tell me something i don’t know
There is a place to be found among the darkness of the pages, a place carved by the flesh of his nail and wrung out in minute intervals. There is an eternity to be lived amidst the ever-reaching walls of the humble library of the Noble House of Black, and there is a boy in hiding, a boy who seeks an eternity behind closed lids, an eternity of mute compassion and discretion. He seeks, and he conceals, but no matter how fervently he wills it he cannot make his body cave and fold into the pages.
Sirius must feel the same of the sky. For he is always airborne, from the moment that he is brought to the world, to the moment Regulus last lays eyes on him. He is a dove at the point of forced submission, a crow in his bottomless ambition; a raven, in his intelligence and beauty. Fluttering, restless wings rattling avalanches that land merely on their heads, a restless mouth that crows and keens and reserves the softest melodies for a boy that hides between that shelf and the other.
And like a bird, he flies away.
Regulus is no bird. He begs to be, for Sirius not to be, begs for him to stay even whilst pleading him to leave, to get away, but to not leave him, take me, take me with you, but I cannot leave, please don’t make me leave.
“Reste.” He whispers. “Avec moi. Pas avec eux, mais moi. Les autres — c’est pas... Est-ce que c’est important?”
“Petit roi.” Sirius calls him, from the floor across which he is lain battered, leaking scarlet on the carpet, and it is the most dreadful goodbye he has ever heard.
“Ne te ridicule.” He chokes. Regulus can see every single part of his body shaking.
“I am not—“
“Bien sûr, il y a d’importance; notre pain a de substance, non?” He laughs, humorless, the sound of sandpaper over the brittle crash of a violent shore. “Je ne peux plus — veux plus. Tu va venir, avec moi, aujourd’hui, ou tu ne vas pas venir du tout.”
Desperate hands, those of his own, lull and bend over the body in the dark, patching together whatever can be mended without wand and in a state of scarce coherence. Because there they are — the sobs that rip out of his ribs, only either in the presence of his brother or because of his brother: Sirius is the sole bearer for his oceans of lament, and the sole influence for which he ever laments.
“Don’t do this to me.” He sobs, fingers deep in a gash on the side of Sirius’ hip, as though he can press the blood back inside.
“C’est ton choix; je ne vais pas te forcer de me choisir.” Sirius says, and he is still talking, bruised and tortured and on the edge of a delirium, yet: “Tu es libre, en façon que tu n’es rien avec eux.”
“Sirius.” Regulus sobs, because he knows he can’t, he can’t, he can’t. “Je t’aime, je —“
Sirius nods, wincing as he does so. His tears have washed his temples clean. “Compris.”
“Non, attends, attends, s’il te plait—“
“Assez. J’ai entendu d’assez.”
“Non, je—“
“Je le sais.”
“Sirius.” He pleads, can’t say anything else.
“Goodbye, Regulus.”
“Is master Regulus writing again?”
Regulus flinches awake with a start on a brutal Tuesday afternoon: it’s snowing. His heart thumps steadily beneath his ribcage, and the cold seeping through his blouse wearily wraps around it. A shiver runs through his spine.
“No.” He declares to Kreacher, who very well knows that he is, in fact, writing again. He doesn’t get a repercussion, save for an urging knock on worn oak. “I’ll just be a second.”
He’s holding his breath whist he fumbles inside his drawers to attain a decent vest. It’s quite a sight, what greets him once he retrieves an amber-hued piece and hurries to inspect himself in the mirror: unruly, linty curls sitting atop his head like a nest, lineal marks on his cheeks from when the pages of his journal bit into his skin as he slept. He most likely should stop dozing off mid-session, Kreacher always tells him, but he wouldn’t know that the most beautiful collocations of words visit solely when Regulus is merely half-restricted by the grave weight of consciousness.
He walks through the manor with a weariness to match the idle snow, a quietude equal to the silent corridors.
(He’s destined to be here, he thinks, sometimes. To be quiet.)
“Regulus.” His father greets him, pungently polite: holding up a peremptory hand, effectively cutting off Lucius and his—exhilarating, as usual—speech. The man stands, rather indignant, next to him, decked in refined, coal-like silk; and seems perturbingly flushed from a state of vigor, at the hands of both not being offered a chair to rest on, and the apparent precipitate of the topic being discussed. “I wonder what renders you late to the table?”
“Excuse me, Father.” Regulus bows his head in primness as he trudges past.
“Excuses are futile, boy.” Orion decrees. “One cannot simply win wars with excuses, nor yet can be redeemed with them.”
He sighs, sparing a look at Lucius bouncing on his heels in the haste of information he’s yet to unearth. It must be stinging the roof of his mouth. Good.
“I hope you haven’t been staying up late writing again.”
He coughs once, gently adjusting his position on his chair, dismissing the lingering eyes of the servants, his father, and Lucius. “I have no means to, sir, since you’ve taken my typist. I’m still in mourning of it.”
“You’ve got nothing to mourn.” His father corrects, smiling humorlessly. “I’m no fool, but the ink your hands suggest you may not have taken after me.”
He looks down at his hands in shame: smudges of navy fountain ink glare back, mocking in the daylight now that he had failed to notice them in the nighttime. He clasps his fingers together, retracting his fists to hide them under the table.
“Arrive late to breakfast again and I’ll collect every last quill in this town and burn them, Regulus. Take my word for it.”
He speaks with the ease of tranquility only a vicious man can possess, stares expectantly at Regulus until he finally gives in and bows his neck, then nods once in approval before addressing his standing guest. “Now, Lucius, where were you? I think Regulus must listen to this as well.”
Lucius claps himself back into life, wide eyes and alarmed and ready to disentangle the embedded knots of the world over breakfast because that’s who he is and what he does: he carries around gossip like a mosquito with malaria.
“Uh—Right.” A cough. “The Order of the Phoenix, sir. They’re on the run again. A considerable number of them have taken to stealing potions. Brewing them anew take too long, regardless of how direly in demand, and our supplies are gone before they’re even sent out to be prepared. We’re short on product, as a result short on staff, which also lowers the rate of production, which leaves careless opening for them to swipe everything out.”
Now that’s — interesting.
“How bad is it?” Regulus asks on a whim, punctuated with Orion clearing his throat, reminding him to not speak out of turn. He lowers his eyes to his empty plate in response, pursing his lips together and remembering to hold his breath.
“It’s not bad enough.” Orion says in Lucius’ stead. “They cannot so much as graze our defenses, let alone by taking a few meager mushrooms.”
“Orion—“
“Regulus, here, is an excellent brews-man. Aren’t you, Regulus?”
The blood in his veins run cold. His mother sweeps in the salon, heels catching oak and skirt catching dust as it drags a path behind her. She comes to stand, right behind his chair, fingernails digging in admonition into his shoulder sockets.
“I’m certain he can concoct advanced potions with similar accuracy and minimal supply-demand.”
Lucius stares at her as though she’s grown a third head.
(Regulus doubts having two would cause much suspicion in anyone.)
“Walburga, not even our greatest Potions Masters haven’t been able to recreate a potion with altered prosecution—“
“Regulus can.”
“Mother.” He whispers, under his breath. No, he cannot. He cannot do such a thing.
He feels the nails puncture through his skin, where the collar of his blouse hangs uncovered.
“You will return to Hogwarts after you are done.” Walburga stares down at him, one palm now flattening the curls on his nape. “However long it takes.”
“What if I can’t?” He whispers, glaring at the florid bracts of the plates so the tears cannot have to room to fall.
“You will.”
Walburga cradles his chin, and no one notices. No one notices how tightly she grips, how frigid her smile sits. “My dear boy,” she sings, “you are the brightest of all. Who else, but you?”
(He isn’t — the brightest. Sirius is the brightest star in the sky.)
(Was. Nowadays, he’s shrouded by flesh-eating clouds.)