Regulus Black was the one I played gobstones with (in secret, of course—it wasn't dignified for an Aldebaran witch to come home drenched in gobstone juice). He was the one I swapped chocolate frog cards with. He was the one who taught me how to fly on his toy broomstick—it was his fault that I broke my collarbone, but that's an old wound. He was the one I whispered my juiciest bits of gossip to, the things I heard whilst I pretended to be a mute and deaf girl during dinners. He was the one I told about my most secret, treasured things.
Needless to say, I thought he was simply divine. I knew I would marry him, too; we both came from illustrious families, we were the same age, our parents were friends—it was the perfect match.
For his part, I'd like to think that Regulus thought the world of me as I did of him. But we were only very small children, after all.
He could be positively wicked, just like his cousin Bellatrix, and I think that that was when I found him most alluring. Say all you like about darkness or sadism or what-have-you, it was when Regulus was ordering around house-elves or forcing gnomes to fight each other or making Narcissa cry that I liked him most. He could be incredibly cruel, and that was why I admired him so intensely. I should never have doubted that he could one day turn that cruelty towards me. But I misjudged how well I knew him.
Nearly three years passed, from the time that I was eight to the day I started at Hogwarts, in which I did not once see Regulus. Three long, lonely years of disgrace, of poverty, of constant whispering whenever we set foot on grounds frequented by wizards. We, of course, meaning my father and I.
I foolishly looked forward to that first day. I dreamt of it for three years, fantasizing my reunion with Reg. For surely he, greatest of my friends, would not heed the stories? Would be waiting for me that day, ready to pick up right where we'd left off?
Clearly I wasn't the most realistic eleven-year-old.
Not that I didn't have something to give me hope: the last time we'd seen each other, Regulus had seemed as confused as I had been. We were only eight, after all. We didn't understand what was going on with our parents. Well. My parents.
His father had stopped in to speak with my father, at the height of the madness, and brought Sirius and Regulus along with him. The adults retreated into my dad's study for several hours, and we were left to our own devices. We went outside to toy with the garden pixies that usually swarmed harmlessly around the fountains on the grounds of my family's estate. Sirius announced that he was too old to play with us, and sauntered off with his latest Martin Miggs comic.
Regulus and I, unsure how to address the situation that neither of us understood, acted at first as though nothing was different. Until I made some vague reference to an adventure I thought we should undertake sometime in the future.
Regulus had snorted. "Fat chance of that," he'd muttered.
"Why?" I'd asked, wrinkling my nose at him.
"Well, I'm not to see you anymore, am I?" He'd said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"You aren't?"
"Of course not. Mum says that Blacks musn't associate themselves with muggle-lovers and thieving murderes." He'd puffed his chest out importantly at that.
"With what?" Regulus had only shrugged. I could tell he had no more of an idea what he was talking about than I did. But we both knew that he'd crossed a line. I knew he knew that—at least, there was a kind of worry in his eyes that wasn't present when he was harsh with Delly, our house-elf. He knew he shouldn't be saying those things to me, of all people. His best friend.
"Well, that's not me, is it? So we can still play. Right?"
Regulus had cocked his head to the side, considering what I'd said. "I suppose," he'd said slowly, and I'd smiled, trying to forget whatever ugly words had come out of his mouth just before.
"Reg, do you know what's going on? Dad won't explain, he's been so angry, and I haven't seen Mum in days, and Cy's gone, too, and all our stuff's been magicked into boxes, and owls keep dropping letters all day long. And all these mean Aurors showed up the other night and wouldn't let Dad leave. And I opened one of the letters and my robes caught on fire, I think there was a curse inside of it!"
He'd patted my back, trying to make me less upset, though I could tell he was just as baffled as I was.
His father had swept outside just then and called him and Sirius, and they'd taken the floo back to Grimmauld Place. And that was the last time I'd spoken with him. Or even seen him. Until that first day, at the start of our first year.
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