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Regulus
When Regulus woke up in the afterlife, no one was waiting for him, which was bittersweet.
On the one hand, his ancestors knew he was a traitor and wanted nothing to do with him. On the other, it meant the few people he cared about in this world were still alive.
Neither change the fact that this is the most lonely he's felt in years.
He's in the welcome room of the afterlife; it's the place where people first come when they die before they pass through another door of their choosing; a new life, a meeting place, or somewhere they can take a break before their souls move on again, but Regulus refuses to move. Instead, he stays in the welcome room, waiting for the moment he selfishly wants and selflessly hopes will never happen.
It takes a long time, but he stays there anyways and meets a lot of people over the years. No matter how much they try to convince him, though, he refuses to leave the room. He doesn't want to go through a door and find out he can't come back through it, or worse, choose a door that Sirius can't follow him through, if he even wants to see him again.
When Regulus was six years old, he learnt that his and Sirius' stars were 68 light years apart and remembers thinking the distance was unfathomably far, nothing more than an impossible concept to grasp.
Then Sirius went to Hogwarts and he understood it a lot better.
James Potter's parents die shortly after him.
His mum dies first, and she keeps him company even when he refuses her attempts to speak with him, and when her husband arrives weeks later, they make sure Regulus knows exactly which door they'll go through if they ever need him.
Marlene McKinnon and her family all arrive at once, and they're both laughing and crying when they realise what has happened.
They all follow each other through a Gryffindor-red door except for Marlene, who waits in the welcome room with him, firmly ignoring Regulus as she waits for her girlfriend.
Regulus thought he was okay with the silence until he heard himself speak.
"Can you tell me something about my brother?"
Marlene had looked at him, surprised, but then dutifully answered his question.
"He's just moved into a new flat in Camden."
When Dorcas arrives six days later, she and Marlene follow each other through a blue door, telling Regulus he can join them, but he only shakes his head.
"I'm still waiting for someone."
Evan arrives next, not immediately after Regulus, but it doesn't feel like too much time has passed when he sees him blinking at the bright lights and smiles for the first time in a while.
"Hey Evan"
"Oh, for fucks sake, I owe Barty twenty galleons."
Evan sticks around for a while; they talk about the war and how they died, and fill each other in on what they've missed out on until Regulus can't hold his question back any longer.
"Have you seen my brother recently?"
Evan just smirks as though it was only a matter of time before the question was asked. "Still alive and still annoying," he replies.
Regulus holds onto the most important part of the sentence, still alive, and tries not to be selfish.
He fails.
It doesn't take long before Evan gets bored. Restless. Antsy. He never could stay in one place for long, and he pauses in front of a black door that reads Do not enter.
"Barty will know to follow me through here," he says. "Are you coming with me?"
Regulus just shakes his head.
"I'm still waiting for someone."
When James Potter enters the afterlife and sees Regulus already waiting, his entire face drops in undisguised horror.
"You can't be here," he says, sounding absolutely gutted. "Sirius is still looking for you."
Lily Potter arrives before Regulus can reply, successfully distracting James, who doesn't seem to have realised that his words have given Regulus the same feeling of being hit by a train.
Because he was wrong. He's spent all these years working himself up over nothing. He still has a brother.
He doesn't think it's fair that he's grieving Sirius so deeply when he's the one who is dead.
"We're going to wait through the purple door for our son," Lily tells him. "Are you coming with us?"
Regulus shakes his head again.
"I'm still waiting for someone," he repeats as he always does. "But before you go, tell me about my brother?"
"He married Remus on the same weekend as Lily and me," James replies. "We got married on the 24th of June, and Sirius married Remus on the 25th."
"But that's my birthday," Regulus says stupidly, and James grins at him as he follows Lily through the door.
"Sirius refused to let death stop you from being there."
For some reason, the number of visitors to the afterlife decreases after James and Lily died, and even though Regulus thought he'd get lonelier as a result, he doesn't.
Because James keeps coming back.
He always goes back to Lily through the purple door and spends most of his time with her, but every so often, he comes to see Regulus too.
It starts off hostile, with Regulus caught up in a net of jealousy and bitterness at his replacement. Any time James comes to talk to him, he hisses insults and vitriol, but James shrugs off his harsh words, walks around the room and watches Regulus, keeping him company, before returning to Lily.
No matter what Regulus says, though, no matter how hard he tries to keep him away, James always comes back, and it takes three months until they finally have a proper conversation.
"Hey, Regulus," James calls, walking through the doorway. "How's it… are you crying?"
"No," Regulus replies, obviously crying, and when James hesitantly sits next to him, Regulus doesn't have the energy to tell him to go away. It's his least favourite day of the year because even though time is almost hazy in the afterlife, this is always when he feels like the worst person in the world.
It's the day he misses his brother the most. It's the day he wishes desperately that he were here.
"It's Sirius' birthday," James announces, which causes Regulus to look at him.
"I'm aware."
"22."
"I can count, Potter," Regulus says sharply, but James only laughs as his eyes glaze over in memory.
"Did you ever hear about what we did for Sirius' seventeenth?" he asks, without seeming to need an answer as he recites the hour-long tale of Sirius, cake, fireworks, firewhiskey, Hogwarts and two months of detentions. If Regulus were a better person, he would have laughed and told James he's glad Sirius had him, but he's selfish and bitter and wishes it were him who got to celebrate it instead.
"What did you do on your seventeenth?" James asks curiously, obviously appreciating the conversation and trying to keep it going.
"I died," Regulus answers flatly.
James slaps his hand over his mouth, looking utterly horrified, and Regulus laughs for the first time in over 3 years.
"On Sirius' fifth birthday," Regulus hears himself say. "He used accidental magic for the first time because our mother tried to dress him in ceremonial robes from the twelfth century, and when she wouldn't let him take them off, he set them on fire. Then he summoned the cake he wasn't allowed to eat to his room and ate the entire thing."
James laughs at the thought of it, and Regulus feels hollow, hollow, hollow.
That day starts a new routine for them, though, and whenever James comes back to visit, they trade memories of Sirius; James hears about the childhood he wasn't there for, and Regulus hears all the ways his brother grew up without him.
The biggest surprise happens a few years later when Marlene comes back. Dorcas appears seconds later, looking utterly furious, and they're bickering, fighting, kissing, and shoving, without taking notice of him at all. When Marlene rips her hand away and stalks off towards a pink door, Dorcas scowls and pulls her through a gold door that they fall through together. The entire encounter takes less than 5 seconds, and Regulus would have thought he'd dreamt it up if it weren't for the fact that he doesn't sleep anymore.
It's a brief reprieve from the monotony of the afterlife, but most of the time, Regulus is alone.
"You can come to wait with us," James tells him one day, gesturing between him, Lily and the purple door.
"I'm still waiting for someone," Regulus replies as he always does, but James doesn't leave the conversation there.
"He wouldn't mind, Regulus," James says softly, his voice full of pity, as he holds open the door, but Regulus just shakes his head.
"I'd mind," he says. "I need to wait for him."
Years pass, people live, people die, and people are reborn, but in the everchanging world, Regulus is a constant, always in the welcome room, refusing to move, and people begin to treat him like furniture.
When he and Sirius were younger, they used to sneak out to the muggle playground down the road, and whenever he got tired, there was a swing that he'd always wait until Sirius was ready to go home too.
There's a swing here in the afterlife, and Regulus sits on it for seventeen years,
Waiting for his brother,
Waiting to come home.
There are a lot of doors in the welcome room of all different colours leading to all different places, some of the doors won't even open, and none of them really catch Regulus' eye until he sees a new door forming in his periphery. Instead of a solid door, it's almost like smoke, a pearly film that someone falls through, looking confused, and –
Oh.
Regulus barely feels the way his entire body has started to shake and the way his heart is racing. He's not even alive, so he doesn't know why it feels like he can't breathe because that's him –
That's –
He's here.
He's here.
Oh, he's here.
It's –
"Reggie?"
"Sirius."
Sirius
Sometimes Sirius sees Regulus in Harry, not because they have similar parents or similar friends or similar morals, but because Sirius can't help but feel an intrinsic need to protect them.
He failed to protect Regulus, but he won't fail with Harry, so he goes to the Department of Mysteries with his wand raised, willing to protect his godson no matter the cost, and he does.
He protects him.
It costs him his life.
His deranged cousin who he used to play hide-and-seek with throughout his childhood, shoots the killing curse at his chest, and he sees Remus watching him go with agony in his eyes, his arms wrapped around Harry, hurting but safe, and Sirius falls back into the veil with one thought in his mind.
I'll see James again.
Beyond the veil is white, everything is white, and when he reaches a hand out to touch the wall, it goes straight through. He doesn't have time to test the floor, though, before the air is forced out of his lungs as he sees someone sitting on a swing, staring at him, crying silently.
Sirius doesn't even realise he's doing the same thing until his vision starts to blur.
It's not James.
It's not anyone he was ever expecting to see again.
But here in the afterlife, the one place he couldn't look, Sirius finds him, the person he never stopped looking for, his little brother.
"Reggie."
Dying didn't hurt.
Falling through the veil didn't hurt either.
No, as it turns out, the most painful part about dying is waking up in the afterlife to see your little brother that you'd hoped was still alive, despite everything.
But he's not alive. Because he's here in the afterlife. Which means he's dead.
Regulus looks seventeen as well, which means he did die when everyone thought he had, and no matter how hard Sirius tried to find him, no matter where he looked, he was always looking in the wrong place.
"I didn't think I'd see you again," he says honestly.
"I knew I would," Regulus replies, and Sirius starts crying harder as he sees Regulus stand up from the swing he was sitting on.
"If you ever lose me, if you ever need me, just wait on the swing, and I'll come and find you," says the older brother.
"That's where I'll be waiting," says the younger brother.
And here he is. Here they are.
Sirius starts moving closer towards him. Regulus does the same.
"You got old," Regulus tells him, his voice wobbling dangerously when they're a metre apart.
"You didn't," he chokes out, and then he's reaching for his brother and holding him desperately against his chest. He knows he's being too rough and too violent and too much, but it's still not enough because it's his brother, his little brother, and he's right here. The little brother he was born to protect but died anyways, he's here, he's here, oh fuck he's here again.
Every star goes through the same cycle of living and dying and being reborn, but sometimes if the force is great enough, the star implodes instead, creating a black hole that destroys everyone and everything it encounters.
Sirius thinks that's what he'd become if someone tried to take Regulus away from him right now; he'd let the meteors fall and the sky burn up, and when he set the world on fire, he and Regulus would watch it burn from the centre of the storm where everything is calm.
Time passes differently here in the afterlife, and it's mere seconds he holds his brother that feel like lifetimes. He is all fluttering hands, pushing away and pulling back, checking Regulus is okay and the moment is real, but Regulus doesn't move from where his forehead is pressed against Sirius' chest, arms wrapped around him like a vice, as though he needs a break from the world and trusts Sirius to keep him safe until he's ready to face it again.
Sirius thinks he would have died a long time ago if he'd known his brother was waiting for him.
Regulus
Regulus didn't know if he'd fit with Sirius like he used to; Sirius has been James' brother longer than he was his, and it's been a long time. Seventeen years. Sirius is older now. Taller too.
All his worrying is for nothing as he feels five years old again, clinging to his brother after his first punishment, eyes closed, weeping deeply and trusting Sirius to pick up the pieces as he falls apart.
"I'm so glad you're here," he chokes out through his tears, "and I'm so sorry that I am. I didn't want you to die, but I always wished you were here, and I know it was selfish, and I'm sorry you're crying, and I'm sorry you have to deal with me now because I didn't mean to cry –"
"Shut up, Reggie," Sirius whispers, his voice still thick. "I was always going to miss you; I already did miss you when you were still alive. Even when you hated me, you were still my brother and always will be –"
Regulus is hit with a desperate need to set things right just in case the afterlife doesn't work like he thought and his brother is gone sooner than he thinks.
"I didn't hate you," he blurts out desperately, pulling his head back slightly to look at Sirius' face, even though it's still blurry and kaleidoscopic. "I didn't hate you, and I don't now, and I never did because you're my brother, and we're like our stars, you know? When you look in the sky, sometimes we were apart, and sometimes we were together, and sometimes no one could see us at all, but we were always there. Always. No matter what happened or what the world did, nobody could touch the stars, and nobody could change you were my brother or that I loved you, and maybe it's different for you because I don't blame you for hating me –"
Sirius had been looking like he was going to cry again until he huffed and rolled his eyes, tugging Regulus forward.
"When I first heard you were missing," he says. "I went to the park and watched that swing for 2 weeks until Remus forced me to come home and shower. And for seventeen years, I went there every week like clockwork to check if you were waiting for me."
"But you hated me," Regulus replies, his voice wavering dangerously.
"I loved you more," Sirius replies easily, and Regulus makes a wounded sound as he folds forward again, resting his head in Sirius' chest and continuing to cry and cry and cry.
"I did miss you," Regulus admits once they've both stopped crying and are sitting side by side on the swing.
"Yeah Reggie, I got that one," Sirius replies amusedly, bumping their shoulders together lightly, and even though there's no clock and no concept of time here, Regulus can sense that he's coming.
"Do you know who else missed you?" he asks as the purple door opens.
Sirius jumps up with a sharp inhale of breath as he sees the figure who walks through it, calling Regulus' name before he sees who else is here and sprints across the room.
"Sirius?"
"James."
Regulus can already feel himself fading into the background; he's done his best, but like always, it wasn't good enough, so he sits back on the swing and watches Sirius with his replacement brother, resigned to spending another lifetime coming up with new ideas to make Sirius choose him instead of James.
Sirius
"How's Harry?" is the first thing James asks him once they've finally let each other go.
"Good, but he's been better," Sirius says honestly, thinking of the way he'd screamed out for him as he fell through the veil.
"How's Regulus been?" Sirius asks.
"Been better," James replies with a soft smile, "but I think he's good now."
That comment warms Sirius more than he'll admit, and he turns around to check on Regulus, who is –
"Dramatic little fucker," he hisses exasperatedly. "Get off that swing, and come here. Why did you even sit on it when I'm right here?"
"I thought you'd forget about me when you saw James, and I'd have to wait for you to live another lifetime before I saw you again," Regulus confesses, and Sirius gapes at him in genuine shock before he rolls his eyes and pulls Regulus against his side.
"Fuck's sake, Reggie," he says wearily, "you've been dead for too long."
"And what am I supposed to do about that?" Regulus asks incredulously, and Sirius stares at him for a long moment, unsure of what he can do about it, when the answer hits him all at once.
"We'll live again," he declares, staring at Regulus, who only looks at him blankly.
"What?"
"That's what this place is, right?" Sirius asks excitedly. "You pick a door, and it's a new lifetime, and when you die, you come back here to do it all over again. There's no point in wasting time; you've waited long enough to live again, so pick one, Reggie; what door do you want?"
"Whichever one you choose," Regulus admits quietly, and Sirius feels something tender flare in his ribs as he stares at the flush on his brother's cheeks as though he's embarrassed by the simple notion of wanting his brother.
"We'll go through the beige door," Sirius decides, gesturing at the one closest to the window.
"It's soft eggshell."
"It's fucking beige, Reggie," Sirius cries out, torn between amusement and exasperation. "A bland colour means a bland life which we could do with; we won't find a Dark Lord behind a beige door, will we?"
"Will I find you, though?" Regulus asks, sounding impossibly small, and Sirius feels his heart clench and release in the same moment as he tugs Regulus into a hug again.
"Of course you will; we're going together –"
"But what if I don't?" Regulus asks suddenly, sounding genuinely distressed. "What if I can't find you? Or what if we get lost? Or what if you hate me because I need you, Sirius. I need you. You lived when I died, and all I did was grieve you even though I was the one who was dead and –"
"You find a swing," Sirius says firmly, cutting off Regulus' panicked tirade before he has a proper meltdown, and Regulus pulls his head back to look at him, blinking in confusion.
"What?"
"You find a swing," Sirius repeats. "If you're ever lost, or you ever need me, or you can't find your way home, you find a swing, and I'll find you."
"But why would you do that?"
"Because you're my little brother," Sirius replies automatically. "If you find a swing, why would you wait for me on it?"
"Because you're my big brother," Regulus answers instantly.
"Exactly," Sirius says softly. "So let's go and be brothers again.”
The next time Regulus wakes up in the afterlife, he finds his brother waiting for him in front of a white swing.