Regulus Black was a lot of things. A son, brother, friend, lover. He was smart and quick-witted. He could be funny too. The one thing that always lead back to him though was that he was always the second choice. Now some might argue that no this isn’t true but that didn’t matter because, in the end, Regulus believed this hole heartedly and what is perspective but what you believe in. There were times when Regulus thought that maybe he was the first choice, sure but he always ended up being left behind somehow.,
A brother, who was always there, running off into the distance of 3 people who seem to always outdo him.
A boy with a soft smile and kind brown eyes that are always so understanding, leaving with tears in his eyes and picking the side of someone long forgotten Never forgotten, no matter how hard Regulus tried he could never forget his brother.
A fierce girl with black hair, a great quidditch player, and a best friend, gone with the whispers of war and a soft goodbye, into the arms of a Gryffindor with blonde hair and a strong will.
A boy, a friend who could’ve been more on the wrong side of the war for his friends, he claims but in the end, it is for a boy with dark hair and a sly smile Not regulus never regulus.
And on and on it goes, people, Regulus had attached himself to, only to get ripped apart by his failing. People Regulus blamed but knows that in the end, it was no one's fault but his own. If only he went when his brother whispered to him that night. If only he fought more to show the boy he was good. If only he didn’t push people away. If only. The tale of his life. Until.
a girl shows up. She has white blonde hair and her eyes are murky and always look like their hiding something. She is the very opposite of everything he is. She is open and drags everyone into her even as people push their way out because she’s too weird or different. She refuses to stay in the box everyone wants her to be in. His parents would hate her, but he can’t seem to care. It happens like this.
A boy sitting on a ledge looking out at the stars wondering where everything went wrong when she comes and sits next to him. Tells him that every star is a chance, a path and he just has to pick the right one and everything will align. As the boy looks at her and tells her he doesn’t believe in that kind of fate, she laughs and says then he’s a fool. To think that everything is already set. She takes his hand and shows him everything he missed.
At first, it’s a secret. Quiet meet-ups in the back of a library to talk about the latest book they’ve read. Sneaking out after curfew to look at the stars. Staying in the kitchen to talk and gossip. Then it becomes less. Dragging eachother out of the halls to talk, sitting next to eachother in class. Slowly the accidental meet-up becomes something more, something solid. A friendship, a siblingship. A family in a way, something Regulus has only had for short periods of time. So he waits. Waits for the other shoe to drop. Waits for someone to come and take her time away.
It doesn’t happen though. They continue to talk and hang out. They start to walk to classes together and trade books in the light of day and nothing happens. His parents don’t say a word, no one comes up to her to tell her to stay away. She doesn’t find someone else or have to leave to talk to anyone and slowly Regulus realizes something. Him and Pandora, Pandora, and Him. They are alike in many ways. They have no one waiting up for them, no one worrying about where they go when they disappear. So as the world caves in and everyone has their people Regulus found his the weirdest way possible, by chance. Something he doesn’t even believe in.
So, even when a brother leaves, a lover gives up, a friend chooses the other side, and 2 friends closer than family find eachother, Regulus has Dora and it gets better. Then the other shoe drops.
Regulus finds out something he never should have but he still needs to do something regardless. His only friend, the only person who stuck by his side other than Dora gets hurt. He has to do something, has to take the chance to stop it and he does. He spends months and months, almost a whole year on research. Hiding things from two boys who should know and a girl who he would tell if she wasn’t busy trying to make a life for herself. Soon though the girl comes and asks what happened.
Regulus spills of course. They never could keep anything from eachother. Like calls to Like as people say. They knew more about eachother than anyone in the world should ever be allowed to. So he tells her everything, and gives her his books and his research, and… the girl, Pandora can’t. She tells him that he can’t do this. That this is a suicide mission, that she can’t watch him kill himself. She tells him that she understands what he has had to go through to survive and that no one who matters is judging him. That he doesn’t need this redemption. She begs and pleads and hopes he listens. Regulus however doesn’t.
He screams back and asks her to support this. That she’s been by his side for too long to quit now. Still, Pandora refuses, and just like that it’s gone. The years by each other's side, the years listening to eachother secrets. Is cracked. Not broken, never broken. But cracked. As Regulus yells at her to get out and that he doesn’t need her help anymore, Pandora resigns herself and leaves with one last whisper that she doesn’t support this but please, please tell her if you do go through with this. But the door closes without another word from either of them.
Regulus slides down the wall once the door clicks shut and screams. Because now, like always he is alone, and like always it’s his fault. This one was the worse because now there is no way to blame someone else, no way to reduce the guilt in his heart. After all, this was truly his fault. He pushed the one person who never left, who always chose him away. He was finally alone and he didn’t know what to do, so he did what he always did.
He shut his emotions down and got to work. He planned and planned and finally, he acted. He didn’t tell anyone, didn’t tell the girl with blonde hair waiting for the call, waiting to hear from the one she loved the most. He slipped out without a word and went into a cave that would become his tomb. As he drank the poison, people surrounded him. Ghosts that looked like a brother long gone, a lover who was soon to be married, A girl soon to be killed and a boy not far behind her. A friend who will lose his mind fighting for the one responsible for all this and a girl with bright eyes and blonde hair with tears in her eyes. And soon that will all stop too. With a promise and a too real neckless in the old friend's hand, Regulus will watch as the ghost and regrets of his past disappear as his vision is filled with dark green. As his lungs start to burn and he feels himself get pulled down. He won’t fight, all his fight left with a quiet click of a door and he will try to cry but the green won’t let him and people will wonder what went through his head, but the truth is that there was nothing. No thoughts, or pleas, or hopes of surviving. Only one thing will pass through his hazy mind right before he passes out and never wakes up. It will be small and quiet and will cause bubbles to float to the surface.
“Sorry”
Even though that one simple word will never be audible to anyone's ears. Few know the power of spoken words, like names everything holds power if spoken. So while the girl might not hear it, she feels it. She’ll be sitting in her living room with her lover, she’ll be happy before the dread sets in. Before she feels the world shift and slip from under her. She’ll stand up without warning and run. Run as fast as she can to a dark lonely home. An empty one. She will find Kretcher and know. She’ll break down and sob and scream until she can’t produce a sound anymore until her eyes are forced to dry and even then she’ll sit there with dry tears and a soundless scream.
After though, she’ll pick herself up. She’ll take a neckless full of dark power, take books, journals, maps, and papers, and read through them all. She’ll tell her husband she is working on something for a friend. At first, she’ll work in the empty house, in an emptier room. Then she’ll get a call about an old friend, a girl she loved, about how she died at the hands of a man almost immortal. Then she’ll move, carve a room and make it for her experiments. She’ll hear about many deaths and people going to jail and going insane. She’ll hear about a boy she knew with dark hair who died, and she’ll hear about a boy she loved like a brother going to jail after driving people insane. She’ll watch as people she once knew so much about turn into strangers and then die. Soon, she’ll be alone with a daughter and a husband she loves very much as she tries to finish what her brother in all but blood started.
Then on a cold night in 1990, she’ll give it one last go. She’ll call an elf who has turned bitter after all these years and tell him is she can’t he needs to hide the locket and burn the research. She knows what Voldemort and Dumbledore will do if they find out and she must protect her family. Dumbledore is already suspicious and so she calls an elf and tries the last spell she has.
The purple shot of light hits the locket and she knows, she does know as soon as the locket starts to creak open she won’t get to see her daughter again. Green floods out of the locket before it slams close and the green clouds her vision. Once the green clears she’s aware of two things, pain and the sliver eyes of her daughter staring at her. That’s the last thing she sees before black starts to tunnel her vision and everything fades into the background.
People will tell many stories about these two. The boy and the girl are friends in the weirdest way. They will always tell the story of how they were close, but no one will ever know the full truth. Some will think Pandora died from a random experiment and that she never knew about the horcruxies. Some will say she and Regulus stopped talking once he got the mark. There will be truths and lies and stories and songs and poems. But in the end, the truth will get mixed in with beliefs and biases and hatred and love until the stories of both of them aren’t really about them anymore. Though one thing will remain. The Boy who was always chosen second and the Girl who was never chosen ever, became friends. That’s all that matters in the end.