Timeless

Regulus

My brother always used to say there were two kinds of people in this world – the ones who live, forever dying, and those who die to live a little. While it's common knowledge that no wizard ages before being touched by their soulmate, staying forever 22 until so, Sirius had a theory that our souls do. That our souls keep ageing until they die, even if the body still remains 22. As I pulled on my gloves and my turtleneck gown, I cursed him, once again, for leaving. For being right.
It was my birthday today, the anniversary of my birth, but in reality, this day had nothing to do with celebrating me. I'd lost count of how old I was turning, and it's not like I'd ever truly lived for it to matter, but I was sure my parents would remind me. I'm sure they'd paint it all over the place in glaring cerulean shades of femininity. At least I got to wear a black dress today.

“My dear girl, Regina, aren't you magnificent,” Mother proclaimed as I entered the drawing room and the attention of everyone present shifted to me. There were more people than I expected, for I had stupidly presumed it would be at tonight's ball where the people would gather. Alas not, grandparents and cousins, aunts and uncles had all already gathered, annihilating all my hopes of a nice and calm afternoon.
“As we all know,” Mother now spoke to the whole room rather than me, “The noble and most ancient house of Black remains heirless, making Regina the only unmarried heiress of our legacy. It is therefore crucial that she, sooner rather than later, gift us a child, a male heir preferably, one that can carry on the Black name, or else with her comes the end of the Blacks. The solution to this issue which her father and I have come up with is to have her marry Alphard.”
“Alphard?!” my tongue ran its course before my brain had a chance to catch up and stop him, “But he's my UNCLE?!” I was unable to believe the words my mother had spoken. To marry my own uncle and have children with him just to carry on the family name. I was going to be sick.
“Of course,” my father took over as my mother made her way to me, fuming fury I'd learned to fear lighting up her eyes, “it is not before we have made sure that he is not her soulmate that we can proceed and whoever her soulmate might be must be eliminated for they are an immediate threat to the Black household. Regina's soulmate inking has yet to appear, which gives us hope he may not have been born yet. However, to be entirely sure that the inking carried by Alphard is not in reference to her we must find one of their soulmates and eliminate them. The wedding shall take place a year from now and that is our deadline,”
As he finished the roomful of people proceeded to agree with nods and mumbles of approval. Mother forced me to smile and nod along with the rest, a wand held to my back, while my fate was being sealed before me without me having a chance to have any say in how it should or shouldn't play out.
But there remained something puzzling about all of it – if I didn't have my soulmate mark while Uncle Alphard had his, then didn't this eliminate the chances of us being soulmates, especially with the additional incest element of the arrangement? So, why was it that my parents were so keen on postponing the wedding?
I found my eyes wandering towards the wall covered with the Black family tree tapestry where in my brother's spot the fabric yawned into a black burnt hole. Not unlike the spot where Alphard used to look down from. His picture had not yet been remade. He had not been welcomed back into the family.
He was also not here in the room with us.
How peculiar.
I swallowed the smirk that wanted to make its way onto my face and kept my lips a straight line as always. Clearly, my parents did not wish me to know what I had just figured out – Alphard, if he even was aware of this scheme at all, was yet to agree to it. He could never agree. I hadn't seen him in decades, he could even be dead.
“Now, Regina” Mother had led me to the centre of the room without me noticing, “to ensure the durability of this course of events and avoid any chance of your actions following that of a certain sibling we no longer speak the name of, it is crucial you make me an unbreakable vow,”
An unbreakable vow. The grin I never let show suffocated, drowned and perished. Never. “Of course, mother,”
“Good girl. Orion?”
“Yes, Dear?”
“Will you do the honours?”
“Yes, Dear,”
Mother offered her hand to me as a final test. If I didn't do this they would torture me until I agreed. Or died. I didn't have the freedom of choice. I didn't have the bold strength of Sirius either. So I grabbed the hand I was being offered and kept my mouth shut.
“Do you, Regina Black, vow to kill your soulmate if you are ever to meet and recognise him?” Father's voice echoed, low and heinous, in my ears.
No. “Yes.”
The first burning twine braided together my arm and my mother's, the heat of it making my skin ache even through the fabrics of my sleeve and glove.
“To never let your soulmate touch you?”
No. “Yes.”
“Do you vow to marry Alphard in favour of the noble and most ancient house of Black?”
No. “Yes”
“And to birth a son, whatever it takes?”
Absolutely not. “Yes-”
The windows closest to us flew open in a loud bang as a Blakiston’s fish owl burst in and started circling the room, knocking down anything that got in his way. I'd never seen an owl this big and let go of my mother's arm to duck at the same time she abandoned mine to curse the grand being. I squeezed my eyes shut so I wouldn't have to find out which barbarous spell she opted for.
I opened my eyes a few moments later to my mother shaking down the bird's last feathers from her dress as my father swiftly fixed all the broken items with just a swish of a wand. The owl was nowhere to be seen and I was too scared of the answer to ask about it. I decided, however, to try and take advantage of the momentary chaos and perhaps escape back to my room, if even for a few moments. While everyone was still stunned, their attention elsewhere, I made a quick move with my own wand, breaking loose half of my formerly perfectly arranged hairstyle.
“Mother,” I then spoke, “may I excuse myself for a moment, there is no mirror here but I fear my hair might be in a bit of an unpresentable state of disarray?”
“Yes, please do. Fix that,” she made a disapproving hand gesture towards me, her way of expressing it leaving me wondering if it was actually just the hair she meant or if I as a whole continued not to be enough.

When I reached my room, however, there was something that had not been there when I left. A closed envelope was taking a snooze in the middle of my bed. I hadn't received a single letter since Sirius left a decade ago. I'd assumed my parents reached each letter he may have sent before they got to me, but this envelope clearly stated “from Sirius” and that had made it to me. So had he just not even tried to write until now? I brushed the thought aside and opened the grey envelope, praying for a posed letter, knowing all too well Sirius' willingness to send howlers just for the fun of it.
It wasn't a howler. It was an invitation card with two men on it, grinning, one with caramel curls and scars down his face, the other with a face similar to mine.
My brother's face stared back at me from the wedding invitation, so alike him and yet a complete stranger. It had been years since I'd heard of him, let alone seen his face. Of course, I could never forget what he looked like but still, to see him staring back at me, smiling, toothpaste dripping as he grinned, felt improbable somehow. It was Sirius, but not. He was older too. Made sense I suppose, considering he was to be married in 11 months' time, according to the letter accompanying the invite anyway.
And he wanted me to be there. Not our parents, of course, I ought not to tell them, which I suppose made sense, but I don't know how he expected me to sneak off a month before my own wedding. Then again, he didn't know of my wedding. I barely knew of it myself.
I slipped the invite into my pillow cover - I'd learned my lesson by just placing secrets beneath the pillow and had been magicking the bedsheets for years now - and hurried to the bathroom mirror to fix the hair I'd messed with.
I tried grinning to myself in the mirror the same way Sirius had on the invitation. My face looked weird and distorted. I dropped it.