If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied. — Common Form by Rudyard Kipling, from his Epitaphs of the War 🜲 🜲 🜲
The world is split into good and bad, pure and impure, worthy and worthless – at least, this is the world as Regulus Arcturus Black has always been taught, and as he has always believed. He has never questioned it, nor has he, as a Black, ever needed to; he is at the top of society, the good, the pure, and the worthy. Yet something gnaws at him all the same, so when Lord Voldemort offers him a purpose, and a way to matter beyond his family name, he accepts without hesitation, throwing himself wholly into his service.
But the Dark Lord isn’t as benevolent as he leads others to believe, and his complete disregard for boundaries and humanity leaves cracks in Regulus’ faith. By the time he discovers the secret of Voldemort’s immortality, he finally understands what he has devoted himself to – and that the only way out may be through his own death.
This is where my extremely elaborate longfic starts, one which has taken me … very many weeks of researching and planning and writing. I actually have no idea how long I have been working on this project exactly but I do know that I have had the idea for a very, very long time, ever since I first got into fanfiction in the mid-2010s. But I never dared do much with it. Needless to say, I am over that fear now, and look where it has brought us!
Now, before we dive straight into Regulus Black’s story, I would like to take a moment to thank a couple of people. First of all, thank you for clicking on this story! Now, if you aren’t interested in getting to know some background information, you can head over here and start the story. I hope you’ll like reading it as much as I did writing it!
For those still reading, I also want to thank everyone who started reading this at some point during its creation and had to put up with my changing everything around several infuriating times, especially those who decided to stick with me and haven’t given up even after over a year of hiatus and plot-changing, well, change. I couldn’t have done it without the undying support of the Ministry of Yaps, though, so thanks most of all to them and their undying patience in putting up with me!
Now let’s get into some things you should know, starting with the way this site looks. You should try to view this page, and all pages on this site, either on desktop or in desktop mode. This site was not designed for phone screens and I am very much an amateur at making sites and don’t (yet) know how to reliably make it work on other screens, but I am working hard to fix that. Also, if you dislike the look of this page, or the story at any time, you can actually read this on Archive of Our Own (don’t forget to disable the workskin!), fanfiction.net, or Quotev. However, if you dislike it because you cannot read something/something broke, please let me know in the comments so I can try and fix it! If you do like how it looks, well, thank you! I tried my best.
Then there’s the matter of canon compliance and the contents of this story. This is not strictly necessary to read before diving in, as I suppose it could be seen as somewhat spoilery, especially for later parts of the story, but I still feel it needs to be said. So read on if you want to know. If not, just skip down to the next heading for some information on how to get to the actual chapters.
With that said, I strive for canon compliance. And you need to know that when I say canon compliant, I mean to say that I am absolutely obsessed with the Harry Potter series in a quite factual way. But even I have my limitations and whenever something directly contradicts the books, I do not accept it as canon. As a rule of thumb this means much of the Fantastic Beasts series and most of Cursed Child, as well as some other Harry Potter-related statements she has made over the years.
What will this mean for the series? Well, I believe that canon is quite clear on a couple of things regarding Death Eaters and the war, and I think that common fanon is very much a stretch from canon sometimes and therefore won’t feature in my story, such as Regulus being forced into the Death Eaters. Regulus joins them willingly at age 16. Furthermore, the Blacks are dysfunctional and broken, yes – but they do not literally torture their children. If you prefer stories in which Walburga and Orion Black are 100%, irredeemably evil, this is not the story for you. If you prefer stories in which they are human and (though misguided and failing in their quest) try to keep their children safe in times of war, this is for you. That is all. I never said this section would be anything major.
Signed, R.A.B. is a huge tale that consists of several smaller stories which, in turn, are broken up into parts. Black Beginnings is part one of these stories, and can be read here. It tells us where Regulus came from and focuses on him and his immediate family, both the good and the bad, and shows us just how the timid, emotional seven-year-old we meet at first grows into the boy who would later end up serving the most dangerous Dark wizard in a century. Its ends when Sirius goes off to Hogwarts, leaving Regulus home alone.
Between Shadows and Spells picks up where Black Beginnings left off, with Regulus at home as the sole child of the House Black. War rages on outside their home and gets dangerously close, and we get to see how Regulus copes with this new order. We follow him into Hogwarts where he is Sorted, unlike his brother, into Slytherin, ready to make his family proud.
Into The Fold is the third story, and in this we see Regulus grow up at the Hogwarts of the early to mid nineteen-seventies, during Lord Voldemort’s first reign of terror. Regulus makes friends and loses them again, but he can’t seem to shake one rather persuasive Hufflepuff.
Then we move on to Dark Waters and The Eleventh Hour which detail his time as a Death Eater and his defection, respectively. But these have yet to be written at all.
And that was it, from me, for now. Please let me know what you think of it all and most of all, have fun!