Memories
Regulus thinks that James Potter might actually be obsessed, maybe possessed by the spirit of his brother because it is the only convincing explanation. James has been following him everywhere, saying nothing and only observing him. Currently, Regulus was sitting next to a window in an abandoned corridor, no one used it anymore after a rumour of a pixie infestation. Reg can literally feel his presence behind him, the back of his neck tingles and he can't concentrate.
"You know I know you're there. You've been there for the past 2 weeks. Can you fuck off?", he turns around to where James was hiding behind a statue staring at him with a weird look. Just staring with his mouth in a frown. Regulus wasn't going to get peace anywhere except in the dungeons. He sighed and started packing his books, setting off for the Slytherin Common Rooms.
"How did you know I was there?", James annoyingly, was still following. "Was it dark magic?"
"How do you know where I am every fucking second of the day?", Regulus is still rushing towards the common room, chanting in his head, 'I need to hide over and over again. He cuts through James's silence
"Was that dark magic?",
"No! Of course not, I would never!",
"Stop being so defensive if you're so quick to assume", there was a long silence after this
"I'm not like you",
"How do you know what I'm like?", Regulus was tired of this back-and-forth shit and he was about to end it, with a single truth that would send Sirius into a spiral of guilt if he ever heard it. Just as James opened his stupid good-looking mouth, Regulus cut him off.
"All the things you hear about me, you hear from my opinionated brother who thinks that I'm a girl and that I didn't leave because I wanted to stay", by now he's turned around to face James in the dusty corridor, with no one around to hear anything. Yet as he hasn't realised what he said about being a girl at all, Regulus glares with eyes that could kill, down at someone who is trying to put the pieces together
"I can't leave and I'll never be able to. The Black Family has to have an heir, if I left they would hunt me or Sirius down until their last breath. They would kill whoever was helping me get out. Not even starting on what would happen to me when they would get me back" Regulus gradually smiles, but it never looks like a genuine smile. It looks like a crack in a mask that someone has been using for far too long, slowly getting patched up until it wears through again.
"So Potter, no you're not like me, I can give you that relief. But don't believe everything you hear from your idiot friends, especially ones that say that a sixteen-year-old is a master at malicious magic"
Regulus turns and walks to the first door he sees, a small door that was barely noticeable to anyone walking by. Immediately he ducks inside and looks around the spacious room. Just as he's about to lock the door, James bursts in, pushing him forward. Reg opens his mouth to yell at him but James gets there first.
"You're not a girl? What do you mean?", Regulus froze and looked at him, with a look of terror mixed with anger.
"Get out."
"I... I don't want to pry, just what you said back there, is this why your hair is so short?" Regulus is a fucking idiot, cursing himself in his head. How could he have said that? He didn't even realise. James will tell Sirius, Sirius will tell his cousins,
"It's none of your business. Get out" James finally seems to know his cue to leave despite being told many times. On his way out, halfway through the door, he looks back at Regulus, with an odd frown still on his face. Yet his eyes soften until they look like they could melt anyone's heart.
"Sirius won't know." then he's out. Almost immediately, Regulus strides over to the door, locks it, and proceeds to sob his fucking heart out.
"I'm going to kill him" Regulus was pacing across the room so fast it made Barty's head dizzy just watching him.
"Reggie dear, I will gladly help you with that, but don't you think that this is a tad bit of an overreaction? As far as I'm aware he just followed you around, bit creepy yes, but you are a stunning person," Barty flirts.
Regulus glanced at him as soon as he mentioned what James did. There's more to it, Barty knows, yet it's useless trying to get anything out of him. It'd be easier to threaten James with the rest of his gang.
"Go try and seduce Evan, the person you actually like."
"Shut up"
"It's only the truth. Now go annoy Evan"
"Fine"
As he was leaving, Barty saw the aging book that his friend was reading. 'The Magical Guide To The Malicious Arts'. He remembers at the beginning of the year when Regulus and Evan came back.
As they came onto the train, Barty and Pandora were waiting for them in the hallway smiling big, getting ready to give their birthday gifts to the two, as both Regulus's and Evan's birthdays were in the summer. They had gotten Reg a professional muggle telescope, courtesy of Pandora's new boyfriend, and some new rings. Barty had found this new device called a 'Walkman' that had just come out. Apparently, you could listen to music with headphones on it. He'd gotten a 'mix tape' with the Stranglers and The Cure on it. He's heard Evan talk about them before buts he's never heard anything from them. He'd been so nervous to see what they think, but now he was more worried about the sombre looks on their faces.
As Pandora led the way back to the compartment they'd chosen, a cake and their presents were laying on a makeshift table for them. Streamers had been hung between the luggage racks. The streamers had been Dorcas's idea who was waiting there, making sure no one came and stole the cake or anything else. Barty had come early as possible to make sure that they wouldn't have to share a compartment with anyone else.
As they walked inside the room, Dorcas jumped up and waved sparkles out of her wand. It was stunning really but no one really said anything, just looked towards the two boys who were whispering to each other. They hadn't even seen the surprise, still outside the door, their backs turned to face the other compartment.
Dorcas realised it first.
"You both got the mark! Didn't you?" They turned around with looks that said exactly the opposite of what they wanted to hear. It was a quiet ride to Hogwarts after that, everyone silently ate the cake. On that train, Barty made a plan.
That moment on the train, Barty had sworn to himself to join the Death Eaters, so that he could get his friends out. They would've said it was a stupid plan, one that would get him killed. It's why he never told them. After they went through the sorting ceremony and the first few weeks of school, he wrote a letter to Reg's mother, it was the only person he knew who knew the Dark Lord. She eventually replied back saying that his wish had been granted, he just had to prove himself first.
As he looks at that book, he remembers what he's going to have to do.
Regulus wants to drown himself in the lake. He would like to politely ask the giant squid to strangle him. He wants to go back in time and tell his younger self to never even speak to James Potter. To never even look at James Potter otherwise, he would say blurt things out that only his closest friends knew. Blurt out that he wants to be a boy, that he has a new name and everything. Blurt out that he wants to kiss James Potter.
Shit, shit, shit, shit! Regulus has always been self-aware of his feelings. They were never blurry or muffled as books often described them to be, so vague with misunderstanding. He knew exactly how he felt about everything, possibly because most of the time, he felt little to nothing. Sirius taught him a trick once, one that he proceeded to excel at. He was crying too much, Reg remembers it, his mother was coming up the stairs. Like a dreaded time bomb, just waiting to explode. Sirius was panicking, he couldn't say that he was the one crying, since it was obvious who was.
"Hey, Reggie, shhh, I'm gonna teach you something cool ok!" Sirius whisper-shouted. Reg had sniffed and nodded in response. "Ok great! Now I want you to imagine a box ok, I... now this box holds all your feelings, all of them! Happy feelings, sad feelings, angry feelings, everything. Can you imagine that please, Reggie?" Regulus was slowly calming down when they heard another step from the stairs, easily recognisable as their mother. He quietly sobbed as a reminder of what would happen. "Noo, remember the box ok, if you remember the box, you won't get in trouble. Now the box has all your feelings, but you need to keep them there. There's a lock on this box, only you hold the key. The box will go at the back of your mind, and the key goes far away, imagine that Reg and you won't get in trouble." Sirius had looked at him, torment on his face, too often for a 9-year-old. Yet he smiled when Regulus suddenly stopped crying, wiping his tears off his face.
He'd long lost the box a while ago.
He sighs and continues researching. The Dark Lord wanted him to find a book from the restricted section and write everything down in notes. He'll never get why, there are far more descriptive books on this subject in Grimmauld Place than the ones in Hogwarts. He wonders if there is a section about wordless magic.
He kept thinking about that night in the astronomy tower, was he so mad that he made the rock fall where James would've been? It could have been possible that it was an outburst of magic, directed by so much feeling that magically moved the rock, like when he was a child to make sure he wasn't a squib. Yet it could not have been, because Regulus didn't feel that anger, he was annoyed sure, but he hadn't felt magic to do that kind of damage in years.
He leaned over to his bedside table and found a spare piece of parchment, and began to write a list. Lists are always simple, and easy to keep track of everything.
How did the rock almost fall on James' head?
- An outburst of magic, similar to a child when showing first signs of magic?
- Wordless magic?
- James did it to himself?
Regulus stares at the list in frustration as he puts a line through each of them. He couldn't have had an outburst, and you would need to know the spell to do wordless magic. If James had done it to himself, why did Regulus imagine it happening beforehand? Another possibility occurred in his mind, one that petrified him. So much that he was willing to ignore it. '
"What if...", he said out loud, no one in the dorm to hear his thoughts. He looked down at his hands, thinking, questioning how much his own mind had betrayed him.
He wanted to stop it, stop the thoughts, block his mind.
So he brushed everything off his bed, and he went to sleep.
They were dancing. Waltzing to be precise, in the most elegant way they could. He couldn't see where they were, it was all blurry and distant. Yet he knew who they were, just by that smirk, and that grin at their partner's cockiness. Regulus had half a mind to run up to them, to talk to them. Seeing them that happy though, was better. Barty and Evan were waltzing around with plenty of other people behind them. No one else was recognisable. Barty was smirking at Evan, twirling him around, dipping him to the floor. Then suddenly Evan was back up, stepping away, a scowl to the person behind Barty. Aunt Druella was coming up to them, Bellatrix in tow.
The scene changed to a big flat, one with windows of the rain outside, a view of the forbidden forest. Unlike the last one, everything was so clear it seemed sharp.
He was standing in the bathroom, looking at himself in the mirror washing his hand, when he felt hands creep up behind him. Normally he'd turn around and kick this person, but his body had a different idea. He leaned back into this person, the one who was burying their face in Reg's hair. Regulus looked back into the mirror and he realised something. His hair was exactly how short he wanted it, his chest was flat, and Regulus felt exactly like himself. As he stared in pure shock, the person behind him began a trail of kisses on his neck.
As the setting morphed again, Regulus was so much more desperate to hang to this one. He clung to the bathroom sink in front of him, the person behind him drifting away.
He found himself looking down from a cliff, the stormy ocean causing the wind to push against him. Kreacher was by his side, holding onto his hand, pointing down to the seas, talking. Yet Regulus couldn't hear a word out of Kreacher's mouth. He just nodded and continued to look down at the rough seas.
"Lily! I have a curious question to ask you!" James yelled across the dorm room.
"Yes, James?"
"What if, a friend, said that they weren't a girl? But like they had been known by everyone as a girl?" Lily looks across the room at James from where she'd been doing her makeup in the bathroom mirror.
"You wanna elaborate on that? Also whose this friend?"
"I don't know! they look like a girl, they would be called a girl, and everyone knows them, as a girl. Then they just said that they were not in fact a girl. Yet their family doesn't know and I just want to not offend anyone." She looks at him from the bathroom.
"James, I might have an idea of what you're thinking of, but the best person to ask is them, you absolute idiot"
"I'm not an idiot."
"You most certainly are. You are one of the most oblivious people in the world, and the only reason why I'm not stopping you is that Mary reminded me of the look that's gonna be on your face, the day you figure it out." She laughs and turns back to the mirror, a soft smile on her face.
" I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. Is this an inside joke or something?"
"Exactly, my dear friend, exactly" James snorts at the deer pun, while she gets ready for a day out in Hogsmeade with Mary. He didn't really know what they were doing, just that Lily was excited. She walked out of the bathroom wearing a silk green skirt that matched her eyes perfectly, with a white top that had puffed out and ruffles at the cuff. As she got her shoes on, James asked where Mary was.
"She'll be here in a sec, I think she was talking to Sirius about something"
"Speak of the devil?", James grinned at Sirius who'd just made his entrance into the dorm. "You ready lils?" she smiled nervously in response and headed out the door, giving the two a wave as she left.