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Regulus Black knew how to keep secrets. In the Black family, secrets were currency, and she had spent her life accumulating them. Some were forced upon her—the burden of being the perfect heir, the whispered expectations, the cold glances from her parents whenever she deviated too far from their design. Others were hers alone, hidden deep beneath silk robes and carefully guarded expressions. The greatest of all: that Regulus Black was a girl in a boy’s body, a girl who had only begun to see herself in moonlit mirrors, cloaked in forbidden softness.
She thought she’d mastered the art of self-denial, until Barty Crouch Jr. came into her life and ruined everything.
Their friendship began like most things in the world of Slytherin House: laced with sharp edges and ulterior motives. Regulus didn’t trust Barty at first. He was brash and reckless, a loose thread in a house obsessed with composure, always sneering at rules just to see them snap. He had none of the Black family’s delicately honed cruelty or Lucius Malfoy’s polished charm. Barty was all wild smiles and mischief, like a storm that refused to be contained.
Regulus kept her distance at first, wary of getting tangled in his chaos. But Barty had a way of getting under your skin without permission—half because he tried and half because he didn’t care if you wanted him to. He would sit too close during study sessions in the library, doodling absurd creatures on her parchment until she rolled her eyes and told him to leave. He’d seek her out in the common room late at night, long after the others had fallen asleep, talking about anything and everything. Regulus wasn’t used to being seen like that—as something other than a Black, a chess piece in the endless game of family politics. And without realizing it, she began to crave those moments when Barty would make her laugh, his grin bright enough to cut through even her darkest thoughts.
One night, curled in front of the dying fire in the Slytherin common room, Regulus told him the truth. She didn’t mean to, of course. She didn’t mean to say anything at all. But Barty had this way of leaning into silence, waiting without pressing, as though he knew she had something fragile lodged in her throat and was willing to sit beside her until she let it out.
“It’s strange,” she whispered, her hands twisted in her lap. “Living like this. Like… like I’m not real.”
Barty tilted his head, his expression unusually soft. “What do you mean?”
And for some reason—maybe because she was tired, maybe because it was Barty—Regulus answered. “I’ve always known I wasn’t supposed to be a boy,” she admitted. “But I don’t know how to be anything else. Or if I even can be.”
She expected him to mock her, to laugh or recoil. She was prepared for cruelty—had lived in it all her life, after all. But Barty didn’t do any of that. He just nodded, like she had told him a secret about the weather instead of unraveling the deepest, most vulnerable part of herself.
“So,” he said after a long moment, “what do you want me to call you?”
The simplicity of the question nearly undid her. It was as though he were handing her a key to a door she’d thought locked forever.
“…Reg,” she whispered, and it sounded like a prayer. “For now, just Reg.”
He smiled, a slow, crooked thing that made her chest ache in a way she couldn’t name. “Alright, Reg.”
After that night, things between them shifted in ways Regulus hadn’t expected. It was subtle at first—Barty slinging his arm around her shoulders, teasing her in ways that felt more affectionate than cutting, standing a little too close when they snuck out to the Astronomy Tower to escape the suffocating expectations of their lives. And Regulus, against all odds, found herself leaning into it, letting herself be held in his orbit.
There were nights when she lay awake in her bed, heart racing, thinking about the way Barty looked at her—like she was something worth noticing, worth knowing. And there were other nights, darker nights, when she wondered if this was all just another game to him, if he’d pull away the moment things became too real. But Barty never pulled away. If anything, he stayed closer, like he was trying to stitch himself into the cracks she had spent years hiding.
The first time Barty kissed her, it was on a rainy autumn afternoon. They had been sitting on the steps outside the castle, sharing a stolen cigarette. Regulus had just made some dry, sarcastic remark about the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and Barty—grinning like an idiot—leaned in and kissed her, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Regulus froze, her brain short-circuiting as her heart tumbled into freefall. For a moment, all she could think was *this isn’t supposed to happen.*
But then Barty pulled back, his grin softening into something almost shy, and everything inside Regulus stilled.
“You alright, Reg?” he asked quietly, his thumb brushing against her knuckles.
She stared at him, at the boy who had taken her darkest truth and held it without flinching. And, against all odds, she smiled.
“Yeah,” she whispered. “I think I am.”
Falling in love with Barty Crouch Jr. was like learning to breathe again after years of drowning. It was messy and confusing and terrifying, but it was also bright and beautiful in ways Regulus hadn’t known she was allowed to have. With Barty, she wasn’t the Black family heir or a pawn in someone else’s game. She was just Reg—her own person, whole and enough.
And as the days slipped into nights and the world around them grew darker, Regulus found herself clinging to that light. Because even if the future was uncertain, even if they were both tangled in forces beyond their control, here and now, with Barty beside her, Regulus knew one thing for certain: she was real. And so was this.
And maybe, just maybe, that was enough.