Written for: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry (prompts below)

Word Count: 391

Sometimes, he wishes the ground beneath him would crack open at his feet and unfurl into a never-ending pit of darkness and swallow him whole.

Like now, for instance.

He knows it's his destiny.

(His fate, his future, his only fulfilment in life.)

And he knows he doesn't have a choice.

(Except for one. But he really doesn't consider it to be a true option. He isn't a coward, but to pretend Death is a reasonable solution would just be foolhardy.)

And as the ink penetrates his skin, he wishes there were some other way.

But the Regulus who was, the Regulus that he used to be, the one with hopes and dreams of the type of future that only a 16-year-old is capable of imagining — that Regulus has been permanently obscured from view, and no matter how hard he tries to unlock the cage in which he knows his true self lies within, his efforts are futile.

—

Who is he, really?

His brother waltzes past him in the corridors like he doesn't exist. To Sirius, Regulus is just another face in the crowd, another sheep in a swarming herd, a mask in a sea swimming with thousands of others.

His mother and father praise him for his excellent schoolwork and love him for his acceptance of his true role as a Black and thank Merlin that he didn't turn out like his brother.

But they're only the things that they want to see.

And they don't see what's really there.

But now, standing here, frowning at his reflection, gazing down upon the ink that still gleams a misty red; the ink that has invaded the length of his forearm; the ink that symbolises a loss of all that once was his self-individuality and instead marks him as another follower of a regime that believes in the destruction of so many; the ink that has changed the course of his entire life — now, nor can he.

He stands in front of the mirror —

And the blank, blank face that stares back at him is unrecognisable.

He is invisible, even to himself.

And so he becomes another follower, another soulless killing machine that lives only for the sole purpose of destroying others.

(And he chooses the life they have given him, rather than the life in which he could have been.)

Prompts:

Assignment #2, Ancient Runes, Task #3 — write about someone who feels invisible