Regulus first saw her when he was just recently 11; barely old enough to tie his own laces, far from old enough to begin to comprehend the beauty that deserves awed whispers in its wake, the beauty that is an extension of Dorcas Meadowes just as much as her forever ink-drained hands and her trusty wand, just as much as his own dew-slicked quidditch gloves and house ring.
She’s laughing along with a blonde Gryffindor and fully entrapped by the conversation, leaning forwards with her dark hands planted firmly on her stomach for support, long fingers grasping at slippery fabric. And despite his cluelessness he finds his eyes drawn to her, tracing the echoes of the reverberating laughter with thick brows furrowed as if to see the remnants of the attention-stealing sound in the air, a kaleidoscope of colours to guide his search.
She’s magnetising as she shakes her head; braids tumbling like the rippling waves of Andy’s favourite favourite beach, raspberry pink tongue stark in a cavern of red and eyes dark like his own squinting as if sprayed by water and yet in obvious joy that steals his heart. She expresses emotions openly in a way that he never has.
He tucks her giggles in his heart and allows them to ignite it like a lone candle flame. The rest of the room - he - remains clothed in maroon-tinted shadows but the light glinting on her as if the glittering sun on seas bejewelling the oceans depths is enough.
It’s enough.
He carries the welcome weight in the line of his shoulders, behind his spine and dangerously close to his ribs like a midnight promise gracing daylight; if she can smile with a Gryffindor while proudly wearing meadow green then so he can too with Sirius.
It doesn’t feel as complicated as his family had drawn it out to be, as Sirius had been treading painfully near like a dark shadow he could escape through ignorance and as both his parents made a surprising appearance to scathingly emphasise with burgundy tongues poised to critically hit.
It clicked and it doesn’t unclick, even as Evan jostles him with a discreet elbow, hastily pulling him under elder students flying limbs with all the haste of first years ready to make the mark promised to them by wizards tales from the nursery upwards.
(He looks back, when Evan fists tighter into his cloak and pulls them to a brake just in time to prevent a collision with a snappish-looking Ravenclaw. They’ve gone some distance yet from the corner of his eye he can see her, from the opposite end of the ruckus he can faintly hear her, ‘course not’ she says. There could be a million different reasons why, too many to be worth the pondering of his pea-brain, Sirius would insist. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t take restraint from him to not venture down the twists and turns of the slight information, of the baby trajectory of her voice.)
(He settles for his heart, carried by the words and contently returned to his chest and yet far lighter than it had once been, as if it had dropped a load and decided flying would be a good past-time.)
The Hogwarts hat - Godric Gryffindor’s hat - clears its equivalent to a throat. It’s voice is like the dusty library of The House Of Black, the long ladders he had disastrously attempted to climb to reach the books on the highest shelves and the dozens of pages he has yet to turn, to devour of their cramped words, their long paragraphs and poetically named chapters.
It hums, a long, deep, soothing sound. Regulus dares to wonder if it could be like the astronomy book hidden in a dark crevice of his parents least favourite study; never dusty with how often he flicks through the well-loved pages shining with a necessary upkeepment charm; perpetually defiant as a book can be for its [~~stance~~] against the weathering of time and further when it triggers memories of Sirius’s larger hand leading him to the rooftop at silent times to mirror its maps to the stars underneath the moons ethereal permittance, beautifully annotated by the souls who had come to touch it in the curving scripture of Arabic. The comparison would certainly fit judging by the mass of crinkles denoting a wise personality to the senile hat, the antique design a dreg of the past even with a wizard’s generous lifespan.
His wondering receives a reaction.
”Ungrateful Boy! Did your parents not teach you how to act amongst elders?” The hat creaks and Regulus suddenly desperately hopes nobody else can hear the condescending words hurtled at the embarrassed son of The Most Ancient and Noble House of Black. He’s long [~~past the age~~] to eep but his shoulders weakly attempt to suppress a sudden rise, twitching uncontrollably nevertheless in a obviously discomforted move similar to the swiping claw of a cat, nicked by a drooling beasts unsanitary teeth or the cutting rim of carelessly discarded rubbish; he should know, he’s seen it often enough from his common perch at his bedroom window, tucked comfortably in the back and overseeing the gardens of Grimmauld Place.
Certainly, his mind begins to wonder with tensing hands dangling by a shabby stool, it hadn’t took this long for the first-years before him, earnest eyes and earnest speed-walks finding their designated table in five seconds flat. The only delay for them all had been the obnoxious cheers and claps that stampeded the tall hall, either soothing the flutters or encouraging the insects crawling around in the new students tummies.
But he’s too mature to have his time muddled by riddling nerves more suited to fawns than representative 11 year olds, surely?
His hands do not clench.
“You’re correct, boy. For a mere babe such as you to figure it out this quickly maybe I should sort you to Ravenclaw. Though, you’d assume a child of Helena’s would have enough knowledge to not insult a being of [~~age as mine~~].”
Its then that Regulus’s blood first begins to tingle unpleasantly, buzzing in his skin with a sensation far too similar to the distinct warnings of the curses objects in his attic and brimming until his insides burn with the desire to leap outside of his flesh without consideration to the curdling pain that would ensue; anything to [~~get away~~] from the [~~ancient~~] being his body is nailed beneath.
He can’t run from his problems, escape to freely experience the moons unbarred silver spotlight and pick a constellation to be lost within using its illuminating light.
Not when countless eyes prick into him, discarding the assurance of his relaxes posture to carve deeper and discover the inner clockwork of the House of Black. Not when his most personal monologue had been invaded by the very creature that had [~~torn~~] his family for the past year, shattered the clear skies and proud smiles of his parents to roll in ominous thunder clouds, taking a hammer to his life and leaving him floundering in an ill-fitting shard with dried blood caking his the cold brown of his skin and trickling like sticky crimson rivers that curl his parents lips sneeringly, even as he boarded the train at 9 and 3/4.
The hat is inevitably aware of his [~~posionous~~] resentment and he waits for its next words impatiently, eager to be rid of the feather-light weight ruffling his curls with its irritably [~~phantom-like~~] touch.
The hat sluggishly drawls with a huff, enunciating the words excruciatingly slowly, “The loyalty to your family suits a Hufflepuff. Helga’s children will welcome you with open minds and your side sites truth in their multitude of languages, honey enriched, not coated.”
“No, I can’t!” Regulus is not firm as he says it, not Narcissa with her [~~cold~~] words, not Bellatrix with her lashing tongue, not Andromeda with her serrated edges and undeniably not Sirius with his growing gales of defiance. He is himself, Qalb Al Asad, heart of the lion but he has been exerted after Sirius had stolen the admirable genes with his charming words, charming laughs and charming tussles. He is exerted as his cheeks achingly surrender to the feelings of flustering, brows furrowing above wide eyes and heart weakly, weakly pumping. It’s on the inside, behind his apathetic mask, but that’s what Sirius had insisted mattered.
“You would thrive there among similarly torn, tearing children with their mending kits behind every pillow and curtain, minds a riddle and combatting riddles as Rowena would be proud of her sister’s legacy; for what greater paradox is there but loyalty? You would shine as bright as the star you’re named for, Qalb Al Asad.”
”I can’t.” Regulus continues his protests and he only has half a second to ponder what he meant himself; [~~he can’t be in Hufflepuff and take his parents hopes with him or he can’t shine?~~]
“Gryffindor or Slytherin then, Little Black?” The hat enquires and Regulus tamps down on the instinctual incredulously at the choice so simply being handed to him, thoughts reluctantly drawn away from the suspicious time-consuming path.
Gryffindor or Slytherin.
Gryffindor with his older brother, wickedly tall and cuttingly comforting; in the small nudges of his elbow during painstaking calligraphy lessons the older excelled at - the perfect heir -, the outbursts they shared behind locked doors as they commented on every pure blood to think of with sharp words given to the them by the victims and in playful punches to the cheeks that always ended with his pulled for cheek and Sirius’s neck stiff from merciless choking until he stopped.
One time, the boy had gotten blue in the face and Regulus retracted his arms to kick Sirius gently in the sides, reluctantly worried, only to realise it was a spell the older had learned for the exact purpose of bombarding him - an obvious precursor to the so-called marauders, he can say in hindsight.
It makes him feel proud, the knowledge he can boast as his own - not the Potter boy’s or the half-bloods not of significant title enough to know yet. (Their first names twist around his mouth, lap around his tongue in hidden dance. He’s worried of overstepping - and simultaneously eager to do so.)
He can practically taste Sirius’s letters on his mouth, odd as that may sound. The Arabic that must be impossible to read for most his classmates but sinks into Regulus’s mind with ease, igniting images of fireplace warmed laughs, hall-cold giggles and overall immersive hysteria enticing, beguiling with a sturdiness of a thousand million floating islands in the fog that often coats the streets - imagination coming alive.
‘sayakūnu alʾamru mumattaʿan, aʿidaka, Asad’
It’s a pang then when he thinks the muggle-borns must be doing the same.
A pang that finds its way shooting through his body, ricocheting of his bones until it knocks into his heart and stops just shy from his rib cage on its new path, an uncomfortable feeling lodging within him.
His mother wouldn’t like these thoughts - not at all, neither would his father. It’s thankful neither of them are skilled in legilimency, as Sirius has often secretly poked fun at them for - Narcissa already proving more talented in the field over her betters. But even miles and miles away, he still feels as if they have a claw in his thoughts, guiding his motions like a puppet master.
It takes a moment to remind himself of their none presence in the abyss he had made for himself with shut eyes.
It’s all black, plain black, and rather dull, he can’t deny.
It pulls his mind back to the Hogwarts Express. And it’s the first of many times he will come to find Dorcas Meadowes acting as his other half, the north to his south or the south to his north. The effect remains the same either way, across time and space.
Colours interrupt his mind’s interior, just as the ones that had guided him to the laughing Slytherin, and he finds that a few stand out, not even in number but in his deplorable haze they fill the shadows and the centrepiece by what must be his own unthinking design, blacks and browns and greens.
She had dark eyes like his own, squinting happily in a way that now sets summersaults in his stomach.
She had dark hair in beautiful braids that left the rest of the room looking bereft, disheveled in her expressive joy like the haunting mosaics of his grandfather’s home - depicting glorious flowers, dresses and kingdoms in the breathtaking way only magic could encapsulate.
She had a green-clad uniform that flattered her, a mirror of the light in her eyes, the upwards tug of her dark lips and her dreamy laughter that tingled his ears pleasantly and settled with a frightening comfort to his own heart.
He wonders - he wants - to be like her. If their dark eyes could mean one thing, he hopes it to be that he can also stand where she does, beside her in the tallest of his desires, to soak in the glorious light that spills from her.
He thinks of browns, of blacks and of greens; everything else falling to static in a deep, dark pit and yet he cannot care for them. Not as the colours begin to form an image, a dark-lipped smile that tugs at him until he too has a creased face, teeth glinting behind the widened dam of his lips.
It’s not unwelcome as the hat calls without further consultation, only a suspiciously amused huff, “Slytherin!”