50% regulus black, mostly regulus black | writing acc!
Leo's Last Light
come suffer w me on ao3 → xXAria_ParkinsonXx
Wattpad → astrarium-angel
PFP credits - pinterest (1soul2bodys)
hi, i’m angel, welcome to my blog. this is mostly marauders brainrot, oc lore, fic posting, fandom nonsense, and me treating fictional characters like they owe me rent.
about me
my name is angel
young adult, 18+
she/her
London (GMT/BST)
writer
mostly smut, comedy, and one-shots on tumblr
more angst and longer fics on ao3
what i post
this blog is mostly for my marauders writing, especially smut, comedy, one-shots, little character moments, and whatever scene has decided to chew through my brain that day. i’ll occasionally post about other fandoms too, especially if i’m having thoughts, making jokes, or getting emotionally attached to some random blorbo, but marauders is the main thing here. expect fic posts, character rambling, ship chaos, unserious meta, oc lore, ao3 updates, and me being deeply normal about dead gay wizards.
ao3 / my writing
my ao3 is xXAria_ParkinsonXx - that’s where most of my bigger writing lives, including my big one-shot book, my Survival Guides series, crossover fics, longer aus, angstier stories, and anything that needs more space than a single post can give it. i write a lot of marauders, mostly character-focused stuff with ships, chaos, smut, comedy, emotional damage, and the occasional “what if i threw these characters into a completely different universe and made it everyone’s problem?”
i also have a few other fics on there from different fandoms too, so it’s a bit of a mixed bag depending on what i’ve been hyperfixating on at the time.
fandoms
main
marauders / harry potter — [regulus black disease]
total drama — [cody & heather loveeeee / ezekiel deserved better]
the addams family — [pugsley my literal child, wednesday x joel for life]
epic: the musical — [hermes my god literally]
danny phantom — [half-dead loser icon]
favourite characters
my main marauders favourites are regulus, pandora, dorcas, marlene, and peter. regulus is basically the brainrot character for me — once he’s in my head he’s not leaving, sorry. pandora is my chaotic little mad scientist who is probably one experiment away from either changing the world or blowing herself up (affectionate). dorcas is just insanely cool, like she’d look at you once and immediately know all your secrets without even trying. marlene is loud, fiery, and the kind of person who would absolutely drag you into trouble but make it fun. and peter… yeah, i’ll always defend him a bit because people really love acting like he’s the worst thing ever when he’s just kind of there getting emotionally steamrolled by everyone else.
ships
i’m a regulus multishipper first and foremost, so i’ll ship him with basically everyone depending on the au. his ships are my main ones, but for marlene/regulus or dorcas/regulus, regulus is always genderbent/fem reg — he’s never male in those ships for me.
i also like dorcas/pandora, marlene/pandora, peter/pandora, remus/pandora, and mary/peter, but i don’t really write about them much. i don’t really ship wolfstar, rosekiller, or a lot of the other big marauders ships because i’m biased towards regulus and just don’t care as much, but i’d still write them if someone requested them.
don’t be weird about ships on my page. like what you like, don’t harass people, and don’t start discourse in my posts.
ocs
i write marauders ocs too, mainly aria parkinson and briar rosewood. aria is my chaotic hufflepuff pureblood, stoner, sirius hater, barty’s childhood best friend, and general political nightmare. briar is my (and my amazing beautiful gorgeous wives @moonflower-moonstone) hufflepuff muggleborn plant girl, softer and quieter on the outside but still absolutely part of the chaos, especially with aria and barty. they show up in my fics, headcanons, posts, aus, and random lore rambles, so please don’t steal them or use them without asking.
as for ships, i rotate them a lot and they’re all kind of interconnected in messy marauders fashion: reg x aria, barty x aria, aria x briar, briar x barty, reg x briar, and briar x marlene. it’s very much a “everyone is in love with everyone and it’s complicated” situation depending on the au.
who’s welcome here
queer people, trans people, disabled people, neurodivergent people, poc, multishippers, oc writers, selfshippers, adults in fandom, and people who understand that fiction is fiction are all safe and welcome here. if you’re respectful, don’t harass people, don’t police other people’s fun, and can be normal about someone having different ships or headcanons to you, you’re fine.
who’s not welcome here
racists, homophobes, transphobes, ableists, misogynists, terfs, zionists, trump supporters, jkr supporters, incels, tory/labour bastards, pro-harassment people, people who attack others over fiction or ships, people who steal writing or ocs, and minors interacting with nsfw posts (if ur gonna be weird about it, like 16+ at least but eh) are not welcome here. i’m not interested in discourse, moral panic, or people trying to turn fandom into a courtroom. At the end of the day these are fictional worlds and characters, they don't actually exist so there's no need to get so pressed over them, let other ppl have their own views and opinions on imaginary people.
asks / requests / boundaries
asks are welcome, whether they’re fic thoughts, headcanons, character rambles, oc questions, random questions, ship/character thoughts, prompts/requests for fics, or personal questions about me. i’m fine with people being nosy in a normal way, but i can refuse or ignore anything that makes me uncomfortable, so don’t be weird if i don’t answer something.
fic requests are also welcome, and i’ll write almost anything as long as it’s not gross. if you send a request, i probably saw it and i’ll get to it eventually, i just procrastinate and take forever sometimes, so please don’t pressure me or demand updates. don’t repost/steal my writing trying to play it off as your own, don’t steal my ocs or use them without permission, don’t bring discourse into my inbox, don’t trauma dump without warning, and minors shouldn’t interact with my nsfw posts though i know that is difficult to control sometimes so if you do please just don't be weird.
navigation / tags
i’m going to try and use these tags from now on, because i haven’t really used some of them properly before, so if i forget don’t kill me haha.
#angel writes — my writing
#angel rambles — random posts and thoughts
#angel answers — asks
#angel requests — requests/prompts
#angel’s ocs — oc posts and lore
#aria parkinson — aria posts
#briar rosewood — briar posts
#marauders — general marauders stuff
#nsfw / #nsft — smut or adult posts
#ao3 update — ao3 fic updates
#fic recs — fic recs if i ever remember to do them
final notes
feel free to follow, lurk, send asks, request fics, scream about characters, talk about ships, or just hang around. this blog is mostly marauders chaos, smut, comedy, angst, ocs, random fandom nonsense, and me being far too attached to fictional people.
also my boyfriend used to be in the marauders fandom, so anytime i talk about writing he already knows i mean fanfics and immediately starts making jokes about wolfstar werewolf smut, knots, or peter rat allegations. tragic that he understands my disease.
im actually getting so fucking sick and tired of these fucking millenial ass men and women on social media, specifically tiktok, acting like theyre fucking detectives regarding the lindsay clancy case. leave that poor fucking man alone and let that fucking woman accept responsibilty and accountability, these fucking people make me sick, this woman fucking killed her children, stop glorifying this woman and making her out to be some fucking martyr and have some empathy to the three babies this woman fucking murdered. god these people are fucking disgusting, actually get a fucking life bro omg
unrelated little thing but i’m planning a small series for my ao3 oneshot book where regulus goes on a school trip abroad to spain for a languages trip, and i want to make it a little romantic because obviously i do.
so i’m doing a poll: who should reg be with?
options are snape, xenophilius, christopher barley, benjy, amos, shacklebolt, or no one if we want him to be a solo menace wandering around spain collecting souvenirs and emotionally confusing everyone.
vote wisely because this will absolutely affect how insufferable he is on this trip.
Peter: When I was a child I was deathly afraid of vampires so I stole garlic powder from the kitchen and kept it in my pocket. If I was out after dark and thought someone was acting suspicious Id subtly sprinkle a little garlic powder on them
Peter: Like imagine a weird little boy deciding you failed his vibe check and promptly seasoning you
hiiiiiii, so I made a mood board for Aria. the quality is shitty, but it exists!
all the pictures were taken from pinterest.
OH MY GODDDDD I LOVE THIS SO FUCKING MUCH 😭😭😭
the quality is literally FINE because i am too busy losing my mind over how ARIA this is. like the black/grey/red colour palette??? the smeared red lips and lighter??? the eye make-up??? the outfit with the platforms and ripped tights??? THE HEART??? you got her whole grubby pretty slightly-dangerous little creature vibe so perfectly 😭
AND THE QUOTES??? “she had this weird habit of being herself all the time, that’s why, not everyone liked her” is actually painfully fucking accurate for aria because she genuinely does not know how to be anything other than herself even when being herself is actively making everyone around her develop a stress disorder 😭
BUT THAT CENTRE ONE. “what is a home if not the first place you learn to run from” HELLO????? and “you’ve got to bite the hand that starves you”????? i’m fucking SICK. that fits her and her family so horrifically well i need to go lie face-down on the floor for several business days.
and then ending it with “there was once a girl known by everyone and no one”??? THAT’S HER. THAT IS LITERALLY HER. everyone knows of aria, everyone has some ridiculous story or opinion about aria, but barely anybody actually knows what’s underneath all of that.
this is genuinely so fucking gorgeous and you captured her vibe SO WELL 😭❤️ i’m obsessed with it, thank you so so much for making this!!! i’m going to be staring at it like a deranged little museum curator for the foreseeable future
Barty’s a massive cuck btw. He loved regulus at first sight and was deeply pining for him for years and still got off to hearing him fuck Evan in their dorm before they got together. He continues to get off to the same thing after they get together btw.
I feel like a large part of the dynamic between Evan Regulus and Barty is how out of pocket and codependent they are, but like in such a chaotic and silly way sometimes. Like for example, Evan and Barty operate on the ‘favorite system’ which is pretty much like treating your mom as base in tag but regulus is the mother in this situation. Like when they get in a squabble or are just being stupid they run around regulus like he’s base and regulus could not be bothered at all. But the ‘favorite’ thing comes in because depending on the day, regulus is much more willing to let one of them slide than the other solely because it’s funny to watch the one not being favored get upset about it. There’s no rhyme or reason to who he picks as his ‘favorite’ that day and they can’t bribe him to change his mind, it’s just a fact of their life that some days Evan can get away with murder and get head pats instead of a talking to or an eye roll no matter what he does while other days it’s Barty that gets the privilege. It’s custom that whoever realizes they’re the favorite is an absolute menace about it the rest of the day. They rub it in the loser’s face in any way they can, and the loser usually just pouts about it because it doesn’t matter and they’ll get a turn later. It’s completely for shits and giggles and doesn’t actually influence any of the threes’ opinions on each other or moods at all, it’s literally just juvenile fun that they take seriously for the bit.
Really random question sorry but what other ships would you do for Aria and Briar? Besides the obvious and with say the marauders?
oh no don’t apologise i LOVE random ship questions 😭
outside of the obvious ones — smokeseeker (aria/regulus), venuskiller (briar/barty), starvenus (regulus/briar), smokekiller (aria/barty) and smokevenus (aria/briar) — there are actually quite a few i could see working depending on the AU/dynamic.
for aria, i already really like dorcas/aria (smokebomb), and i think peter/aria would genuinely work weirdly well. i feel like peter would be one of those people who initially finds her mildly terrifying but then realises that, once aria actually decides she likes you, she’s ridiculously loyal. i can imagine her dragging him into whatever bullshit she’s doing while peter’s just sort of accepted that this is his life now. he’d probably be much better at handling her than people expect too because he wouldn’t constantly try to challenge her.
i could definitely see mary/aria as well. there’s something about mary being annoyed by aria initially and then slowly becoming fascinated by her that i really like. especially because aria would absolutely flirt with her purely because mary gets irritated by it, and then at some point it stops being a joke and they’re both like. oh. fuck.
fabian/aria or gideon/aria could both be really fun too, especially because aria would absolutely match the prewetts’ chaos instead of being overwhelmed by it. honestly you could probably do aria with either twin and get a slightly different flavour of disaster. i could even see some ridiculous aria/fabian/gideon situation working because none of them have ever encountered the concept of making a sensible decision.
and i’m SO into the idea of lily/aria in a very specific rivals-to-lovers way. not soft academic rivals either. i mean they genuinely cannot fucking stand each other for ages. lily thinks aria is an infuriating waste of intelligence because she’s constantly getting high, breaking rules and somehow still doing ridiculously well, while aria thinks lily is uptight and gets endless entertainment out of winding her up. they’d argue constantly, get competitive over everything, and i can absolutely see it developing into that horrible we’re still arguing while making out situation. very much enemies/rivals to lovers with a generous amount of hate-fucking before either of them admits there are actual feelings involved.
with the actual marauders, peter/aria is probably the one i could most genuinely see becoming a proper relationship.
sirius/aria would be an absolute fucking nightmare 😭 they already fight constantly and aria has literally knocked one of his teeth out and KEPT IT. i don’t know if i’d ever make them conventionally romantic but as some fucked-up enemies-to-lovers AU where everyone around them is begging them to either kiss or kill each other already?? incredibly funny.
james/aria could work in the right AU too, mostly because i think he’d find her hilarious right up until she turned that energy on him. they’d have a very loud, competitive dynamic. i don’t think it’s one of my first choices for either of them, but i could definitely play with it.
remus/aria is interesting because they have that completely different energy to each other, and obviously there’s already the whole thing with aria unknowingly being obsessed with his werewolf form lmao. i could absolutely see an AU where that becomes something, especially because aria would probably be one of the least bothered people imaginable by the werewolf revelation.
for briar, i LOVE marlene/briar (cherryvenus) because marlene openly flirting with her while briar remains completely fucking oblivious will never stop being funny to me.
i can really see alice/briar too. that one would be much softer. alice feels like somebody briar could actually relax around, and i think they’d have such a lovely domestic sort of relationship — cooking together, studying together, briar showing alice all her plants and alice being appropriately impressed instead of asking why half of them have teeth.
frank/briar works for similar reasons. he feels like he’d be incredibly patient with her and would genuinely listen when she rambles about something she’s interested in. there’s something very sweet about them to me. honestly alice/briar/frank could work ridiculously well too.
and remus/briar is probably one of my favourite alternative briar ships. they have such compatible energy on the surface — quiet, bookish, cosy, both giving off the impression that they are significantly more normal than the people surrounding them — except briar is secretly raising carnivorous plants and has aria and barty as her closest people, so remus would gradually realise that he has once again accidentally attached himself to someone insane. i think they’d understand each other really well though. lots of library dates, tea, exchanging books, comfortable silence etc.
i could potentially see peter/briar as a cute rarepair too. much quieter and sweeter than peter/aria, but i think he’d feel very safe around her.
i don’t really see sirius/briar immediately, but i think it could be interesting specifically because briar wouldn’t react to him the way he expects people to. he’d be doing the whole dramatic sirius black routine and she’d just be sitting there trimming a carnivorous plant like “mhm :)”. meanwhile the plant is trying to eat his sleeve.
so i think my main non-obvious ones would probably be:
aria: dorcas, peter, mary, lily, fabian, gideon, remus, and potentially james/sirius in very specific disaster AUs.
briar: marlene, alice, frank, remus and peter, plus alice/frank/briar as a poly ship.
aria is generally REALLY fun to multiship because she creates a completely different kind of problem depending on who you put her with, whereas briar’s ships tend to become “person thinks they’ve found the sweet normal one and gradually discovers she is also fucking weird, just quieter about it.”
The coach exhaled them onto the pavement in a long, noisy, half-crumpled stream.
For a moment, nobody moved properly. They only stumbled and stretched and blinked up at the pale morning sky, all of them released from hours of trapped knees, warm windows, rattling bags, and the peculiar, stale smell of too many packed lunches sitting together in a luggage rack. The coach door hissed behind them. Someone’s trainer hit the kerb wrong. Someone else groaned as though the simple act of standing upright again was a personal attack.
Sirius Black was the first to fling both arms wide.
“Freedom,” he declared, voice rough with theatrical suffering. “Actual freedom. I was beginning to think we’d be buried in there. They’d find us years from now, mummified in polyester seats, clutching our water bottles.”
James Potter climbed down after him, one hand gripping the rail, glasses slightly crooked. “You had two seats to yourself.”
“I was emotionally cramped.”
“You were lying across my lap for half the journey.”
“That was survival.”
“That was drooling.”
“I don’t drool,” Sirius said, with immense dignity, and then immediately turned to Remus. “Do I drool?”
Remus Lupin stepped off the coach with the slow care of someone whose spine had already decided the day was too long and had not yet properly begun. His jumper was twisted slightly under his jacket, his hair flattened on one side from the window.
“Yes,” he said.
Sirius looked wounded. “You’re meant to love me.”
“I do. Tragically. In full knowledge of the drooling.”
Peter Pettigrew appeared behind them, clutching his packed lunch bag to his chest as though someone might steal it before they even reached the gates. “Is everyone sure we’re allowed to bring food in? What if they check the bags and take it?”
“They handed us the food, Peter,” Lily Evans said, stepping down with her water bottle already in one hand and her bag already zipped. Her hair had escaped its tie in coppery strands around her face, but she still managed to look more organised than everyone else by simple force of will. “The professors handed it to us. They know.”
Peter looked at the paper bag anyway. “Yes, but what if the park doesn’t know?”
Mary Macdonald, still standing on the bottom step of the coach, leaned around him and squinted towards the entrance. “If they confiscate school sandwiches, they’re doing us a favour.”
“That’s wasteful,” Alice Fortescue said, climbing down after her.
“That’s mercy,” Mary replied.
Frank Longbottom was handed down a crate of spare water bottles by one of the professors and immediately looked terrified by the responsibility. “Where do these go?”
“On the pavement, Longbottom,” Lily said. “Not into your soul.”
Frank set the crate down very carefully, as though it might explode if jostled.
Fabian Prewett bounded off the coach backwards, grinning. Gideon followed with a yawn so enormous it looked like he was trying to inhale the car park.
“Right,” Fabian said, clapping his hands once. “We’ve survived the journey. I propose we immediately eat lunch.”
“It’s nine in the morning,” Alice said.
“It’s lunch somewhere.”
“It’s breakfast here.”
“I can be flexible.”
Gideon peered into the nearest crate. “Did anyone get crisps?”
“Everyone got crisps,” Marlene McKinnon said, hopping lightly down from the coach with her bag slung over one shoulder. “It’s a school trip. The entire structure of British education depends on one bruised apple, one questionable sandwich, one tiny packet of crisps, and a biscuit if the teachers are feeling emotionally available.”
Mary looked into her own bag. “I got a biscuit.”
“See?” Marlene said. “Pastoral care.”
Behind them, more students spilled out in clusters, laughing too loudly, arguing over who had kicked whose ankle under the seats, pulling hoodies straight, grabbing bags from underneath the coach. The teachers moved through the bustle with clipped voices and clipboard authority, counting heads, checking names, reminding everyone about water bottles and packed lunches with the repeated patience of people who already knew at least three students would lose both before noon.
“Water bottles where I can see them,” one professor called.
A groan moved through the crowd.
“Packed lunches stay with you.”
A louder groan.
“No, Mr Prewett, your packed lunch does not count as eaten because you looked at it.”
Fabian closed his mouth around a corner of sandwich wrapper and looked personally betrayed.
Hooch stood near the front of the coach with her arms folded, sunglasses perched sharp across her face, whistle hanging around her neck though there was no pitch, no broomsticks, and absolutely no reasonable need for a whistle at Alton Towers. Somehow, this made the whistle more threatening. She watched the students form a vague, useless clot around the luggage hold and clicked her tongue.
“Lines,” she said.
Nobody listened.
“Lines,” Hooch repeated, not louder, but much worse.
The clot became something roughly resembling order.
Regulus Black stepped down last from the coach with his bag tucked neatly over one shoulder, dark curls ruffled from sleep and one hand wrapped around the strap near his chest. He didn’t hurry. He glanced once towards the park entrance, once towards the gathered students, then towards Hooch.
She lifted two fingers in a small beckoning gesture.
Regulus walked to her immediately.
Barty Crouch Jr., who had been halfway through rifling in his bag with the sharp, offended energy of someone convinced the coach had personally rearranged his belongings, looked up at once.
“Where are you going?”
Regulus ignored him long enough to accept a water bottle from Hooch.
Barty straightened. “Reg.”
Evan Rosier, standing beside Pandora, turned his head lazily. “He’s been summoned.”
“By Hooch,” Barty said. “That’s worse.”
Pandora Rosier was staring at the entrance with bright, distant fascination, her packed lunch bag dangling from two fingers. “There are so many people.”
Dorcas Meadowes shifted beside her, protective without appearing to move much at all. “Stay with us.”
“I am with you.”
“You are looking like you’re about to drift into the crowd and return with a balloon, three rocks, and someone else’s child.”
Pandora blinked. “That’s very specific.”
“It’s happened before.”
“Only once.”
“Twice,” Evan said.
Pandora smiled. “The second child was lost.”
“Pandora.”
“It was a rescue.”
Barty barely glanced at them. His eyes remained fixed on Regulus and Hooch, who had begun moving not towards the huge mass of students being herded towards the main entrance queue, but slightly to the side.
“Why is he walking away?” Barty demanded.
Dorcas followed his gaze. “Oh, he is.”
“Regulus,” Barty called, louder this time.
Regulus lifted one hand without turning around, a calm little acknowledgment that somehow managed to make Barty more furious.
They were all moving now, funnelled by the professors and the restless pressure of the crowd towards the front gates. The entrance was a wide spread of bodies, bags, signs, ropes, barriers, and lines. Lines everywhere. Lines that curled back on themselves like sleeping snakes. Lines full of families, students, couples, children bouncing on their toes, parents checking tickets, people shifting bags from shoulder to shoulder. The sound rose around them in layers: chatter, laughter, the wheels of suitcases or pushchairs over pavement, the distant mechanical hum of the park beyond the gates, the occasional sharp bark of a staff instruction.
The Hogwarts students slowed collectively when they saw the scale of it.
“Oh, that is disgusting,” Mary said.
Lily frowned. “It’s just a queue.”
“It’s a kingdom.”
James leaned sideways to look around a tall group ahead of them. “How long do you think?”
“Don’t ask that,” Remus said.
“How long do you think?” Sirius asked immediately, because he had been born with absolutely no survival instinct when it came to making Remus suffer.
Remus stared at the queue. “Long enough for me to become a different person.”
“Will you be nicer?”
“No.”
“Tragic.”
Peter rose onto his toes, trying to see the front. “Are we all in this one?”
“Yes,” Lily said.
“All of us?”
“Yes.”
“Even the professors?”
Marlene nodded towards the front. “Looks like it. Misery loves company and school policy.”
Ahead of them, a pair of professors were already shepherding students into a large, shuffling line for tickets and bag checks. Bags were being opened. Water bottles were being counted by teachers with the grim focus of guards at a vault. Packed lunch bags rustled. Students grumbled. Somebody complained that they had been given egg and cress. Somebody else tried to trade tuna for cheese and onion crisps. Nobody accepted.
Frank craned his neck. “We should stay together.”
“We won’t,” Gideon said cheerfully.
“We might.”
“We absolutely won’t.”
Alice adjusted the strap of her bag. “We can at least try not to scatter before we get into the park.”
Fabian pointed at James. “Potter’s going to see something shiny and bolt.”
James looked offended. “I am not a dog.”
Sirius slung an arm around him. “He’s worse. Dogs come back when called.”
“Sometimes I come back when called.”
Lily gave him a look.
James paused. “Eventually.”
The queue shifted forward by half a step. Everyone moved with it, then stopped again.
“This is already a nightmare,” Sirius said.
“You’ve been here for thirty seconds,” Remus replied.
“Yes, and I’ve gathered evidence.”
That was when Sirius saw him.
Regulus Black was not in their queue.
Regulus Black was not in any part of the massive school group now being absorbed into the ordinary entrance line. He was walking past them entirely, calm as anything, bag over one shoulder, ticket tucked into one hand. Beside him, Hooch strode with all the restrained smugness of someone who had, through divine intervention or paperwork, escaped a queue before breakfast.
Sirius blinked.
Then he leaned out from the line so sharply James had to grab the back of his jacket.
“Oi. Reg!”
Regulus paused.
Several heads turned. Barty’s, first and fastest. Evan’s with mild interest. Dorcas’s with narrowed focus. Pandora’s as if she had only just remembered they were all standing at the front of a theme park rather than inside a particularly crowded dream.
Regulus glanced over his shoulder.
Sirius lifted both hands. “What’s happening?”
Regulus looked at him for a moment, as though deciding how much of an answer the queue deserved.
Then he said, perfectly calmly, “I’m going in.”
Mary stared at him. “We’re all going in.”
“No,” Regulus said. “You’re waiting.”
Fabian made a wounded noise. “Uncalled for.”
James leaned out beside Sirius, squinting at Regulus and Hooch. “Why aren’t you waiting?”
Hooch’s mouth twitched.
Regulus held up his ticket between two fingers. “Ride Access Pass.”
Silence rippled through the nearest part of the line.
Then Sirius said, “You what?”
“Ride Access Pass,” Regulus said. “Because I’m diagnosed with autism, I have a Ride Access Pass and ticket. I can use the disability queue to get into the park and skip this line.”
The silence grew a different shape.
Peter looked from Regulus to the enormous queue, then to the tiny side area where two people were waiting, then back to Regulus. “That’s allowed?”
“Yes.”
“Legally?”
Regulus blinked at him. “Obviously.”
Sirius’s face had gone through several emotions at once and settled somewhere between delighted, jealous, and deeply impressed. “You absolute little menace.”
“I didn’t invent accessibility.”
“No, but you are enjoying it.”
Regulus’s mouth curved faintly. “Yes.”
Hooch folded her arms tighter, chin raised. “As am I.”
Lily, who had already been studying the arrangement with the swift, furious calculation of someone who respected rules but resented unequal logistics, looked at Hooch. “Professor, you get to go with him?”
“I’m his assigned essential companion,” Hooch said.
Sirius stared. “His what?”
“My ticket allows one carer or essential companion,” Regulus said. “The school assigned Hooch.”
“Because I am his coach and support worker,” Hooch added, the smugness now fully visible at the edges of her voice. “And because I already help him at school.”
Marlene’s eyes widened. “So you get to skip as well?”
Hooch smiled.
It was not a kind smile.
“Yes.”
A collective groan broke out around them.
“That’s outrageous,” Gideon said.
“That’s beautiful,” Fabian corrected.
Frank looked genuinely torn between envy and admiration. “So you don’t have to wait in this line at all?”
“No,” Regulus said.
“And ride lines?” Alice asked.
Regulus looked at her.
Alice stared back.
Regulus lifted his ticket again. “Fastrack.”
Mary’s mouth fell open. “Oh, you’re joking.”
“I’m not.”
“You get into the park without this queue and then you skip the ride queues?”
“Yes.”
“Both?”
“Yes.”
“All day?”
Regulus tilted his head. “That is generally how it works.”
James put both hands over his heart. “I feel betrayed.”
“You aren’t involved.”
“That’s what makes it hurt.”
Sirius had gone very still in the dramatic way he did whenever he was preparing to become insufferable. “Regulus.”
Regulus narrowed his eyes slightly. “No.”
“I didn’t ask anything.”
“You were about to.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know your face.”
Sirius pressed a hand to his chest. “My face is innocent.”
Remus coughed.
Lily muttered, “It has never been innocent.”
Sirius ignored them. “Little brother. Blood of my blood. Moon of the ancient and noble—”
“No.”
“—exceptionally beautiful child of our mother—”
“No.”
“—favourite son of our father—”
“Also no.”
“—surely your ticket allows one beloved sibling.”
“It allows one carer or essential companion,” Regulus said. “You are neither.”
“I could be essential.”
“You are ornamental at best.”
James wheezed.
Sirius pointed at him without looking away from Regulus. “Don’t laugh. This is a family tragedy.”
Regulus’s mouth twitched again. “Eomma and Appa gave you spending money.”
That shut Sirius up for half a second.
Then he perked. “They did.”
Regulus’s eyes brightened with a quiet, pleased satisfaction. “They gave me spending money too.”
“How much?” Sirius asked at once.
Regulus said nothing.
Sirius gasped. “More than me?”
Regulus’s expression stayed carefully blank.
Sirius looked offended down to the bone. “Regulus.”
“They gave it to us separately.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“They gave me enough for food and drinks and ride pictures and merch and souvenirs.”
Sirius stepped out of the line entirely. Lily grabbed his sleeve and yanked him back.
“Stay in the queue.”
“But my brother is rich and abandoning me.”
“You are also rich,” Lily said.
“Not spiritually.”
Regulus, who looked very spiritually wealthy at that moment, adjusted his bag on his shoulder. Hooch, beside him, checked her watch with pointed satisfaction.
Barty had been silent for too long.
It was unnatural enough that Evan glanced at him.
Barty was staring at Regulus’s ticket as if he could set it on fire by force of want alone. “So you just get to go?”
“Yes,” Regulus said.
“With Hooch?”
“Yes.”
“And skip all the queues?”
“Yes.”
“And buy food while we’re still standing here like peasants?”
Regulus’s smile sharpened by one single, devastating millimetre. “Probably.”
Barty looked as though he’d been stabbed.
Evan sighed. “He’s going to be impossible for the rest of the day.”
“I’m already impossible,” Barty snapped.
“More impossible.”
Dorcas crossed her arms. “Reg, are you really leaving us in this?”
Regulus looked at the queue. Then at Dorcas. Then at the queue again.
“Yes.”
Dorcas’s eyes narrowed. “Cold.”
“You’d leave me.”
“I would not.”
“You would if Pandora had the pass.”
Dorcas paused.
Pandora, who had gone very still beside her, looked slowly towards the small disability queue.
Barty noticed.
His expression shifted from theatrical betrayal to sudden confusion. “Wait.”
Pandora blinked.
Barty pointed at her. “Why don’t you have one?”
Pandora looked at him. “A packed lunch?”
“A pass.”
“Oh.”
Evan turned towards her too.
Dorcas’s face softened a fraction. “Pandora?”
Pandora looked at Regulus’s ticket again, then at the large, seething, miserable entrance queue they were standing in, then at the tiny side line where only two people waited in front of Regulus and Hooch.
“I don’t have a diagnosis,” she said.
Barty frowned. “But you’re autistic.”
Pandora’s head tipped slightly.
It was not surprise exactly. More like a thought moving from a distant shelf into her hand.
“Yes,” she said.
Barty stared. “So why don’t you have a diagnosis?”
“My parents never realised when I was little,” Pandora said, voice airy and matter-of-fact. “And then I was never bothered about getting tested.”
She looked again at the tiny line.
Her expression did not change much, but something in her eyes sharpened.
“That may have been a mistake.”
Evan gave a low hum of agreement. “Today does provide strong evidence.”
Barty looked horrified on her behalf. “You could’ve skipped with us.”
“With who?” Dorcas said.
“With me.”
“You don’t have a pass.”
“I could’ve been her essential companion.”
Dorcas stared at him. “You are nobody’s essential companion.”
“I am extremely essential.”
“You require supervision in gift shops.”
“I require appreciation.”
“You require a lead.”
Barty turned to Regulus, indignant. “Tell her I’m essential.”
Regulus considered him.
“No.”
Barty clutched at his chest. “Betrayal from every angle.”
“Try standing in the queue,” Hooch said dryly. “It builds character.”
Barty looked at her with open disbelief. “You’re literally not standing in the queue.”
“No,” Hooch said. “I have enough character.”
Marlene barked a laugh.
Mary pointed at Hooch. “That’s evil.”
“That’s experience,” Hooch replied.
The ordinary queue shuffled forward another half step. The Hogwarts students moved with it automatically, resentment dragging at their feet. Regulus and Hooch did not have to move with them. They stood in the clear strip beside the barrier, already near the small check-in point, the gap between them and everyone else beginning to feel less like a few feet of pavement and more like a social divide.
Sirius leaned on the rope barrier with mournful intensity. “Reg.”
Regulus looked at him.
“You wouldn’t really abandon your own brother in a queue this size.”
“I would.”
“You used to be sweet.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You used to hold my hand.”
“I was small and had poor judgement.”
James made a noise dangerously close to a giggle.
Sirius swung around. “You’re all enjoying my pain.”
“Not all,” Peter said quickly.
Mary looked at Peter.
Peter hesitated. “Some.”
Lily adjusted the strap of her bag and looked towards Regulus, less jealous now and more curious. “Does it cover every ride?”
Regulus shrugged lightly. “It means I don’t use the normal ride lines.”
“And the Fastrack?”
“Yes.”
Alice smiled despite herself. “That’s actually quite good.”
“It’s excellent,” Regulus said.
Frank nodded solemnly. “Makes sense. Queues are a lot.”
Regulus glanced at him for half a second, and his expression softened into something quieter. “Yes.”
The word landed more simply than the jokes around it. For all his smugness, for all the bright little gleam of satisfaction at walking past the rest of them, there was something settled beneath it. Not triumph alone. Relief. The kind that came from knowing, before the day began, that he would not have to spend hours crushed between strangers, trapped in loud zigzagging barriers, waiting too long with too many bodies and too little control.
Hooch saw it. Her smugness did not vanish, but it shifted, becoming less about escape and more about having arranged something properly.
“Right,” she said. “Ticket ready.”
Regulus held it up.
“Bag open.”
Regulus unzipped it.
“Water bottle?”
Regulus showed her.
“Packed lunch?”
He lifted the paper bag.
“Spending money?”
Regulus’s eyes flicked towards Sirius. “Enough.”
Sirius made a strangled sound. “I need numbers.”
“You need patience,” Lily said.
“I’ve never needed that in my life.”
“You have needed it constantly.”
“I’ve never possessed it, which is different.”
James leaned against him, looking past Regulus into the smaller queue. “Imagine us, Padfoot. Imagine the open gate. Imagine strolling through without having to stand here.”
“I am imagining it and it’s making me worse.”
Remus shaded his eyes with one hand and looked at Regulus. “Will you at least tell us what the inside looks like?”
Regulus blinked slowly. “It looks like a theme park.”
“Poetry,” Remus said.
“Stunning,” Marlene added. “Painted the picture.”
Pandora raised her hand slightly, as if they were still in a classroom. “Regulus.”
“Yes?”
“Will you describe the ticket process later?”
“Yes.”
“And the pass?”
“Yes.”
“And whether the queue is peaceful?”
Regulus looked towards the tiny line, where the two people in front of him were already being spoken to by a member of staff.
“Compared to this?” he said. “Yes.”
Pandora nodded to herself. “I am beginning a new chapter of my life.”
Barty rounded on her. “Getting diagnosed?”
“Possibly.”
“So we can skip queues?”
“So I can understand myself better,” Pandora said, then added, after the briefest pause, “And skip queues.”
Dorcas kissed the side of her head. “Good.”
Barty threw both hands up. “Why is everyone but me being rewarded by society?”
Evan smiled faintly. “Because society met you.”
Barty pointed at him. “Unnecessary.”
“Accurate.”
The larger line moved again. This time, the movement carried the group a few feet forward, but the angle meant Regulus and Hooch were still visible just beyond the barrier. They looked almost offensively close to the entrance now.
Fabian cupped his hands around his mouth. “Regulus Black, remember us when you’re eating overpriced sweets.”
Regulus’s reply came without hesitation. “No.”
Gideon nodded appreciatively. “Respect.”
Mary called, “Bring back evidence that joy exists.”
“I’m not sharing.”
“Didn’t ask you to share. Asked for evidence.”
“I’ll consider it.”
Alice smiled. “Have fun.”
Regulus glanced at her, then gave a tiny nod. “I will.”
Frank lifted his water bottle in a sort of solemn salute.
Regulus returned it with his own.
Peter frowned at his packed lunch again. “Do you think the tiny queue also checks sandwiches?”
James stared at him. “Peter.”
“What?”
“Yes,” Lily said. “They’ll check his bag too.”
Peter looked relieved. “Right.”
Marlene leaned towards Mary. “Imagine being the teacher who gets assigned to Regulus and accidentally wins the whole day.”
“I heard that, McKinnon,” Hooch said.
Marlene smiled sweetly. “Good, Professor.”
Hooch’s grin flashed quick and sharp. “And yes.”
The staff member at the small check-in point waved the two people ahead of Regulus and Hooch forward. They stepped through, tickets scanned, bags checked, gone in moments.
The gap opened.
Regulus looked once over his shoulder.
The massive queue waited behind him in all its slow, trapped glory: Sirius draped over the rope like a betrayed aristocrat, James laughing into his shoulder, Remus watching with tired amusement, Peter guarding his packed lunch, Lily pretending she wasn’t jealous, Mary openly jealous, Marlene delighted by everyone else’s jealousy, Alice smiling, Frank still holding his water bottle like a tiny flag, Fabian and Gideon already plotting emotional survival. Barty glowered as if he intended to fight the concept of fairness itself. Evan looked entertained. Dorcas looked resigned. Pandora looked thoughtful in the dangerous way that usually meant a life decision had quietly taken root.
Sirius lifted one hand.
“Reg.”
Regulus waited.
Sirius’s expression softened, just a little, beneath all the performance and noise. “Get a good ride picture.”
Regulus’s answering smile was small and real. “I’m getting several.”
Sirius grinned. “That’s my brother.”
“Buy something stupid,” James called.
Regulus looked at him. “That’s your role.”
“Ouch.”
“Deserved,” Lily said.
Hooch tapped Regulus’s shoulder with two fingers. “Come on. Before they remember we’re happy.”
Regulus turned away from the main queue.
Barty made one last wounded sound. “Regulus.”
Regulus did not stop this time. He only raised his hand again, calm and pleased and already victorious.
Hooch walked beside him with her ticket ready, shoulders straight, sunglasses bright, looking more satisfied than any teacher had a right to look before ten in the morning.
They joined the tiny line.
Two minutes later, Regulus’s ticket scanned with a clean little beep. His bag was checked. His water bottle was waved through. Hooch followed, smug as sunlight on steel.
Then the gate opened, and Regulus Black and Madam Hooch stepped into Alton Towers ahead of everyone else, disappearing into the park beyond.
Author’s Note: This story is deeply personal to me. It’s based on my own experiences and feelings around cancer, especially the way it has passed through my maternal family, and the grief of losing my mother to cancer when I was young.
A lot of Regulus’s fear here comes from my own fear of inheriting those genetics, of waiting for my body to betray me, and of carrying that history even when nothing is visibly wrong. Please take care reading.
Hogwarts had never been good at changing quietly.
It was a castle of drama by nature, a place of staircases with opinions and portraits with grudges and suits of armour that sang drunkenly after midnight if Peeves bribed them with stolen custard creams. Even its silences were old and theatrical, full of candlelight, dust, and the lurking suspicion that something in the wall had teeth.
So, naturally, the school’s great expansion had arrived like a thunderclap in velvet robes.
It had started, as most catastrophes and improvements did, with complaints.
Half-blood and Muggle-born students had been complaining for years that magical education was, in certain ways, absurdly narrow. They could brew potions to regrow bones but half the school couldn’t calculate a percentage without looking personally betrayed. They could identify twelve uses for powdered moonstone but struggled to write a properly structured essay unless Professor Binns’ ghostly monotone frightened them into submission. They could charm an object across the room but did not know what electricity actually was, which Lily Evans considered grounds for governmental concern.
And then there were other complaints, quieter at first, and then not so quiet at all.
Students wanted space for things Hogwarts had spent centuries pretending did not exist.
Different faiths. Different cultures. Different languages. Different holidays. Different foods. Different ways of mourning, celebrating, dressing, praying, gathering, living.
Students wanted a school that did not treat “British wizarding tradition” as if it were a moral law carved into the bones of the earth.
Students wanted Muggle Studies that did not sound like pure-bloods peering at a toaster through opera glasses.
Students wanted proper classes.
Humanities. English. Maths. Science. Art. Music. Physical Education. Practical health. Modern languages. Technology, somehow, despite the castle’s long-standing habit of making anything with a battery give up and die in a faint puff of smoke.
Hogwarts, under the pressure of a generation that had discovered meetings, petitions, strongly worded letters, and the phrase “institutional negligence,” had begun to expand.
New corridors had opened behind old tapestries. Unused classrooms had been emptied of cursed violins, dusty duelling trophies, and one extremely angry wardrobe. Noticeboards had appeared in every common room, covered in provisional timetables, consultation schedules, student feedback forms, and warnings about not using the new Muggle calculators to write rude words upside down.
It was, in other words, chaos.
Organised chaos, Professor McGonagall insisted.
Still chaos, everyone else thought.
That afternoon, one of the old Defence classrooms had been turned into what the staff were calling a “student consultation space,” though Sirius Black had immediately called it “the complaint aquarium” and James Potter had asked whether refreshments were being provided.
They were not.
The room smelled faintly of chalk, old wood, and the sharp polish Filch used when he wanted everyone to know he’d been inconvenienced. The desks had been dragged into a wide semi-circle, leaving the front of the classroom open. A large roll of parchment had been pinned to the blackboard, already labelled in McGonagall’s precise, slanted handwriting:
CLUBS AND EXTRACURRICULAR PROPOSALS
Underneath, in smaller script:
Purpose: to support academic growth, wellbeing, cultural inclusion, practical skills, and constructive student engagement.
The words sat there with all the optimism of a lamb wandering into a dragon enclosure.
Professor McGonagall stood before them, tall and severe in emerald robes, her tartan shawl pinned neatly at her shoulder. Beside her stood Madam Pomfrey, arms folded, expression brisk but not unkind, her healer’s cap pristine and her eyes already carrying the faint, haunted impatience of a woman who had seen too many students attempt to swallow enchanted objects for dares.
The students had been gathered from two groups that, under ordinary circumstances, should not have been placed in a room together without a responsible adult, a duelling barrier, and possibly a priest.
The Gryffindors took up most of the left side.
Sirius Black lounged in his chair like gravity was a suggestion he found personally insulting, dark hair falling around his face, school tie loose, one boot hooked carelessly around the leg of James Potter’s desk. James sat beside him, bright-eyed and restless, glasses slipping down his nose as he spun a quill between his fingers. Peter Pettigrew was half-hidden behind them, trying to look both interested and not involved. Remus Lupin sat with a book closed beneath one hand, gaze calm, mouth already twitching with the effort of not laughing too early.
Lily Evans sat upright with a parchment of her own, because of course she did. Mary Macdonald had doodled a flower in the margin of Lily’s notes and was pretending innocence. Marlene McKinnon had her chair tipped back on two legs, arms crossed, expression wicked. Alice Fortescue and Frank Longbottom sat near each other, both politely attentive in the way of people who were about to be forced to witness nonsense and wished to be remembered as blameless. Fabian and Gideon Prewett had taken the back corner together, identical red heads tilted at identical angles, already vibrating with the promise of mischief.
On the other side sat Regulus Black and his friends.
Regulus was quiet in the middle of them, smaller than nearly everyone in the room, composed as a pressed flower in dark robes. He sat with his hands folded around the strap of his bag, grey eyes lowered toward the grain of the desk. Barty Crouch Jr. sprawled too close on one side, knee knocking Regulus’s under the table, grin sharp enough to cut thread. Evan Rosier leaned on Regulus’s other side with lazy elegance, pale and watchful. Pandora Rosier sat beside Evan, dreamy-eyed and luminous, braiding a strand of her hair around her finger as if the room were happening somewhere far away. Dorcas Meadowes sat forward, elbows on the desk, gaze steady and guarded, already looking as if she had mentally challenged half the room to try something.
McGonagall surveyed them all.
“Right,” she said crisply. “As you are aware, Hogwarts is beginning a significant programme of academic and pastoral expansion.”
Fabian raised his hand.
“No,” McGonagall said.
Fabian lowered his hand.
Gideon raised his.
“No.”
Gideon lowered his hand.
Sirius leaned toward James and whispered, loudly, “She’s frightened of innovation.”
“I am frightened,” McGonagall said without looking at him, “of whatever you are about to call innovation.”
James’s mouth twitched. “Fair.”
McGonagall continued. “Members of staff are visiting classes over the next several weeks to ask for student suggestions regarding clubs and extracurricular activities. These should be constructive proposals. They should positively affect you, your peers, and the wider school community. They may be academic, cultural, practical, social, athletic, or supportive in nature.”
Madam Pomfrey gave the room a sharp look. “And they should not involve unnecessary injury.”
“That feels targeted,” Marlene said.
“It is,” Pomfrey replied.
Barty grinned. “I like her.”
“You like anyone who threatens people,” Evan murmured.
“I respect professionalism.”
Dorcas snorted.
McGonagall took a piece of chalk in hand. “We will begin by gathering suggestions. I will remind you again: useful, constructive, and possible.”
“Possible is subjective,” Sirius said.
“It is not,” Lily said.
“It absolutely is,” said James. “People used to think flying was impossible.”
“We use broomsticks,” Lily said.
“Exactly. Vision.”
“Mr Potter,” McGonagall said, “please do not make me regret beginning with your side of the room.”
James sat a little straighter, but only a little. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Professor.”
James put his hand up. “Official broom racing club.”
“You already play Quidditch.”
“This is different.”
“How?”
“No balls.”
Sirius nodded solemnly. “James needs a sport where fewer things are actively trying to break his skull.”
“Thank you, Padfoot.”
“I said fewer.”
McGonagall pinched the bridge of her nose. “That proposal may be revisited under PE provision, but this is not an opportunity to create a second Quidditch team for Mr Potter’s ego.”
“My ego would captain beautifully,” James said.
Lily muttered, “It would fail inspection.”
Peter raised his hand uncertainly. “What about a snack club?”
“A snack club,” McGonagall repeated.
Peter nodded, gaining courage. “People bring snacks. Then we eat them.”
There was a pause.
Pomfrey said, “And?”
Peter blinked. “That’s it.”
“It’s elegant in its simplicity,” Sirius said.
“It’s lunch,” said Mary.
Peter looked injured. “Lunch is scheduled. Snack club is a movement.”
Fabian leaned forward. “Would there be minutes?”
Peter frowned. “Minutes?”
“To record the snacks.”
Gideon nodded gravely. “Snack minutes. Essential for accountability.”
Peter seemed to consider this. “Maybe.”
McGonagall looked at the blank parchment behind her as if it had personally betrayed her by existing. “I will write down ‘food appreciation society’ and hope the kitchens survive.”
She wrote it, very reluctantly.
Mary raised her hand next. “Gossip club.”
“No,” Lily said at once.
Mary turned on her. “It’s oral history.”
“It is not oral history.”
“It is if people remember it.”
Remus covered his mouth with his hand.
McGonagall lowered the chalk. “Miss Macdonald.”
Mary smiled sweetly. “Yes, Professor?”
“No.”
Mary sighed. “Censorship.”
“Mercy,” said Alice.
Sirius raised his hand high, fingers wiggling. “Motorbike club.”
“No,” McGonagall said.
“You don’t even know what I was going to propose.”
“You were going to propose motorbike club.”
“Yes, but you didn’t know that.”
“I did.”
Sirius looked at James. “She’s reading minds now.”
“Terrible abuse of power,” James agreed.
“Muggle vehicles cannot operate safely or consistently on school grounds,” McGonagall said.
Sirius brightened. “So we make magical motorbikes.”
“No.”
“Hybrid engineering club.”
“No.”
“Alternative transport research society.”
“No.”
“Leather jacket appreciation club?”
“No.”
Barty, from the other side of the room, muttered, “That one had potential.”
Sirius pointed at him. “See? Cross-house unity.”
Regulus did not look up, but his mouth flickered at the edge.
McGonagall did not smile. “Mr Black, you will sit properly or you will leave.”
Both Sirius and Regulus straightened at the surname.
Only Sirius made a theatrical show of it.
Regulus merely shifted quietly, hands still folded, eyes still down.
Frank flushed slightly. “I was thinking plants, greenhouses, maybe Muggle gardening methods too. Composting. Food growing. Practical skills.”
Professor McGonagall looked faintly relieved. “Thank you, Mr Longbottom. That is precisely the kind of—”
“Can we grow plants that fight each other?” Gideon asked.
Pomfrey shut her eyes.
Frank’s blush deepened. “That was not part of my suggestion.”
“But it could be,” Fabian said. “You can’t deny there’s educational value in plant combat.”
“Botanical duelling,” Gideon said.
Marlene snapped her fingers. “Venus flytrap tournaments.”
“Absolutely not,” Pomfrey said.
Dorcas looked at Frank. “I thought the gardening idea was good before they got their hands on it.”
Frank gave her a small, grateful smile. “Thanks.”
Pandora raised her hand.
McGonagall hesitated. “Miss Rosier?”
“A club for listening to mushrooms.”
Silence.
Evan closed his eyes as if he had been expecting exactly this and was still somehow disappointed.
Barty slowly turned to look at her. “Panda.”
Pandora smiled vaguely. “They gossip underground. We never ask them how they feel about it.”
Lily stared at her. “Is that a magical thing or a you thing?”
“Yes,” Pandora said.
Remus, after a valiant battle with himself, quietly lost and laughed into his sleeve.
McGonagall wrote nothing. “I will mark that as environmental awareness.”
Pandora beamed. “They’ll appreciate that.”
Alice raised her hand. “Maybe a sewing or repair club? For robes and clothes. Not just charms, but actual stitching.”
Mary snapped upright. “Oh, yes. That’s good. People could customise things, fix hems, mend old uniforms.”
Pomfrey nodded. “Practical.”
McGonagall wrote it down. “Textile repair and garment skills.”
“Can we include dramatic capes?” Sirius asked.
“No.”
“What about emotional capes?”
“No.”
“Ceremonial capes?”
“No.”
“You’re killing culture.”
“You will survive.”
“Debatable.”
Gideon raised his hand. “Club where we rank portraits by how likely they are to commit fraud.”
McGonagall stared at him.
Fabian added, “It would teach critical thinking.”
“Media literacy,” Remus said lightly.
Lily turned slowly to look at him. “Don’t encourage them.”
“I’m only saying.”
Professor McGonagall pressed the chalk so hard against the board it snapped.
A tiny white fragment skittered across the floor.
Everyone watched it go.
Madam Pomfrey bent, picked it up, and placed it calmly on the desk.
“Continue,” she said.
The suggestions continued.
They got worse.
James wanted a “hair charm experimentation society,” which Lily said already existed informally every time Sirius looked in a mirror.
Sirius suggested a “dramatic entrances club” because, according to him, too many students were arriving in rooms like they had no respect for narrative tension.
Marlene wanted a “legal duelling but only with pillows” club.
Mary wanted a “fashion criticism society,” which she insisted was not the same as gossip club, because gossip attacked people and fashion criticism attacked choices.
Peter suggested “nap club.”
Pomfrey, to everyone’s surprise, paused on that.
“Structured rest can be beneficial,” she said.
Peter looked triumphant.
“Not in cupboard corners during Transfiguration,” McGonagall said sharply.
Peter looked less triumphant.
Fabian proposed a club devoted entirely to finding secret passages that had not already been found, except his criteria for “not already found” seemed to mean “not already found by me.”
Gideon suggested a “levitating furniture orchestra.”
Alice asked about a baking club, which began as sensible and immediately turned dangerous when Sirius asked whether cakes could be trained to bite.
Frank, perhaps learning from earlier, suggested a first aid club. Pomfrey looked interested for approximately three seconds before James said, “With fake blood?” and Fabian said, “Or real blood, for realism,” and she visibly reconsidered humanity.
Evan suggested, without moving from his elegant slouch, “A club where everyone sits quietly and does not speak.”
Barty gave him a wounded look. “I’d fail.”
“You would be removed at the door.”
“Betrayal.”
Dorcas said, “Self-defence club.”
McGonagall nodded. “That may have merit.”
“Against other students,” Dorcas clarified, glancing at the Gryffindors.
“Miss Meadowes.”
“What? Practical.”
Marlene grinned. “I’d join.”
“Of course you would,” Mary said.
Pandora raised her hand again. “Cloud naming club.”
“No,” said McGonagall.
“Only the lonely ones.”
“No.”
“They drift so far.”
“Miss Rosier.”
“Fine,” Pandora said gently, as if McGonagall had wounded the sky itself.
Through it all, Regulus said nothing.
He sat in the middle of his friends like a shadow someone had taught manners. His fingers remained wrapped around the strap of his bag. His posture was straight but not stiff, his head slightly bowed, curls brushing his cheek. He watched the chalk move across the board without seeming to follow the words.
Sirius noticed.
Sirius always noticed Regulus, even when he pretended not to.
Across the room, beneath his lounging posture and easy grin, Sirius’s gaze kept slipping back to his younger brother. Once, when James was in the middle of proposing a “competitive cloak swishing club,” Sirius glanced over and saw Regulus’s thumb rubbing slowly against the webbing of his own hand.
Not nervous, exactly.
Worse.
Preparing.
Sirius’s grin faded by a fraction.
No one else saw.
Regulus’s friends didn’t, because they were busy being themselves around him. Barty was half-hissing arguments with Evan about whether “political assassination history club” counted as Humanities. Evan was pretending not to hear him. Pandora was drawing stars in the corner of her parchment. Dorcas was watching the Gryffindors with open suspicion, as if she knew one of them was going to throw something emotional before the lesson ended.
McGonagall turned back to the class after rejecting Fabian’s request for a “tax evasion appreciation society.”
“For the last time,” she said, “the purpose of these consultations is not to create hiding places for crimes.”
Gideon looked personally offended. “It was theoretical.”
“It had a membership fee.”
“That was also theoretical.”
“It was three Galleons.”
“A theoretical three Galleons.”
Lily raised her eyes to the ceiling. “I’m going to start a club for people with headaches.”
Pomfrey said, “That one may have genuine demand.”
Mary leaned over. “Can mine be caused by men?”
“Most are,” Lily said.
James pressed a hand to his chest. “Cruel.”
“Accurate.”
McGonagall scanned the room, chalk in hand. Her gaze passed over the Gryffindors, over hands still half-raised, over Sirius who was no longer performing quite so loudly, and then settled on the small, silent figure in the other half of the room.
“Mr Black,” she said.
Both brothers looked up again.
This time, McGonagall’s gaze stayed firmly on Regulus.
Regulus blinked.
Barty immediately straightened. “He doesn’t have to—”
“Mr Crouch,” McGonagall said.
Barty’s mouth snapped shut, though not without visible effort.
James, already recovering from his wounded dignity, began, “Regulus probably wants a—”
“No,” McGonagall said sharply.
James stopped.
Marlene opened her mouth.
McGonagall turned her eyes on her next. “No.”
Marlene closed it.
Sirius shifted, boots landing flat on the floor with a quiet thud.
McGonagall’s voice softened by the smallest degree. “Mr Black has been silent while everyone else has had ample opportunity to contribute. He will have his turn without interruption.”
The room changed.
Not dramatically. Not in any way that would have made the portraits whisper about it later. But the air tightened a little, and Regulus felt it. He always felt shifts like that, tiny atmospheric pressures, the shape of everyone’s attention turning toward him.
He disliked attention.
He disliked being asked to speak in rooms full of people who spoke louder.
He disliked the way a pause could become a spotlight.
His fingers tightened once around his bag strap.
Evan noticed then.
So did Dorcas.
Barty leaned slightly closer, knee pressing to Regulus’s again. “Reg,” he murmured, under his breath, not quite soft enough.
Regulus drew in a breath.
Sirius sat very still.
Professor McGonagall waited.
Madam Pomfrey watched Regulus with the practised patience of someone used to frightened patients deciding whether pain was worth admitting aloud.
Regulus swallowed.
“I…” he began.
His voice was quiet enough that several students leaned forward automatically.
James shifted as if about to say something helpful and received a warning look from Lily so sharp it could have sliced his glasses clean in half.
Regulus started again. “I think there should be a medical support and advocacy group.”
No one spoke for half a second.
Then Peter frowned. “A what?”
Regulus looked down at the desk. “A medical support and advocacy group.”
The words sat strangely in the room. Too serious. Too clean-edged. Too heavy compared with snack minutes and cloud naming and dramatic entrance societies.
Barty’s eyebrows drew together. “What sort of medical?”
Evan looked at Regulus sharply now, lazy posture abandoned. Pandora’s dreamy expression thinned into something quieter. Dorcas went very still.
Across the room, Sirius’s face changed completely.
It was small. The sort of thing someone might miss if they hadn’t grown up learning the Black family’s language of almost-nothing.
His mouth softened. His eyes warmed and hurt at once. He smiled at Regulus, but not his usual reckless grin. Not the smile he used to charm, provoke, or survive.
This one was gentle.
Reassuring.
A small, wordless thing held across the room like a hand.
Regulus saw it.
His shoulders loosened by a fraction.
Remus noticed Sirius’s expression and went quiet.
Lily noticed Remus noticing and looked between the brothers with sudden concern.
James, unfortunately, did not notice quickly enough.
“A medical support club?” he said, brows furrowing. “Isn’t that just the hospital wing?”
Sirius’s head snapped toward him.
James didn’t see that either.
Marlene tilted her head, not cruel at first, just confused. “What would students even do? We’re not healers.”
Mary wrinkled her nose. “Sounds a bit intense.”
Peter, trying to follow the social current and failing, said, “Like… people sitting around talking about being ill?”
Regulus’s jaw tightened.
Dorcas’s eyes cut to Peter.
Frank looked uneasy. Alice glanced at him, then at Regulus, as if she sensed danger but not the shape of it.
Fabian leaned back in his chair. “Bit saviour complex, isn’t it?”
The words landed badly.
Very badly.
Regulus went motionless.
Sirius stood so fast his chair scraped hard against the stone floor.
“Sirius,” Remus said quietly.
“No,” Sirius said.
McGonagall’s eyes sharpened. “Mr Black.”
Sirius ignored her, gaze fixed on Fabian with a fury so sudden and clean that even James straightened. “What did you just say?”
Fabian’s expression faltered. “I just meant—”
“No, go on.” Sirius’s voice had dropped. Not loud. Worse than loud. “Say it again.”
Gideon sat forward. “He didn’t mean anything by it.”
“I didn’t ask you.”
James put a hand half-out. “Padfoot—”
Sirius rounded on him. “Don’t.”
The word cracked across the room.
James froze.
Regulus’s eyes closed.
For one second, the classroom seemed to hold its breath.
Then Mary, uncomfortable, defensive because guilt had not yet arrived and so irritation had taken its place, said, “It’s not like he’s wrong to ask. Regulus looks perfectly healthy. He plays Quidditch.”
Sirius made a sound under his breath that was almost a laugh and not even slightly amused.
Marlene, less certain now, still shrugged. “I mean, yeah. You’re able-bodied, aren’t you?”
Regulus opened his eyes.
Sirius looked ready to climb across the desks.
Dorcas stood halfway up.
Barty’s mouth parted with a look that promised something vicious. Evan’s hand landed flat against the desk. Pandora’s fingers stopped moving in her hair.
Professor McGonagall’s voice cut through the swelling heat. “Enough.”
No one moved.
Her gaze went to Fabian first, then Mary, then Marlene, then the rest of the room. “You will not mock a student suggestion because you do not immediately understand it.”
Fabian flushed.
Mary looked away.
Marlene’s chair legs hit the floor.
Regulus breathed in.
It wasn’t a large breath.
It was small. Controlled. Measured, like everything about him. But Sirius heard it and went pale with anger all over again, because he knew that breath. He knew the little ritual of it. The way Regulus built a wall inside himself one brick at a time so he could say something that hurt.
“Sirius,” Regulus said softly.
Sirius turned at once.
Regulus didn’t lift his eyes all the way. “It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not.”
“I can answer.”
Sirius looked at him for a long second, jaw clenched, then slowly sat back down. Not relaxed. Not pacified. Merely obeying because Regulus had asked.
Barty noticed that too.
His stare moved between the brothers, confused and sharp.
Regulus placed both hands flat on the desk.
“I suggested it,” he said, voice quiet but steadier now, “because I would have wanted something like that when I was younger.”
The room remained silent.
Regulus looked at the parchment on the board rather than at anyone’s face. “I had cancer as a child.”
No one breathed.
Or perhaps everyone did, all at once, and the sound was so soft it vanished into the stone.
Barty’s expression emptied.
Evan stared at Regulus like he had been struck.
Pandora’s lips parted soundlessly.
Dorcas sat back down, slowly, as if her knees had forgotten what they were for.
Across the room, James’s face lost every hint of colour.
Mary’s hand flew to her mouth.
Fabian looked as if someone had punched him in the stomach.
Sirius didn’t move. He only looked at his brother.
Regulus continued before anyone could speak over the silence.
“I was little the first time. Too little to understand all of it properly. I understood hospitals before I understood most normal things.” His fingers flexed once against the desk. “I understood that adults lowered their voices when they thought I was asleep. I understood that my appa and eomma looked different under hospital lights. Older. Frightened. I understood that Sirius stopped making jokes when healers came in with certain faces.”
Sirius bowed his head.
No one looked at him except Remus, who looked only briefly, gently, and then looked away again.
Regulus’s voice stayed level.
It was almost worse because it stayed level.
“I had treatment. Chemo. Radiology. Surgeries. More than once. I went into remission, and then I came out of it, and then I went back into treatment, and then everyone said words like brave and strong and lucky as if those words meant anything when you’re vomiting into a bowl and your body doesn’t feel like yours.”
Madam Pomfrey’s expression had changed.
The briskness was gone.
She was watching him now with something quiet and stricken around the eyes.
McGonagall had not moved at all, but her face had tightened.
Regulus swallowed.
“My parents were there,” he said. “My appa and eomma. They were there through all of it. Sirius was there. Our family was there. People like to decide things about my family because it’s easier when people are simple in your head, but they were there. My eomma slept in chairs beside hospital beds. My appa learnt every medication schedule better than some of the healers. Sirius used to sneak things in for me because I was bored, and because sometimes the hospital food tasted like wet parchment.”
Sirius’s mouth twitched faintly, painfully.
Regulus looked at him then, just briefly.
“You brought me those awful comics.”
“They weren’t awful,” Sirius said, voice rough.
“They were very awful.”
“You laughed.”
“I had a fever.”
“You still laughed.”
Regulus’s eyes softened for one bare moment. “I still laughed.”
Then he looked down again.
Barty was staring at him as if trying to reconcile every version of Regulus he knew with this one suddenly standing behind them all. The sharp-tongued Regulus. The proud one. The little prince of Slytherin corridors. The precise Quidditch player. The boy who vanished into silence when rooms got too loud. The boy who smiled like it cost him. The boy who never let anyone carry his bag even when he looked tired enough to dissolve.
“You never told us,” Barty said.
His voice sounded small in a way none of them had ever heard from him.
Regulus’s shoulders tightened. “No.”
“Why?”
Regulus’s mouth pressed thin. “Because I wanted to be something else.”
Barty had no answer to that.
Evan did, but it died before becoming sound.
Dorcas looked down at her own hands, jaw clenched, fury and hurt and love twisting together in her expression.
Pandora’s eyes were wet.
Regulus kept speaking.
“When you’re sick for a long time, people stop seeing you before they stop loving you. Even the good ones. Even the ones trying.” His voice did not tremble, but the room seemed to. “You become the illness first. The appointment. The scan. The blood result. The surgery date. The relapse. The remission. The thing everyone is afraid to hope too loudly about. People ask how you are, but they mean, are you dying? Are you better? Are you still frightening us?”
Lily’s eyes had gone bright.
Mary’s face crumpled further.
Peter stared at the desk, shame creeping red up his neck.
Regulus’s fingers moved to his sleeve. He tugged it down though it was already low enough.
“I grew up in hospitals,” he said. “Not entirely. I had home. I had rooms and tutors and birthdays and Christmas mornings and Sirius being insufferable. But hospitals were always there. Waiting. The smell of antiseptic. The sound of curtains on rails. The feel of tape coming off skin. Cold hands. Warm blankets. Needles. Healers counting under their breath. My eomma trying not to cry where I could see her.”
Sirius covered his mouth with one hand.
James looked at him then, really looked, and something in his face broke.
Regulus’s gaze had gone far away.
“There were times I thought I was going to die,” he said. “Not in a dramatic way. Not like stories. Just… quietly. In the middle of the night. During treatment. Before surgeries. After bad test results. I’d lie there and think, this might be the time my body gives up. This might be the one they can’t fix. This might be the last room I ever see.”
No one interrupted.
Not even the Prewetts moved.
Regulus breathed out through his nose, controlled and careful. “And then sometimes I didn’t die. And everyone celebrated. And I was grateful, obviously. I was. But being grateful doesn’t make it simple. Surviving doesn’t hand you yourself back whole.”
Madam Pomfrey lowered herself into the chair beside the front desk.
It was the first time any of them had seen her sit in the middle of a student session.
Regulus’s voice dipped quieter.
“I felt wrong in my body for a long time. I still do, sometimes. I have scars. I have places that ache when the weather turns. I have memories that come back because of a smell, or a sound, or because someone says a word too casually. I have mornings when I wake up and my first thought is whether something inside me has betrayed me again.”
Barty’s eyes flashed up.
“Reg,” he whispered.
Regulus did not look at him. Perhaps because he could not.
“It took a long time to recover enough to play Quidditch,” he said. “Longer than people think. Everyone sees the result and assumes it was easy. They see me on a broom and decide I must be fine. They see that I can walk and fly and train and sit exams, and they think that means the story is over.”
He finally looked across the room.
His eyes moved over Mary. Marlene. Fabian. Gideon. James. Peter.
Not accusing.
That made it worse.
“It isn’t over,” he said. “It’s quieter. That’s all.”
Mary’s eyes filled.
Marlene looked away, jaw tight.
Fabian whispered, “Shit.”
McGonagall did not reprimand him.
Regulus continued. “I still have check-ins. Tests. Scans. Blood work. Appointments where everyone acts calm because there is a professional way to discuss whether your life is about to split open again. I still wait for results. I still watch my parents try to pretend they aren’t afraid. Sirius still pretends he isn’t counting days.”
Sirius laughed once, broken and quiet.
“I’m not very subtle, am I?”
“No,” Regulus said softly. “You’re terrible.”
Sirius wiped quickly beneath one eye with the heel of his hand, then looked furious that his own body had betrayed him by feeling something publicly.
James looked wrecked.
Utterly wrecked.
He opened his mouth, closed it, and stared at Regulus as if every careless word from the last ten minutes had become stones in his hands.
Remus’s face had gone pale in that quiet, inward way of his. Lily was sitting perfectly still, but tears had slipped down her cheeks. Alice’s hand was pressed to her lips. Frank’s eyes were fixed on the floor, guilt and sorrow heavy on his usually gentle face.
Regulus looked at McGonagall and Pomfrey, because that was easier than looking at his friends.
“I’ve spoken to some other students,” he said. “Not many. Only a few. Students who have chronic illnesses. Students who have terminal illnesses. Students who had things before Hogwarts and came here hoping nobody would know. Students who still take potions every morning and hide the bottles under their socks. Students who miss lessons and let people think they’re lazy because it’s easier than explaining pain. Students who are afraid all the time but don’t want to be treated like glass.”
Madam Pomfrey’s eyes closed briefly.
Regulus’s voice grew firmer by a thread.
“That’s why I think there should be a group. Not a pity club. Not students pretending to be healers. Not people collecting sick children to feel useful.” His eyes flicked, briefly, to Fabian, whose face twisted with shame. “A proper support and advocacy group. Somewhere students can speak without having to perform being fine. Somewhere they can ask for help getting lesson notes, or talk about appointments, or figure out how to tell a professor they need accommodations. Somewhere people can learn how to support friends without being cruel by accident.”
His eyes moved to Mary.
She flinched, but she did not look away.
“It could include information sessions,” Regulus said, words gathering now, not louder, but clearer. “How to advocate for yourself with healers. How to manage medication safely at school. How to talk to teachers about missed work. How to support someone without making them feel like a burden. How not to assume health by looking at someone. How to make hospital stays less isolating. How to include students who can’t always attend clubs or Hogsmeade weekends or Quidditch matches. Maybe older students could help younger ones. Maybe Madam Pomfrey could advise, if she wanted. Maybe professors could learn from it too.”
McGonagall’s face flickered.
That landed.
Regulus noticed, but he did not stop.
“Because being sick is lonely,” he said. “It’s lonely even when people love you. It’s lonely because nobody else is inside your body with you. Nobody else wakes up in it. Nobody else has to trust it again after it has hurt you.”
His voice finally shook.
Only once.
Tiny.
Devastating.
“I would have wanted somewhere to put that,” he said.
Silence.
It filled the room from wall to wall.
Even the old castle seemed to go quiet around them, as if the stones themselves were listening.
Then Barty moved.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. He simply turned toward Regulus, his face pale and furious and devastated, and said, “I should’ve known.”
Regulus looked at him. “No.”
“I should’ve.”
“No,” Regulus repeated, sharper this time. “That’s not how it works.”
Barty swallowed. “But I should’ve.”
Regulus’s expression softened with exhausted sadness. “I didn’t want you to.”
That ruined Barty completely.
He looked down, jaw working hard, one hand curled into a fist on the desk like he wanted to fight the past itself and had been denied an address.
Evan’s voice came next, quiet and stripped of all its usual smoothness. “Is that why you hate hospitals?”
Regulus’s mouth twitched without humour. “I don’t hate hospitals.”
Evan stared at him.
Regulus sighed. “Fine. Yes.”
“And why you don’t like people touching your left side without warning?” Dorcas asked, voice low.
Regulus glanced at her.
Dorcas’s face was hard, but her eyes were shining.
“Yes,” he said.
Pandora reached across Evan and placed her hand palm-up on the desk near Regulus. She did not grab him. She did not cling. She only offered.
Regulus looked at her hand for a moment before resting two fingers lightly against her palm.
Pandora’s face crumpled.
“Oh, starling,” she whispered.
Regulus looked away quickly.
That was when Sirius stood again.
This time, McGonagall did not stop him.
He crossed the room slowly, not with his usual swagger, not with the careless grace that made half the school look twice and the other half pretend they hadn’t. He moved like someone approaching a wild thing that might bolt if loved too suddenly.
Regulus watched him come.
For one strange moment, they looked much younger than they were.
Not the heir and the runaway. Not Slytherin and Gryffindor. Not the school’s favourite scandal in two different colours.
Just brothers.
Sirius stopped beside Regulus’s chair.
“You all right?” he asked, voice rough.
Regulus looked up at him with a small, brittle expression. “That’s a stupid question.”
“Yeah.” Sirius swallowed. “I know.”
Regulus’s mouth trembled once.
Then Sirius opened his arm, barely, giving Regulus the choice.
Regulus hesitated.
The whole room pretended not to watch.
Then Regulus stood just enough to lean sideways into him.
Sirius folded around him immediately.
Not tightly. Carefully. Like he remembered every place that had once hurt and would rather break both his own arms than press too hard.
Regulus leaned his forehead against Sirius’s shoulder.
The sight of it did something terrible to the Gryffindors.
James looked as though he had been gutted.
He whispered, “Regulus…”
Sirius’s head turned.
One look.
James stopped.
Lily wiped her face and spoke instead, voice thick. “I’m sorry.”
Regulus did not lift his head.
Lily breathed in shakily. “That was ignorant. What they said. What we let happen. I’m sorry.”
Mary nodded quickly, tears falling now. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t think.”
“No,” Sirius said coldly. “You didn’t.”
Mary flinched.
Regulus’s hand shifted against Sirius’s robe. “Sirius.”
Sirius shut his mouth, but his glare did not soften.
Marlene leaned forward, elbows on knees, face pale beneath her freckles. “I’m sorry too. I wasn’t trying to be cruel, but I was. That’s not an excuse. I’m sorry.”
Fabian looked like he wanted the floor to swallow him and all his ancestors. “Regulus, I—”
Sirius’s eyes flashed.
Fabian stopped, then forced himself to continue properly. “I’m sorry. That saviour complex thing was vile. I said it because I didn’t understand and because I wanted to be funny. It wasn’t funny. It was awful.”
Gideon’s voice was quieter than anyone had heard it all afternoon. “We’re sorry.”
Peter was staring at his hands. “I’m sorry.”
James took his glasses off, wiped them on his robe though they did not need wiping, then put them back on wrong before fixing them. His voice came out rough. “I’m sorry. I spoke over you. Earlier. And I was going to do it again when McGonagall asked you. I do that a lot.”
Lily gave him a look through tears that said, at least you know.
James swallowed. “I’m sorry for that too.”
Regulus lifted his head at last.
He still leaned into Sirius, not fully trusting his own balance or perhaps not caring to pretend.
His eyes were red-rimmed, but dry.
“I don’t need everyone to apologise forever,” he said quietly.
Sirius muttered, “I might.”
Regulus elbowed him weakly.
Sirius accepted it like a blessing.
“I just want the group to exist,” Regulus said. “For people who need it.”
McGonagall had been silent for a long time.
When she finally spoke, her voice was lower than usual.
“Mr Black,” she said, “I owe you an apology as well.”
Regulus looked startled. “Professor?”
“I did not know.”
“You weren’t told.”
“That does not remove my responsibility entirely.” McGonagall’s eyes moved briefly to Pomfrey, then back to him. “A school cannot support what it refuses to see. But it is our duty to look properly.”
Pomfrey nodded once. “Your medical charts include basic information,” she said, voice gentle in a way that made several students look at her with surprise. “Medications. Relevant history. Alerts for check-ins. But not this. Not the whole of it.”
Regulus gave a faint, humourless smile. “Charts rarely include the whole of anything.”
“No,” Pomfrey said. “They do not.”
She stood then, smoothing her apron with hands that were steady by discipline rather than ease.
“A medical support and advocacy group,” she said, turning to McGonagall, “would be useful. More than useful. Necessary, perhaps. Properly supervised. Clear boundaries. No students giving medical advice, no replacing treatment, no nonsense. But peer support, advocacy, education, practical help with access and accommodations…” She looked back at Regulus. “Yes. I would support it.”
Something in Regulus’s face loosened.
Not relief exactly.
Something more fragile.
McGonagall turned to the parchment on the board. She picked up a fresh piece of chalk.
This time, she wrote with care.
Medical Support and Advocacy Group — peer support, chronic and terminal illness inclusion, hospital liaison, self-advocacy, accessibility, staff education.
The chalk made soft, definite sounds against the board.
For once, nobody joked.
McGonagall underlined the proposal.
“There,” she said.
Regulus stared at the words.
Barty stared at them too, then said, “I’ll join.”
Regulus blinked. “You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
“That’s not why I suggested it.”
“I know.”
“You’d have to be respectful.”
Barty looked offended even through the wreckage of his expression. “I can be respectful.”
Evan arched a brow.
Dorcas said, “You threatened to bite Potter eight minutes ago.”
“Respectfully.”
Sirius, still beside Regulus, muttered, “He can try to bite Potter after the meeting.”
James gave him a wounded look. “Why am I being sacrificed?”
“Personal growth,” said Remus.
Despite everything, a small laugh moved through the room.
It was weak and damp around the edges, but it was real.
Regulus’s shoulders dropped.
Evan looked at him. “I’ll join too.”
“You don’t like groups.”
“I like you.”
Regulus looked away, colour touching his ears.
Dorcas said, “I’m joining.”
Regulus sighed. “Dorcas—”
“No. I’m joining. And I’m helping with the part about accommodations, because if a professor gives someone trouble about needing extra time or rest, I’d like to be invited.”
Pomfrey gave her a warning look. “Not to threaten them.”
Dorcas paused.
“Miss Meadowes.”
“Fine. Not to threaten them first.”
McGonagall looked heavenward.
Pandora squeezed Regulus’s fingers lightly. “I’ll make it gentle.”
Barty sniffed. “That sounds ominous.”
“I’ll make posters,” Pandora clarified.
“That did not make it less ominous,” Evan said.
Pandora smiled. “Some things should be soft enough that frightened people can touch them.”
That quieted them again, but not painfully this time.
Alice raised her hand.
McGonagall looked at her. “Miss Fortescue?”
“I’d join,” Alice said softly. “Not because I understand, because I don’t. But I’d like to learn how to help properly. If that’s allowed.”
Regulus looked surprised.
Frank nodded beside her. “Me too. And the gardening club could help, maybe. Not in a silly way. But… quiet sessions. For students who can’t manage loud clubs.”
Regulus looked at him for a long second. “That would be good.”
Frank smiled faintly, sad and sincere. “Then we’ll make it good.”
Lily wiped her cheeks again and straightened, finding herself in usefulness the way she always did. “I can help with notes. If students miss lessons. There could be a system, maybe. Volunteers in each subject. Proper copies, not just whatever James writes down, because half of his notes are drawings of Snitches.”
James attempted dignity. “They’re diagrams.”
“They have faces.”
“Expressive diagrams.”
Regulus’s mouth twitched.
Sirius saw it and relaxed by the smallest degree.
Mary raised her hand halfway, then seemed to realise she did not need to, and lowered it. “I could help with… making it not miserable.”
Everyone looked at her.
She flushed. “I mean, support groups can sound terrifying. Like everyone sits in a circle and cries under bad lighting.”
Mary rushed on. “But it could have normal things too. Tea. Biscuits. Comfortable chairs. Not just talking about fear every second. Somewhere people can exist without having to explain why they’re tired.”
Regulus looked at her carefully.
Then he nodded. “Yes. That’s exactly it.”
Mary looked as if that nod had hurt more than being shouted at.
Marlene leaned forward. “And I can help make sure people actually show up. Not in a pressuring way,” she added quickly when Sirius glared. “Just… if someone wants company walking there. Or doesn’t want it to look obvious. I can be loud nearby.”
Remus said, “That may be the most accurate description of your skill set.”
Marlene sniffed. “I’m a public service.”
Peter lifted his head a little. “Snack club could help.”
A few people turned.
Peter went pink, but continued. “I mean… snacks. If people are taking medication, or if they’ve had treatment, or if they just don’t feel up to meals in the Great Hall. There could be food available. Easy food.”
Pomfrey’s expression softened. “That is actually a sensible point, Mr Pettigrew.”
Peter looked stunned. “It is?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” He sat a bit taller. “Good.”
Fabian rubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t know what I can do.”
“Start by not saying stupid things,” Gideon muttered.
Fabian looked at him. “You also said stupid things.”
“I know. I’m including myself.”
Regulus gave them a dry look. “Revolutionary.”
Fabian winced. “Deserved.”
Gideon leaned forward. “But we can help with set-up. Rooms. Furniture. Getting things moved. Making sure people know where to go.”
“And,” Fabian added, more carefully, “we can shut other people up if they say things like we did.”
Sirius said, “I reserve judgement.”
“That’s fair,” Fabian said.
McGonagall watched the room with an expression that had shifted from stern endurance to something quieter, something almost proud, though threaded through with sorrow.
“This,” she said, “is closer to what the consultations were intended to produce.”
Sirius glanced at the board. “So no dramatic entrances club?”
“No, Mr Black.”
“Medical support group with dramatic entrances?”
“No.”
“Quietly dramatic entrances?”
Regulus murmured, “Sirius.”
Sirius immediately stopped. “Right. Sorry.”
James stared at him.
“Did you just obey him?”
Sirius looked at James as if he were very stupid. “Obviously.”
Barty pointed across the room. “Careful, Potter. It starts like that. Next thing you know, you’re rearranging your entire moral framework because Regulus Black looked disappointed for half a second.”
Regulus frowned. “I do not do that.”
Evan said, “You absolutely do.”
Dorcas nodded. “Constantly.”
Pandora smiled. “It’s one of your talents.”
Regulus looked betrayed. “I have never rearranged anyone’s moral framework.”
Barty stared at him.
Evan stared at him.
Dorcas stared at him.
Pandora kept smiling.
Sirius, after a pause, raised one hand slightly. “You did make me apologise to a portrait once.”
Regulus glared at him. “You insulted her dead husband.”
“He was ugly.”
“He was dead.”
“That doesn’t improve bone structure.”
“Sirius.”
“Sorry.”
This time the laugh that went around the room was steadier.
Not careless. Not like before.
But alive.
Regulus leaned a little more heavily into Sirius once the laughter faded, as if the small burst of levity had taken the last of his strength with it. Sirius noticed immediately and shifted his stance so Regulus could lean without it being obvious. A brotherly sleight of hand. Protection disguised as posture.
McGonagall noticed.
So did Pomfrey.
So did Barty, whose face tightened again with the pain of all he had not known.
Regulus saw that too.
He sighed. “Barty.”
Barty looked up.
“Don’t.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You’re thinking loudly.”
James muttered, “He does that too?”
“Apparently everyone does,” Lily said.
Barty’s mouth twisted. “I’m allowed to be upset.”
“Yes,” Regulus said. “But not at yourself for not knowing something I deliberately didn’t tell you.”
Barty’s eyes shone with something furious. “I’m your friend.”
“I know.”
“I’m supposed to know when something’s wrong.”
Regulus’s expression softened. “Something isn’t always wrong just because something happened.”
Barty looked like he hated that sentence.
Evan looked like he understood it too well.
Dorcas looked like she wanted to burn down every hospital in Britain and then sit beside Regulus politely with tea.
Pandora whispered, “The past is such a rude ghost.”
Regulus blinked, then huffed a small laugh. “Yes. It is.”
Pomfrey moved around the front desk and stood nearer to Regulus, though she was careful not to crowd him.
“Mr Black,” she said, “you need not answer this now, but would you be comfortable meeting with me later to discuss what such a group would require? Properly. Safely.”
Regulus hesitated.
Sirius’s hand settled between his shoulder blades. Light. Steady.
“You may bring,” Pomfrey clarified, with a faint smile, “one or two people.”
Barty and Sirius looked at each other.
A silent war began.
“No,” Regulus said.
Both of them looked at him.
“I will choose later.”
Barty slumped back in outrage.
Sirius muttered, “Cruel.”
“Efficient,” Regulus corrected.
McGonagall returned to the board. “We will treat this proposal as a priority item. Madam Pomfrey and I will discuss supervision, safeguarding, and structure. Mr Black, your input will be valuable, but you will not be expected to carry the entire thing yourself.”
Regulus blinked again, as if that had not occurred to him.
Pomfrey’s expression sharpened with healer’s instinct. “I mean that.”
Regulus’s gaze lowered. “I know.”
“No, you heard it,” Pomfrey said. “That is not the same as knowing it.”
The corner of McGonagall’s mouth moved almost imperceptibly.
Sirius murmured, “She’s got you there.”
Regulus elbowed him again.
Barty, still pale, leaned forward. “What would the club actually do first?”
Regulus considered. Now that the worst thing had been said aloud and the ceiling had not fallen in, he seemed able to think in pieces again.
“Maybe start with anonymous suggestions,” he said. “Students might not want to be known.”
Lily nodded at once. “A charmed box. Or a normal one, if it’s for Muggle inclusion too. People could write what support they’d want.”
“Confidential,” Pomfrey said firmly.
“Completely,” Regulus agreed.
Remus spoke for the first time in a while. “There could be a library shelf as well. Approved resources. Things people can read without asking in front of everyone.”
Regulus looked at him.
Remus’s expression was gentle, careful. “Sometimes asking is the hard part.”
Regulus held his gaze for a moment, then nodded. “Yes. That would help.”
James leaned forward slowly, as though sudden movement might make Sirius hex him. “Could there be a way to help students catch up after they miss lessons without making it obvious why?”
“That’s what Lily said,” Mary murmured.
“I know, I’m supporting it.”
“Miracle.”
James ignored her, eyes on Regulus. “Like shared notes. Rotating. Not charity. Just… school-wide. Anyone could use it. Then students who need it wouldn’t stand out.”
Regulus studied him.
James looked back, guilt still clear on his face but no longer demanding comfort for it.
Finally, Regulus said, “That’s a good idea.”
James let out a breath.
Sirius narrowed his eyes. “Don’t look so relieved. You’re still on thin ice.”
“I know,” James said quickly.
“Thinner than my patience.”
“Understood.”
“Transparent ice.”
“Very clear.”
“Cracking.”
“Padfoot,” Remus said.
Sirius subsided, but only because Regulus’s shoulder was still touching his side.
Dorcas crossed her arms. “The advocacy part matters. If someone needs accommodations, they shouldn’t have to beg each professor individually.”
McGonagall nodded. “Agreed. That would require staff policy.”
“Then make one,” Dorcas said.
A few Gryffindors inhaled sharply.
McGonagall arched an eyebrow.
Dorcas did not blink.
After a moment, McGonagall said, “That is the intention of consultation, Miss Meadowes.”
Dorcas nodded once. “Good.”
Evan murmured, “Elegant diplomacy.”
Dorcas shrugged. “Nobody died.”
“Low bar.”
“Achievable bar.”
Pandora looked at the board. “Could it also include people who are frightened even after getting better?”
Regulus went very still.
Pandora did not look at him when she said it. She only traced a tiny circle on the desk with one finger.
“Because people think better means finished,” she continued softly. “But sometimes better is just the door closing, and you’re still in the room where it happened.”
Regulus’s throat moved.
Pomfrey said, “Yes. It should include that.”
“Recovery support,” Lily said quietly, writing it down.
Regulus stared at Pandora for a long moment.
Then he whispered, “Thank you.”
Pandora’s smile was small and sad. “Of course.”
Barty looked like he was two seconds from crying and would rather commit treason. He turned his face away and glared at the wall.
Evan placed a hand lightly at the back of his neck, casual to anyone who did not know them.
Barty did not shrug him off.
On the Gryffindor side, the guilt had settled into something less noisy. It sat in their laps, their lowered gazes, their careful hands. It was no longer the theatrical horror of being wrong in public. It was becoming understanding, which hurt more and would last longer.
Mary sniffed hard. “Can we go back for a second?”
Sirius’s eyes narrowed. “To what?”
“The part where you said people shouldn’t assume health by looking at someone.” She glanced at Regulus, then away, then back again. “That should be one of the first sessions. Not just for sick students. For everyone.”
Marlene nodded. “Like awareness without making people into exhibits.”
“Exactly,” Mary said.
Regulus considered it. “Yes. But only if no one is forced to share personal things.”
“Agreed,” said McGonagall immediately.
Pomfrey’s tone turned iron. “Absolutely no student would be pressured to disclose medical information. Ever.”
Fabian swallowed. “Good.”
Sirius looked at him. “You’re thinking about what you said.”
Fabian nodded miserably. “Yeah.”
“Good.”
Regulus sighed. “Sirius, stop terrorising him.”
“No.”
“Sirius.”
“…Fine.”
James stared again. “That is terrifying.”
Remus nodded. “And useful.”
McGonagall gave Sirius a long look. “If only I had known years ago that the key to your discipline was your brother saying your name in that tone.”
Sirius lifted his chin. “I contain multitudes.”
“You contain detention slips.”
“Those too.”
Regulus’s mouth twitched again, and this time it almost became a smile.
The room softened around it.
It was strange, how quickly a space could change. Ten minutes earlier, the classroom had been all noise and nonsense, students tossing ridiculous ideas into the air like fireworks to see which ones exploded prettiest. Now the same walls held something fragile and newly made. Not comfort exactly. Comfort was too simple a word. It was more like the first plank laid across a ravine.
Unsteady.
Necessary.
McGonagall turned back to the board.
“Let us record the practical elements,” she said. “Anonymous suggestion box. Confidentiality. Peer support meetings. Madam Pomfrey’s supervision. Student note-sharing system. Staff guidance on accommodations. Resource shelf. Recovery support. Awareness sessions on invisible illness and assumptions.”
She wrote each one down.
The list grew.
No one interrupted.
Regulus watched the chalk form words that, an hour ago, had existed only as a tight, private ache beneath his ribs.
Medical support.
Advocacy.
Recovery.
Invisible illness.
Confidential.
He had not expected it to look so real.
He had not expected the sight of it to hurt.
Sirius noticed his face and leaned down slightly. “Still with me?”
Regulus nodded. “Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“No.”
Sirius’s mouth pulled into something small and sad. “Yeah. Fair.”
Regulus looked up at him. “I didn’t want everyone to know.”
“I know.”
“I still don’t.”
“I know.”
Regulus’s voice dropped further. “But I think I wanted someone to know.”
Sirius’s eyes shone again.
He nodded once, because anything more might have undone them both.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know that too.”
Barty made a rough sound and looked sharply at the ceiling.
Evan murmured, “Subtle.”
“I’m inspecting the architecture,” Barty snapped.
“Of course.”
Dorcas reached across and grabbed Regulus’s bag strap, not his hand, not his sleeve, just the strap he had been strangling all lesson. She held it loosely, sharing the weight without making a display of it.
Regulus looked down.
Dorcas did not look at him. “You should’ve told us when you wanted.”
“I did.”
Her jaw tightened. “Yeah.”
“I’m sorry.”
Dorcas’s head snapped up. “Don’t you dare.”
Regulus blinked.
Dorcas’s voice was fierce, shaking at the edges. “Don’t apologise for surviving something and not handing us the worst parts of it on command. Don’t. I’ll be angry if I need to be, but not at you.”
Regulus stared at her.
Barty nodded hard. “Yes. That.”
Evan said, “Less aggressively, but yes.”
Pandora added, “With flowers.”
Regulus looked overwhelmed for a moment, then breathed out a tiny laugh. “You’re all impossible.”
Barty leaned closer. “And yet beloved.”
“Debatable.”
“False.”
“Annoying.”
“Also true.”
Sirius looked between them and, despite everything, smiled faintly.
It was odd, seeing his brother loved by people he had not chosen for him. Odd and painful and relieving. For years, some childish, bitter part of Sirius had imagined Regulus alone in Slytherin, swallowed by green shadows and family expectations, unreachable as a star behind glass.
But Regulus was not alone.
He had Barty looking ready to declare war on mortality. Evan gone quiet with devotion. Pandora holding space like a candle in a dark chapel. Dorcas furious enough to frighten grief itself.
Sirius had not been there for everything.
But others had been there for some of it.
And maybe, he thought, that mattered too.
McGonagall finished writing and turned back. “This proposal will be taken seriously,” she said. “I give you my word.”
Regulus nodded.
Pomfrey added, “And I will review what support structures currently exist in the hospital wing. Quietly. There may already be students who need this more than they have been able to say.”
“Thank you,” Regulus said.
His voice was nearly gone now.
Sirius noticed and looked to McGonagall. “Can he leave?”
Regulus stiffened. “I don’t need—”
“He didn’t ask if you needed to,” Pomfrey interrupted gently. “He asked if you could.”
Regulus fell silent.
McGonagall’s gaze softened. “Yes. Mr Black may step out if he wishes.”
Regulus hesitated, pride battling exhaustion across his face.
Then, to everyone’s surprise, James stood.
Sirius’s eyes narrowed instantly. “What are you doing?”
James lifted both hands. “Nothing stupid.”
“Specificity, Potter.”
James looked at Regulus, not Sirius. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “Properly. And I’ll make sure people don’t talk over you next time.”
Regulus arched a faint eyebrow. “You are one of the people who talks over me.”
“I know. That’s why I’m starting with me.”
Regulus studied him, then gave a small nod. “Good.”
James seemed to accept that like a sentence and a pardon at once.
Lily stood too. “I’ll get the notes system started. Only as a draft,” she added quickly, looking at Regulus. “Nothing final without you seeing it.”
Regulus nodded again. “All right.”
Mary wiped under her eyes with both hands. “I’ll help with the comfortable chairs thing.”
Marlene sniffed. “I’ll help make sure it doesn’t become miserable.”
Peter said, “I’ll think about snacks.”
Fabian and Gideon exchanged a look.
“We’ll help move furniture,” Fabian said.
“And shut up,” Gideon added.
Sirius looked at them. “Ambitious.”
Gideon nodded solemnly. “Growth mindset.”
Despite himself, Regulus huffed another laugh.
McGonagall looked faintly stunned that the phrase had emerged from Gideon Prewett of all people.
Remus stood last, quieter than the others. “I’ll help with the shelf. If you want.”
Regulus met his eyes.
There was something in Remus’s face. Not pity. Not guilt exactly. Recognition, perhaps, though of a different country of pain.
Regulus nodded. “I’d like that.”
Remus smiled, small and careful. “Then I will.”
Alice looked to Pomfrey. “Could students also learn basic first aid properly? Not in a stupid way. Actually properly.”
Pomfrey considered her. “Yes. Separately structured, but connected. That would be appropriate.”
Frank nodded. “And gardening.”
McGonagall looked at the board, where the earlier nonsense still lingered in fragments around the serious proposal. Food appreciation society. Textile repair. Gardening. Nap club, underlined by Peter when no one was looking.
“Some of the earlier suggestions,” she said slowly, “may have more merit once properly refined.”
Sirius perked up. “Motorbike club?”
“No.”
He deflated.
Regulus murmured, “Dramatic entrances?”
“Also no,” McGonagall said.
“A tragedy,” Sirius whispered.
Regulus finally, properly smiled.
It was brief. Exhausted. Barely there.
But Sirius saw it.
So did Barty.
So did the rest of them, though most had the decency not to react too obviously.
Pomfrey stepped aside from the front of the room. “Mr Black, go and get some air.”
Regulus nodded once.
Sirius picked up Regulus’s bag before Regulus could protest.
Regulus glared at him. “I can carry that.”
“I know.”
“Then give it back.”
“No.”
“Sirius.”
“Not this time.”
Regulus looked irritated for two full seconds before the irritation buckled under sheer tiredness.
Barty stood abruptly. “I’m coming.”
“So am I,” Dorcas said.
Evan rose without bothering to announce it.
Pandora gathered her parchment, her stars and cloud names and half-finished mushroom notes folded carefully between her fingers.
McGonagall lifted a hand. “Not all of you.”
They froze.
Regulus looked back at his friends.
Barty looked mutinous. Dorcas looked worse. Evan’s expression went smooth in the way that meant danger. Pandora simply looked sad.
Regulus sighed. “I’ll be fine.”
Barty flinched.
Regulus corrected himself. “I’ll be with Sirius.”
That helped.
Not enough, but some.
Sirius gave Barty a strange look across Regulus’s shoulder. Not challenging. Not triumphant.
A promise.
Barty stared back, jaw tight, then nodded once.
“Bring him back,” Barty said.
Sirius’s voice was quiet. “Always.”
Regulus looked between them. “I’m not a library book.”
“No,” Evan said. “Library books are less difficult when mishandled.”
Regulus’s eyes narrowed. “I’m too tired to insult you properly.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Generous.”
Dorcas stepped closer, stopping just short of touching him. “You don’t have to talk about it again today.”
“I know.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
Pandora lifted her hand in a tiny wave. “We’ll be here when you come back.”
Regulus swallowed. “I know.”
This time, he sounded like he might actually believe it.
Sirius opened the classroom door.
The corridor beyond was cooler, quieter, lit by afternoon sun spilling through high windows. Dust drifted in the gold like tiny suspended stars. Somewhere far away, a suit of armour clanked. Somewhere even farther, students shouted in a courtyard, ordinary life continuing with all its careless mercy.
Regulus paused at the threshold.
For a moment, he looked back at the board.
At the words McGonagall had written.
At the room full of students who had begun the hour asking for impossible nonsense and ended it sitting with something real.
At his friends, stunned and aching.
At the Gryffindors, guilty and changed.
At Madam Pomfrey, who knew the chart but not the child.
At Professor McGonagall, who had stopped the room for him before she knew why it mattered.
Then he looked at Sirius.
Sirius’s expression softened again. “Ready?”
Regulus leaned, just slightly, into his brother’s side.
“No,” he said.
Sirius nodded, as if that was answer enough.
“Come on, then.”
They stepped into the corridor together.
Behind them, the classroom stayed quiet long after the door closed.
Not empty quiet.
Not awkward quiet.
Working quiet.
McGonagall turned back to the board. Madam Pomfrey stood beside her.
Lily bent over her parchment and wrote the heading carefully: Medical Support and Advocacy Group — Initial Planning.
Mary moved closer to look.
Marlene dragged her chair in.
Alice and Frank began speaking softly about accessible rooms and calm spaces. Remus suggested shelves in the library that would not draw attention. Peter listed foods that were gentle on the stomach. Fabian and Gideon, for once, said nothing ridiculous at all.
On the other side, Barty sat staring at the closed door, one hand pressed hard against his own knee.
Evan sat beside him in silence.
Dorcas watched the board as though committing every word to memory.
Pandora drew a small star next to Regulus’s proposal.
Then, beneath it, in tiny letters, she wrote:
Some bodies are battlefields. Some are gardens after.
Petunia who wakes up with an immense sense of grief everyday and mourns a sister who is still alive
Petunia who always thought she would be brave enough to apologize to Lily
Petunia who couldn't bring herself to cry at Lily's funeral because she had been mourning her sister since they were twelve
Petunia who broke down three days later Infront of a flower shop that had the most beautiful lilies on sale but they could never be as beautiful as her Lily
the only reason i'd want to go back to secondary school is to redo my exams and give myself a better chance, not having to give up and burn out due to other circumstances, get myself the grades i achieved in my mocks that i know i was capable of if only things werent the way they were, forever one of my biggest regrets
~ Aria Parkinson ~ @astrarium-angel - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
