FicWad

Still in awe, Regulus found himself slowly approaching the contraptions in the centre of the room, ones he now knew his ancestors to lie in. It was a funny idea, picturing them in those stone things. Sleeping. Dead. Their bodies still and ... and what? He wasn’t sure what happened after death, wasn’t sure of the exact whereabouts of the people whose bodies lay in this room. He wasn’t even sure what happened with their bodies.

But wherever they were, something about it all drew him in.

Perhaps if he just…

He reached out his hand and hovered it over the stone, and looked back at Narcissa, the question burning in his eyes and his hand almost shaking with desire.

Narcissa nodded.

He let his hand rest upon it. It wasn’t cold. It wasn’t hot. It was warm, and pleasantly so, and it radiated not from his fingertips inwards but from his heart outwards. It spread through his body from his head down to his toes and it seemed to exit his body through his hand – and it was such a strange feeling he pulled it back from the contraption. It turned cold instantly.

He reached out again, missing the warmth. He grazed his thumb over the stone and could clearly feel the heat building again, building, building—

‘The dead never really leave us, do they?’ said Narcissa, and he jumped at how loud and close her voice was. She stood next to him now, still smiling, looking around the room.

‘They’re here,’ she said. ‘And they know we’re here, too, and they’re proud of us. And they’ll be so much prouder when we’re old and shrivelled and joining them – after we lived our lives to the fullest, after we’ve left our own marks on the world ... wouldn’t that be wonderful? To be a part of this? To lie with the best of the best someday?’

Regulus looked around the room as well. The best of the best. A funny feeling fluttered through his stomach at the thought.

‘You can feel it, can’t you?’ she continued. ‘The heat. The whispers. I can hear them, too.’

He closed his eyes and reached out his hand again, touching the stone once more. The warmth exploded throughout his body and his mind was spinning, spinning, picking up on something no louder than the wind but distinctly human. Something inside him lit up at that, and he opened his eyes again, to find Narcissa beaming back at him, touching the stone herself.

‘We’ll make it, you and I. I just know it.’

He was convinced by those words. After all, he had heard his ancestors. He had felt them. He was already with them now, so why not stay around after he was dead, join them, send whispers and warmth out to the next generation of Blacks just as they were doing right now?

They spent most of the day in that room, trying to talk to their ancestors, asking for advice. Or just sitting in silence. They only left briefly to eat lunch, and again when it was almost five o’clock and Regulus had to go back home.

He didn’t want to go. Not even when Narcissa promised him they’d visit their ancestors again over Christmas. Because Christmas was so far from now, and he didn’t want to wait that long. But there was nothing to be done about it and so he left with Father the same way they’d arrived.

They landed in the dining room.

Father instructed Regulus to take up his seat. ‘Kreacher will have the food ready soon,’ he said.

And so he did.

But he felt oddly empty inside. Cold. Silent. He longed to go back to the place his ancestors lay, where he could spend hours surrounded by people who had done incredible things. Not Father. What had he ever done? Not Mother. Certainly not Sirius with his antics. Sirius would never end up in that burial chamber.

‘Did you not have fun today?’ Mother asked as she, too, sat down at the table. He hadn’t even heard her enter.

‘I did,’ he mumbled. She wouldn’t understand.

‘Yet you seem so...’ she sighed and shook her head.

She said no more about it for the rest of the evening, and neither did he. Father occasionally spared him a look that seemed to ask what was going through his mind, but never voiced his thoughts, and Regulus didn’t feel up to starting the conversation about all he’d seen today. It wasn’t something he could easily bring up over dinner. It wasn’t something trivial.

So he only spoke of it when he and Sirius had been sent up to their rooms. He took Sirius with him and sat him down on the bed.

‘You should’ve come with me today,’ he started.

‘To Cissy’s?’

Regulus nodded. ‘Did she take you when you were seven?’

Sirius looked utterly confused.

‘The burial chamber. Our ancestors are there,’ he clarified.

Sirius still lookdd confused. ‘We haven’t even got a burial chamber—’

‘Yes, we do!’ he said, excitement building. Because if Sirius didn’t know ... ‘I went there today, and everyone was there, in the burial chamber—’

‘There’s no such thing,’ Sirius maintained, crossing his arms.

‘But there is! I saw it! And they were talking to me! Our ancestors, they were there!’

‘You’re making this up,’ he argued. ‘Imagining things. It’s all in your mind.’

‘But they spoke to me. They spoke to me. How could they speak to me if they weren’t there?’

Sirius clasped his hands and rose from the bed. ‘The dead are dead. They are gone. Whatever you heard, it wasn’t them. Goodnight.’

‘That’s not true, I could hear them, they’re there, Sirius, I’m telling you!’ he called out, but Sirius ignored him. The door fell closed and Sirius did not come back.

Regulus stared at the door for a while.

‘It’s your loss, if you don’t believe me,’ he muttered, eventually, sitting down on his bed.

Because it was Sirius’ loss, of course, this disbelief. He would never hear their ancestors. He would never feel their presence. He would never know how it felt to stand in their midst.

But to be made out a liar? To be accused of making it all up? To say he was imagining things?

It made him angry. Very angry. The only thing he could think of to do was to lie down on his bed and press his face down on his pillow and scream.

It didn’t help. The room seemed to close around him, his own voice echoing back in the silence. It made his chest ache and he wished desperately for Sirius to come to and understand he hadn’t been lying. He wasn’t making stuff up. If only he could prove it. If only he could take Sirius with him next time.

Regulus tried to sleep, despite all this, and he managed eventually. It was a restless sleep, however, and when he next woke up, he was still very tired, and his mind was still racing, and he had never felt more alone.

His conversation with Sirius haunted him. He had simply wanted to share in his wonder, and it had resulted in disappointment.

It always did, with him. But nobody ever seemed to understand.

The resentment remained and all weekend he spoke not a single word to his brother. He barely even looked at him. He avoided him at all costs. He stayed mostly in his room, sulking, longing for the burial chamber and the warmth he’d felt there. He hoped Narcissa would somehow miss the train to Hogwarts, so they could visit sooner, but he knew his chances were slim. Had anyone ever missed the Hogwarts Express?

And so the weekend passed and made way for Monday, and Monday cast away all of his resentment, all of his anger. It pushed back his wishes and the whole visit to the burial chamber.

The next step had arrived.

It was the first Monday after his seventh birthday, and that meant the start of his formal education.

He made sure to arrive early and seated himself at his new desk in Father’s study. It was a small one, compared to Father’s, or even Sirius’, but it was beautiful and made him feel grand and important. And he made sure he sat upright, with broad shoulders and a straight back, and his hands neatly folded.

The contrast couldn’t be greater.

Sirius slouched in his chair. Sirius was impatiently drumming on the wood with his fingers. Sirius yawned and stuck out his tongue whenever their eyes met. Sirius did all sorts of things Regulus would never dream of doing on such an important day.

He glanced back at the door occasionally, intently, as if he could summon Father just by looking whence he wanted him to come. When Father did enter, he carried (or rather, it floated with him) a stack of paper, two scrolls of parchment, a hornbook, a couple of quills, an inkwell, blotters, and a little knife.

Regulus rose. Sirius yawned once more. Father paid them no mind. He simply directed the supplies to put themselves down upon his own desk, away from either Sirius or Regulus, except for the hornbook. As it came near, Regulus could make out the lesson sheet bearing the inscriptions. He was old enough to recognise these inscriptions as the letters of the alphabet – he wasn’t completely illiterate, that was impossible with an older brother and older cousins so intent on reading him books and getting him to guess the letters for the last three years of his life. But to be put on the spot...

And he was, for Father drew up a stool and sat down, still holding the hornbook. ‘After today’s lesson,’ he said, ‘I want you to have this. Keep it on you at all times.’

Regulus nodded, eyeing the hornbook with much curiosity. It was silver and rather pretty. And it would be his after this? Really? He looked sideways to Sirius, but he didn’t seem very impressed.

‘For now,’ Father continued, ‘let’s go over what’s written on here. Regulus?’

But Regulus, not wanting to guess incorrectly and disappoint everyone, didn’t say anything. He simply stared at the shapes – the letters – in front of him, trying his best to be sure of his case but not knowing how to be.

‘All right, let’s go slowly. This is A,’ Father prompted, pointing to the first one, ‘the letter of Astronomy, Amulet and Alchemy. And this is ...?’

‘B, for Binoculars, for Butterbeer and Broomstick. C is for Cauldron—’

‘Yes, yes, Sirius,’ Father interrupted, annoyed. ‘I should hope you know this by now. I wasn’t asking you; I was talking to your brother.’

Sirius scoffed but spoke no more.

‘Regulus, your turn. Can you tell me what sound this makes?’ Father pointed to the next letter, and he knew he could no longer remain silent. He had to guess. He had to dig deep into his memory and come up with the right letter.

‘Err ... D ... as in ... erm ... Dark Arts?’

Both Father and Sirius laughed. ‘That’s certainly creative, son, certainly ... Let’s keep that one: D is for Dark Arts. Brilliant!’

‘No, it’s for Dragon,’ Sirius protested, ‘It’s for Dragon, and Demiguise, and—’

‘And Dark Arts,’ said Father, and that was that.

The rest of the lesson was much the same, reciting letters and voicing them. After three hours of hard work, they were done, and he got to take the hornbook with him. Only then he noticed the engravings depicting all sorts of things easily traced back to what the letters stood for. Whenever he sounded out a letter with the hornbook carried around his neck, the appropriate engraving would spring to life. There were many, including an Erumpent, and a Flitterbloom, a Hippogriff and an Invisibility Cloak – which was his personal favourite: the engraving was completely invisible until the word itself was mentioned. It took him a while to figure that out.

This all made it far easier to study than he’d imagined, and by the end of the week he had mastered the entire alphabet – and it had taken over his life. It was all he did. He only thought back to Narcissa and the burial chamber when the first of September came around, and he became very much aware of the fact that his three cousins were all boarding the train to Hogwarts whilst he was stuck in his father’s office, dissecting words into letters and forming new words with those letters (“Regulus” for example became Rat, Elf, Galleon, Umbrella, Lamb, Unicorn, Silver – all of which could be further dissected. Rat became Remembrall, Acromantula, Transfiguration, and Elf would be Enchantment, Lunascope, Fluxweed, and so on. The trick was to come up with more and more difficult words each time).

He thought of how they had to feel, spending so much time away from home. If they felt lonely or sad. Would they miss him?

After the lesson he went with Sirius and they spoke, properly, for the first time since he’d told him about the chamber.

‘Want to play wizard chess with me?’ he asked, as they began their descent.

‘Oh, so it can talk.’

Regulus stopped. ‘What?’

‘You’ve been ignoring me for weeks,’ Sirius scoffed, leaning back against the railing.

‘Well, I didn’t—’

‘You didn’t mean to?’

‘Well, you wouldn’t believe me about the chamber!’

‘Because it’s not real.’

‘It is!’

‘Is not!’

‘Is too!’

‘No, it isn’t!’

‘It is, just because you didn’t get to go when you were seven—’

‘I didn’t go because it isn’t real!’

‘It is real!’

‘No it isn’t. And you stink!’

‘I do not! And it is!’

‘Yes you do! You’re a poopyhead!’

‘I’m not, I’m not, I’m not!’

‘Poopyhead,’ Sirius sang. ‘Poopyhead.’

‘ARGH! I hate you!’ Regulus yelled, anger building inside him.

But Sirius seemed not to care. ‘I hate you more,’ he said calmly.

‘I hate you the most!’

‘Children, children! What’s the meaning of this?’

Regulus – and Sirius, for that matter – jumped up at the sudden adult voice sounding through the hall below.

They leaned over the balustrades to see who had interrupted their bickering, and Regulus’ heart was still racing when Sirius broke the silence. ‘Aunt Lucretia!’

Aunt Lucretia smiled at them and beckoned them closer.

They came down the final stairs.

‘What’s all this about hating each other?’ she questioned.

‘He started it!’ Regulus pointed at Sirius.

‘That’s not true!’ Sirius protested. ‘He—’

‘One at a time, please! Sirius?’

‘He was lying to me.’

Aunt Lucretia raised her eyebrows and turned on Regulus. ‘Were you?’

‘No!’

‘He was!’ Sirius called, trying to convince her.

She sighed. ‘It doesn’t matter if he lied or not. You mustn’t say such things, or you’ll come to regret it. Apologise to your brother. Go on, Regulus.’

‘Fine. I’m sorry,’ he mumbled.

‘Good enough. Sirius?’

‘Sorry,’ he spat. ‘Happy now?’

‘Quite. I’ll leave you two to it, then. I’m here to see your father. Do you know where he is?’

Sirius vaguely pointed at the ceiling and Aunt Lucretia brushed past them to get upstairs. They waited for her to disappear from sight before they turned to each other again, glaring and angry.

‘Poopyhead,’ Sirius whispered, and Regulus could only glare at him; nobody ever picked his side, and Aunt Lucretia would surely hear if he said anything.

But they were Blacks, and when Blacks grew angry, they either exploded or imploded – or both. They’d explode when confronted with each other and they’d implode when left alone.

Seeing as both brothers preferred not to get in any more trouble, they imploded and ignored each other for the rest of the day.

And the day after.

And the day after that.

Because that was the problem: working through issues together, talking about it, trying to fix it – it was a foreign concept to them both.

And so another week went by, and the week turned month, and September became October, and the lessons progressed just as drastically: Father handed Regulus his very first quill. He treated it as if it was a golden treasure, even though it was a simple one, stripped of its feathers, with a simple nib sharpened on the spot. But it was the first quill he’d be writing with, and that’s what made it so important. Once he mastered this, he could move onto the beautiful one he’d got for his birthday. And so he paid great attention to what Father taught him.

He watched intently as Father, with his own quill, showed him just how to hold it, between thumb and index finger, with the tip over the middle finger.

He watched as he dipped the quill into the ink, and watched as he shook off remaining ink in sharp downward strokes against the well.

He watched as he demonstrated how to put it on paper, carefully angled, and apply pressure so the ink could flow from the nib and create letters. Father used the most careful precision to put all the letters of the alphabet on the paper, occasionally going back into the inkwell to refill.

The result was stunning.

‘Now it’s your turn,’ said Father, sliding the inkwell over to him. ‘Try it.’

And Regulus took up his own quill and tried his best to mimic Father’s movements and position the quill in the same manner, dip it in the ink in the same manner, and put it to paper in the same manner. He put pressure on it to get the ink flowing – too harshly. The nib split, the paper tore, and ink splatters flew around creating stains on the desk and both their clothes.

Father shook his head and waved his wand, causing the stains to disappear and the tear to heal. ‘Gently, try again. It’ll work.’

He looked to his side, to his brother. Of course Sirius hadn’t broken his quill. Of course Sirius hadn't caused splatters of ink to fly everywhere. Of course Sirius had a quill with a golden tip. Of course Sirius was better at this...

Sirius was scribbling away with ease, creating those same beautiful letters Father had made. Those same beautiful letters he couldn’t make.

It sparked both anger and determination, but when he tried, and failed, again, he threw down his quill and gave up. If he couldn’t get it right, he’d rather not make a fool of himself.

‘Regulus...’ Father sighed, picking up his discarded quill. ‘It takes practice. You can’t get better if you give up now.’

‘But I’ll never get better!’

‘You will.’ He handed the quill over to him once more. ‘Take your time, and try again.’

And he dipped the quill in the inkwell again, pressed it onto the paper again – less harshly, this time – and tried to form those letters he saw on his father’s parchment, the letters he saw on his brother’s parchment...

But he couldn't get the letters to form. The ink blotted together, forming one large spot that drenched the paper, creating yet another hole.

‘Oh, I can’t!’

‘Patience, son,’ Father said. He waved his wand and the ink disappeared and the paper healed again. He walked around to his side of the desk and took his hand in his own, guiding it to the inkwell and then onto the paper, very carefully, as they formed the lines together. ‘See?’

The lines joined together, forming letters, forming words, forming art. And he was doing this. Father let go of his hand, and he continued with what they had done together. He had to dip, move to the paper, glide over the paper and then the shapes would form themselves, and repeat.

Over time, during the next month or so, his strokes became more controlled, and the letters began to resemble those he had seen his father write. When October turned to November, he could get out his birthday gift, and use it to write the most beautiful letters he’d ever seen.