Chapter Text
My name is Ophelia.
I'm thirteen. I live in Cartwrights orphanage in Birmingham.
I'm decent at schoolwork. My singing voice is good enough for the church choir on Sundays and sometimes at Christmas. I can draw very well.
And that's just about all I know.
I like to look at the stars. You can't always see them here, but sometimes the clouds clear just right and the sky opens up and it feels like I'm looking at the story of the world mapped out. Kings and gods, dogs running, eagles flying, lions roaring.
Sometimes I have memories of doing this. Hours upon hours of watching. The stars have names, I know that, but I know as much of that as I do of my own life.
Yes, my name is Ophelia.
I've lived here since I was five.
The other girls and boys talk about their mums or dad's, aunties and sisters and grannies, their lives before here. But try as I might-screwing my eyes shut in the darkness, I can't remember them. I can’t picture where different bits of my face came from, who has my sharp chin or scattering of freckles.
For a long time I wondered if something was wrong with me. If it was wrong that I could not remember a doting mum, or even a quiet yet loving father. I would have taken a confirmation of a parent filled with hate if it meant I remembered belonging to someone. I spent a long time trying to find these figures, eclipsed somewhere in my memories.
Long enough that it took me a while to notice them .
Two boys. With faces and eyes like mine, silver like the gleam on metal. Hair as dark and wild as my own difficult curls.
When I try to remember, I can see them.
They could be twins, but one is smaller. Shyer too. Sensitive where the other is brazen. Cautious where the other is confident. Strong in different ways.
I always feel younger than them, even though I'm older than how I remember them.
For a while I wondered if I had just made them up, if my imagination had turned my desperate longing into some strange comfort. Something to belong to. Someone to belong to.
When the thoughts get too much I can distract myself by drawing. When I draw, it's usually faces. It's been great for gifts and earning spare bits of pocket money for the tuck shop. One of the teachers even gave me a massive bar of chocolate for a sketch of her giant ginger cat.
What I like to draw most though, is those two boys.
I've drawn their faces nearly a thousand times. I'd say I know them as well as my own.
I know their smiles, I know their frowns. I know how they look when they lie, and when they are trying not to laugh. I know the look of fear upon their face, the way it strips them bare.
I know they must be family. I feel I belong to them. I feel they know me in ways I still don’t know myself.
What I don't know is their names. Or why I'm here. Without them.
***
At Christmas we go down to London for a day out. All of us children crammed into a bus that heaves and puffs out putrid black smoke. I sit in the back with the other girls, bundled up in all of our coats and scarves, peering out windows obscured with condensation as we get closer to the glow and frantic fervour of the city.
We get off on a street that's so bright it feels like walking into the sun. Decorations, lights, ribbons and bows light up the night sky. The warm scent of spices, the call of laughter, and the catches of music floating out of shops crammed with people.
It is beautiful. Like nothing I have ever seen before. A rush of colour and creation and chaos.
But I can't see the stars.
We wander the street with Sister Jane, following her like an obedient little gaggle of animals. She lets us choose which store to go to.
We end up in Harrods, drooling at its magnificent food Hall and ogling the floors upon floors of finely crafted wears.
"It looks like someone forgot it's Christmas, not Halloween." Chrissie Boyd’s mocking voice floats towards me through the dim.
I turn to see her pointing at a man who is closely inspecting the tower of cheese. Despite my unease at her open rudeness he is admittedly dressed rather oddly, even for London.
He appears to be wearing a long cloak of the deepest blue, decorated with sparkly silver fastenings and accompanied by a matching top hat. Almost like something out of A Christmas Carol.
I can’t help but stare at him, something strangely familiar about the eccentric flowing opulence of his clothing. I know I’ve never seen something like this before, certainly not in Birmingham, and yet…
He notices, and before I can turn away with embarrassment he winks genially at me and lowers his hat.
“Happy Yule to you my dear.”
Yule.
The word feels funny on my tongue. Like the flavour of something I’d eaten once, and rather forgotten I enjoyed.
***
I find a book in the back of the library. On a shelf with a bunch of donated books that are probably more suited to a university or school, but it’s here nonetheless. Covered in inches of dust it makes me sneeze while I fly through its pages. My eyes double back to read the same passage more than twice.
Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. Its name is derived from the Greek word Σείριος, or Seirios, meaning lit, 'glowing' or 'scorching'. The star is designated Alpha Canis Majoris, or the Dog Star.
Sirius.
Funny. In my mind he rarely seems serious, the laugh upon his face as natural as the rest of it.
But that's who he is.
“Sirius,” I test it out. It feels like something secret, like the forbidden scent of a dark curse from those old storybooks.
I had found the younger one here the week before. Regulus, or Alpha Leonis, the brightest star in the zodiacal constellation Leo and one of the brightest in the entire sky. True to his name, he radiated a bright warmthness that I hadn’t been able to find in anyone else.
The dog star.
The lion.
The dog and the lion.
I can recognise them now. Whenever I feel sad, or lonely, or I've had an argument with one of the other girls I come outside and look , gazing at the stars until I find them and feel okay again.
***
March has yet to stretch its wings, the last days of February ushering in my fourteenth birthday when Miss Bridget arrives at my door, hesitant and confused.
I look up from my textbooks. She doesn't speak, but just stares at me as though she is truly seeing me for the first time. As though I’m someone different than she expected.
"Miss?" I ask after the silence drags on.
"Ophelia." She pauses like she's running the words over in her mouth. "There's.. there's someone here to see you."
I frown. I've never had a visitor.
She looks as confused as I feel.
"Yes, he definitely is asking for you. I just-" She looks at me again. "When you arrived here we were told that you wouldn't receive any visitors. Do you want to see him?"
The words are blunt, even though she's not intending to offend. I can feel my heart hammering away in my chest, as though I’m right on the precipice of something, getting ready to jump off.
"Yes. Yes, please."
I stand up and follow her, wiping my sweaty palms on my skirt. She leads me through the corridor and down the stairs. We stop in the hallway outside the formal reception room.
"I'll be right outside." She says, patting my shoulder with something that might be fondness.
I push open the door.
A boy stands at the far end of the room with his back to me. He’s very nearly a man, dressed in the expensive looking clothing of a business man.
He turns.
A stifled noise squeaks from my throat.
"Ophelia?" He asks, my name sounds strange, between a prayer and a plea. There is a strange desperation on his face, as though fearing I might vanish if he so much as blinks.
"Y-yes. I’m Ophelia." I stumble over my words, my mind a rush of incoherent thoughts.
He stares at me like I'm a ghost.
I wonder if I am.
He looks like he's stepped right out of my memories and into this strangely ornate, creaking room.
Only older than I had ever pictured him. Sadder too. It lingers in his eyes despite a genuine smile. A strange mixture of apology and relief crosses his slender face.
His fingers tremble as they rake through his hair, the light shining on his ring.
Regulus.
***
I don't have all the answers yet, neither does he.
We both have plenty of questions.
I don't remember our parents, I don't remember anything really.
I don't ask the questions I want to ask. I don't ask the ones that hurt. Why am I here alone? Why has it been so long? Where have you been?
Instead I focus on the practical ones. The ones that won’t quite sear my soul and promise layers of pain.
"How did you find me?"
He smiles, a sharp and flinty one. "With a lot of searching. I- we thought.."
He reaches a hand out as though to clasp my own, but seems to think better of it and withdraws.
"What?" My voice too, is sharp. Is this what family does?
He closes his eyes, pale skin covering up the sadness that lingers.
"We thought you were dead."
Oh.
That should answer some questions, but really it just leaves me with a lot more. Some I don’t want to touch with the sharpest of daggers.
Over cooling cups of tea and a small plate of crumbly biscuits we sit and try not to stare at one another. Eyes flicking up and down, trying to gather in as much information as possible about the other.
“You knew my name.” he says. It isn’t a question.
I nod, half a biscuit in my mouth. “I don’t… I saw it in a book, and I just knew . Knew that was the name that matched my memories.”
He pales with surprise. “You knew what I looked like.. Do you.. Remember anything else?”
“Sirius.”
A strange sort of expression crosses his face, a mixture between a grimace and pleased surprise. He reaches out to take a sip of his tea, settling the fine china cup back down without a sound.
It's rather bewildering, to see someone I remember as a child nearly a man now. It's even stranger to think that this person is my own flesh and blood. That I, Ophelia-who has always been keenly aware of my loneliness-have a real living, breathing relative sitting before me.
He keeps looking at me as though he expects me to disappear.
We talk in a roundabout sort of way. Half threads of conversations, tentative steps to figure out who the other one is.
Regulus stays until Matron kicks him out. He promises to come back.
I have no real, tangible reason to believe him, but I do. I keep his visit a secret from even my closest friends, holding it close to my chest until it squeezes my chest with anxiety.
He arrives the following Sunday, right as visiting hours start, a package wrapped in fine brown paper in his hands.
“You, er… mentioned you like to draw.” he said eventually, shuffling his feet.
Inside are crisp sheets of paper, pencils, charcoal, brushes that are so soft they tickle my skin, a smattering of bright colours in little pots. All contained in a neat wooden box with clasps.
I look up to see him watching me, desperately trying to quash down what I recognise as a hopeful expression.
“I do.” I say softly, running my hands over the objects before me. I’ve never had anything new before. Everything here is shared, second hand, faded, torn, damaged, old.
I’ve never had something that is mine .
I open my mouth. I falter.
“Are they okay?”
“Thank you.” I say softly, fighting the urge to hug him. I’ve never been a particularly tactile person, not growing up here. But something about Regulus feels so familiar, I can’t help but feel a strange sort of connection with him. A tethering.
This time I gather enough courage to show him one of my better drawings. The fluidity of charcoal is great for capturing the wildness of our dark hair, the subtle shape of a nose I’ve come to realise Regulus and I share.
His mouth opens slightly as he looks at it. His fingers hover above the faces as though he could hope to reach us through it.
“Ophelia,” he says, his voice thick with emotion. “This is beautiful. This is amazing. Your talent is breathtaking.”
Somehow this means more to me than any other compliments I’ve received before.
We go for a walk, out into the old gardens and down by the aging oak tree that marks the boundary between the orphanage and the school. The soft sounds of spring hover around us, birds chirping in the pale sky accompanied by the smell of freshly mown grass.
“I have a question.”
“What is it?” he asks softly.
“Sirius.”
Something like disappointment flashes through his face, but he wipes it away before I can study him too intently.
“I.. haven’t told him yet.” Regulus admitted. “In case I was wrong. I didn’t want to get his hopes up.”
“Wrong?”
Regulus scrubs a hand over his face, a tired sort of gesture that doesn’t match his years. He’s nineteen, he had told me that, but something in his gait and his eyes tells me he’s seen a lot more than the other boys of nineteen out there.
I wonder if he and Sirius are still as close as I remember.
“It took me a long time to find you. At first I thought it was a lost cause, but then I couldn’t find any proof you were…” he struggles with his next word, and I dutifully supply it for him.
“Dead?”
He nods, looking so immeasurably sad it takes me aback. This boy, man, brother , had grieved me. He had thought me as lost as I felt, and yet he had somehow found proof of my existence. Beyond all the odds.
“Why did you-”
Regulus winces as though he had been fearing this question. “Our… parents… told me you were.”
Something horrific crashes through me. It had been obvious, of course it had, I didn’t just stumble upon here at five years of age and decide to make it my home. Someone, my parents , had put me here.
“I don’t like calling them that.” I say, with a firmness that surprises us both. I don’t have the strength yet to ask why , to know the reason why they put me here. To know why I alone have been exiled. I can feel the surge of emotions, red hot and frothing but I push them back down and remind myself to breathe.
“Okay. We don’t have to.” he says hurriedly. “I don’t like calling them that either. They’re not… nice people.”
I snort, it breaks the strange tension and we both laugh, a strange fragile thing.
“Sirius sounds exactly like that.'' Regulus says with a wry smile, and this warms me in a way I had never expected, to hear of some part of myself existing within someone else. To be connected to someone, so infinitely and undeniably.
To finally stop feeling this aching loneliness.
To be part of something.
To be more than just Ophelia.