Year One
Regulus
I couldn't see him in the dark, but I felt him tighten my tie. He smoothed down my collar and kissed my neck gently. "You won't tell him, right?" he breathed.
"I haven't told him anything in years." I assured him.
~
I tightened Severus' tie in much the same way. It felt strange to compare the size of my neck now with the size it was in my vision. How many years would it be until that moment? Who was the boy? Who was I not supposed to tell?
"Nightmare?" Severus asked quietly as I smoothed down his collar.
I hummed and nodded. I never felt well-rested after a vision, and it must've been showing. And on my first day of classes, as well.
"I'm sorry. If you'd like to speak about it…"
I shook my head, but smiled all the same. Severus was thoughtful, and I hadn't known him a day yet. "Perhaps later." I extended my elbow to him. "Shall we go to breakfast?" He stared at my elbow in confusion until I took his arm to link our elbows.
"Yes," he agreed. His lips twitched, an almost-smile, and I wondered what his real smile looked like.
~
"Evan has an announcement." Cissy and Evan sat down across from us as we dug into breakfast.
"As you're aware, I am not staying in the boys' dormitory." Severus and I nodded. "I'm in the girls'. I'm a girl." I had guessed as much when she hadn't shown up last night.
I swallowed hastily, so I could respond, "Thank you for letting us know. I had thought you were a boy, and I was quite worried when I didn't see you last night." I'd need to think twice about how I referred to someone going forward. Evan was quite a boyish-looking girl. Evan blinked at me for a moment, as if weighing how to respond. I shouldn't have said I thought she was a boy — that's rude to any girl. "I apologize, it was rude of me to say that I thought you were a boy, please forgive me." I blurted before she could speak.
Evan shook her head gently. "I forgive you, Reggie. It was an understandable mistake." A pool of guilt remained in my chest from the note of pain remaining in her voice. Now that I was looking at her, she was rather pretty. Her hair was curly, though it wasn't much longer than mine, and her eyes were a coppery hazel. Her cheeks were round and I liked the way they softened her jawline. I would've told her this, but I didn't want to accidentally hurt her further. Besides, my father had frequently reminded Sirius and I that it's better to say nothing to women at all.
"Evan, are you transgender?" Transgender? What does that mean? I have Transfiguration class first, but I've never heard of transgender.
Evan coughed and choked on her juice. Cissy glared at Severus, who simply stared at Evan, waiting for a response to his question. "Yes, that is what I meant to announce, Sev." Evan slowly replied.
"What is transgender, if you don't mind my asking?" I hoped I wasn't pushing Evan too far after Sev's bluntness.
"I was born in a boy's body, but I'm a girl." She explains. I tuck that definition away in my brain for later reference. I guess you really never know.
~
I hadn't thought about the dual-house classes I'd have with my brother. I had thought Transfiguration, which I was most excited about, would be wonderful. I couldn't stop staring at Professor McGonagall, sitting at her desk, waiting for the bell to ring. I guess that's how I missed one of his newfound 'best friends' sitting next to me. One moment, Severus was sitting next to me, and the next, he was seated next to a ginger girl, and one of Sirius' buddies was plopping down next to me. His tie was tied in such a way that I knew he could properly tie it, but that he didn't want to. He looked at me with an arched eyebrow, judgemental hazel eyes, and a quirked mouth. I hated him immediately.
"James Potter." He talked at me, extending a pretentious hand to me. "Who are you?" Rage boiled in my veins. Had Sirius not said a word to them about me?
The bell rang and I focused on the Professor with every fraction of my being. I would not let James Potter ruin this class for me.
Sirius
Reggie looked like he was having the worst time of his life. In a way, I felt kind of bad. But in another way, I was sat next to Remus, who took lovely notes and stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth, and I wanted to pull every prank on him that I could. I spent the entirety of Transfiguration aggressively writing down prank plans. James had pulled me aside after breakfast, and his words kept replaying in my head...
"We have to prank Remus." I was already nodding along with him. Reggie never wanted to prank anyone with me. James was a perfect opportunity.
"I wouldn't, if I were you." Peter mused, walking next to us. Remus had gone on ahead--something about wanting to grab his books from the dormitory or something--leaving the three of us to dawdle our way to McGonagall's Transfiguration class…
And it was at the end of the Transfiguration class that I had my first vision at Hogwarts. I glanced over from my cursive scrawl, at Remus’ hand flowing across his page, and caught the edge of an old, silvered scar peeking out the end of his sleeve.
Mother had always said that Regulus inherited Grandmother’s visions and that I inherited hers. His visions came to him in his sleep, painlessly, whereas mine, ripping me from the waking world, were worse than Grandfather’s Crucio punishments: years of growing pains snapped my bones into place within a second; my muscles pulled themselves to length, my skin burning to cover them; time and space contracted, tearing my skull in two just to sew it back together again by the time my vision settled on his same scar, some time in our future. This time, he was seated before me on my bed, stilling in the way I knew that he had just taken off his shirt. The bare skin of his arms and torso glowed faintly in the evening light that cascaded through the windows of our dormitory. Instead of looking at me, he stared down at the silver-pink memories displaying his story of someone else’s desire left upon his flesh. And I felt my own sorrow, tenderness, rage, and jealousy from the visibility, the permanence, of his forever scars.
I was forced backward, shoved down and into myself, stitched into my youth, compacted back into the body of my eleven-year-old, first-year self. I had been placed on a bed, soft blankets pulled up to my chest, with a pillow supporting my head. I ached from head to toe in waves like the resounding notes from Mother’s operas. In their tune, my twin brother massaged the feeling back into my fingers. He could always take the pain away. Little, cold, nimble fingers. Reggie.
We remained silent long after he knew me to be awake. My eyes remained closed, his fingers tethering me to the promise of respite.
“How is he? Can I see him yet?” And then there was James Potter, whose voice promised a future away from the pain, away from Crucio, away from the reminder that I was born to abuse and be used.
I pulled my hand from Reggie’s and opened my eyes to find James Potter, big round circular glasses magnifying his eager, mischievous eyes. Eyes that wouldn’t survive one minute in the House of Black. And I lifted my hand to find his; and he lifted his hand to pull me from the last magnifying crescendo of the opera.