Chapter 3
Regulus:
As I walked away from my brother and his friends I felt that all too familiar pang of longing and loneliness, but there was no time for this, Pandora’s looking closer and closer to tears every second. If she cried in public she wouldn’t be able to stop. So I have to get her to our dorm. Once we got to the dorm she collapsed on her bed and wrapped herself in a blanket. I grabbed some butterbeer bottles from our secret stash, brought them over to her, and looked at her expectantly
“How many this time?”
“Six”
“What about?”
“No, no,no,nononono-”
“OK! Ok, you don’t have to tell me,” She let out a sigh of relief “But you should tell someone”
She looked at me, looked at the bottle, took a swig, and looked at me again.
“Who do you suggest I should tell hmmm? Professor Flitwick? He would never believe me. Professor Slughorn? He looks traumatized enough on a daily basis, I’m not about to add to that. Professor Dumbledore? I-”
“NO! Not Professor Dumbledore, he’d use you as one of his soldiers in the war!”
“Yes, I know.”
“What about… Professor McGonagall?”
“I- wait that might work, she doesn’t have any nargles that I noticed but….” She trailed off. She does that, a lot. I get that she needs to think, but it can take LITTERAL HOURS for her to speak again, given her reaction to the visions she had I don’t think we have that time
“Pandora, I think you should talk to her.”
“I thought that you wouldn’t like her since she is the head of house of ‘All those lazy Gryffindors who waste their potential on a daily basis”
“Don’t quote me. And it’s not her fault that her house is full of idiots who can’t keep their priorities straight.” She paused,
“Fine, I’ll go talk to her, on one condition.”
“What do you want?”
“You don’t come with me and you don’t ask what we talk about.” I looked at her coldly
“Abosuloutly not.”
“Then I’m not going.”
“Pandora, you must go, it’s imperative.”
“Don’t start talking posh, it attracts wackasperts.”
“Do you really believe in those?”
“They're more like a metaphor for me and a way that I can confuse people” A sly grin spread across her face. We paused sitting in silence for a moment.
“I’ve never told an adult about this before, even my parents don’t know. What if they say I’m crazy, or overreacting?”
“Then I kill them for you,” I stated matter-of-factly
“Thanks, but I can manage,” she sighed and looked up at the ceiling where we had painted stars with one having the label ‘Regulus’. Sometimes being named after a star had its perks.
“I’ll let you walk me to and from her office.” She said finally, in a slightly defeated tone.
“Done.” I got up and held my palm up like the gentleman I am.
Pandora would rather die than admit it but she behaved like a lady from the highest pureblood families; in privet. She took my hand, and we were off to an unscheduled meeting in which if it went well she would confess the secret she had guarded for the last 15 years. And I had to talk to my brother earlier. Today was turning out to be very eventful.
As we approached her office Panda kept getting increasingly fidgety and she would randomly have sharp intakes of breath through her nose. At one point she had to stop and say “Stop” before we continued walking. When we got to the office door she looked at me.
“You leave now.”
“No, you said I could walk you back, how will I know when you're done if I don’t wait here?”
“Reg y-”
“I said that I would walk you to and from, it’s too late to negotiate, go inside”
“Fine.” she huffed and stomped inside Professor McGonagall's office
Now all that was left to do was wait.
…
…
…
After 30 minutes she still hadn’t come out of the office and I had started losing focus on the door and my mind had started wandering. I started thinking about how Pandora and I had become friends. She had come up to Evan and I in the great hall during the second year of Hogwarts. He and I were talking about some prank that my brother and his friends had pulled, he thought it was the greatest thing he had ever seen, and I thought he should be focusing on his studies not fooling around with blood traitors and half-bloods. She had come up to us holding both Dorcas and Barty by the wrists. She had large dangling earrings that looked like orange radishes and rings that looked like they were made of rock candy.
‘This is taking far too long for my liking so let us just start now.’ she had proclaimed with a twinkle in her eye and a large grin
‘Who are you? I haven’t seen you in the common room or at any dinner parties. Why are you talking to us? Are you important?’ I asked impatiently
‘I am to you. I’m Pandora you’re Regulus, he’s Evan, he’s Bary, and she’s Dorcas. You four are Slytherins and I’m a Ravenclaw. Regulus’ favorite food is escargot, Barty’s favorite book is Tails of a Phoenix Brave, Evan can’t go a day without vanilla-scented lotion, and Dorcas likes drawing scales on her wrist.’ she smiled
‘...How do you know that’ Evan asked slowly and quietly as if she were a ghost who would disappear if you spooked her
‘I know the way the bird knows to fly and the way the ocean knows to send gifts to us. I know because it was engraved in my soul.’
‘Is that supposed to make sense?’ Barty had asked looking between her and me
‘It kind of does if you think about it like it was written in an old mythology book’ Dorcas had chimed in looking at Pandora. After that, we walked to class together and became a little group.
Pandora came out of McGonnagal’s office with a determined look on her face and her usual slight smile gone. That’s when I knew something was afoot, if she wasn’t smiling then something awful was going to happen, or something unexplainable. Who knew with her?