicking limbs among glittering sparks of the sun's reflection off the water.

Beside me, laying on a plastic lounge chair with an obscene amount of sunscreen slathered across his legs and arms, was Remus Lupin. He wore a brightly printed, unbuttoned shirt covered with blue pineapples over a plain white tank top and a pair of swim shorts that didn't quite match his shirt. His sunglasses were bigger than his face, and the bush of curls that hung over his forehead was even blonder than ever - the shades of brown that usually dominated the color had been sun bleached and dulled over the couple of days we'd already spent on the island. He shook his head and turned the page of the book he was reading as James and Sirius surfaced, shouting and laughing.

"Idiots," he murmured. But you could tell he was more amused than he was disapproving. They'd been friends so long that it was both annoying and endearing to him, probably nostalgic of days that were long past. It was clear that all three boys had come to this place to release pent up tension that had been building, the effects of being forced into growing up too soon. I envied them the ability to let go like that - to play in the waves and forget their problems.

I'd been trying to forget the things I'd left behind when I'd disembarked at Platform 9 3/4 and climbed onto the back of Sirius's motorbike. There was some darkness that echoed in my blood that wouldn't let me completely let go, no matter how much I wanted to. I picked at a loose thread on the yellow-striped towel I sat on, watching the way the loops of the terry cloth sunk and came undone as I pulled.

The sun was bright, burning from the sky. I could feel it tingling across my back and wished I'd worn a shirt like Remus had done. He'd worn it, he said, because the Lycanthropy made him sensitive to any celestial objects.

"He burns like a fire salamander if he even thinks about the sun," Sirius had confirmed that morning, when I'd asked Remus why he was wearing not one but two shirts to sit on the beach. "Isn't that right, Moony?"

Remus had nodded, "Unfortunately, yes."

"He's shy about the scars," James had said quietly, when Remus was out of ear shot.

"I don't care about scars," I answered.

James shrugged, "Neither do I." I thought his eyes might've flitted to the place on my wrist where the remnants of the Dark Mark marred my skin. Instinctively, I had turned my wrist in, pressing it to my hip. But his words echoed in my chest like a heart beat.

Neither do I.

Neither do I.

I turned my wrist over then, sitting on the beach, and looked at the silver puckering that was all that was left of the Dark Mark that. Sometimes, I could still feel my skin crawling as though something alive was trapped just below the surface, something dead and rotted, even though the Mark had been burned away as ferociously as it had been burned on in the first place.

I glanced at James Potter in the water, hair damp and stringy as he surfaced, laughing and flapping his arms as he swam backwards, out further from the shore, past where my brother could touch the sea floor if he followed, where James easily stood up and still had head and shoulders above the surface.

I'd written to Sirius after the Christmas holiday. The black ink on pale parchment stood out in my mind as dark as the Mark had stood out against my skin.

I made the wrong choice.

My seventeenth birthday had come and at a time when most wizard boys get a watch to celebrate their coming of age. Instead, I'd been whisked away to my Uncle Cygnus's parlor for a different sort of thing to put up on my wrist...

Once, I'd been excited and counting down the days to when I would be old enough to be accepted as a member of the Dark Lord's inner circle - a Death Eater, a Knight of Walpurgis. I'd yearned for the moment that I could kneel and vow my allegiance to the cause of preserving the purity of magical blood among the wizarding world. I'd played at being a Death Eater when I was a child, brandishing sticks and imagining fighting enemies who denied my Lord the allegiance that he deserved, helping to make the wizarding world a safer place from the muggles I was convinced sought to capture me and kill me.

"They put them into the river and if they did not drown, they were killed for being witches - whether they were one or not," my mother had said. "The ones who survived, they burned or ran through with swords and daggers, arrows and bullets, bayonets and pitchforks... They hated us, and all that the purebloods had done was try to help them to have better lives, to heal their illnesses and to grant their desires... We helped to grow their crops and bring them rest, peace, and healing with our magic and they took advantage. They sought to steal our power... and killed us when we refused to give it to them."

I'd believed this rhetoric and I'd passionately desired to fight to protect the freedom and sacredness of the Wizarding World.

But it changed. It changed the same night that Sirius ran away from home.

I could still remember the night he left, the way the house had crackled with electricity from the curse Father set on his eldest son. Sirius had made a snide remark when I had proposed a toast to the health and well being of the Lord Voldemort at dinner. When my father snapped at Sirius for it, he called Father a coward, and antagonized him just a bit more than usual. Father's anger had flared up and Sirius's screaming echoed in the very walls of the place to this very day. The fabric of the curtains still smelled of the burned-skin-and-urine scent that had seared my nostrils and had assaulted me in nightmares ever since. Or maybe it was just residual trauma - memory more than actual sound or smell - something that was real only in my head...

The cruelty had been unbearable. The smell had turned my stomach. The curses had set off a domino effect in my brain, sending me spiraling through two years of deep soul diving and research that had ended with one trembling, irrevocable truth that had changed everything about me, about my life...

The Lord Voldemort was wrong.

"When you have come of age, Regulus, you will make our family proud," Mother had whispered so many times throughout my life.

It was my destiny.

A destiny that, at fifteen, I realized I no longer wanted.

A destiny that I couldn't walk away from.

And my countdown to the night I turned seventeen became a march to a dirge rather than something that I danced toward in anticipation.

And then the night had come over the holiday.

I turned seventeen at midnight on Christmas Day - and I was brought to my uncle's where I was shown to a seat before the fireplace. Father and Uncle Cygnus stood at either shoulder, their fingers firm upon my shoulder, holding me in place, as though they knew that it was necessary to keep me there - as though they knew my deepest desire was to turn and run as fast as I could. The other people in the room that were hidden behind their silver masks, faces reflecting my own fear-filled one back to me, the dark holes where their eyes peered out and the small slits of their mouths giving away nothing for the identity of who was behind those masks, who was witnessing my initiation... The other Death Eaters gathered around the chair in a half-moon crowd. Whispered praises were passed about like the hissing of snakes. The fire place before me flickered and glowed as we waited for the arrival of the Dark Lord.

My heart throbbed with anxiety - an erratic drum line like one of Sirius's punk-rock songs.

This is what my brother ran away to avoid, I'd thought.

Lord Voldemort came through the floo network, stepping out of green flames in the hearth like a nightmare rising up, coming to life. I'd never been in his physical presence before that night - save for once, when Sirius and I were young and he had come to our home to appraise us, to judge if we were worthy to be counted among the offspring of his followers. But it was so much more horrible to see him when I knew what horrible things that he and his followers did, when I was no longer disillusioned and tricked by the pageantry and the lies. I shivered even now at the memory of the way he made me feel - just the presence of him was enough to curdle my interior. He gave off a cold blooded charisma - an actual, physical chill filled the room so that the glass on the family portrait over Cygnus's mantel frosted at the edges and the Dark Lord's pale skin shone white even in the darkness. He stepped toward me, his robes sliding over the carpet, his long fingers loosely holding his wand in a manner that I'd never seen any other wizard do... as though he needed only to barely touch it in order to conduct his power. His face was unsettling, like someone who had once been handsome but whose features had lost their luster. His eyes were blood shot, the color in his eyes was so dark that the pupil hardly seemed separate from the iris, aside from the slightest sparks of red that glinted there.

"Regulus Black," he'd spoken my name in a quiet tone, his voice a mixture of a low baritone and a high rasping sound, as though there was more than one voice that spoke through his mouth. The sound had turned my innards to a heavy liquid and they began to churn as he reached out his free hand, clasping my chin in his fingers, his nails pressing into my skin, and tilting my head to look straight up at him.

My father's grip on my shoulder tightened.

"The day has come," he said regally, studying me, turning my chin this way and that. "When you shall swear your loyalty to me... and to no other." He looked around the room at the Death Eaters gathered around and he hissed, "The boy is afraid."

The Death Eaters laughed.

"Do not fear, Regulus... you are surrounded by your new family... and tonight is the night which we shall accept you as one of our own. Hold out your arm, boy, and receive the Mark of your allegiance."

When I hesitated to move, Father grabbed hold of my arm and forced my arm taught, turning my elbow so that my wrist faced up, and the Dark Lord laughed, eyes glinting, and he began to speak the words to spells for the darkest sort of magic. Black streams of smoke seemed to rise up from his every word, tendrils forming, curving, twisting into thick black robes that coiled up my arm, holding me in place, snake like... and then the searing pain had come, searing white hot, and the smell of burning flesh - so like that lingering scent in the library's curtains - filled my nose.

But that time it was my own.

"Father held me there," I wrote to Sirius, "He held me there as the Dark Lord seared my arm - as I screamed for mercy for the pain to stop; he and Uncle Cygnus held me down and would not let me go. He said if he had loosed his grip or stopped the burning of the Mark that the Dark Lord would have murdered me on the spot. So he held me firm as I begged him not to, held firm until I blacked out. Sirius, please. I made a mistake... I made the wrong choice. Help me.

The owl had flown from the window of the Hogwarts Express as we rode northward when the holidays concluded, and I'd watched the black speck until the owl had disappeared, unable to be seen through the swirling snow.

Sitting there on the beach, I stirred out of my thoughts. I felt like someone was looking at me - a skill I'd developed, rather than a paranoia - and I turned around.

Remus quickly looked away.

I knew he wasn't entirely thrilled that I'd come along with the Marauders on their lark. He'd made that abundantly clear when he'd walked into the living room at the flat that he shared with Sirius and found me there. Remus had been harboring it like a grudge, stealing glances at me that seemed to bore through me as though he was trying to figure out what secret motive lay under my plea for asylum.

James on the other hand had been the one that had burned the Mark away.