He is sorted into Gryffindor.
(Frown. No. No, that's not how it happened.)
He is sorted into Gryffindor and it's strange to even think about it and Regulus can't quite put his finger on it, can't wrap his head around it. But then again there are so many things he does not understand: a loud brother with loud friends and silent enemies with narrowed eyes (Bellatrix hissing to his ear he betrayedyou, Narcissa whispering hewill leave you and he doesn't get it, not yet, anyway, but some part of him thinks you allwill) and red and green scarves that stigmatise eleven-year-olds. The words that follow a lion: stupid, brave, good; and the words that follow a snake: cunning, dark, bad.
The Great Hall is silent and no one claps and people frown and murmur (two Blacks in Gryffindor, be careful who youtrust) and Regulus walks away from the Sorting Hat with the feeling that something has gone wrong, with the feeling that something is amiss, with the thought this is not how ithappened. But perhaps it did and perhaps it didn't; he doesn't know. (He knows. He knows. That's not how it happened.) The Great Hall is silent and his cousins watch as he sits among the red robes, and he doesn't bow his head, doesn't lower his gaze; instead, he looks at Narcissa, he looks at Bellatrix. His eyebrows furrow because the image is blurry, and he thinks again this is wrong.
"Sirius," he says, looking up to his brother, "Sirius, what just happened?"
His brother grins a mad grin—his face strange, almost blurry around the edges, just like his cousins' and Regulus wonders, wonders, wonders.
"You got sorted into the lions, Regulus," he says, and his smile is so huge and happy and excited that Regulus doesn't even try to correct him; I am not a Gryffindor, I'm notalion, he wants to say—no, says, but no one listens—no, the words don't even leave his mouth—no—what—
You don't get it, he thinks, you don't get it you don't get it you don't get it—
He isn't a lion.
But everyone's dancing around him, twirling and whirling like a fortex and the flow takes him away before he can tag his brother's sleeve and ask again what just happened, Sirius, Sirius, Sirius? He is screaming, he is whispering, he is not talking at all and his mind is a child's room, everything hidden under the bed, the rest of it neat and clean and correctly folded away. He opens the imaginary shelves and the doors and the windows but they slam right in front of his face again and again and again so he winces and doesn't try again. He accepts defeat and this is why he knows he isn't a bloody Gryffindor, because he has the stubbornness of Slytherin (and the intelligence of a Ravenclaw, and the loyalty of a Hufflepuff—so what's the point of the sorting, anyway?)
He is sorted into Gryffindor and the world doesn't make sense around him or he can't make sense of the world, which of the two it doesn't matter. Nothing makes sense. He is a fraud, a thief, a snake among lions. He is a brother, a son, someone's nephew and someone's cousin and he is sorted into Gryffindor. He is a mistake and he is sorted into Gryffindor. He knows that's not how it happened and he is sorted into Gryffindor anyway.
___
He is sorted into Ravenclaw and again he knows something is wrong. But he doesn't get it and Regulus feels like he needs to remember something that is just out of his reach, just out of his grasp; if he reaches out, he will understand, he will remember, he will know (knowledge is power, son, never forget that) but he forgets he has to remember and goes on thinking and thinking about this and that. There is a sentence that keeps circling his head like a crow, and he is like a small child, jumping to reach a flying balloon; there is a sentence that makes his brows knit and his head hurt and his heart ache and his body sick with something he can't recognise. There is a sentence (that's not how it happened) and it plagues his dreams and nightmares until he wakes up gasping for air.
There's the sentence and there's this girl, too: wide blue eyes and dirty blond hair and skin tanned by the sun—I like walking underthesun, she says and he frowns, don't you getburnt? and she shrugs, why would that stopme? There is this girl and she doesn't feel wrong, and she is the only thing that doesn't feel wrong, like he was supposed to meet her, to talk to her about long walks and the sun and books and everything, really. There is this girl and he likes her but not in a romantic way and he thinks that's how it's supposed to be. But that doesn't stop his life from unruffling in front of his eyes (you have silver eyes, youknow, she says, and he asks like the moon? and she laughs no, silly) like some strange writing on a yellowish brown parchment that is too old to understand.
"You're Regulus Black," she says and Regulus nods, even though it isn't phrased as a question.
She tilts her head and looks at him, from head to toe, then the corners of her lips quirk. The girl reminds him of an overly large owl, he suddenly thinks, but doesn't know what to do with this thought; he tucks it away with all the other things he doesn't understand, like a House he doesn't belong to, with clothes and colours that do not fit, with classmates he doesn't know, a loud brother with loud friends and loud smiles—the last one always seems to remain the same. Regulus does not understand Sirius and Sirius does not understand Regulus; it is as simple as saying that the sky is blue and that the earth spins around the sun.
Her features break into a grin. "You must be so confused."
His eyebrows touch his hairline. "Because it's my first day?"
"No, silly. Because it isn't. You've been here before, remember?"
Remember remember he can't—
"What the hell are you talking about?"
She giggles. He wrinkles his nose in annoyance, but that seems to amuse her even more. He wills his expression to harden, like his father's when he's arguing with mother, but even that doesn't shake her mirth. In the end, Regulus gives in and returns a reluctant smile that seems to be enough.
"Pandora," she says, "Pandora Lovegood," and he wants to say I know but doesn't because there is no way he actually knows that, even though in his mind it makes perfect sense—it makes perfect sense that he would know the name of this strange owl-girl with the orb-like eyes and the strange orange earrings he met just a few minutes ago.
___
The Gryffindors are loud and brash and everything like Sirius, everything like his mad, mad family that has been sorted into Slytherin for the last four centuries. It's disconcerting to spot the similarities, the way he recognises Gryffindor behaviours in his family; Bellatrix reminds him of Alice Fortescue, ruthless and fierce, and he thinks there's some kind of irony here that he doesn't quite get yet; Narcissa is like Marlene McKinnon, regal and cold and incredibly understanding. Andromeda, on the other hand—she is nothing like the Gryffindors, because she is a Slytherin through and through, impossibly like Regulus himself.
"You don't belong here," a boy tells him the first day of classes, and Regulus wants to say I know and he wants to say I don't belonganywhere because he doesn't; the boy says, "You have no place here," and Regulus wants to say I have no place anywhereat all because he is out of place and out of time and he doesn't even know what that means.
The boy is taller (everyone is taller; that seems to stay the same, too) and he has broad shoulders and a pointed chin, a crooked nose. His voice is low, but a forced low, like he's trying to immitate an adult; it's quite pathetic, really. His eyes are muddy brown, his hair murky black, skin freckled, eyebrows thick.
"I don't need to belong here to be better than you," Regulus sneers.
Sirius whistles and claps his back and James Potter bursts out laughing; Lupin's lips quirk and Pettigrew wheezes from giggling. Regulus purses his lips because he didn't say anything funny, just the truth, but, otherwise, hides his confusion. This is why he isn't a Gryffindor, a lion; they parade their weaknesses, they wear them like golden armour—as if weakness isn't a card from Exploding Snap that can betray you at any moment. But if he isn't a Gryffindor, what the hell is he? Nothing; it's becoming clearer and clearer. He is nothing at all.
His eyes dart from one of his brother's friends to the other. There is Potter, who is brash and bold and arrogant, who thinks that the world is a game (blood-traitor, scum of society, shameful shamefulshameful); there is Lupin, who's a quiet coward, consumed with his guilt and who wears his scars like his deepest regrets (half-breeds disgusting creatures stay away son); there is Pettigrew, who follows his brother and his friends around all the time and Regulus thinks maybe, maybe but never finishes the thought because his mind travels from one thing to another like a bee from flower to flower.
He cannot focus. He cannot sit still for too long. Sudden noises make him draw his wand; sudden movements make him flinch and recoil and physical contact makes his skin crawl as if something is clawing his insides, peeling off the bones (touch me again and I will rip you apart) and he hates the open sky, he hates going out, he hates himself for all of those things he doesn't understand. Regulus is a walking wound that keeps bleeding again and again and again—and the worst: he doesn't know why. Why when Sirius hugs him he wants to scream; why when Potter smiles at him he wants to retch; why Lupin's silent reassurances make him sick. Why the mere sight of Pettigrew sets a burning fire in his heart.
___
He is eleven and he gets sorted into Gryffindor. Eleven and sorted into Ravenclaw; eleven and sorted into Hufflepuff; eleven and he is sorted into Slytherin. Eleven and he has no magic in his veins, in his blood to control; eleven and he has too much magic to control. He is eleven but he's not, because he is seventeen and walking towards his own death (To the DarkLord); thirteen and he slits his wrists in the bathroom and sews the skin back together (it was an accident, I swear); sixteen and he joins Voldemort (welcomehome); fourteen and he runs away with Sirius (come withme).
He is twelve and nine and six and he has died, he is dying, he is alive, he is nothing.
___
"Do you ever get this feeling," says Regulus, pulling the loose strings of his sweater, "that you've done this before, but slightly different?"
He doesn't look up, doesn't want to see his brother frown at him. He knows what Sirius thinks, what they all think. Regulus has heard them talk. He's mad. They've no idea. Hey, Short, Dark and Crazy! they call him in the corridors. He hexes and jinxes and curses until they get the message. Until they don't touch him, don't annoy him openly—but he can't stop them from talking. (Who bothers you, Regulus? Tell me and I'll kick their ass, Sirius says, but Regulus shakes his head, Ican fight my own fights.) It's not like they're wrong, anyway. He is every inch his parents' son.
"What do you mean?" Sirius asks, an edge to his voice.
Regulus shrugs.
He doesn't say, nothing makes sense.
He doesn't say, I think I'm going crazy.
He doesn't say, help me please.
(He doesn't say, I am a fraud livingsomeoneelse's life or the silence in my head is tooloud. It sounds insane even to Regulus; they would lock him up. He would lock him up.)
"It's like things aren't happening the way they're supposed to happen."
"No one decides how things are supposed to happen, bro." That edge again. Please believe me.
___
"Pandora?"
She glances at him distractedly, chewing at the end of her quill. They are in the middle of a History of Magic lesson and almost everyone is dozing off. The heat is unbearable; Regulus feels sweat on his brows, his breaths hot in his chest. His hands are clammy, and he wishes he could take a cold bath and scrub his skin until the sweat goes away. He settles for rubbing his hands on his blue Ravenclaw robes. (They don't fit. Not in the sense that the size is wrong, that they are too big, or too small. They don't fit.)
"Regulus," she hums.
He frowns, then the words leave his mouth before he can suppress them. Or maybe it's because she won't think he's going crazy. Or maybe because she's crazy herself, he sometimes thinks. Not a bad crazy, not like Regulus who drowns in the middle of a crowded corridor and can't breathe under a blue sky. Pandora is simply on a world of her own, and she's lucky.
"We've done this before, haven't we?" he asks. Even those words echo with familiarity through his ears.
He thinks, I've heard this before.
He thinks, I've been here.
I've seen this. In a dream of a dream. In a nightmare of a nightmare.
She beams—a bright, lovely smile. "Of course we've done this before. A hundred times."
___
He is thirteen and wearing Ravenclaw robes. He is sixteen and wearing Slytherin green. He is surrounded by enemies; he is surrounded by allies; Sirius and his friends on his side; Pandora Lovegood on his side; Death Eaters on his side. He has lived one life and he has lived a thousand lives, in one moment and in a thousand moments.
Regulus drowns in a cave; Regulus slits his wrists; Regulus lives on and on. He dies and doesn't in a hundred ways.
___
There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying
When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons
Now I've got that feeling once again
I can't explain you would not understand
This is not how I am
I have become comfortably numb
Comfortably numb, by Pink Floyd