Regulus had come to the lake to mourn.
The atmosphere was right or at least the rightest one could find in the ever-so-whimsical Hogwarts, no stairs moving beneath you like sinking sand, as if to emphasise that everything still carries on, and no creaky floorboards to echo the unbearably shambled state of mind you find yourself attempting to escape from.
It was perfectly still. Well, perhaps only perfectly to Regulus. Barty often complained that it grates on his nerves, the way that the lake seldom rippled and shifted from its familiar murky mass and the way the wind seemed to slow its trickle until the common whistling of autumn days bent around the peaceful land.
It rankles, Barty’d say, There’s gotta be some magic to it, triggering my natural survival instincts.
That, to be fair, was a plausible thought, the magic, not the instincts part. To house a creature such as the great squid, surely a few spells must have been cast.
Regulus, however, was not a fair person and would unfailing respond that it never triggered his.
Barty’s always been on the step with him, or one ahead as the blond boy would claim. Exactly, survival instincts. I don’t think you’ve ever had those.
Oh, how the tables turn.
No survival instincts, huh?
Who’s the one potentially getting pulled out of Hogwarts?
Barty had suggested the idea in the first place so it should be fine that he’s the only one receiving the consequences but still..
It’s fair.
Regulus, however, is not a fair person.
His hands clench around the grass stalks he’s sitting on, ruining the painstaking gardening of the wind to bend them anyhow.
The pressure slowly leaks out of him, until his knuckles eventually return to their usual tan.
Barty had been acting so Gryffindor when he shoved Regulus down that passageway, the one Evan had discovered in their second year and the older’s fifth.
Regulus had half a mind to slip back out there and render Barty’s interference null, if only out of pure spite towards the sacrificial fool, when the groundskeeper started going off in such a malicious tone.
The one time they’d got caught, and it had to be the most important as well.
Anxiously, Regulus had slowed his shoulders to hike upwards, reaching his ears in a manner Trixie once fondly, if with that undercurrent of mania she’s always held, called similar to a cat. The black cat she and her sisters had picked up even, a thought that sprouted many evenings of childish chases as Trixie ‘tested if he had any other feline traits like, she doesn’t know, leaping off of bookshelves and cramming into crannies that are probably the cause of the now common cricks in his back.
That was when she was less distant, more caring and vulnerable. Before she grew into a respectable standard, a worthy role model who had not time for games, warmth or her little cousin.
Now, Bellatrix would flick a wand at him, scolding with a barb-laces tongue is that were to happen. And Allah forbid, if his mother overheard, he’d be in for an artful beating.
(There’s nothing artful about harm with a wand rather than fists, Sirius had said proudly and in far dumber words, standing besides James Potter right before he threw a nasty one at Severus Snape. Regulus wasn’t sure if he was proud of his proclamation or the brother he had always craved. His silent question remains unanswered, wilting away in the shadows he lurked in and hastily retreated on when a searching glance swung in the general direction. Regulus doesn’t want to know.)
Regulus would rather take a beating, magical or otherwise - no matter how shameful or unlikely the latter, if it meant Barty would stay.
The ache in his bones, ever-present since his mothers first lesson - from the start of his life, proves he can withstand that.
Not that he couldn’t withstand Barty’s departure, but he’d rather not. Allies are good to have, and - and his friend keeps him grounded to say the least.
They met in first year.
Regulus is too reliant.
(First on Sirius, then on Evan, now Barty.)
This is the perfect opportunity to cut ties, cut weaknesses.
He doesn’t want to let go.
It’s not his choice.
A vengeful witch or wizard must have cursed him or otherwise he would not struggle with such things, his heart would not thud traitorously at conversation and he would not jump at his mother’s delicate touch. His cheeks would not threaten to moisten in a still, still hideaway.
His mourning would be in the crowded common room, grinning with the rakish airs his fellow Slytherins, fellow correctly-minded pure bloods without a lick of disobedience to their bones but the obnoxiously mischievous kind that earns friends and followers. The storm in his head an afterthought compared to the burning touch of an arm flung around his shoulder, of the warning tingle in his back as he leans forwards with his knees spread apart, picture perfectly confident.
They don’t like him well enough.
He wasn’t loud enough for them, and the sudden change he had needed to undergo when Sirius had betrayed him came late enough that he must be content at hovering at the edges of their folds - a precarious position that requires a demandingly subtle touch to hand wave as acceptably frigid for such a noble heir without becoming too condescending,
He should be there, furthering connections that will outlast their time at Hogwarts and spread the the Black Family’s influence, like a good heir, good son.
But instead, he is in mourning.
It feels disrespectfully, damningly severe.
He hadn’t felt so crushed, his lungs not so punctured and his tan face not so blue in pursuit of air, when his Dadi passed.
He needs to be alone.
Just for a while.
He’ll come back properly composed.
He will.
If only he’d stop feeling like a miserable jelly, unable to stand straight and slowly sliming off the plate, a minute sooner.
It’d help if his ear don’t suddenly prick up, as they have been routinely tricking him to believe his vulnerability may be intruded upon, only to not prick down.
Rather than remain distant sounds, a drowned humming in the background, the thuds continue in their pattern, only gradually getting louder - gradually getting closer.
He’d chosen to settle under a tree, back to its rugged trunk, and legs crisscrossed behind the large roots. His spine has naturally arched with it, his form curled in an embarrassingly comforting position.
They may not look, could he-?
But it’s better to seem as if he is not hiding, he firmly reminds himself.
He had learned that lesson long ago, he is not sure why his mind acts as if eager for a repeat of the physical and verbal lashing.
Straightening up allows himself a familiar feeling of awareness, sharp edges of his gaze no longer softened by his lowered lids but on full ferocious force.
The chilling cold acts as it meant to, now his head is no longer tucked to the warmth of his robes.
It bites into him and his hearing clears a touch more.
An important touch.
He pauses where his face had schooled into a slight scowl, adjustable depending on who he’d turn to face and how far he needed to be in their graces, a Don’t talk to me loaded on his tongue.
Hopefully not a marauder, but maybe so. They’d deserve to take the brunt of his anger, if only for their continuous distastefulness. Aside from Pettigrew perhaps, the boy wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
It’s not one of them.
Its none of the Slytherins he knows either.
His hands fall from where they were adjusting his sleeves, relaxing as if a great pressure had been taking from them.
It’s not very subtle, though hidden between his legs thankfully. As the rest of the tension within him leaks, he resolves for it to be less perceivable.
The tinkling of the bell attached to the boots - and how did he not recognise that? - comes to a stop a few steps away from him and he is surprisingly languid as he turns to face her.
He shouldn’t be.
She is Sirius’s, or James’s friend even, first and foremost.
She is the annoying Gryffindor, quieter than the loudest of her peers but suitably bold as the bravest of them, that tags along with him in the secluded hallways and silent astronomy tower and empty classrooms and anywhere, everywhere where their reputations are untouched by lingering eyes. That he has found himself tagging on alongside of in return.
She’s a blood traitor.
He has consistently bristled at the mere mention of the notion since his brother’s betrayal.
She is surprisingly sensible, orderly in her duties as head girl. Bold, despite her quieter demeanour, and though liked among Sirius’s lot, she prefers the quiet of the Ravenclaw Tower with its endless books.
He’s seen her reading and reading and reading, but rather than at the cold uncomfortable chairs of the library, she’d curl up on the floor and spend hours.
She’s witty, if discounting her overuse of the unfortunate nickname ‘Baby Black’ after she claims he’s smiled at it once, and quietly creative with the drills from jahannam she puts herself through for quidditch.
She introduced him to Peter, a slip-up actually the cause, but then the boy had introduced him to art and the wonders of oil pastels.
The end of the day, when they almost nightly now, a risky jaunt he doesn’t know why he won’t stop committing now that she’s no longer insistent on it, is his peace.
His feelings are too muffled already, he should resolutely ignore the fluttering of his heart just as unwaveringly as before, before it shows on his face.
She guided him to Islam, the true Islam rather than the one his parents taught and Sirius abandoned.
At the Honeysuckle Cafe, giddy as - as school kids by their secret meeting, in plain sight! He’d felt like preening and she’d approached the conversation once again, as theirs breathing returned to normal, and when their hands stopped shaking enough to nurse their cups.
Hers stopped first but she didn’t dare touch her cup before he could too. A her thing, one of many that seem to slide into a file or more like pot in his mind. One at the end of the rainbow she’d magicked the forest clearing to become on their most disastrous wanderings, when he still rallied to be reluctant.
Her parents didn’t hit her, didn’t believe in that. She’d explained, gentle as if talking to a foal despite her typically brash, typically abrasive blurted comments around those she cared for.
(They look so different, act so different. The sun and moon, one could say. Stars in the day and stars in the night. But their minds whir in easy coordination.)
She wears the hijab proud, a yellow eyes can’t not be drawn to. It looks like his Dadi’s, who he loved - he did - even if he hadn’t cried at the funeral, favourite marigolds. The ones she’d tuck behind his ear and weave into crowns and grow without fail, year after year with a faint sheen to her eyes as she explained they looked like the ones get family had grown in another time, in a warmer country with luscious, warm green decorating the flag.
She’d said they suited him like no other, and while he respects her a far greater deal than any family member he’s had, with her always gentle words and the tendency to forget her wand in her drawers, only hobbling up stairs to grab it for a harmless light show, he thinks she was wrong. For waiting patiently before him, a sympathetic curve to her eyes, Alice looks like the final piece to one of Emma’s admittedly pretentious puzzle. Much nicer though, much more.. electrifying than those antique things.
His lips tug upwards out of habit at the sight.
She grins back, and oh, she’s waiting for him to speak.
Regulus is tempted not to, to play the waiting game, but she’d likely be less concerned, less inquisitive, if he can cover any blunders with distracting words.
”Hello Fortescue.”
“Hey Reggie.”
Crap.
Not right.
He always waits. They’d once spent an entire 7 minutes of silence, once it had become a game rather than his steadfast attempt to pretend that any and all Gryffindor’s do not exist. She’d cracked first. But leapt after him with the strength of a harpy and twitching figures transformed to woodpecker’s beaks. He still doesn’t know how she so quickly found his most ticklish, a secret not even Sirius was privy to.
He sighs, pushing his back to rest again against the tree.
He can see her bite back a comment at his Bava-like behaviour from under his lashes.
So they’re playing it this way.
Alice leans back on her heels and if only one person could be titled as stubborn as a bull, Regulus would insist it to be her at the moment.
”Are we talking about it, or not?” The answer she knows she’ll get is written into the barely perceptible slump of her shoulders. Yet she leaves the offer open.
”There’s nothing to talk about.” He responds curtly but not too unkindly, his already lifting mood wouldn’t allow for that.
She sighs, as if wounded and then suddenly grins in a way that tells him one of the common rooms will be flooded tonight and James Potter blamed for a prank he‘s innocent of for once, and the couple of other times they’ve felt the urge, scattered across the year so no one but the popular but distrust-worthy marauders themselves could claim anything - that’s always a pleasant bonus.
Alice settles in the grass in front of him, disregarding that the muck will be much more visible on her Gryffindor red robes.
(He bites back the offer to let her rest on his instead.)
They’ve been doing this since mid second year, the first time a happy accident and the rest following gleefully planned.
It’s easy enough to carry out a prank, only occasionally for their group of perfectionists high standards, and then let the blame fall on the most frequent perpetrators, innocent for once.
A bit like the boy who cried wolf, Pandora had said they were.
Barty was mostly just happy to enact revenge on Sirius, a major supporter of the infrequent de-stressing activity.
”Are we lazing about or planning?”, Alice questions and adds once she sees his mouth open the slightest, “And do not disrespect my genius. I know you’re thinking it, smartass.”
”Black coffee.” Regulus responds in the childish way he’s seen Pettigrew do with a suitably childish - for black standard’s at least - tone he wouldn’t be caught dead with otherwise, just to throw her off. His tongue almost pokes out of his mouth with the answer.
He wouldn’t normally, but it’s nice to see her stutter and struggle for words, rosy cheeks hiding any potential blush but the readjustment of her hijab giving it away. Now to learn how to to react quickly enough when he’s distinguished between her face-hiding-revenge-later-(cute)-flustered and leaping-play-fighting-immediate-revenge-(cute)-flustered.
”What?” The one question is all that manages to escape, yet the rising tones it’s blurred in is enough to convey a rapid-fire rant of exasperations.
”That’s what I was thinking of.”
”No- Black like your soul, huh? You can barely stand dark chocolate, dude.”
Alice stares at him disapprovingly, and honestly? Touché.
There’s a flicker of warmth in his stomach.
He leads her on with another unnecessary remark, ”I thought you were encouraging me to expand my horizons?”
”I need to stop letting you hang out with Pete.
Allah, I feel like a probation officer.”
She’s obviously not as fed-up as she attempts to portray, lips tucking upwards despite her half-hearted struggle to draw them down.
There’s something nice about it, being able to smile and jest, to quip and snark, without fearing breaking his character.
It seems they both met in the middle somewhere.
Past cobbled stone pathways and dark skies far from even the tallest perch of Hogwarts, the masks they raised to please with the elegant architecture but defend with the towering, immovable walls.
Before the patrolling head boys and girls and the more intimidating housekeeper who wanders so close it’s as if he’s sniffing them out and yet at the last moment a gust blows and sends their scents scattering, before the sharp brambles on the other side of the walls, threatening to poke their eyes out the same way Rapunzel’s prince’s had been when tossed down by the power-thirsty witch.
Though, that comparison niggles wrongly, for while there is danger, so high where they have spread their picnic in a spot he hopes so badly isn’t as precarious as one might guess on first glance, a peak none other can reach as they relax among the twittering birds and battering sun, he doesn’t think - not at all - that she’ll throw him down. And her the same to him.
The air is without falsities and fear there.
He’s long stopped caring that that sort of trust is dangerous.
He’s not heir to the most ancient and noble house of black; cold and sneering, calculators and smug, and cruel.
He doesn’t feel completely like useless little Regulus, trailing in his brother’s shadow and flinching at perfectly normal gazes he can’t help but confuse for those of predator’s.
He feels like..
(..Qalb Al Asad.)
”This is Gryffindor’s version of rehabilitation?”
His heart beats faster.
It’s not healthy even to be separating himself into boxes like this, is it?
He shouldn’t - isn’t - but..
”Don’t sound so judgmental!”
Though I should probably sign you up for some sort of it.
Gryffindor Tower Rehabilitation For Impossible Slytherins? Petty Bitches Anonymous?”
Regulus huffs, then giggles, then laughs, a little raucous and a little sudden.
It’s the first genuine sound he’s made that day.
..It can’t hurt.
That’s a bold-faced lie. It very much could - if it were anyone but Alice who surely, surely wouldn’t hurt him with it.
The light catches Alice’s eyes and makes them soften slightly.
She’s quite for a moment proud, and then immediately teasing again, “Sound catchy enough for your tastes?”
To think one of his best friends her being herself could somehow make this both so easy and yet so, so hard.
”I suppose so, can’t make you think too much. You must have worn yourself out with that already.”
Slander, light-hearted and as obvious as a bright red tie he nearly forgot to charm to green before Barty could see it, are as charming as his mother would consider her cruciatus curse.
He’s no longer hesitant when he pursues conversation. Once, if it wasn’t unnervingly dark, it wasn’t worth it as it would only encourage her attempts.
(How did they get so far?
He knows how.
Her smile.)
”Who’d run it? Professor McGonagall?”
An huff that blows her hijab in front of her, seamlessly though fitting into the mostly still atmosphere. She does that, though he doesn’t know how, where she fits in whenever. Normally, someone so.. hurricane-ish.. would destroy his peace.
“That’d just become torture. She’d turn it to quidditch practice.”
”Maybe a necessary evil. I reckon a bludger to the head might begin to fix Avery.” He offers.
”I’m starting to like where this is going.”
Alice is evil. The golden badge glinting from her robes just supports that.
”C’mon,” she urges him up, to the astronomy tower he’d have guessed correctly even if it weren’t for the long glance she sent it, “We’ve got a long night ahead of us, Reggie.”
“Asad.” He interrupts the bustling.
“Hm?”
“That’s what my grandmother would call me, my real name.” It feels like cutting out a peace of his heart to be so vulnerable and the casualness he speaks with is nothing but a plaster slapped to the gushing wound.
It’s a good pain.
Her tongue rolls around the name reverently, her voice a cradle he finds he wouldn’t mind living within for the rest of his lifetime, “C’mon then, Asad.”
(They’ll talk about it, eventually.
Maybe they’ll devise a plan to keep Barty in school.
Alice would, for him.
He thinks about the guilt that lifts from him, the air that comes rushing back in when Alice is near in thoughts or presence.
He does not think about the bats beating in his chest - butterflies in his stomach.)