the hogwarts express - regulus
the hogwarts express
“I almost had her, I swear!” Barty bluffed, puffing his chest out with that cocky grin plastered on his face. It made Regulus’ stomach spin sometimes, when his friend was at ease like this. Like he commanded the compartment, with everybody hanging off his word. And he knew it, too. Barty Crouch Jr. was a boy far too handsome for his own good. Just on the edge of sixteen, one of the oldest of his year, he had an air of easy confidence that surrounded him when he was with his mates.
“One more drink and she would’ve been putty in my hands,” he crooned, leaning toward Regulus with teasingly pursed lips.
He chuckled and shoved Barty back into his seat, shaking his head disapprovingly.
“You mutt,” he sneered lightly.
“Shove off Reg,” Evan turned back to Barty, “well,” he demanded, a hungry look on his face, “who was she then?” Regulus could almost imagine the boy licking his lips in anticipation.
“How were her tits?” Evan followed up before Barty even had a chance to respond. Regulus faked gagging and returned to the pages of De Profundis. Evan matched his question with a cheshire grin and raised eyebrows as he aimed a kick towards Regulus’ shins. Fuck, he hissed internally, rubbing at his leg and glaring at the blonde boy, that bloody hurt.
“Oh, Evan, Evan, Evan… She’s nothing but a mere memory now,” Barty sighed dreamily, patting Rosier on the shoulder almost pityingly as his friend looked displeased with the answer.
Regulus started to tune the two of them out, turning and stretching out his legs across the seat so that nobody else would be tempted to join their compartment (...and maybe to avoid another well aimed hit from Evan). It was nice when it was like this. Just the three of them. Only shitty jokes and dreamy sighs from his friends about pretty women.
He immersed himself back into Oscar’s mind. Ignoring every whining call of Reggie when they tried to drag him into their conversation. He was very much at peace with just being in their presence, something warm and almost… foreign. But nice.
See, he’d known the boys since they were trembling little first years making the walk of horror down the Great Hall. Evan was what you could call the lucky one. He was born to be a Slytherin, with his entire family sending their welcoming regards and congratulations the next morning via owl. A Slytherin just like Regulus. Only he didn’t have to watch his older brother’s face fall, condemning Regulus to his parent’s fate, as Regulus walked further and further away from the table lined with red and gold.
Regulus didn’t get any letters. He’d already known what was expected of him.
Barty had informed them in secret, whispering in the confines of their shared common room, that he’d asked the Sorting Hat to be placed there. He was a vindictive and bloodthirsty boy. Always out for his father’s neck. Always causing trouble.
But that night, when the other boys had gone to sleep, Regulus still laid awake as he twisted and turned. His tight curls became unwoven with the movement. He couldn’t help but wonder what it could have been like – could he have asked?
Was it truly that simple? Had it been what Sirius had done?
He’d been haunted by the what if’s for weeks as he continued to fail to catch up to Sirius in the corridors. The older boy seemed to already know the castle like the back of his hand, despite only spending one year prior residing within it. Sirius was elusive. It had taken Regulus months to glumly give up his chase and begin just looking from afar, listening and drinking in as much as he could hear about his brother.
I heard Sirius Black has a crush on Mary MacDonald!
Didn’t Black and Potter lose Gryffindor fifty points last night for their little prank against the Slytherins?
Sirius, shove off! Just because you beat me by one mark doesn’t mean you're better at transfiguration than me! It’s one time!
He’d watched his brother grow up from the side-lines, and some tiny part of him had desperately hoped Sirius was watching him too.
The hours passed slowly before Regulus had heard it. It was almost unfathomable that he even managed to hear it in the first place, but he was used to straining his ears for the slightest creak in their house. Or the faint and ghostly footsteps of his mother striding up the stairs. But even with Barty cursing under his breath as his chocolate frog escaped, and Evan snoring like a steam-engine, he still heard the pointed mutters outside of their compartment as McKinnon and Meadowes walked past.
“So, Regulus had the gall to show up then,” the blonde muttered scornfully.
“Well he couldn’t exactly just stop coming to school,” the Ravenclaw responded almost exasperatedly.
“After what happened in that house he should be rotting in a jail cell with his filthy parents–”
The conversation had become too faded after the last comment. While Regulus knew that of course Barty and Evan hadn’t caught a word of the girls’ gossip, he couldn’t help but feel exposed. Like he’d been presented raw on a platter for all to see and judge. His insides out.
Oh god, they knew.
Of course they knew, he thought anxiously. Sirius had run off to the Potters and they would have demanded answers as to why he came in the middle of the night, a week earlier than anticipated. If there’s one thing Regulus knew about that damn Potter boy, it’s that he was persistent and fiercely protective over his band of Marauders.
He doubted Evans and Lupin would still want to study together in the library on Thursday evenings. They would see him for who he truly is now.
Regulus was close with Evan and Crouch, but he’d never quite understood what it was like to be as close as their group was. He’d spent too long flinching away from unexpected touches that the boys had given up attempting to hug or teasingly wrap their arm around his shoulders.
Regulus spared a glance at the boys on the seat across from him. Evan was sprawled out, his hand casually resting right next to Barty’s leg. Barty had no issue with tapping his foot against Evan’s. The boys were inseparable at points. It could be hard to identify where one stopped and the other began.
It wasn’t uncommon, per say. It’s a consequence of living together for four years. Regulus had witnessed many other friend groups act like this, with this intimate proximity, but the self-proclaimed Marauders seemed to take this closeness to an entirely new level.
Regulus had seen Potter hex a sixth-year, when he himself had only just entered his second, for teasing the Pettigrew boy and calling him chubby. Potter had his scrawny twelve-year-old ass handed to him and ended up the hospital wing, but it didn’t seem to take the spring out of his step when Regulus next saw him, grinning like a cheshire cat and slipping some Honeydukes sweets onto Pettigrew’s dinner plate (how on earth had he gotten them so fast?).
Regulus had always been in a weird abyss of being in the Slytherin boys’ group (even the other boys that shared a separate dorm) but existing on the outskirts. He merely paced the perimeter. At times it felt like he was permissively entering their friendship. Like he had unspoken conditions placed upon him.
Honestly, he thought to himself, as he noticed something on Evan’s arm that tore him out of his anxiety, sometimes it felt like a blessing.
A crude drawing was just visible from under the sleeve of his robe. Regulus could just make out the shape of a skull and a winding snake. Rosier’s hero worship of… him… that was something that made Regulus want to run sobbing and hide behind the coat of his big brother like when he was a child and cousin Bella was being cruel.
Regulus knew Evan was counting down the days until he turned seventeen and could pledge allegiance to the Dark Lord. When he remembered this nauseating fact Regulus felt comfortable in his odd distance from the boys, despite the horrific guilt that ate away at his hypocritical soul.
Fine with the safety in numbers. Fine with the comfort they bring after a summer of hell. Ready to pretend you can’t see the hexes they throw at Muggleborns. But drawing the line at genocide?
Oh, what a generous soul you are Regulus Black.
“Oi, Reg,” Barty hissed, drawing him out of his thoughts. The boy raised his eyebrows, glancing pointedly down at Evan’s arm. He’d caught him looking, then, Regulus thought resignedly.
“Looks pretty sick, right?”
“I don’t know if that’s exactly how I would phrase it,” he commented lightly, aiming to keep the conversation neutral.
“Did your parents say anything this summer, then?” It was a pity that Barty looked so pretty asking about something so ugly. It was a pity that a murderer in the making was sending flutters down Regulus’ stomach.
“About what?” He feigned ignorance, hoping to drop the topic. He stood and stretched, his back cracking as he attempted to twist out the fatigue in his bones. He reached up to grab his trunk before realising that Barty had ended up pushing it further back when throwing his own up on the storage shelf, haphazard as always.
Barty snorted as he stood up, having a good few inches on Regulus that he had resented for years. Both he and Evan had shot up again in height over the summer, while Regulus persistently remained one of the shortest in their year, something that bothered him to know end and amused the other boys greatly.
He reached over Regulus and shoved his own trunk to the side, pulling Regulus’ out from behind and resting it down on the seat.
“The Dark Lord, you twat,” he sat back down again, resting lazily against the compartment wall.
“No,” the lie came easily to his tongue, “they didn’t mention anything.”
“Oh come on, they must have said something. Your family’s like royalty, aside from your bastard brother. Don’t they know if anything exciting is going to happen soon?”
Maybe it was the combination of the idea that Barty found the death of people he’d never even met exciting, and the comment against his brother, but Regulus could feel his cheeks heating up with anger. Anger he had to bite his tongue against.
Barty wasn’t one to blab to his parents about anything Regulus said, but if he were to complain about any drama that he stirred up, there was no doubt someone in the Slytherin common room would overhear the gossip and it would end up in a letter to his mother.
He brushed a strand of hair that had fallen loose back behind his ear and bit the inside of his cheek.
“I was studying all summer for OWL’s, I barely saw them. I’m gonna get changed, I’ll be back soon,” he voiced this carefully, refusing to look Barty in the eye as he worked for the bored monotone he had begun to perfect, even when he felt close to ripping his hair out.
“Prat, keeping all the juicy details to himself,” Regulus could hear Barty muttering as he gathered his robes and left the compartment. He knew their little spat (if it could even be classified as that… but Regulus knew just how spiteful and petty Crouch could be) would bother Barty for a few days and he would likely complain to Evan when he finally woke from the dead. He resigned himself to straying further along the outskirts for a few days.
Despite the coldness gripping his chest, squeezing his ribs and making it difficult to breathe, Regulus knew that he would eventually want to crawl back to the loose comfort the boys offered.
Their lightly teasing remarks. Their griping about homework and one-inch-too-many essays. The chess and card games by the fireplace.
They were a pleasant reprieve. Nothing more, Regulus told himself.
When he returned to the compartment, draped in green and silver, he would curl up again with De Profundis, and silently trace Wilde’s words:
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Regulus figured that perhaps he’d been born just to become a ghost. Something ephemeral. A whisper of a life once lived.
And deep in his heart he knew all his life would achieve was a mimicry of his parents.
Until the day his fate was set in ink, Regulus would continue to sneak glances and watch his brother grow from afar, without him. He’d watch what it meant to be somebody, and scornfully judge as he saw himself falling deeper and deeper into the pit of becoming somebody else.