Sirius knows the moment that Reggie is in his room. In this house, Sirius has always been a light sleeper, ears always catching the creak on the floorboards outside his room, the sound of each parent’s footsteps coming up the stairs. He could tell you who it was by the way they opened the door.
So, when Sirius’ bedroom door creaks open, he knows that someone’s there. And that someone is…
“Reggie?”
Sirius looks at the small figure in the door. Reggie is only one year younger than Sirius. Ten years old, going off to Hogwarts that coming September.
Reggie stands quietly in the doorframe, the risks of being awake this late known to both siblings.
“Sirius.”
Reggie’s voice is a terrified breath of air in the room. Sirius sits up and throws the blankets off his legs almost instantly. Reggie is more important than a good night’s sleep anyways. Silent as ever, Sirius creeps across the room and let’s Reggie close the door before he kneels down and reaches for Reggie’s hands. It’s only then that his eyes find Reggie’s thick black curls, so much the same as Sirius’, hacked off in an awful, uneven mess.
“Oh Reggie, what have you done?” Sirius asks, his breath soft with impending fear, with pity.
After those words leave Sirius’ lips, tears well in Reggie’s grey eyes, and Sirius desperately, and quietly, tries to backtrack.
“No, no Reggie, this is fine, it’s, this is okay—”
“Tell the truth.”
It’s horrendous, Sirius wants to say.
“It’s horrendous,” Reggie chokes out, trying to stay quiet through tears.
“It’s modern,” Sirius tries, using words he’s overheard from his parents.
“Don’t lie!”
Both siblings fall silent at the same time, the moment those words leave Reggie’s lips, just a little too loud for this time of night. Sirius doesn’t breathe, he doesn’t dare to. He wraps his arms around Reggie and keeps his eyes on the closed door. He strains his ears, hearing Reggie’s ragged breaths in his ear. He detects no creak in the floorboards, but just to be safe he stays silent for a whole minute.
When Sirius lets go of Reggie, the tears haven’t stopped and the new haircut is still a problem.
“It’s French,” Sirius finally whispers, smiling so gently at Reggie that he sees that pout turn into a cautious smile.
Reggie whispers but is unable to shake that smile. “Really?”
Sirius smiles and ruffles the dark curls a bit. “Oui.
Reggie shoves Sirius’s arm but he can see that smile refusing to fade.
“It’s a little choppy though,” he adds. “Do you want me to fix it for you?”
Reggie gives him a deadpan look. “What would you know about haircuts?”
Sirius’s gasps quietly, ever the dramatic even when they’re meant to be quiet. “More than you.”
He accepts the little punch in the arm with a smile and silence. He takes Reggie’s hand and together they walk to Sirius’ bathroom. “Besides, I have a friend at school, Mary, who does all the girls hair in the common room. I’ve picked up a thing or two.”
A perk about having very, very strict and irritable parents is that every bedroom in the house has a small bathroom attached, so there’s no one walking through the halls at night. Sirius tells Reggie to sit on closed toilet and finds a pair of scissors in one of the vanity draws.
He starts by cutting small pieces, wanting to even it all out before he tries anything to do with styling.
Reggie is quiet throughout most of it, letting Sirius babble quietly as he works.
“My friend Mary could fix it up when you come to school next year,” Sirius says, fixing the back bits. The floor around their feet is littered with tufts of dark curls. Reggie watches them fall, each with a small rush of triumph.
“She’s got all sorts of hair products and like these little charms she can put in your hair. They look very pretty on Marlene’s hair, but she hates them. But Mary could do a real hair style that girls actually wear, not what I’m trying to do—”
“Sirius.”
He stops cutting Reggie’s hair the second the word comes between them in the air.
“You alright?” he asks, lowering his arms, still whispering as he walks around to see Reggie’s face.
Those grey eyes are filled with tears again, not longer hidden by long dark curls that cup Reggie’s face. Sirius frowns when Reggie refuses to meet his gaze, teary eyes locked on the floor.
“I’m not a girl.”
Sirius frowns for a minute. Not a girl? But Reggie’s his little sister. How could she not be a girl? Besides, who wouldn’t want to be a girl?
“I’m a boy Sirius. I was—” Reggie takes a deep shaky breath. “I was cutting my hair to look like you. Because you’re a boy and you look like a boy, and I am a boy.”
And then everything just falls into place. Years of Reggie asking Sirius to wear his clothes instead of those stupid, uncomfortable dresses, always flinching harder than Sirius when their parents addressed Reggie by the full name that only Sirius doesn’t use.
“So, you’re my brother then?”
Reggie blinks and looks up at his brother. “Huh?”
“You’re a boy,” Sirius repeats. So, you’re a ‘he’. Then that make you my brother.”
Reggie blinks again and then pulls Sirius into a hug, pressing his face into his big brother’s shoulder. The weight of his long hair was a relief to lose, but this makes Reggie feels like he’s floating, like he weighs absolutely nothing.
Sirius pulls back first, to cup Reggie’s face and grin, that same grin that has always made Reggie feel safe. “I’ve always wanted a brother.”
Then Sirius goes back to cutting Reggie’s hair like nothing has changed. And nothing has changed. Sirius is still in the bathroom, cutting his younger siblings hair because they cut it with no help and came to their big brother’s room to fix it. But now, that younger sibling feels more like themselves around their big brother, and that matters more to Sirius than whether that sibling is a boy or a girl.
“Do you still want me to call you Reggie?”
Reggie shrugged. “I don’t mind it too much. But I… I did find a new name I like. It’s a boy’s name. A real boy’s name.”
Sirius grinned again and stood back to examine the haircut. “Let’s hear it then.”
“It’s Regulus. It’s a star in the Leo constellation. It’s the one down where the leg would be.”
Sirius hums. “You put a lot of thought into that huh? It’s even a star.”
“I thought mum and dad would like that,” Regulus said quietly. “I still like it a lot.”
“Then that’s what I’ll call you,” Sirius said, smiling down at Regulus.
He continued cutting his brother’s hair, both sitting in comfortable silence as Sirius finished it. He made Regulus stand and walked around him to see it from all angels. It wasn’t terrible, for the work of an eleven-year-old.
“All done,” Sirius says, grinning when Regulus looks in the mirror for the first time and smiles so bright he looks like a real star for a second. Instead of Regulus going back to his room, they both crawled into Sirius’ bed for a bit. They lay on their sides, facing each other.
Sirius reached out and poked Regulus’ shin with his foot.
“Can I ask you a question?”
Regulus nods and pulls the covers around under his chin.
“Why didn’t you want to be a girl?”
Regulus frowns and shrugs, thinking about it. “I don’t know. It just didn’t feel… right. I’ve always been called a girl but something about it always sounded a bit off. Like someone always saying your name wrong.”
Sirius takes that in and nods. “Sometimes I think I’d like to be a girl.”
It’s a secret shared between two siblings in the dark. They share the bad and giggle and push at each other. And one of them says something they’ve never told another person before. And because they’re siblings, the other one says,
“That’s okay.” Regulus smiles and pokes Sirius’ shin in return. We could’ve swapped.”
Sirius huffs a laugh, trying desperately to muffle it in the blanket. Regulus grins and Sirius thinks he looks more like Sirius than he ever has himself.
“Love you, little brother.”
Regulus still has that Sirius Black grin on his face. “Goodnight Sirius.”
He hears that, and that feels like a person saying his name right. Not brother, or sister, just Sirius. And that fits well enough.