pekeleke

I agree with you on the point that visiting the vault was difficult for both of them. Harry definitely would have found it hard to cope with both, Severus's grief and the obvious signs that someone else, someone he can never compete with, loved Severus so wholeheartedly.

Yes, Regulus was Severus's first love and you're right, he was also Severus's only love for a very long time indeed, but I don't think the issue here is that Severus must choose between the perfect, idealized love-affair he had with his first lover or the relationship he could build with Harry. I think the main issue is the lack of proper mourning process for his past romance on Severus’s part. He hadn’t yet become an order member around the time of Regulus’s death, and nobody really knew for certain what had happened to the man until Harry found Slytherin’s locket, anyway. Severus would have felt both betrayed and abandoned back then, he wouldn’t have had anyone to share his grief with and probably tried his best not to ‘indulge’ his sorrow.

So many years have passed since then, though, but the fact that Severus is once again contemplating entering a romantic relationship would make him prone to reminiscing the only other experience with emotional attachment he’s ever had, add to that the news that Regulus had a vault he never even knew existed, and what we have is more a cocktail of circumstantial introspection and the instinctive need to finally come to terms with the untimely passing of a beloved partner than an unhealthy attachment to Regulus’s memory on Severus’s part.

I think Severus needs to embrace this moment, use it to find the closure he hasn’t yet managed to achieve. Both his past relationship with Regulus and the one he is trying to build with Harry deserve that he faces them with equal and wholehearted sincerity. :)

Thanks, as usual, for taking the time to both read and review another chapter of this story, teryarel. Your kind and thoughtful comment meant the world to me. :)