Fic: 20 Random Facts About Regulus Black
Okay, so this was nowhere on my list of things to do, but iulia_linnea's Random Facts Fest is shiny like a shiny thing and, um, well, bunny, you know, big teeth, and so on.
Title: 20 Random Facts about Regulus Black
Author: elsane
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~1100
Disclaimer: just playing in JKR's sandbox.
Note: Written for the Harry Potter Random Facts Fest.
1. He's six years old the first and only time he sees a Snidget, up at the country lodge. Sirius scoffs, but it's half jealousy. Regulus knows what he saw.
2. On his seventeenth birthday his parents present him with the Black family pocket watch. It's over four hundred years old and more magic than metal by now. It sits heavily in his hand, larger than modern watches and louder, vibrating ever so slightly with the whirl of gears and charms.
Tovjovrs Pvr, it says in Gothic script, the letters still militantly crisp in the soft and dented gold.
3. The year Sirius starts school Regulus gets an owl from him every week. They're wonderful letters about wonderful things, starlit ceilings and moving stairs, pie for breakfast, monsters in the lake, full of run-on sentences and practically bubbling off the page. It isn't until Regulus gets to Hogwarts himself that he realises Sirius never wrote a word about the Gryffindor common room.
4. The first time he truly understands what it means that Sirius has run away is when Bellatrix sits next to him at Christmas dinner.
He doesn't eat roast beef anymore.
5. It's Narcissa who watches out for him first year. She does it delicately and mostly on the Quidditch pitch, so it's not unbearably girly and awful. She's family, not to mention wicked on a broom, and he can't quite bring himself to resent it. It's thanks to her he makes the team a year later, and as he banks and veers through the layers of play, he feels motion, the game, clear in his bloodstream, quick and effortless as breath.
6. It's the snitch in his hand and the crowd roaring in his ears that he thinks of when he sits on the footstool in his father's study the night after Sirius disappears. It's not triumph. It's looking down at the snitch, its tiny wings still beating feebly against his fingers, and thinking: Oh. Yes.
7. It only takes him three months to figure out how very little the newspaper articles actually say. It's a lot longer before they stop making him feel clever.
8. The Slytherins have a betting pool every year on how and when this year's DADA professor will fall afoul of the jinx. Regulus usually cleans up. He was about to lose catastrophically in fifth year, though, until he had the brilliant notion to go talk to his brother.
9. He still doesn't know what Sirius did with his half of the take.
10. He keeps dreaming of sofa cushions in disarray, and the hot splatter of blood across the backs of his hands.
11. He goes to tea after endless tea with his mother, where he is inevitably served cakes and milky tea. He waits until he's sure his voice has broken before he starts to hand the cups back and ask for his tea black, unadulterated.
12. His father's brandy and cigar parties are much better. Even if his father won't take the Sobering Charm off until Regulus proves he can take two shots of Firewhisky and still debate the portrait of Lycoris the Loquacious to a standstill. He figures, morosely, that he might manage this by the time he's forty-five.
13. Sirius is gorgeous. Regulus looks just like their father. He is grateful for that, now.
14. Sixth year, after Slytherin lose the Quidditch Cup to Hufflepuff, he lies on his back on the Quidditch pitch and watches the clouds bloom and shift and slip slowly west. He wonders what the game would be like if there were no boundary charms on the balls, imagines the snitch soaring upwards in an ever-widening spiral, vanishing into the cold and infinite air.
15. At Slug Club meetings Slughorn invariably leans in and suggests that Regulus should really bring his brother along next time. Regulus invariably grits his teeth and demurs. He has very little choice; he would die rather than let on that Slughorn would have better luck appealing to Lily Evans.
16. He hates Lucius Malfoy. He is polite, for Narcissa's sake, but as he shakes the man's hand and smiles, he thinks: You are not a Black. Malfoy slings an arm around his shoulders, murmuring things like Ministry, influence, trade. Five years, Regulus thinks, give me five years, and manages not to sneer.
17. Even Muggles have eyebrows. It's not logical, it has nothing to do with anything, but for five awful minutes, as his father pours their best brandy for the Dark Lord, it's the only thing in his head.
18. Sirius teaches him cards. They stay up all night once, absorbed in an epic game of Pounce (the James variation, Sirius says importantly), and after Sirius wins at 2 a.m. they sneak out onto the balcony to trace their family through the stars.
19. Four months before his NEWTs he stops even pretending to study. McGonagall calls him into her office, where she frowns at him over the rims of her glasses and talks crisply of futures, jeopardy, talent gone to waste. Slughorn claps him on the shoulder and commends him, with strained joviality, on his good sense: No reason to wind yourself up when your future's in the bag, eh, m'boy? Regulus spends his time curled over his pocket watch probing the charms, which are fused and strange from the sheer usage of age and enchantment. He adds a few himself.
Tempus Fugit, he finally says one day in April, and opens the window to let the watch flutter out.
20. The last time he sees his brother is in a pub on a rainy Friday evening. He and his friends tumble in damp and laughing, and only once they're at the bar does he notice Sirius with his clique in a booth in the back. Empty and half-empty bottles clutter the tabletop.
Let's find another place, Evan mutters in Regulus' ear, and he shakes his head: no.
Sirius' hair curls against the nape of his neck, overlong, and a diamond glitters in his ear. He's wearing Muggle clothes, of course, stupidly tight.
Regulus can see the exact moment Sirius' eyes drift to the tattoo on his forearm, then back up to his face. Sirius's eyebrows slide up, and he smiles, slow and sardonic. He cocks his head, and Regulus still knows what this means, can understand the invitation in the slant of the eyebrows, the quirk of the mouth.
Sirius has always thought he understands rebellion.
Regulus thrusts himself away from the bar, out of the door, and lifts his face to the rain.
Title: 20 Random Facts about Regulus Black
Author: elsane
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~1100
Disclaimer: just playing in JKR's sandbox.
Note: Written for the Harry Potter Random Facts Fest.
1. He's six years old the first and only time he sees a Snidget, up at the country lodge. Sirius scoffs, but it's half jealousy. Regulus knows what he saw.
2. On his seventeenth birthday his parents present him with the Black family pocket watch. It's over four hundred years old and more magic than metal by now. It sits heavily in his hand, larger than modern watches and louder, vibrating ever so slightly with the whirl of gears and charms.
Tovjovrs Pvr, it says in Gothic script, the letters still militantly crisp in the soft and dented gold.
3. The year Sirius starts school Regulus gets an owl from him every week. They're wonderful letters about wonderful things, starlit ceilings and moving stairs, pie for breakfast, monsters in the lake, full of run-on sentences and practically bubbling off the page. It isn't until Regulus gets to Hogwarts himself that he realises Sirius never wrote a word about the Gryffindor common room.
4. The first time he truly understands what it means that Sirius has run away is when Bellatrix sits next to him at Christmas dinner.
He doesn't eat roast beef anymore.
5. It's Narcissa who watches out for him first year. She does it delicately and mostly on the Quidditch pitch, so it's not unbearably girly and awful. She's family, not to mention wicked on a broom, and he can't quite bring himself to resent it. It's thanks to her he makes the team a year later, and as he banks and veers through the layers of play, he feels motion, the game, clear in his bloodstream, quick and effortless as breath.
6. It's the snitch in his hand and the crowd roaring in his ears that he thinks of when he sits on the footstool in his father's study the night after Sirius disappears. It's not triumph. It's looking down at the snitch, its tiny wings still beating feebly against his fingers, and thinking: Oh. Yes.
7. It only takes him three months to figure out how very little the newspaper articles actually say. It's a lot longer before they stop making him feel clever.
8. The Slytherins have a betting pool every year on how and when this year's DADA professor will fall afoul of the jinx. Regulus usually cleans up. He was about to lose catastrophically in fifth year, though, until he had the brilliant notion to go talk to his brother.
9. He still doesn't know what Sirius did with his half of the take.
10. He keeps dreaming of sofa cushions in disarray, and the hot splatter of blood across the backs of his hands.
11. He goes to tea after endless tea with his mother, where he is inevitably served cakes and milky tea. He waits until he's sure his voice has broken before he starts to hand the cups back and ask for his tea black, unadulterated.
12. His father's brandy and cigar parties are much better. Even if his father won't take the Sobering Charm off until Regulus proves he can take two shots of Firewhisky and still debate the portrait of Lycoris the Loquacious to a standstill. He figures, morosely, that he might manage this by the time he's forty-five.
13. Sirius is gorgeous. Regulus looks just like their father. He is grateful for that, now.
14. Sixth year, after Slytherin lose the Quidditch Cup to Hufflepuff, he lies on his back on the Quidditch pitch and watches the clouds bloom and shift and slip slowly west. He wonders what the game would be like if there were no boundary charms on the balls, imagines the snitch soaring upwards in an ever-widening spiral, vanishing into the cold and infinite air.
15. At Slug Club meetings Slughorn invariably leans in and suggests that Regulus should really bring his brother along next time. Regulus invariably grits his teeth and demurs. He has very little choice; he would die rather than let on that Slughorn would have better luck appealing to Lily Evans.
16. He hates Lucius Malfoy. He is polite, for Narcissa's sake, but as he shakes the man's hand and smiles, he thinks: You are not a Black. Malfoy slings an arm around his shoulders, murmuring things like Ministry, influence, trade. Five years, Regulus thinks, give me five years, and manages not to sneer.
17. Even Muggles have eyebrows. It's not logical, it has nothing to do with anything, but for five awful minutes, as his father pours their best brandy for the Dark Lord, it's the only thing in his head.
18. Sirius teaches him cards. They stay up all night once, absorbed in an epic game of Pounce (the James variation, Sirius says importantly), and after Sirius wins at 2 a.m. they sneak out onto the balcony to trace their family through the stars.
19. Four months before his NEWTs he stops even pretending to study. McGonagall calls him into her office, where she frowns at him over the rims of her glasses and talks crisply of futures, jeopardy, talent gone to waste. Slughorn claps him on the shoulder and commends him, with strained joviality, on his good sense: No reason to wind yourself up when your future's in the bag, eh, m'boy? Regulus spends his time curled over his pocket watch probing the charms, which are fused and strange from the sheer usage of age and enchantment. He adds a few himself.
Tempus Fugit, he finally says one day in April, and opens the window to let the watch flutter out.
20. The last time he sees his brother is in a pub on a rainy Friday evening. He and his friends tumble in damp and laughing, and only once they're at the bar does he notice Sirius with his clique in a booth in the back. Empty and half-empty bottles clutter the tabletop.
Let's find another place, Evan mutters in Regulus' ear, and he shakes his head: no.
Sirius' hair curls against the nape of his neck, overlong, and a diamond glitters in his ear. He's wearing Muggle clothes, of course, stupidly tight.
Regulus can see the exact moment Sirius' eyes drift to the tattoo on his forearm, then back up to his face. Sirius's eyebrows slide up, and he smiles, slow and sardonic. He cocks his head, and Regulus still knows what this means, can understand the invitation in the slant of the eyebrows, the quirk of the mouth.
Sirius has always thought he understands rebellion.
Regulus thrusts himself away from the bar, out of the door, and lifts his face to the rain.