White Letters
Regulus knows his day is forsaken before he even squints his eyes and rolls out of bed.
He is prickingly aware of it as he fumbles his way through breakfast and as he pulls a book into his lap with unfitting ease for still carrying angry red welts: he knows and he only hadn’t when the suns rays had graced and morning dew had permeated the air, the tweeting of birds undisrupted as ever.
His desire for the ignorant bliss to return is left unquenched by his refusal to sleep unfortunately and instead he lets arms, clawing and insisting, to spur him to the counter at late midday.
The slight shaking of his surroundings conjured by his still half-asleep brain dares him to shut his eyes, to try and hide; the shadows slink further at his guiltless refusal.
The couch still stands abandoned and with not much to show of his no longer presence whereas the counter quickly has orange juice and a cupcake placed upon it and to his side - a quick sham of brunch.
He preoccupies his time with adamantly slow munching and exploring the living room with his eyes, every lonely crevice and perceived mark. He can’t say he isn’t to blame for some of them - the dents in the wall behind the rocking chair glare straight back at him.
The counter is a much better, taller place to sit anyways.
That’s where he drifts, anchor hugged close on a rocking boat, drowsy waves guiding way.
Dramatic, he sighs in his mind without prompt. That somehow alerts his personal demon, a fish to water when it comes to his misery.
”Well, are you going to open it? Or should I pop the kettle on and settle in for the Sunday news?” Marlene cuts in, sniffing his subtle hesitation out like a shark to blood and effectively drawing Reg’s eyes to the sealed envelope that is somehow unwaveringly uncreased by his incessant fingering.
Her ever-sharp remarks receive a slightly sluggish reply, quick to anyone else’s standards but not keeping tempo with the rampant anticipation in their little home.
She does garner more than a few words, even with him in his unusually unperformative state; a surprise he knows when considering his forever-ashy pallor. It’s admirable, he might admit, if he could stand to be kinder to his sister.
It’s something he can’t help but imitate in her, whatever-the-clusterfuck adoptive-sister-guardian she is to him, even though the grace never clicks for him; the McKinnons associates with undisguised barbs laying in wait, patient for him to step outside hearing range, may hold partial influence over his frequent decision to seek the unpopular shadows, or at least just shut his unhelpful gob at such events or any including people.
He wouldn’t say he is insecure, not as towering figures of dreams insist, but simply aware of when he is unwanted, an often enough happening, he avoids thinking. Which is easy enough with Marls and the other two or his little group only ever demanding his space.
“It’s alright, nan. Let me just fluff up your pillows for you too, while you’re at it.” By the crease next to her eyes, Reg thinks Marlene understands his peculiarly aggravating wording as teasing, her own little mirror if you were to ignore his perpetual eye-bags, her dyed-blonde hair and well everything in his flawed little analogy.
”That would be lovely, you goblin, if you wouldn’t just beat it till it went limp. Heaven knows how with your noodle arms.” Her smile grows wider at that, pulling at her cheekbones and crinkling up her face.
Reg lifts his head defiantly at Marlene, biting his cheek with a nervous edge that denies the label of thoughtful. He skims his eyes over her frame, taking note of her ram-rod posture; she looks beholding of enviable confidence, nothing new. However, his mind unreasonably warns against loosing, not today, it seems to hiss. Besides, he will forever hold the key to triumph. He is smug at his mind’s unintended reminder and he preemptively marks one more on his mental tally.
“Just making sure you aren’t always getting spoiled. You probably get Evan to pamper you enough already.”
He doesn’t even have to wait a second for the familiar crackle of Marlene’s offense. He wouldn’t be exaggerating to say the over compensating reactions, through calm or reckless denial, are worth every lost tussle.
”Fuck off, you absolute doorknob!” A squawk claws its way out of the soft flesh of Marlene’s throat, the building pressure she had been dicing through determinedly having finally seemed to tear back at her enough to deflate her ego-inflating calm - the first sign of a rip having been her rocking legs leaning her body to and fro from the counter.
His insult was likely just the keg to powder but Reg takes that as a win either way.
”Oh, are you the sadistic type, then?” Reg can see her eyes so much clearer than in the glass’s reflection when she leaps at him and they show him back his own, similarly spritely, and making up tremendously for the contrast of her blushing cheeks to his unaffected pallor.
If anything, the messed hair would speak of their siblinghood for them, Reg thinks ruefully. What with the way Marlene goes after his with abandon, undeterred by his valiant attempts to prevent his hair from looking anything like her outrageous mop.
”Rosier is just an idiocy-prone bastard but you seem to see something more with him. Awfully obsessed, aren’t you?” Marlene thinks she’s done something judging by the still-present quirk of her lips and for a moment Regulus would gladly trade his cupcake for the chance to smash it in her face, a position that would be difficult from where he is currently held in a headlock and dragged onto the tiling - but he’s never been one to give up when it comes to his siblings before.
Maybe he did copy all of Marlene’s tricks but she never learnt his own; his mind somewhat cornily supplies, mind tip-toeing around the idea of just biting at her muffling arm and getting it done with. The victory is guaranteed to be scored, even if all he does is give her warning. Miles is to thank for that.
Instead, he says ”For someone unbothered, you do get so emotional whenever he’s mentioned.”
And for a minute, maybe egotistical of him, but Regulus can imagine another unfamiliar voice in the background, chiming in with wickedly lilting words. It’s gone as soon as it arrives though and his attention is caught again by Marlene’s next move.
Just being around her is like playing uno with a chess board when you only know go fish, exhilarating with a side helping of for-fucks-sake. It depends on the day who says the last bit.
She snatches the envelope left behind with thanks to her mad scramble, smooths out its wrinkles above her head, and raises an eyebrow.
Theres a twinkle in her eyes that almost distracts him from the erratic quiver of her lips that he hesitantly shakes off as his wayward imagination.
She breathes her next words with a magnetising quiet, “Can I open it?”
Reg bites back a remark at just how similar to Miles she sounds. Instead, he takes the moment to forcefully centre his mind on the cause of his lately introspective behaviour. He’s not foolish enough to run from something right in front of him, after all.
The white seems to mock him then and his imagination makes use of glamourising it, as Marlene deftly unseals it, making out a snake widening its jaw, an ouroboros, and as she slides out the off-shade white letter, conjures a coughing karma.
A bit like Beth, dealing with her - their, kinda - irrational parents, even, he guiltily draws the comparison.
She’d laugh at it maybe though, a solacing thought. Miles would call him an old man in mind nevertheless, another reason to not hold back his quips the next time he sees his brother.
A snapshot of a memory, and that’s all is necessary to hook his unending dissatisfaction with- well, everything at the very moment, including the precarious tilt that their photo - them four siblings - was hanging at, inexplicably not crashing even though he knows he’d be more annoyed at having to reprint and frame it again.
The hope of failing - really, Regulus Rehman-McKinnon showing an ounce of want for anything, not likely, to put it in an idiots terms, - rests as a fog not thick enough to hide the gleam of the serpents fangs.
The chance, the gamble, of his life played in a droning voice, so dissimilar to Miles’ expressive tone, or Beth’s low voice but a mockery of Marlene’s typical monotone, rings wrong to his ears but he takes it in nonetheless with brief annoyance at his cowering thoughts.
He’d be loosing the puzzle he has, pieces strewn comfortably around the carpeted floor, waiting to slot into place. Pandora or Fabian or Gideon wouldn’t be there, districts away actually, if Marlene is going to have her resolute way.
Though the buzzing silence already speaks to him enough, he listens attentively as crunch-causing creases refuse to appear with the way Marlene is delicately holding the paper, maintaining an infuriating pristine that conversely twists his stomach into double-knots.
The letter only looks a pale white now, the snake having slithered off and Regulus wonders if he were to just glance down, would it be there entrapping his torso, lethargically eyeing bared neck?
Marlene’s eyes flit back and forth seemingly still on the first line, he forces his own to observe instead, and she is startled into action only when the paper seems to slit her hand slightly, suddenly in an unprecedented rush as she scans the sheet.
Finally, she looks up at Regulus with an indecipherable expression, something glossy in her eyes.
”I didn’t get in?” He probably didn’t drain the relief out of his usually veiled tone well enough, likely - hopefully - just because he’s out of practice around her. It wouldn’t be a surprise considering her position as having outlier status to most of his jagged pieces, or more accurately their harmful nature. But the disappointment still pounces momentarily.
”Totally, you’re just going to pack your bags for a trip to mum’s down south, aren’t you?”
Marlene fucking McKinnon, everyone. As much as he loves cares for his sister, he’s starting to sympathise with Miles’ life-long mission to suck the life out of her with bad puns, not to imply Reg would ever stoop to that level despite its tempting distance; it looks to be only a breath away, alas.
The reveal leaves his breath spurting out unhappily but almost unnoticeable behind his sleeves, preoccupied with filtering his expressions while glancing over his issues, a hook ready to puncture just waiting in his mind.
Hogwarts.
A school for the best and brightest of Everlassea, famous - or infamous you could say - for accepting students from any area or with roots from beyond Everlassea, with seemingly no reason or rhyme to their pickings, the rich, elite & occasional commons. Regulus personally believes it to be pity students to keep a keen relationship with fellow nations and to give the people something to strive for - textbook evil, he bitterly concludes.
The fake leniency isn’t to say it’d be kind below the water, voices and actions gurgled and distorted before a clear view can emerge. Not when rumours have been stirring for so long, an open secret, and yet nothing is ever done, students prance through the streets past curfew, says the trustworthy neighbours, and inexplicable injuries, strange things happen around them, is the responding gossip.
Regulus wouldn’t put any weight on the whispers nevertheless, not affecting him and thus much lower on his priority list than pleasing the teachers enough to avoid a beating or dunking. The rumours are wisps if anything and the comparison seems ironic for their punishment, if it weren’t for the odd quiet that befalls his siblings that even the only other to not attend - Beth - would participate in.
That and Marlene’s hesitance to even mutter the name, let alone how she ducked her eyes out of sight when he first questioned his moving.
It sits almost like a beast waiting to pounce in his mind.
The hook is reeled back, however, as the prey swims a little closer, saved by a luckily-passing rock. Marlene wraps him in a hug, pulling him away from the sharp waves threatening to engulf, and instead into a warm blanket settled on the shore. She pulls him closer like the night on the beach all those years ago, huddling in a little boat with the others, though it’s just the two of them this time.
He muffles his face into her shoulders in a rare show of vulnerability and drinks in the sudden explosion of volume, bright and bold and brilliant compared to the previous backdrop.
She tightens her grip in response.
He’s going to lose everything- again. But this time, he’d have his sister’s talons swooping through the sky as he falls. And she’d skin a dozen monsters alive for him, he can say with an urging certainty from the depths of a heart his amnesiac brain can only just brush past.
All good things must come to an end, that’s how the saying goes, Regulus thinks, unwillingly contemplating his ruined sleep as he further puts off packing his bags. He’s not stupid enough to not do it.. but he just needs to see someone - multiple someones, actually - first.
He makes his way on the arduous trek across the magpies, the name of the little corner of the district him and most everyone - barely ten - people he knows live, cursing once again the distance he lives to his friends as he plops down momentarily in a bus stop.
Regulus stares in a building bout of frustration up at the sky and is left unsurprised by the lack of the birds presence in their name-sake area, they’ve only been downed and grounded each time he happens a glance. He supposes he shouldn’t shut his eyes for more than a moment but he’s too tired, bogged down with cursed knowledge, to bother with restricting himself in the face of his displacement -especially not when he’s alone as he can’t hope to be in times to come -who knows who could be watching in that loony’s school?
He lifts himself up with effort and palms his eyes before he continues his not-so-merry way, finally considering taking the extra training his friends had so eagerly pondered upon. Maybe next time, he could kick Miles ass instead of his current predicament; dragging along a heaving mess also know as his own unfit body.
It’s odd to think he won’t have the option anymore but maybe that’s why he is making his way over to their place too -aside from just meeting them - the journey gives decent time alone - time he’s always sorted out his problems or at least subconsciously his reactions.
To make his way to the hide-out as Pandora giddily calls it, all he has to do is fucking fight the monster under the bed. He’s not kidding either, the terrier could probably pass as it.
It barks so loudly it rattles the fence, a ching that grates his ears though maybe just for the built association. But it is most often seen prowling in the meadows he needs to cross; gaining its own reputation as a blood-thirsty mutt while it’s owners are who-knows-where.
The field itself is beautiful, really, and he’d pause for a minute or two, maybe loose an hour to sketching or reading or whatever tickles his fancy, relaxing among the grass, some time, but he can’t. Not when that dog tears past him and into the meadows with hind legs kicking up dirt, maybe the part that antagonises him the most and provides firm basis for his irrational phobia.
Every time he sees a dog, dark-furrred dogs with haughty tilts of their heads and an unnerving wrongness his mind offers unthinkingly, he scrapes his hands down his face and ignores the pounding of his heart, terrified and unfitting of a grown teen. It seems almost a betrayal, to do so, but he seeks solace in distance from the beasts.
Still, despite the disturbed, disappointed and utterly demeaning voice in the back of his head, rolling its eyes if it were to have any and expressing its dissatisfaction with his dodged situation, he thanks his lucky stars when he sees no sign of the rugged creature.
His feet hit the hard soil with a renewed energy slithering about his person. And just in time too, as he notes annoyed-sounding nattering that beholds the distinctive voice of Fabian ringing through the woods.
The scruffy boy is a good friend of his, odd and excitable, always ready for mischief but shying away from the subsequent punishments despite or maybe in thanks to his perceivable gall. Certainly his more diplomatic brother is to thank at least partially or better yet, their sensible older sister Molly is to be given credit for his surprisingly continued survival.
The words drift out into the distance, however, and he makes sure to grasp gently every flower he sees on the way, pondering over how to word his announcement in a way that he hasn’t since he first arrived at magpie; alone and loathingly empty. The pen is mightier than the sword as scholars say, but Reg considers that they may have purposely excluded spoken word and the crushing weight, the utmost feeling of execution, silver blades, chopping box and all, it can inspire.
He heaves himself up the ladder after having finally reached his destination with aching arms, bones protesting still from the rigorous ordeal of pushing through thick bramble bushes, and meets peering eyes.
”Oh hello there, mate.” It’s not for long he experiences the welcome voice before Fabian - Gideon’s bemoaned brother proving once again why dying his hair a forsaken blue was the only suitable way to convey his revenge - has pushed him out of the way and instead allows Reg space to pull himself up before bombarding him.
“What’s gone on, then?” Gideon’s mumbling voice, the first to slip through to Reg’s brain and an opposite to his brothers rambunctious drawl provides a comfort and he takes a moment to bask in the concern, the unintentional message of his friends care, eyes blown a fraction wider before he drinks in his surroundings and curls his hands into disappointed fists; being stunned is never appreciated.
Pandora is crouching on a bean-bag they had piteously dragged up when they had unanimously decided enough was enough and that comfort was a priority one day. The two siblings are sitting in front of him, finishing to form an oddly proportioned diamond.
He takes it a step further by gazing evenly at their expressions before the downturned lips of Pandora and Gideon and Fabian’s anxiously upturned prompt him into quick speaking.
The knowledge is thrown through the air, whizzing and coating their little group.
”I’m moving to Hogwarts.”
It doesn’t land, not for a few seconds. It comes level by level in fact, starting with Fabian’s choked, “What?”
And then, Gideon’s stunned blinking and desolate voicing, “Oh. Oh.”
It all comes to a head at Pandora’s approach. Of course, it does. His oldest friend - that he can remember - treads slowly over, inducing an agonising wait and chucking his plan of brushing over the news with light-hearted humour out the treehouse.
His eyelids flutter close for a single moment and then she is in front of him, taking up his sight with her image, so close and her touch casual as she runs circles soothingly into his shoulders. She traces them gently with the same care she would when she cradles a particularly falling-at-the-seams book or pokes daisy in daisy again and again to make a crown, chain, necklace or ring, depending on her mood at the very minute.
He stares back into her eyes, not uncomfortably, and she takes cue to knock their heads together, “Don’t forget us over the school year then, you better not. We’ll be having the holiday of a lifetime when you get back.”
Her laughing tone seems to break the depressing sheen before it even begins to settle peacefully.
“Forgetting you would be harder done than said thought I do have experience.” Regulus adds on, twisting the phrase unapologetically, and he relaxes with a peeking smile as if a raft had suddenly come together before his eyes.
Gideon, daring with his present company if Regulus were to wager a bet, contributes cheekily, “Like when you forgot garlic bread and called it pizza?”
Pandora shoots at the both of them before Regulus can out of well-trodden mortification, “We’re getting tired of this lovers quarrel, y’know. At this rate, you’ll be writing love confessions every day now you can’t go on dates anymore.”
Rather than focusing on the fact of there soon-to-be lost outings, Gideon picks out the glint in Fabian’s eyes as he laughs at the sudden tease and spites his brother with the opportunity; comfortable enough with his natural ten-foot distance from romantic love to play along.
”Promise you’ll reply?” He looks completely serious when he says this, eyes alight and lips drawn in surprising surety only disproven by his squinting eyes, a matching glint in clear view to Regulus but also a genuine sense - or maybe Regulus just know him well enough to note the truth wrapped in the comedy.
”Every day I can manage,” replies Regulus, finally coming to the realisation of the noticeable release in tension of his facial muscles, and he wonders too if he’d be able to just rip out pages of his school books or if he’d have to resort to the back of receipts.
Fabian from where he’s watching, chin propped on knees, speaks with clear energy, “Or -Or you could just get expelled! Then you can come back! I’ve got some perfect ideas I’ve been dying - dying, I’m telling you - to try.”
His machinations are halted before they can begin though as Pandora elbows him good-naturedly in the ribs, eliciting wheezing laughs from the the other two, almost a parallel of Fabian, curled into a ball and likely swearing a storm from his muffled position.
It’s later than then, with the setting sun and the discarded realisation that he needs to be home very soon, that he discovers an ache his brain can identify. He loves them, his friends, and the victor to his doubtful thoughts would be the homely hurt that they’d still be there - still care - even with distance’s division.
He chooses to rest - and trust - in that for the night.
Marlene has never claimed to have the healthiest coping mechanisms but if she would be seen right then.. she thinks with a tinge of easily identified hysteria.
The worried floorboards creak again beneath her feet and she resists the urge to make them scream, until her weight snaps them and it’s all she can hear -all she has to ponder.
It’s not good of her and she knows that Reg would naively accept any reasoning she’d throw his way, his investigative nature squashed thoroughly with no reason, or not enough, to accuse his brave sister of any harm, his own hurt still present from a lurking life-time too, she’d expect; a fact that doesn’t fail to possess stinging impact; if he’d ever look at her the same if he truly knew..
Its almost distracting how quick she can go from a calm facade to a train wreck, almost, how easy it is to just delve into her mind with no feasible solution in sight, no action or mini-endeavour that can soothe her or her siblings predicament. Nothing like she’s dealt with before and even worse, with her brother’s everything on the line.
She can only watch as machinations whirr and whirr within cracks in the walls, cogs hidden and blatant but always unnoticeable until desired to be otherwise by their shadowing mentors.
She can only manoeuvre her pieces to the left and to the right and she can only hope on a brother she can’t deny hurting.
If it goes wrong, her little brother will survive hoops of smoke for the price of her lungs she decides, though she can’t think of a way to trade his place above a torturously heating fire; a pig slaughtered with deceivingly warm embrace.
Scars are healing, cold is graves, comes scattered reasoning as her hare-brained plan begins to hatch.
She scribbles down James, where the letter lays face-up, and Dorcas while she’s at it too.