Begin, Again.

There is a specific concentrate of mortification that comes with spilling your guts out to someone you really don’t like that much. Truly, at the heart of it, Regulus really did not like James Potter. There wasn’t a secret dame stuck in his ribcage clawing at his bones chanting the older boy’s name in devotion. Regulus wasn’t laying in his dorm hands clasped, sighing wistfully at the thought of his brother’s best friend. He really wasn’t. His thoughts of James Potter started and ended with the fact that he was his brother’s. In the same way that quidditch, potions, the title of Black, was Regulus’, James Potter was the property, and pride and joy, of Sirius Orion Black. Fact.

Therefore, waking up with the undeniable sinking feeling of having said the wrong thing to absolutely the wrong person, is a feeling of such sticky hot shame that would also have you groaning into your plush silk pillow in the dampness of the Slytherin, sixth year, boy’s dorm. There’s nothing like the shame of being sixteen, brotherless, and severely emotionally repressed, to get you out of bed on a Saturday morning.

So, Regulus got out of bed, went through the motions, looking at his reflection with the same contempt he felt rearing in his soul. The grim realisation that his rotting corpse reflection is happier than his current reflection set the mood for the rest of the day. When he got to the Great Hall, he made a point to stick his princely chin out and avert any of his gaze from the crimson table that was bubbling over with people rubbing their rations of brain-cells to form one coherent thought. He walked past the Hufflepuffs, where Amos Diggory had a very smug smile as he talked at Lauren Scott who paid him no mind. Then, past the Ravenclaws where he gave a nod to Pandora once he walked past her, to which she gave a shining smile back and a wave which made a pleasant jingle sound as her bangles moved with her. Regulus wondered when he would stop noticing everything. When the details would stop eating him alive and the bigger picture would soothe him a little.

The issue was that Regulus was very astute, there is no use in denying that, noticing allowed him to brace for impact as the gentleness of adolescence began to waver giving way to something foreign. Regulus was used to the very quiet peace of his school, but he knew all too well that this peace would be disturbed if anyone looked too closely. Unfortunately, he couldn’t spare himself from his gazing eye. If anyone dared to question the sensibility of having a sectarian system that set up 11-year-olds on the basis of their mood that day, they didn’t dare say anything, and Regulus was never one to use his words. The world outside had already picked apart the partisanship of wizarding youth and decided the fate of each witch and wizard based on the colour of the tie that they had put on that morning. Green meant dark-lord and red meant Auror, obviously. The hysteria simmered in Regulus’ chest again.

The heir of the most boring and hypocritical house of Black was quite tired and really wanted to throw a tantrum, but the mail was coming and if he was to be met with a letter from home, he wanted to save the wallowing for that particular honour. He looked up from his plate to look at the flurry of feathers and plates dropping letters, parcels, and in the case of Shada Shafiq a red howler, which set the entire hall into a quiet curiosity awaiting the poor girl’s fate. She, however, took it entirely in stride, smirking as she opened the lip of the letter.

“Shada Shafiq, ya ‘eib el shoom!”

Regulus’ ears perked up as he heard the Arabic spill out from the shaking letter.

“Was it not enough that we let you study in Scotland instead of Egypt? Was it not enough that we let you drop potions even though you had sworn to baba and me that you would come to Hogwarts only to become a healer? Ya bint! Esma’ini halaa! El-Ustaz Biggins tells us you have not been to class once this term! Listen to me very closely, if I hear one more word about this you will be withdrawn from Hogwash, Hogkhara and taken straight into Al-Zahraa girls’ school in Alexandria! Tamam? Also, we are expecting you home for Eid do not make me remind you, tell Regulus and Sirius that they are expected too.”

Regulus barely suppressed a laugh at the look of disappointment on the other students faces as they could not understand the content of the howler, Shada however was sending a very pointed glare at the Slytherin table, right at Regulus, where she was met with a raised eyebrow from him.

While Regulus’ heritage was little known to most of his peers, the Shafiqs had been close friends of his grandfather’s. He had always gravitated towards them since his exile as they represented the epitome of where the Black’s had failed. They spoke, practiced, and lived with their heritage in their stride, the family had come to the country a century after the Blacks, they had never denied their past, and never shamed their language, and regularly visited Egypt. So, despite having known Shada in passing, she had known who he was in that respect.

Regulus having had enough excitement for breakfast, turned his eye to the letter waiting for him. The calligraphy was really quite nice for what he assumed was a summons.

“Regulus,

Your attendance is required for the Yule period you are not permitted to spend it at school. We will be spending the winter in the Malfoy estate, please ensure your punctuality. Also, Mariam Shafiq has informed us of her invitation, do not embarrass us by snubbing her.

Best,

Lord Black”

Perfect. He chose this moment to rise from his seat and make his way out of the hall, narrowly missing the second wave of hungry students claiming their seats.

It is safe to say that Regulus had a lot to mull over this weekend. Firstly, he had to make time to wallow over the fact that he was to stay in Narcissa’s ornate palace-prison. Secondly, to wallow over the fact that his choice company at present was a certain Lord Voldemort, and Lucius Malfoy, and in that moment, he couldn’t decide which was worse.

Thirdly, and most pressingly, he had to mull over the subject of his desire and if the mirror of Erised was as powerful as he was being forced to contemplate, what this meant for the ugly piece of magic on his arm that his heart apparently had no want for. So he went to the library, with a quill and a dream, and some kind of passion that would make up for the fact that he had to face the Shafiqs, and no doubt his brother, next week.

The first thing that Regulus wanted to ascertain was where his corpse was floating to. The scene looked little like London or Scotland, or anywhere he would attribute to such a place of awe and euphoria. The scenery was entirely foreign in that respect. The lake he was in was overlooked by tall hills, with houses of old beige brick facing it scattered across the greenery. The flowers were nothing like he had ever seen, they resembled poppies but none like the ones he had seen in England, there was white colouring on the inner corner around the seeds inside and the petals were much more pointed. He decided that was where he would start first, reading about flowers, oh his parents should see him now.

He sat and began his quest for poppies, struggling to get through the author waxing poetry about the meanings of the different flowers. When he had read through all the native flowers of Europe, he moved onto the Mediterranean. The descriptions waned in their specificity slightly, a sign that the author lacked knowledge but was too proud to admit it. However, Regulus barrelled right on ahead, hungrily reading pages until he stopped in his tracks.

Anemone coronaria, the poppy anemone, Spanish marigold, or windflower, is a species of flowering plant in the buttercup family Ranunculaceae, native to the Mediterranean region. A curious link between us and the region! largely attributed to be the national flower of Palestine. The Arabic name is shaqa'iq An-Nu'man translated literally as the wounds, or "pieces", of Nu'man, after the King took great lengths to preserve them, it is said they grew on his grave. The flower can represent remembrance, loyalty, resilience, or Sumoud.

Palestine. Sumoud, steadfastness. Regulus blinked back the pang in his eyes at the thought of his grandfather.

His distance from his culture was far from his mind most days, and it only really became a sore point in a moment like this. When London represented his prison, and Edinburgh his suffocation, why had he not though of the home his grandfather had tried so hard to instil in him. His home his family had fought so hard to stay on, the one his ancestors had written his name in and bled life’s worth into. It was like a punch in his gut that he could forget who he was before a sentence and after to remember exactly how he despised who he had become. Of course, of course, safety would be there and not here, but he was neither here or there, and he had come to forget the language he dreamt in. The nagging feeling of disgust would make his grandfather laugh at him, but he couldn’t help it, because the poppy was staring back at him swaying slightly, and its petals seemed to dare him to go find it.

The better part of their family resided in An-Nuway'imah, a village just outside the ancient city of Jericho. This was where the claim of the Most Ancient came from, it was true that the house of Black was very old, just not in the bones of the British Isles. The village had the majority of its land taken, but there remains the house of their family who still reside there. He had memories of his grandfather’s misty eyes talking of poppies and greenery he couldn’t imagine, but the poppies. The poppies he remembers his grandfather showing him the flowers he had pressed into his books from the day he left. That was where his soul saw his safety.

Regulus sighed, and rubbed his eyes again, before he pressed them harder trying to suppress the hurt in his bones. He ached every single time, and he was tired of it all. Where was he supposed to go, was he supposed to pretend that this beaten path didn’t have thorns pulling him back, ripping his clothes, his skin, taking blood that wasn’t his to give. That the mark on his arm was killing him, it was killing him when all his rotting corpse wanted was home. Would he not be his own even in death?

Hope once meant something, and it takes a specific cruelty to make it redundant. Hope once looked like a reflection, a taller one, with eyes crinkling with a joke he wasn’t allowed in on. It looked like his grandfather’s study with his reflection sat at the foot of his chair next to him listening to a story of a home he knew would wait for him. It looked like loyalty; it bloomed in the secret he shared in that room. What did he have left if not for this? Was his soul going to rot and his body remain as it is? That isn’t fair, at the very least let his soul scream as the thorns pulled it apart, let them know that all he ever wanted was to stay in that study, to steal the warmth and leave it in his chest.

Now, his chest was tight, the barely contained secret spilling out of his ribs. Regulus’ life had always been a series of halves, truths or lies, but this was entirety coming for its reckoning. The floor beneath Regulus buzzed, but he didn’t follow it this time. Instead, he rocked in his chair, clutching at his chest trying to rip the warmth apart. Tears in his chest tore out as the thorns began to feel more like gentle suggestions, as they turned into poppies pointing him away from it all. When pain was always so visceral, Regulus had never considered it could kill him so gently, that it could cradle his hurt and begin to resemble hope.

No one ever told him that it could be this, in every story he thought his life would have, he never considered that sometimes it was just this. He is a boy, he was a boy, and he couldn’t put away childish things and become a man, not when he wasn’t done growing. He wasn’t done thinking and changing. He wasn’t the same now as he was yesterday, nor the day before that, the week, the summer, that summer.

Vile was gathering in his throat, and his bated breaths made him gargle with the growing nausea, he hadn’t realised he had sunk onto the floor and under the desk.

“Regulus? Regulus!”

His vision had gone black, but somehow, he could see a corpse and a smile, a promise of a poppy and home. His fingernails stuck into his brow bone trying to pull at skin, a plea that he was still flesh and bone, and his freedom would not come from his corpse. Begging that maybe, maybe it could be in his lifetime. In life, Regulus could be his own, that was all he could hope for. Hope, hope. Hope.

“Regulus, it’s okay.”

The poppy faded slightly but turned to the light coming in the corner of his vision, it seemed ready to let him go, and the idea of it stirred something in Regulus’ rotten chest.

His grandfather had many a time recited the Quran to him, in that moment all he could think of was a quiet night in the garden of Grimmauld.

"Have they not travelled throughout the land so their hearts may reason, and their ears may listen? Indeed, it is not the eyes that are blind, but it is the hearts in the chests that grow blind."

But Regulus sees, oh God he sees, he sees, and he wishes he could stop seeing. To stop noticing, to stop thinking about every little minor detail. He sees a poppy in a corpse, and he sees a seed of hope bloom in a hostile chest with infertile soil.

“You’re okay, breathe, you’ll come out of it.”

The light overtakes his vision, and the poppy turned completely to face it before moving a leaf beckoning him over too. Regulus basks in it, as his hands soften their hold of his face, and his breathing begins to even.

When Regulus opened his eyes he’s met with his reflection, slightly taller, eyes crinkled with something, and yet another secret held between the both of them. For once, when Regulus looked at Sirius, all he could see is his brother. That thought was more terrifying than anything else. So please don’t blame him for taking off without a word, give him a chance. Hope blooms in more precarious conditions than this.

When Regulus comes back to his dorm, he sends a letter to Mariam Shafiq confirming his attendance, his hands can’t decide if the tremor is from the chance of seeing his brother or the severe woman.