Never alright again
It was nearly midnight but Regulus still sat in one of the armchairs in the common room.
Pandora was with him.She was a ravenclaw but sometimes she stayed with regulus over night. He didn’t even had to ask her to she just feel that he needed her.
Regulus was scared to sleep. He had nightmares every time he actually allowed himself to rest. It was always about James finding out that he had gotten the dark mark.
Regulus would have loved to talk to Pandora about everything. She could always help him and calm him down.
But he couldn’t bring himself to say something.
Thankfully, as if she had read his thoughts, Pandora carefully raised her voice. “ You know reggie, I did already notice that something is off. Why not just tell me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” regulus said while he stubbornly started at a random point on the ground.
“Don’t lie to me. You know that doesn’t work.” Pandora turned so she could get a better look at regulus,” since when are you scared to tell me things, reg. I’m worried about you.”
“I’m not scared,” regulus said,” why do you even care so much?”
“You can’t piss me off by being unfriendly to me. Come on Reggie what’s so bad that you can’t tell me? You will feel better after talking about it,” she whispered.
But he knew he would in fact not feel better. It wouldn’t change anything at all. Nothing would get better anymore. Nobody could help him now.
Tears filled regulus eyes. He couldn’t stop them. They streamed down his cheeks and then they fell. And he couldn’t do anything about it. He could feel Pandora hugging him and telling him that he‘d be alright but that was not true.
He would never be alright again.
And then he just cried into her shoulder. And she held him in her arms. And they sat there like this for one hour or maybe it were three hours regulus didn’t know but he also didn’t care.
——————————————————————————————
After all those hours crying regulus had eventually run out of tears.
So he just sat there quietly, next to Pandora. She had stopped asking questions. But she needed to know. He wanted her to know so badly. But Merlin he was scared. What if she would just leave him here and then tell everyone about the mark. James would find out and then he would hate him too. That couldn’t happen.
“My parents forced me to get the dark mark,”
That was all he said.
It was quiet for a long time.
“So you already have it?” Pandora said so quite the he could barely hear her.
“Yeah,” he answered. He realised that this was the first time that he actually admitted to himself that he really got the mark. Sure he knew it and he felt it but he hadn’t really progressed it yet .
“Oh Reggie,”Pandora whispered.”I’m so sorry.”