Archive of Our Own

The classroom was all polished dark wood and crisp white walls, with tall windows that let in a thin stripe of grey afternoon light and rows of neat little desks arranged with the kind of rigid order only an elite pureblood private primary school could ever manage. Everything in the room was expensive, spotless, proper. Even the children were expected to look polished. Shiny shoes. Straight backs. Quiet voices. Perfect posture.

Regulus Black did not fit into the room at all.

He sat hunched over his desk near the window, shoulders curled in, one sock already half-slid down into his shoe, tie slightly crooked, completely absorbed in the paper beneath his hands. His exercise book had been nudged off to one side, abandoned in favour of a sheet crowded with little looping shapes and careful lines and tiny figures only half-finished. He was drawing with fierce concentration, pencil moving in quick, sure strokes. His legs swung gently beneath the desk, heels never quite touching the floor, and the tip of his tongue poked out a little in thought.

He did not look up when the other children whispered.

He did not notice when they sniggered.

He did not catch the way some of them looked over at him and then at each other with little mean smiles.

That happened all the time. He thought they were being nice.

At the front of the room, the teacher was speaking in a calm, clipped voice about sums, but Regulus had long since drifted somewhere else entirely, head full of shapes and patterns and lines. He pressed a little harder with the pencil, darkening the curve of something that looked like a dragon’s wing.

Across the aisle, Pandora Rosier noticed.

Pandora and Evan sat together like they always did, a matched pair in immaculate uniforms, both neat as pins, both beautiful in that eerie polished way that made the other children stare and copy and trail after them even when they were being cruel. They were popular, in the way storms were popular. People were drawn to them. People liked them. People watched them.

Nobody really talked to them unless spoken to first.

Nobody ever forgot that they could be mean.

Pandora’s mouth curled.

She leaned a little in her chair, looking past her own desk to where Regulus sat folded over his drawing, oblivious to absolutely everything except the page in front of him.

She tilted her head.

Then she leaned over and said, in a soft, poisonous little whisper, “Regulus.”

He glanced up at once, blinking like he had been yanked from somewhere very far away. “What?”

Pandora smiled at him.

It was the sort of smile that usually made the rest of the class go very still.

“My brother,” she murmured, nodding lazily towards Evan beside her, “has a crush on you. He wants to be your boyfriend.”

Evan, on cue, smirked and said nothing. He just watched.

Normally, that was the part where everything went exactly the way it always did. The person got pink and flustered and delighted, and the twins dragged it out until the whole thing turned into a joke and everybody laughed and laughed and laughed.

Pandora waited for it.

Evan waited for it.

Regulus frowned.

Not embarrassed. Not flustered. Just confused.

He looked at Evan properly, as if trying to solve a strange problem.

“Why?”

Pandora’s smile twitched.

Evan’s eyebrows pulled together a little. “What?”

Regulus looked between them. “Why would he have a crush on me?”

Neither twin answered at once.

Regulus went on, still perfectly sincere. “We don’t really know each other.”

Pandora stared at him.

Regulus looked at Evan again, earnest and puzzled and completely unguarded. “We never talk or play.”

Evan’s smirk had begun to slip.

“And,” Regulus added, as though this were a very important point, “if you liked me, why didn’t you ask?”

The silence that followed felt strange. A few children nearby had stopped pretending to work. One or two were openly listening now, waiting for the punchline.

There wasn’t one.

Regulus thought about it for another second, then gave a small shrug.

“I’m not interested,” he said simply.

Then he looked back down at his drawing and went right on with it.

Just like that.

No fluster. No excitement. No blushing, no stammering, no desperate little pleased smile.

He had rejected Evan Rosier with the same calm tone he might have used to decline an extra biscuit.

Pandora actually went still.

Evan just stared at him.

Regulus, meanwhile, had already forgotten they were there. His legs started swinging again beneath the desk. He bent low over the paper, tongue peeking out faintly once more as he shaded in another line, entirely content.

Pandora slowly turned to look at her brother.

Evan was still staring.

Pandora whispered, “He said no.”

“I heard him,” Evan whispered back.

“He said it like—” She stopped, clearly searching for the right word. “Like he meant it.”

Evan’s face had gone tight with bafflement. “He did mean it.”

That seemed, somehow, to make it worse.

Pandora narrowed her eyes at Regulus. He hadn’t looked up again. He had not even glanced their way. He was still drawing, utterly unbothered, as if being told one of the most popular boys in class wanted him had not mattered in the slightest.

That did something strange to the air between the twins.

This was not how the game was supposed to go.

Pandora leaned closer to Evan, voice dropping lower. “Why doesn’t he like you?”

Evan looked offended by the question itself. “How should I know?”

“Everyone likes you.”

“I know.”

Pandora studied Regulus with open fascination now, the way one might study a puzzle box or something washed up from the sea. “That’s odd.”

Evan said nothing for a second. Then, quieter, “Why isn’t he interested?”

Pandora glanced at him sharply.

There it was.

Not the easy smugness from before. Not the lazy performance. Something realer. Something much less comfortable.

Evan was confused.

And because Evan was confused, he was annoyed.

And because he was annoyed, he was already digging in.

Pandora could see it happening in his face.

“He should like me,” Evan muttered.

Pandora’s lips curled slowly upward. “Maybe he doesn’t know enough yet.”

Evan tore his eyes away from Regulus just long enough to look at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” Pandora whispered, “we’ll have to figure out what he likes.”

Evan looked back at Regulus.

Regulus had tucked one elbow onto the table now and was squinting slightly at some detail only he could see, pencil tapping twice against the page before he began another careful little line. He looked soft and odd and entirely separate from the rest of the class, cocooned in his own little world while everybody else orbited around cruelty and status and performance.

Pandora rested her chin on her hand. “He doesn’t care what people usually care about.”

“No,” Evan said.

“He didn’t even get embarrassed.”

“No.”

“He just said no to you.”

Evan’s mouth flattened.

Pandora watched him for a beat, then smiled wider. “Oh, you hate that.”

Evan ignored her. “I’m going to make him like me.”

Pandora blinked once, then grinned. “Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Because he rejected you?”

Evan’s eyes stayed fixed on Regulus. “Because I want to know why.”

Pandora’s grin sharpened. “That too.”

A few desks away, a child looked over nervously, saw the twins whispering, and quickly looked back down again.

Pandora lowered her voice even further. “We can watch him at playtime.”

Evan finally looked at her properly. “Watch him?”

“Yes.” She sounded delighted now. “Find out what he does. What he likes. Where he goes at lunch. Who he talks to.”

“He doesn’t talk to anyone.”

“Exactly.”

Evan glanced at Regulus again, who was now gently erasing part of the page with intense care, lips parted slightly in concentration.

Pandora tipped her head. “Maybe he likes drawing more than people.”

“That’s stupid.”

Pandora gave a tiny shrug. “It’s Regulus Black.”

Evan kept staring.

Then, quietly and with absolute determination, he said, “I’m still going to make him like me.”

Pandora’s eyes gleamed. “Good.”

The teacher’s voice rose suddenly from the front of the room. “Pandora. Evan. Is there something you would like to share with the class?”

The twins sat back at once, both perfect innocence.

“No, miss,” Pandora said sweetly.

“No, miss,” Evan echoed.

The teacher eyed them for a moment, suspicious but not quite willing to push. “Then I suggest you pay attention.”

“Yes, miss,” they said together.

Regulus did not look up once.

He was still drawing.

The classroom settled again into the soft scratch of pencil on paper and the occasional shuffle of shoes on the floorboards. Outside, somewhere beyond the windows, the grounds stretched wide and immaculate, ready for playtime and lunch and the rest of the school day.

Pandora folded her hands neatly on her desk, eyes bright.

Evan sat very straight, face set, gaze flicking back once more to the lonely boy by the window.

Regulus, unaware of any of it, smiled faintly at whatever had appeared on the page beneath his hands.

He kept swinging his legs.

Kept hunching over the table.

Kept drawing as if nothing important had happened at all.

And beside him, in low whispers and sharp little glances, the twins began to plan.

Break came all at once, like a dam giving way.

Chairs scraped back. Exercise books snapped shut. Children burst from their desks in a flood of noise and polished shoes and shrill voices, all rushing for the door in one bright, chaotic wave. The classroom that had been so neat and so tightly held together a moment ago became a blur of motion.

Regulus did not notice.

He was still at his desk by the window, curled over his paper, pencil moving in small careful strokes as the room emptied around him. His legs still swung beneath the chair. His brow was furrowed. He had moved on to another little figure now, tongue caught faintly between his teeth as he shaded in a sleeve.

By the time the last child had darted out into the corridor, he was alone.

He did not realise that either.

The teacher, gathering a stack of books at the front, looked over and softened at once.

“Regulus,” she said gently.

He jolted a little at the sound of his name and looked up, blinking.

The room was suddenly quiet.

He looked around, a little dazed, as though only just now noticing the empty desks and abandoned chairs and the silence left behind after the rush.

“It’s break time,” the teacher told him kindly. “You can go and play now.”

Regulus looked from her to the door and then back again. He paused for a moment, thinking.

Then he asked, very seriously, “Can I stay in here instead?”

The teacher smiled, though there was a tired note in it. “Not today, darling. I’m busy in here.”

Regulus’s mouth turned down.

He glanced at his drawing, then at the classroom, clearly trying to find another way around the problem. “I’ll be quiet.”

“I know you will,” she said softly, coming over to his desk. “But you still can’t stay in here today.”

He slumped a little in his seat, disappointed but not angry, only resigned in that small solemn way children sometimes were when the world refused to arrange itself properly.

The teacher reached for the page on his desk. “May I see?”

At once his attention caught there instead. He let her take it without protest, watching closely as she lifted the drawing and looked over it.

“Oh, Regulus,” she said, and she meant it. “This is lovely.”

His whole face changed.

The disappointment loosened at once. A shy little grin tugged at his mouth, sudden and bright and impossible to hide.

She turned the page a little to catch the light. “You’ve put so much detail into this. Look at that. And these lines here.” She glanced at him over the paper. “Would it be all right if I pinned this up with the others you’ve done?”

Regulus sat straighter. “With the others?”

“With the others,” she confirmed.

His grin widened instantly, all soft surprise and pleased pride. He nodded at once. “Yes.”

“I thought you might say that.” She stacked the drawing neatly with a few more papers already set aside, then gently touched the edge of his desk. “Off you go now.”

He gave the drawing one last look before sliding off his chair. “Okay.”

The teacher ushered him kindly but firmly toward the door.

Out in the corridor, the noise of break echoed from farther down the building. Hooks lined the wall, each one crowded with coats and satchels and scarves. Light from the high windows fell across the polished floor in pale bars.

And standing a little way off in the hallway, half-hidden by the turn in the corridor, were Evan and Pandora.

Waiting.

Watching.

Regulus did not notice them at all.

He walked straight past without even glancing their way, drifting to the row of hooks where his coat and bag were hanging amongst all the others. His bag was a little higher than seemed fair, and he had to go up onto his tiptoes to reach it, fingers fumbling at the flap before finally getting it open.

Pandora narrowed her eyes.

Evan said nothing.

They watched as Regulus rummaged around with complete focus, pushing aside bits and pieces until he found what he wanted. At last he pulled out a sketchbook and a small bundle of pencils, clutching them to his chest with visible satisfaction.

Then, without the slightest hesitation, he sat down on the floor.

Evan blinked.

Pandora’s brows lifted.

Regulus shuffled himself backwards until he was tucked under the hanging coats, hidden beneath the drape of wool and sleeves and hems. He curled there as if it were the most natural place in the world to be, sketchbook in his lap, the coats around him like a little den. The fabric brushed his hair and shoulders. He shifted once, getting comfortable.

Then he went still.

Pandora stared.

“He’s sitting under the coats,” she whispered.

Evan kept watching, his face unreadable. “I can see that.”

“He wants to stay there.”

“Yes.”

A moment later the classroom door opened and the teacher stepped out with her stack of papers. She looked one way down the corridor, then the other, clearly checking for stragglers.

Her eyes fell on the small pair of shoes just visible beneath the coats.

She sighed.

“Regulus,” she said.

There was a rustle from under the hanging uniforms.

“No,” came his muffled voice.

Pandora’s mouth twitched.

The teacher stepped closer. “You cannot stay in the hallway either.”

Another rustle. Then Regulus’s head poked out through the coats, hair slightly mussed, expression full of mournful protest.

“But it’s comfy.”

“I’m sure it is,” the teacher said, far too experienced to be swayed. “But you still can’t stay here. Off you go.”

He made a small whining sound under his breath, not quite a complaint and not quite a word, then slowly crawled out from beneath the coats, sketchbook and pencils held tightly in both arms like something precious. He stood, looking terribly put upon.

The teacher gave him a look that was gentle but firm.

Regulus sighed as if the whole world was very unfair indeed, then turned and hurried off down the corridor, clutching his things.

Pandora and Evan exchanged a glance.

Then, silent as shadows, they followed.

Regulus did not go towards the doors that led outside to the playground.

He did not even glance that way.

Instead he turned down the quieter corridor near the admin offices, where the noise from the rest of break became more distant and muffled. Tucked into a little alcove there was a miniature library corner: low bookshelves lined with well-thumbed books, a faded rug, two beanbags, and a small display board pinned with reading charts and carefully lettered notices.

There was no one there.

Regulus went straight to it as though he had known exactly where he was heading all along.

Evan and Pandora stopped just out of sight by the corner, peering round.

Regulus set down his sketchbook and pencils with care, then dropped into one of the beanbags, sinking deep into it until only his knees and socks and the top half of his jumper seemed properly visible. He looked immediately more comfortable than he had anywhere else all day.

Pandora watched him scan the bookshelf.

His fingers moved along the spines with concentration. Then he selected a copy of The Enchanted Wood.

He settled back with it at once, opening the book carefully in his lap.

“Oh,” Pandora whispered.

Evan frowned. “He came here to read.”

Regulus had already vanished into it.

The whole world seemed to narrow around him. He tucked one foot beneath the other, bent over the pages, and began to read with the same total devotion he gave his drawings, every bit of him absorbed. The corridor outside still carried far-off laughter and running feet and doors opening and shutting, but in the little library corner there was only quiet.

He was the only one there.

Only him, the beanbag, the little shelves, and the book.

Pandora looked at her brother, intrigued all over again. “He doesn’t even want the playground.”

Evan’s eyes stayed on Regulus. “No.”

“He doesn’t want the other children.”

“No.”

Pandora tilted her head, studying the lonely boy folded into the beanbag with his book. “He really is strange.”

Evan did not answer immediately.

Regulus turned a page.

Very gently, very carefully, as if he respected books enough to never be rough with them.

Evan kept staring.

Then he said, quietly, “I want to know why he’s like this.”

Pandora’s smile curled, slow and sharp. “So do I.”

They stayed hidden where they were, still watching him.

But Regulus, oblivious as ever, only sank deeper into the beanbag, held The Enchanted Wood close, and kept reading as if he had escaped into somewhere much better than break time, much better than the playground, much better than all the noise and all the people.

And somewhere behind him, unseen and whispering in the corridor, the twins kept making plans.

They kept watching.

They did not go outside for the rest of break.

The playground noise rose and fell in the distance, children shouting, laughing, shrieking over games that seemed to matter desperately for ten minutes at a time, but none of it touched the little library corner by the admin offices. Regulus stayed where he was, folded into the beanbag with The Enchanted Wood open in his lap, turning each page with careful fingers, entirely content.

Pandora leaned lightly against the wall just out of sight, arms folded, expression bright with interest.

Evan stood beside her, quieter, still watching.

“He hasn’t moved,” Pandora murmured.

“He turned a page.”

“You know what I mean.”

Evan did not answer.

Regulus had not looked up once. Not for footsteps. Not for voices. Not for the occasional receptionist passing through the corridor. He had made himself a tiny world and disappeared neatly inside it.

Pandora glanced sideways at her brother. “You’re still bothered.”

Evan frowned faintly. “I’m not bothered.”

She raised an eyebrow.

He ignored that. “He just doesn’t act properly.”

Pandora smiled. “That’s one way of putting it.”

They kept watching.

And then, all at once, the bell rang.

It cut through the corridor sharp and clear, the sound echoing through the building, summoning children back to their classrooms. From farther off came the immediate scramble of feet and voices and the general miserable dragging of break time to its end.

Regulus did not react.

Not even a little.

He stayed tucked in the beanbag with the book open, still reading as if the bell had happened in another country.

Pandora’s mouth twitched.

Evan stared. “He didn’t hear it.”

“He heard it,” Pandora said. “He just didn’t notice.”

Regulus turned another page.

The corridor began to fill and empty in brief little currents as children passed through on their way back to lessons, but still he did not move.

Then one of the receptionists came out from the office nearby.

She was older, tidy and kind-faced, and when her eyes landed on the little library corner and the small dark head bent over the book, she let out the softest sigh, the sort that held no real annoyance in it at all.

“Oh, Regulus,” she said, smiling.

That got his attention.

He looked up at once, blinking as though surfacing from underwater.

“It’s time to go back to class,” she told him gently.

He looked around, disoriented for a second, then down at the book in his lap. “Oh.”

The receptionist’s smile only warmed. Clearly this was not unusual. “Come along, then. Let’s sort that out for you.”

Regulus climbed reluctantly out of the beanbag, holding the book with care while she led him to the little desk just outside the office. The twins stayed hidden, watching from the corridor as she went through the motions with practised ease, checking the book out for him as though this happened often enough to have become part of the daily rhythm.

Regulus waited patiently, clutching his sketchbook and pencils against his jumper.

“There we are,” she said at last, handing the book back.

He took it at once, careful and solemn. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, sweetheart. Off you go now.”

He nodded and hurried away.

Pandora and Evan stepped back farther as he came down the corridor, still unnoticed by him. He held all his things tight against his chest, walking quickly now that he had somewhere definite to be.

When he reached the hooks outside the classroom, he stopped and immediately began putting everything away with that same careful focus he gave everything else. The sketchbook went into his bag. The pencils followed. The library book too, tucked in properly and safely. He checked the flap twice after fastening it, then let the bag hang back in place.

After that he went and stood outside the classroom door.

Just like they were supposed to.

Hands by his sides. Feet together. Waiting.

He was the first one there.

The corridor behind him still echoed with the distant stragglers of break time, children dawdling on purpose, talking too loudly, taking as long as they could to make their way back inside. No one else had returned yet.

Regulus stood alone.

Quiet and neat and very still now, all the restless little comfort he had found in the library corner folded away again as he waited at the door.

Pandora and Evan stopped a short distance away, looking at him.

“He came back properly,” Pandora said.

Evan nodded once.

“He put everything away.”

Another nod.

“He’s standing exactly where he’s meant to.”

Regulus did not fidget much. Only a little shift of weight from one foot to the other, then stillness again. His expression was calm. Distant. Patient. As if waiting alone in an empty corridor did not bother him in the slightest.

He looked smaller standing there by himself than he had in the beanbag with a book or at his desk with a pencil in hand.

Not sad, exactly.

Just singular.

Separate from everyone else.

Pandora’s eyes narrowed with fascination. “He really doesn’t do things like other people.”

Evan did not look away from Regulus. “No.”

For a moment neither of them spoke.

The corridor felt oddly hushed around the three of them, with only the far-off noise of other children taking their time and the faint classroom sounds beyond the closed door.

Regulus stood waiting, perfectly obedient, perfectly unaware that he was being watched yet again.

And the twins, lingering nearby before the others came back, kept staring at the lonely boy who had said no, who read during break, who sat under coats because it was comfortable, who missed bells and ignored playgrounds and seemed entirely untouched by all the things that ruled everyone else.

Then Pandora smiled to herself, slow and thoughtful.

Evan’s expression remained set.

And Regulus, none the wiser, simply kept waiting outside the classroom door, first in line and alone.

The rest of the class came spilling back in eventually, all noisy shoes and chatter and dragging feet, filling the corridor around Regulus until he was no longer standing there alone. He did not join in. He just stayed where he was, neat and quiet at the front of the line, while the others shuffled into place behind and beside him, still talking under their breath.

Pandora and Evan took their places too.

Pandora’s eyes slid immediately to Regulus.

Evan’s did too.

Then the classroom door opened, and the teacher smiled at the line. “In you come.”

The children filed inside.

Desks scraped. Bags thumped lightly against chair legs. Exercise books came out again. There was a low hum of voices until the teacher called for quiet, and then, little by little, the class settled.

“Now then,” she said, once everyone was seated. “This afternoon we’re doing science.”

That got the room’s attention far more cleanly than most subjects did.

Science had been going well lately, mostly because the lessons had been so fixed on space travel, astronauts, rockets, and the moon. The recent Apollo 13 mission had captured the children’s imaginations so completely that even the ones who usually drifted through lessons half-awake had opinions about spacecraft and helmets and flags and moon dust. The school had leaned into it. Worksheets about rockets. Reading tasks about astronauts. diagrams of spacecraft on the board. Facts about the moon, the planets, stars, and how men travelled into space. It kept them interested. It kept them listening.

And Regulus loved it.

The moment the worksheets were handed out, something in him sharpened all at once.

He sat straighter.

His eyes dropped to the page with fierce concentration.

Where he had been so quiet before, now there was a kind of electric stillness to him, all his focus narrowing to a point. His pencil moved almost immediately, quick and confident, racing over the sheet. He barely hesitated over any of the questions. He knew the answers. More than that, he knew extra things, too many things, and he wrote them in the margins and beneath the lines and wherever else there was space.

Across the room, Pandora noticed how different he looked.

Not louder, not less odd, but brighter somehow. Awake in a deeper way. Like this reached inside him and switched on every light.

Evan noticed too.

Regulus tore through the worksheet so quickly it was almost alarming. While other children were still sounding words out under their breath or chewing the ends of their pencils and peering suspiciously at the diagrams, he was already at the bottom of the page. He checked over his answers once, frowned and added another sentence beside one of them, then carefully set his pencil down and raised his hand.

Silently.

He was the first to finish.

The teacher looked over, mildly surprised but not shocked, because Regulus was often first when the subject caught him properly. She came over to his desk with the same patient calm she always wore and bent to look at the worksheet.

For a second she said nothing.

Then her eyebrows lifted.

Every answer was correct.

More than correct, really. Full. Detailed. Far more detailed than the sheet had asked for. Where the question had wanted a single sentence, Regulus had written three. Where it had wanted a label, he had added explanations. He had even tucked in little tiny diagrams in the margins, neat and careful and oddly beautiful.

“Well,” she said softly.

Regulus looked up at her, intent and waiting.

“This is excellent.”

His whole face lit at once.

And because she had praised him, because the subject was space, because he was already full of it and trying very hard to keep it all contained inside himself, the words came spilling out anyway, though he kept them in whispers because they were in class and he knew he was meant to be quiet.

“I know lots more too,” he whispered quickly. “Apollo 13 is my favourite one at the moment because I’ve been reading about the mission and the astronauts and I’m making things at home.”

The teacher smiled faintly, already recognising the tone. “Are you?”

“Yes,” he whispered, leaning forward over the desk. “My mum got me paper mâché things so I’m making all the planets into a mobile for my room and I’m doing them the right colours and sizes, well not the real sizes because that’s too big, but the right sizes compared to each other, so Jupiter is the biggest one and Mercury is very small and Pluto is the littlest and I’m trying to make the spaces right too but that’s hard because there isn’t enough ceiling for the real amount of space, so I’m doing it as right as I can.”

His hands had come up while he spoke, shaping circles in the air.

“She got me balloons and paste and paint,” he went on in a rush, voice still hushed but tumbling over itself now. “And I’ve done Earth blue and green and white and I’m trying to do the swirls right on Jupiter and Saturn’s rings have to be very careful because they bend if you hold them wrong and Mars is red but not just one red because it’s got darker bits and lighter bits and I’m trying to make Neptune darker than Uranus because it is.”

The teacher nodded, still looking over the worksheet, though now her expression had softened into something fond.

“And I’m making Apollo 13 too,” Regulus whispered. “Not a big one, a little replica, but proper with all the bits. I looked at pictures. The command module is different and there’s the other parts and I’m trying to get them right and I want to hang that next to the planets but not too near because it needs its own string. And I’m making a poster of the astronauts.”

“The astronauts?” the teacher repeated quietly.

He nodded hard.

“Yes. All of them. With their names. I’m doing little portraits but I need to do them again because one of them looked wrong. And I’m writing about the mission too. A story, but also research. Because I read about what happened and I’m putting in the facts I know and then the bits I think happened on the moon.”

He lowered his voice even more, as if confiding something serious.

“Because some things don’t get written down properly in children’s books, so I’m putting what I think they did when they were there. I think they probably had to check lots of rock things and walk very carefully because the ground might be odd and I think they would have had lists of what to look at and collect and maybe they talked to each other on the radios even when nothing very exciting was happening because being there at all is exciting.”

The teacher let him go on.

Regulus had that look now, the one he got when he was no longer really noticing whether anyone wanted him to stop.

“I’m writing the story like a mission report but also like a proper story,” he whispered. “So it starts before they go up and then it says about the spacecraft and then what they saw and what they did and then what they brought back and what they learned. And I’m doing drawings in the margins. I drew the moon and the Earth from far away and the astronauts stepping out and the little footprints.”

His eyes were shining now.

“And I’m writing a letter.”

The teacher glanced down at him. “Are you?”

Regulus nodded again. “To Jim Lovell.”

The name came out with great importance.

“I picked him because he’s the commander and I think commanders probably know the most and he would understand the questions best. I’m asking him if the moon looks bigger when you’re actually there and if it felt strange seeing Earth far away and how long it takes to stop feeling wobbly after the rocket goes up and if the stars look different in space when there’s no proper sky around them.”

He drew a quick breath and continued before she could say anything.

“And I’m sending him some drawings I did. One of the spacecraft and one of the moon and one of how I think the next mission should go. I put ideas in too.”

“What sort of ideas?” she asked, almost amused now.

Regulus leaned even closer, whispering with urgent seriousness. “I think on the next mission they should research more kinds of moon rock from farther apart places, not just from one bit, because maybe different parts are made of different things. And I think they should look at the dust more because it gets everywhere in the drawings and that probably means it matters. And maybe they should test if plants could grow there in special boxes even though I don’t think they can unless people bring everything with them. And they should write down more about how it feels to walk, because that’s important too.”

His hands moved again, quick and exact.

“And I asked him whether astronauts ever get scared when it’s very quiet, and whether they can see more stars than we can, and if they have favourite constellations.”

The teacher had stopped looking at the worksheet altogether now.

Regulus, meanwhile, had no intention of slowing down.

“My dad got me an astronaut costume too,” he whispered, nearly vibrating with excitement. “A real one. Well, not a real real one, but it looks real enough. And I’m making my big brother film a moon landing with me in the garden.”

The words tumbled over each other.

“He’s got to hold the camera and do the close bits when I step down and put my foot in the mud so it looks like moon dust and I’m making him do it properly and Mum said she’ll film and direct it because she says my brother won’t take it seriously enough if she doesn’t. So she’s going to tell us where to stand and when to do it again and she said we might use flour or chalk dust or something to make it look better.”

His grin by now was impossible to hide.

“I’m going to say lines and everything,” he whispered. “And I’m making the flag too.”

The teacher had one hand lightly against the edge of his desk, smiling now in spite of herself.

Regulus went on and on, quiet but unstoppable.

“And the moon’s interesting because it doesn’t shine by itself, it only looks bright because the Sun shines on it, and there are dark patches called maria and they aren’t seas really, they just look like it, and there are lots and lots of craters because things hit it and there isn’t weather there like here to rub them away. And the moon makes tides because of gravity, and it changes shape when we look at it but it isn’t really changing shape, it’s just how much we can see lit up, and I know all the phases in order—new moon, crescent, quarter, gibbous, full, then back again—and if you look very carefully sometimes you can see bits of it in daytime too.”

He barely paused for breath.

“And stars are different because they’re very far away suns and some of them are much bigger than our Sun and some are different colours because they’re hotter or colder and if a star looks redder that means something different than a blue one and some stars are in constellations and some only look near each other from here but they’re not really. And if you watch them long enough they move across the sky because of the Earth and some you can only see at certain times of year.”

Now he lowered his voice again, like this bit mattered most.

“My name is from a star.”

The teacher’s face softened even further. “Is it?”

Regulus nodded.

“Yes. Regulus is a star in Leo. It means little king. I looked it up. It’s very bright and it’s in the lion and I think that’s nice because it sounds important. I like stars with names better than just numbers. There’s lots of good ones. Sirius is one too, but mine is better.”

That last part came out with such quiet certainty that the teacher nearly laughed.

He wasn’t finished.

“And the stars around the moon don’t always look the same because of where everything is and because sometimes it’s too bright to see lots of them properly, but if you know which ones you’re looking for you can find them, and I’m trying to learn more of them because when I finish the planets I want to do some stars too, but only the most important ones because if I do all of them there won’t be enough room.”

At last he stopped, only because he had reached the edge of what could be whispered in one continuous stream without breath.

He looked up at the teacher, expectant and utterly earnest.

Then, after all of that, he asked in the same serious little voice, “Do you have more worksheets?”

She blinked once.

Regulus continued, hopeful now. “Or maybe another science sheet. Or something about rockets. Or stars. Or space. I can do more if you want. I’d like to do more science work.”

Around them, the rest of the class was still scratching through their own worksheets, nowhere near finished.

But Regulus sat waiting patiently, every answer done, every extra thought spilling out of him like light from a lantern, looking happier than he had anywhere else all day.

And from their desks, Pandora and Evan watched him.

Watched the silent weird boy become something else entirely when the subject turned to stars and spacecraft and astronauts.

Watched his face change.

Watched the teacher bend over his desk, smiling down at him while he whispered on and on and on, unable to stop, full of moons and rockets and names of stars and plans for paper planets hanging from his ceiling and a letter crossing oceans to a man he had never met.

Pandora’s expression had gone intent again, fascinated.

Evan stared with a frown so slight it was almost nothing, but he did not look away.

Because Regulus Black, who could sit alone at break and hide beneath coats and not notice bells and say no as if it were nothing at all, was sitting in the middle of science class glowing over a worksheet about space.

And somehow that was stranger than anything yet.

The teacher smiled at him, properly smiled, the kind that came from being both fond and a little amused by how intensely serious he was about all of this.

“I think,” she whispered back, “we can find you some more to do.”

Regulus sat up even straighter.

She gathered a few extra science worksheets from the stack on her desk and brought them over first, setting them down in a neat pile in front of him. Then she took a spare sheet and wrote out a few additional tasks in her tidy hand as she spoke them softly to him.

“Two drawing projects,” she said. “One of the Moon and one of your favourite spacecraft.”

Regulus nodded at once.

“Letters to the other Apollo 13 astronauts as well.”

His eyes widened. “All of them?”

“All of them.”

He looked delighted by the size of the assignment.

“And,” she continued, “a short story about aliens.”

That made him blink in pleased surprise.

“And one more,” she said, glancing at him with a knowing little smile now. “Since you like stars so much. Write down all the people in your family with star names, what stars they are, which constellations they belong to, and any facts you can find.”

That one landed with such immediate force that his whole face lit from within.

He whispered, awed, “There’s loads.”

“I thought there might be.”

He was already reaching for his pencil.

“Regulus is me, Sirius is my big brother, my dads name is Orion,” he murmured, counting them on his fingers. “My cousin Bellatrix and my cousin Andromeda and my uncle Cygnus and my uncle Alphard and my granddad Pollux and my grandpa Arcturus—”

He stopped only to draw breath.

“And my aunt Lucretia,” he added seriously, “because she has the same name as the German astronomer.”

The teacher gave him one last pleased look. “That should keep you busy for the rest of the lesson.”

It did.

The moment she walked away, Regulus bent over the desk and got to work as if the room had vanished around him.

He sorted the new sheets into piles first, because there was an order to this now and it mattered. Science worksheets on one side. Letter pages in the middle. Story paper beneath. Drawing paper at the top. Then he wrote little headings in careful print, pressing his tongue lightly to his lip in concentration.

To Captain Jim Lovell had already been started, so now beside it appeared To Fred Haise and To Jack Swigert, both written very neatly at the top of fresh pages.

He paused over the alien story for a moment, thinking.

Then he wrote the title in deliberate capitals and immediately began.

After that he made a fourth page and wrote:

Star Names in My Family

Underneath it, he started a list.

Regulus — brightest star in Leo. Means little king. In the lion.
Sirius — brightest star in Canis Major. Dog star.
Orion — constellation, hunter.
Bellatrix — star in Orion. Means female warrior.
Andromeda — constellation and princess.
Cygnus — constellation, swan.
Alphard — star in Hydra. Lonely one.
Pollux — star in Gemini.
Arcturus — star in Boötes. Very bright. Also my middle name because I was named after Grandfather.

He frowned for a second, then carefully added:

Lucretia — not a star but same name as an astronomer.

That seemed important enough to underline once.

His pencil moved quickly after that, darting from page to page. On one sheet he began sketching the Moon in grey pencil with crater rings pressed in darker near the edges. On another he started outlining Apollo 13 again from memory, getting the shape down first before fussing over the smaller pieces. Every now and then he stopped only long enough to whisper tiny reminders to himself.

“Fred Haise gets his own drawing.”
“No, Jack Swigert first.”
“Bellatrix is in Orion.”
“Arcturus is orange.”
“Need another page for moon facts.”

He was so deep in it that when the teacher returned to her own desk and sat down, he did not notice her at all.

She glanced over once, saw him wholly occupied and happily so, and then turned to the computer.

The screen hummed softly. She rested one elbow on the desk, thoughtful now, and began searching through the kinds of notices schools kept, the kinds of archived competitions and clipped opportunities and educational circulars that might, with a bit of luck, turn into something useful for a boy like Regulus Black.

Every so often she found something and made a small sound of interest.

There was a student experiment competition tied to Skylab, full of older pupils proposing things to be tested in space, exactly the sort of thing Regulus would pore over even if he was still too young for it. There were notices for the NSTA-NASA Youth Congresses, the sort of grand serious school-science opportunity that might make his eyes go wide on the page. There were older NASA-linked science contest circulars out of Ames, and later newspaper clippings about Skylab fever turning into prizes and reward money and public excitement, and a whole mess of space-themed essay contests, model-making calls, and astronomy features that papers and companies had run whenever America’s fascination with rockets flared up again. She kept opening them, printing some, setting others aside, and making a little stack for him anyway, even the ones he could not possibly enter yet, because he looked exactly like the sort of child who would still want to read every word of them. 

After that she added a few more local-looking things from school circulars and company-sponsored children’s pages too, smaller competitions, less grand ones, the sort that asked for rocket drawings or moon essays or “what I think we’ll find in space” compositions. Some were real and clipped and old; some were the sort of flimsy cheerful contests schools seemed always to be sent by someone or other. The point was not whether he entered all of them. The point was that he would love looking through them.

At his desk, Regulus kept working.

The science worksheets were already half-finished again. He had moved to the letters next, printing in his careful small hand.

Dear Fred Haise,
I like your mission very much and I am making a model of Apollo 13 at home. Did it feel different when things went wrong in space than it would on Earth? I think you were very brave. I am sending a drawing of the spacecraft and also a drawing of what I think the Moon looked like from your window. If you go again I think you should write down even more about how things feel because that is science too.

On the page for Jack Swigert he wrote even more questions, some squeezed into the margins when he ran out of room.

Did all the buttons make sense after a while or did it take ages?
Could you tell where everything was without looking after enough practice?
Do astronauts argue in a polite way when they are busy?

Then, because he had thought of it and could not bear to lose it, he turned over the page and began sketching a new mission patch idea he thought they ought to use next time.

His alien story was not really short at all.

It began with a spaceship finding a very polite species living under the surface of the Moon and quickly turned into three pages of notes about what the aliens might eat, whether they would understand telescopes, and how one should properly introduce oneself if one landed on another world and wanted to be respectful.

His family stars list became dense with facts.

Next to Sirius he added that it was the brightest star in the night sky.
Next to Bellatrix he wrote that it was blue and in Orion’s shoulder.
Next to Andromeda he added that she was also a constellation and there was a whole story about her.
Next to Alphard he wrote called the solitary one and underlined that because he liked it.
Next to Pollux he added twin star name in very small writing.
Next to Arcturus he wrote one of the brightest stars in the sky and then, after a pause, very carefully:
Grandfather’s name and mine too in the middle.

The teacher looked up once more and saw him bent over all of it, absolutely swallowed by the work, the pages spreading around him like a little paper universe.

On the far side of the room, Pandora had long since stopped pretending not to watch him.

“What’s he doing now?” she whispered.

Evan glanced over from his own desk. “Everything.”

That was nearly true.

Regulus had gone from one task to another with tireless delight, not in a messy rush but in a bright ordered stream, like he had been handed the exact shape of happiness and was intent on finishing every piece of it before the bell.

Pandora’s gaze lingered on the pages around him. The little labelled list. The careful diagrams. The letters. The drawings. The way he kept working with the same absorbed seriousness, never looking up to see who noticed and never once checking whether anyone else was doing the same.

“He likes being given more work,” she whispered, sounding genuinely astonished.

Evan kept staring. “Yeah.”

At the teacher’s desk, the printer started up.

A page slid out.

Then another.

Then three more after that.

The teacher gathered the printed competition notices into a growing stack and straightened them with a tap against the desk edge, already imagining the look on Regulus’s face when she handed them over at the end of the lesson.

At his own desk, unaware, Regulus turned to a fresh page and wrote in very careful capitals:

IDEAS FOR THE NEXT MOON MISSION

And then, because he could never leave anything at only one idea, he started listing them all.

Eventually the lesson ended.

The room changed all at once again, the same way it had at break: chairs scraping back, children talking over each other, the sudden scrape and thud of a whole class releasing at once now that lunch had arrived. Everyone was desperate to get out. Books were shoved aside. Pencil cases snapped shut. A dozen voices started at once.

Regulus did not join the rush.

He stayed in his seat while the rest of them bolted for the door, carefully gathering every single sheet into one neat pile. The extra science worksheets. The moon drawing. The Apollo 13 sketch. The letters to Fred Haise and Jack Swigert. The alien story. The family star list. His pages of moon facts and mission ideas and extra notes he had squeezed into margins when he ran out of room.

He squared the edges against the desk, making them tidy.

He had finished all of them.

Every last one.

He looked down at the stack with quiet satisfaction, smoothing one palm over the top page. He was already thinking ahead, to taking them home, to showing them properly, to where they would go after that. Some of them would have to go on his bedroom walls, obviously, because they were space ones and that was where the best space things belonged. Others could go on the fridge. His mummy would like them on the fridge. She would see how much he had done and how right it all was and how neat.

He smiled to himself.

Then he picked the stack up with great care and went to the teacher’s desk instead of the door.

The teacher was still sorting a few things, letting the last of the lunch rush clear before she moved. She looked up as he approached and immediately smiled, unsurprised to find him still here.

“All finished?” she asked.

Regulus nodded and held the papers up. “All of them.”

She took the top few and flicked through them quickly, her expression shifting almost at once from pleased to quietly amazed all over again.

“You really did finish all of them.”

He nodded harder. “Can I take them home?”

“Of course you can.”

That seemed obvious to him, so he moved right to the more important question.

“Can I have more science homework?”

The teacher looked at him over the papers and laughed softly under her breath. “More?”

“Yes,” he said at once. “For home.”

He stood there so serious about it that she could not even pretend to refuse.

“Well,” she said, turning to the little pile she had made on her desk, “I think I might have something for you.”

Regulus blinked.

Then she handed him the printed stack.

The proper competition notices first, the space-related ones she thought he would like best, followed by the others she had found and clipped together for him. Some were grand and official-looking, full of school science challenges and essay submissions and model-making competitions linked to space and astronomy and future missions; some were smaller, splashier, less serious but still full of rockets and stars and moon talk. She had even added a few cheerful children’s competitions from magazines and education packs too: a Design the Spacecraft of Tomorrow drawing contest, a Young Moon Reporter writing prize, a My Message to an Astronaut letter competition, a Build Your Own Rocket schools challenge, a Name a New Space Station Module children’s callout, a Future Moon Colony Poster Prize, and a little one from a science company asking children to send in their “best idea for what scientists should study next in space.”

Regulus stared at the stack.

Then stared at her.

Then looked back at the papers as though she had just placed the moon itself in his hands.

“All these?” he breathed.

“All these,” she said.

There was about half a second where he seemed to freeze under the size of his own delight.

Then it hit him all at once.

He let out a sharp, bright yell of joy that bounced off the classroom walls. His whole face split into a huge grin. He started bouncing on the spot before he could stop himself, the stack of papers clutched carefully to his chest. One foot, then the other, then both. His hands flapped hard and fast at the wrists, his arms jerking with the force of how excited he was, and then he gave one little jump, then another, nearly vibrating with it.

“Oh my God—” he gasped, not even trying to contain it. “Look— there’s loads— there’s so many—”

He bounced again.

The papers rustled wildly in his hands. He gave another delighted little yell and flapped harder, his shoulders up by his ears, joy pouring out of him so purely it made the whole moment seem bright.

The teacher just smiled.

Not mocking. Not shushing him. Just smiling, warm and soft, because there was something impossible not to smile at in the sight of a small boy all but exploding with happiness over science homework and space competitions.

“Yes,” she said gently, once he had half-caught his breath. “There are rather a lot.”

“I can do all of them,” he blurted.

“You can certainly look through them all.”

“I can do the poster one first,” he said, already halfway elsewhere in his head. “And the letter one and the model one and the moon one and— and— the space station one— and maybe the rocket one if Dad helps me cut bits because the knife is sharp—”

His hands flapped again. He bounced once more in place, then clutched the whole stack tighter like he was afraid someone might suddenly take it back.

The teacher rose from her chair. “Let’s get all of this into your bag before it goes everywhere.”

That was sensible enough that he allowed it at once.

Between the two of them they gathered everything together: all his finished work, all the printed competitions, all the extra sheets, the carefully stacked drawings and letters and stories. She helped him sort them so nothing bent. He opened his bag and she made sure the heavier pages went flat at the back, with the competition notices together in their own pile and the drawings laid safely on top. Regulus hovered close the whole time, watching anxiously until the final flap closed.

“There,” she said.

He put both hands on the bag immediately, reassured.

Then she glanced at the clock and her expression shifted slightly.

“Lunch, Regulus.”

He looked at her, then at the bag, then back at her.

There was a familiar sort of calculation in that pause, the kind that suggested lunch was a vague nuisance interrupting much more important things.

She knew that look.

A lot of the teachers did by now.

Too many times, Regulus Black had become so absorbed in work or books or drawing that he had simply failed to eat at all, or had wandered into lunch and then somehow ended up reading in a corner or working at a table until the entire break was nearly gone. More than once a teacher had had to keep him behind later and make him eat his untouched lunch instead of going straight to lessons. Nobody particularly wanted a repeat of that.

So before he could drift anywhere else, she moved briskly to the hooks with him.

“Lunch first,” she said.

He made a tiny sound of complaint, more reflex than rebellion, but he did not argue properly. He let her help him settle the bag back into place and then pull down his lunchbox from the hook beside his coat.

He took it automatically, still visibly thinking about the competitions.

“There’s time to look at them later,” she told him.

He hugged the lunchbox in one arm. “I need to do the astronaut letter one first.”

“After lunch.”

“And the moon colony poster.”

“After lunch.”

“And—”

“After lunch.”

That, at least, seemed immovable.

So he sighed in the long-suffering way of a child enduring the world’s constant insistence on practical interruptions, and let her guide him along the corridor.

She walked him all the way down to the lunchroom.

Regulus came willingly enough, but his mind was nowhere near it now. It was clearly still racing through titles and rockets and poster ideas and whether one should use blue ink or black ink for an astronaut letter and what sort of spacecraft children in competitions probably drew wrong. Every so often his free hand twitched as though it wanted to flap again.

He was smiling to himself.

The teacher glanced down at him once, amused.

“Exciting, is it?”

“Yes,” he said immediately, with such deep sincerity it was almost solemn. Then, because solemnity lasted about one second under that amount of excitement, he grinned again. “There’s loads.”

“I noticed.”

By the time they reached the lunchroom doors, he had already whispered half a dozen more ideas under his breath.

The teacher steered him gently toward the entrance, lunchbox in hand, pointed firmly inside so he could not drift away, and only then let him go.

Regulus hurried in the moment the teacher let him go, lunchbox hugged tight against his chest, moving with that quick determined little walk of someone who had something specific in mind and no interest in being delayed on the way there.

The lunchroom was loud.

Too loud, really. Full of clattering cutlery and scraped chairs and voices bouncing off the walls in one long rolling wave of noise. Children crowded at the tables in little clumps, all chatter and elbows and laughter, the smell of hot school food hanging thick in the air.

Regulus did not go anywhere near the line for the lunches.

He never did.

Instead he made for the end of one of the longer tables where there was still a clear bit of space, far enough from the busiest knot of children that it felt a little less pressed in. He sat down at the very end, where he usually sat, and set his lunchbox carefully in front of him.

Alone.

Just as he always did.

He did not mind eating alone. Eating alone was simple. Quiet enough, if one ignored the rest of the room. Predictable. Sometimes one of the lunch ladies would sit with him for a few minutes, and that was nice enough because they were gentle and asked easy questions and did not mind if he talked about odd things.

He opened the lunchbox.

Everything inside had been packed exactly the way it ought to be. His parents did his lunch for him every morning because the school lunches were wrong in too many ways: the textures, the smells, the sauces touching things they were not meant to touch, the way hot food went slippery or soggy or grainy in unexpected places. At home they knew what he actually ate. They knew what was safe. What would not make him go strange and shivery with disgust before he had even put it in his mouth.

So this was right.

He took each thing out one by one and arranged it in front of him with the same quiet care he gave everything else. Sandwich first. Then the little cut fruit in its separate container. Then the crisps. Then the biscuit wrapped in paper. Then the drink, placed exactly beside the lunchbox, not too close to the edge.

He adjusted the sandwich once.

Shifted the fruit a little.

Straightened the napkin.

Then, tucked beneath the top lid, he found the note.

His face changed at once.

It was only a silly little note from his mum, folded once and tucked in where he would see it, but that was enough. He unfolded it carefully and read it, and the grin that spread across his face was soft and bright and immediate.

He let out the faintest huff of pleased laughter through his nose.

Then he read it again.

Still smiling.

He was just about to fold it up and tuck it safely beside the lunchbox when the bench shifted on one side of him.

Regulus looked up.

Someone had sat down to his left.

Before he could properly process that, the bench moved on his other side too.

He turned.

Pandora was sitting on one side of him.

Evan was sitting on the other.

Both of them set their school lunch trays down on the table as if this were the most natural thing in the world.

For a moment Regulus just stared.

His grin faded, not because he was upset exactly, but because this made no sense.

He looked at Pandora.

Then at Evan.

Then down at their trays.

Then back at them again.

He was confused in a very total, genuine way, the kind that wiped his face clean of everything else.

Usually he ate alone.

Always, really.

No one sat with him except sometimes a lunch lady, and that was different because lunch ladies were grown-ups and asked if he wanted his drink opening or reminded him to eat the fruit first before it went warm.

But this—

This was Evan and Pandora Rosier.

Sitting beside him.

With their trays.

At his table.

Regulus blinked once. Twice.

Then he asked, with complete sincerity, “Why are you here?”

Pandora smiled at him.

It was not her classroom smile this time, not exactly. Still sharp, still interested, but softer around the edges because she was clearly enjoying this.

“We’re having lunch,” she said.

He looked at her tray, then at the dozens of other places in the lunchroom where people were sitting.

“Yes,” he said slowly. “But why here?”

Evan said nothing at first. He only looked at Regulus with that same fixed unreadable focus he had been wearing all day.

Regulus turned his head slightly toward him too, waiting for an answer from either of them.

Pandora leaned her elbow on the table. “Can’t we sit here?”

Regulus considered that.

Technically, obviously, they could. There was room. They had already done it. But that was not what he had meant, and the fact she was answering a different question made his brow knit together.

“I mean,” he said carefully, “why do you want to?”

That seemed to amuse Pandora even more.

Evan put his hands flat on either side of his tray and finally said, “You always sit by yourself.”

Regulus looked at him blankly. “Yes.”

“And today,” Pandora added, “we decided not to let you.”

That was even stranger.

Regulus frowned a little deeper, trying to work through it. “Why?”

Pandora’s eyes gleamed. “Because we wanted to.”

He looked between them again.

There was no embarrassment in him, no pleased surprise, no flustered little panic like the twins were used to getting out of people. Only honest bewilderment. He was not offended either. Merely trying to understand the shape of the thing.

His hand drifted absently to the folded note from his mum, holding onto it while he thought.

“But you don’t usually sit with me,” he said.

“No,” said Evan.

“And we don’t really know each other.”

“No,” said Pandora.

“And at lunch people normally sit with their friends.”

That one neither of them answered straight away.

Regulus glanced down the table at the other children, all gathered in their usual little groups, then back at the twins boxed in close on either side of him.

“So,” he said, still trying to be fair about it, “I’m confused.”

Pandora let out a tiny laugh.

Not a cruel one. More like delight.

“I know,” she said.

Regulus did not seem reassured by that.

He looked at Evan instead, perhaps because Evan had been the one supposedly involved first. “Did you want something?”

Evan frowned. “What?”

“Did you want something,” Regulus repeated, “or are you just sitting here?”

Pandora actually had to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself smiling too much.

Evan stared at him for a second, then said, “We’re just sitting here.”

Regulus absorbed that.

Apparently that was the answer.

He did not understand it, but it was an answer.

So after another second of uncertain staring, he gave a small slow nod as if filing the situation away as odd but presently unavoidable, then very carefully folded his mother’s note again and slid it back into the lunchbox so it would not get bent.

The twins watched him do it.

Regulus reached for his sandwich.

Then paused again and looked at them one more time, still suspicious only in the sense that he genuinely could not make the pieces fit.

“You know,” he said, “there are lots of other spaces.”

Pandora rested her chin on her hand. “We know.”

“Near your friends.”

“Yes.”

Regulus looked at Evan. “And people you talk to.”

Evan’s mouth twitched faintly. “Yes.”

Regulus glanced at both of them once more, then finally asked the question that seemed to matter most to him now.

“Are you going to be weird?”

Pandora’s eyes widened.

Evan made a choked sort of sound that might almost have been a laugh if he were the sort of child who laughed easily.

Regulus kept looking at them, earnest and serious and waiting for a real answer.

Pandora recovered first.

“No,” she said smoothly. “Probably not.”

Regulus narrowed his eyes just a fraction, because that sounded less certain than he would have preferred.

Then, because lunch was lunch and his sandwich was right there and there was no point starving just because the Rosier twins had suddenly decided to become inexplicable, he picked up his food and began to eat.

Still confused.

Still quietly aware of them on either side of him.

Still not understanding at all why the two strangest popular children in school had set their trays down beside his carefully arranged lunch as if they belonged there.

Across from them, a few other children had started to notice. Quick glances. Whispered comments. The sort of low-level shock that spread fast in a room like that.

But Regulus did not care about any of that.

He only sat at the end of the table with his lunch laid out exactly as he liked it, his mum’s note safe in the box, and Pandora and Evan Rosier seated on either side of him like a question he had not yet figured out how to solve.

The question seemed simple enough when Pandora asked it.

“Can we have some?”

Regulus looked up from his lunch.

Evan was already eyeing the things laid out in front of him: the sandwich cut neatly the way he liked it, the fruit in its little container, the crisps, the biscuit, everything set in the right places.

Regulus hesitated.

He did not want to say yes.

That was the first thing inside him, immediate and clear and quiet. He did not want them touching it. Did not want things moved. Did not want the nice safe order of it disturbed now that it had all finally been set out properly.

But he also knew sharing was polite.

People were meant to share.

Grown-ups said so all the time.

And the twins were looking at him, waiting.

So he went still for a second too long, then said, a bit uncertainly, “Okay.”

Pandora smiled at once.

Evan did too, though his was smaller, sharper.

And then they started taking things.

Not one thing. Not a crisp after asking. Not half a biscuit with a laugh.

Almost everything.

Pandora took some fruit. Evan took the crisps. Pandora broke off part of the biscuit. Evan reached for the sandwich like it belonged to him now. Their hands kept crossing into the careful little arrangement Regulus had made, moving things out of place, taking them apart piece by piece until what was left in front of him looked wrong.

Very wrong.

Regulus stared.

He did not say anything.

He did not know how to say anything, because they had asked and he had said yes and now, technically, nothing bad was happening except that something was very bad and wrong anyway.

His hands curled quietly in his lap.

He shifted on the bench.

His shoulders started to creep upwards toward his ears.

Pandora noticed first.

She glanced at his face, at the way he had gone smaller somehow, quieter, drawn in.

Evan noticed a second later.

Regulus was looking at the table, not at them, not at the food, just somewhere near it, and there was something tight and unhappy in the line of his mouth now.

Pandora and Evan exchanged a look.

Then Pandora, grinning as though this might somehow fix it, pushed her tray a little closer to him. “You can have some of ours.”

Evan did the same, shunting bits of hot school lunch toward Regulus.

The smell hit him first.

Then the sight of it.

Greyish vegetables gone wet at the edges. Something with sauce. Something soft and steaming. Mash pressing up against peas. The sheen on the meat. The wrongness of one thing touching another thing touching another thing.

Regulus made a tiny sound in his throat at once.

Not words. Just distress.

He leaned back sharply away from the trays.

Pandora blinked.

Evan frowned.

“Here,” Evan said, nudging it closer as though maybe Regulus had not understood.

That made it worse.

The smells thickened. The sight of it came closer. The wetness, the steam, the shine. His stomach turned hard and mean inside him. His skin went tight. The room got louder all at once, every scrape and voice in the lunchroom slamming into him at the same time.

He started fidgeting fast now.

One hand came up and flapped once, sharply, then again.

His leg began to jolt beneath the table.

He made another small whining noise and pulled himself farther back, shoulders pressed away, face screwed tight with distress. He hit his own thigh once with the heel of his hand, then again, not hard enough to hurt but hard enough to ground himself in the middle of the wrongness.

Pandora’s grin faltered.

Evan stared.

Regulus could not seem to make the right words happen. He knew there should be words. No thank you. I don’t want that. Please move it. But they would not come. They jammed up somewhere inside him while everything crowded closer and louder and hotter.

His breathing had gone strange.

He looked at the trays and then away again immediately, whining under his breath, hands jerking helpless little movements now. His eyes were glassy and fixed on nothing useful. He was panicking, though he did not have a name for it. The world had narrowed down to textures and smells and noise and the awful fact that all his safe food was mostly gone and the wrong food was right there in front of him and he did not know how to fix any of it.

He stopped speaking altogether.

Pandora shifted. “Regulus?”

No answer.

Evan leaned closer, frowning now in real confusion. “What’s wrong with him?”

Regulus flinched at the sound of his voice.

His hand smacked against his own leg once more. He leaned even farther away from the trays, almost curling sideways off the bench to escape them, and let out a smaller, more desperate whine.

That was when one of the teachers on lunchroom duty noticed.

She was moving between tables already, half-watching for dropped cutlery and arguments and spilled drinks, when she saw the end of the bench and changed direction at once.

“Regulus?” she said softly as she approached.

Pandora and Evan looked up.

The teacher took in the scene in a second: the school lunch pushed toward him, his own lunch half-gone, the way he was leaning back and hitting his leg and not speaking, the pinched panicked look on his face.

“Oh, sweetheart.”

Her voice dropped immediately.

She crouched a little beside him, careful not to crowd him. “It’s all right. You’re all right.”

Regulus made another tight sound in his throat and stared somewhere past her shoulder.

She did not ask too many questions straight away. She had seen him like this before, or near enough. Not often, but enough to know what not to do.

“Let’s move these away,” she said gently.

She slid the trays back first, away from him, then began gathering up the rest of the lunch things with calm efficient hands. His lunchbox. The fruit tub. The paper from the biscuit. The sandwich pieces. Everything that had been upsetting him just by being there wrong.

Pandora and Evan sat very still now.

Neither of them said anything.

When the space in front of him was clear again, Regulus’s breathing loosened by the smallest fraction, though he was still rigid and silent and trembling with the effort of not quite falling apart.

The teacher lowered her voice further. “Would you like to come with me somewhere quieter?”

He did not answer in words.

But after a second he gave a tiny jerky nod.

“All right,” she said. “That’s all right. We’ll go somewhere else.”

She stood and reached a hand out to help him off the bench. Regulus tried to get down on his own, but his legs felt wrong, clumsy and shaky, and he stumbled awkwardly, one foot catching under the bench. The teacher caught him at once, steadying him with a hand at his elbow and another lightly at his back.

“There we are,” she murmured. “I’ve got you.”

He leaned into the steadiness for half a second without seeming to notice he was doing it.

Then she guided him away from the table.

The lunchroom noise swallowed up behind them as she took him out into the corridor and then into a small separate room near the offices, somewhere plain and quiet with a little table and two chairs and none of the sharp lunchroom smell still clinging to it. The door shut most of the noise out at once.

Regulus stood in the middle of the room, breathing unevenly, eyes down.

The teacher set his lunchbox on the table and crouched to his level again.

“You can sit in here on your own for lunch if you like,” she said softly. “You don’t have to go back in there.”

That helped.

His shoulders loosened a little.

“We can find you something else to eat,” she went on. “Or we can ring your parents and ask them to bring something. Whatever you’d like. All right?”

Regulus swallowed hard.

He was still mostly shut down, words difficult and far away, but with the room quiet and the trays gone and no one pressing food at him anymore, one or two things started coming back.

The teacher waited.

Eventually he gave a tiny whine and looked at her from under his fringe.

“Can… can you ask Mum and Dad,” he whispered, voice so soft it was almost lost, “to bring McDonald’s?”

The teacher’s face softened at once. “Yes. We can ask.”

He nodded quickly, still small and miserable and embarrassed by it now.

Then, even more quietly, “Can I talk on the phone when they answer?”

“Of course you can.”

“I want my mum and dad.”

“I know,” she said gently.

That seemed to be the right thing to say.

He sat down at the little table then, still clutching himself a bit, and the teacher reached for the office phone on the side cabinet. Before dialling, she glanced back at him.

“We’ll sort something out,” she promised. “And while we wait, you can stay in here. Nice and quiet.”

He nodded again.

Her hand hovered over the phone, then she added, in the same soothing voice, “And if you want, when we’ve called them, we can put something on for you in the office. One of the cartoons.”

That got a flicker of attention from him.

His eyes lifted properly for the first time.

“The one with the pink cat?” he asked, still hushed.

A smile tugged at her mouth. “Yes. The Pink Panther.”

That, more than anything so far, seemed to settle him.

Only a little. But enough.

He curled one hand around the edge of the chair and gave a very small nod, and the teacher, seeing the worst of the panic finally beginning to ebb, turned to the phone and started dialling home.

Regulus climbed into the chair like he was trying to disappear inside it.

Not sitting, really. Folding.

He tucked his legs up at once and dragged the hem of his jumper down over his knees, then higher, up over his chin and the lower half of his face until only his eyes and the top of his nose were visible. His sleeves swallowed his hands completely. He curled himself in tight, shoulders rounded, chewing faintly on the collar of the uniform jumper where it bunched against his mouth.

Small.

Contained.

Trying very hard to make the world narrower.

The teachers were used to this by now.

Not the exact shape of every upset, because Regulus always seemed to find new ways for things to go wrong around noise or food or change or too muchness all at once, but the aftermath of it. The shutting down. The curling in. The way he needed quiet and softness and no sudden questions. No one at school knew exactly what was wrong yet, not in a neat answer sort of way, but they knew how to help him. They knew what worked and what did not. His parents had made very sure of that. Walburga and Orion Black had long since established themselves as the sort of parents who did not tolerate carelessness where their son was concerned. They advocated. They instructed. They corrected. They sent notes and had meetings and made it very plain what helped Regulus and what upset him further. And more than that, they loved him with such open, doting devotion that it was impossible not to understand that he was precious.

The teacher stood nearby with the phone tucked to her ear, keeping her voice low and calm while it rang.

Regulus stayed bundled in the chair, chewing lightly on the jumper collar and staring at nothing.

Then the line clicked.

Walburga answered.

The change in Regulus was immediate.

His head snapped up. His eyes sharpened. He stopped chewing at once, listening with sudden fierce attention.

“Mrs Black,” the teacher said softly. “Hello. It’s school. Regulus is all right, but he had a bit of a difficult moment in the lunchroom.”

Regulus uncurled halfway before the teacher had even finished the sentence.

Walburga’s voice was too faint through the receiver for him to make out the words from where he sat, but he knew it was her. That was enough.

He slid off the chair in a hurry and padded over, still wrapped half in his jumper, bouncing up onto his toes with desperate little restless movements. One hand emerged from his sleeve just long enough to make a grabby motion at the phone.

The teacher glanced down at him and had to hide a smile.

Regulus made a soft pleading whine, reaching again.

“One moment,” she murmured, hand briefly over the mouthpiece. “I’m just telling your mum what happened.”

Regulus bounced again, small and urgent, fingers flexing in the air like he was trying to physically pull the phone toward himself.

The teacher gave in to a little chuckle and returned to the call. “He’s with me now in one of the quieter rooms. He got a bit overwhelmed at lunch. The other children shared some of his food and then offered him school lunch, which upset him rather badly. We’ve moved him away, settled him somewhere calm, and he’s asked if you might be able to bring him something else to eat.”

There was a pause.

Then the teacher’s face softened into amused fondness.

“Yes,” she said. “McDonald’s.”

That made Regulus perk up even more, because clearly his mother had responded in exactly the right tone. He gave another little whine and reached for the phone with both hidden sleeve-hands this time.

The teacher smiled despite herself and went on, “He’d also like to talk to you. Quite urgently, I think.”

On the other end, Walburga chuckled—warm and low and entirely unsurprised—and the teacher could practically hear the coo in her voice even through the line. “Of course he would. Tell him I’m here. I’ll call my husband now and have him pick something up and bring it over as soon as possible.”

“I thought that might be the plan.”

“It is now,” Walburga said. “Give my baby the phone.”

The teacher lowered it at once.

“All right,” she said to Regulus. “Here.”

He took it in both hands like it mattered more than anything else in the room.

“Mum,” he whined immediately, the word drawn out and shaky and full of the tears he had been holding off by sheer effort. “Muuum.”

Walburga’s voice poured through the receiver like silk.

“Oh, my darling boy,” she cooed. “Hello, sweetheart. Mummy’s here.”

That nearly undid him.

He pressed the phone harder to his ear, shoulders hunching, eyes stinging. “I want you.”

“I know you do, baby.”

“I want to go home.”

The words came out all small and miserable and ashamed of themselves at once, as if asking for home was somehow failing at something.

Walburga did not sound annoyed. Not even slightly.

“Oh, my poor lovely thing,” she said gently. “I know. I know. But listen to me a moment, sweetheart.”

He sniffled.

She kept her voice soft and bright at the edges, like she was laying cushions down around the panic one by one. “Can you try to do the rest of the school day for me? Just the rest of your lessons, and then we’ll get you at the end of the day.”

Regulus made a wounded little noise into the phone.

“I know,” Walburga said at once. “I know that isn’t what you want. But I want you to try, my love.”

He leaned against the side cabinet, nose scrunched, jumper still up over half his face. “Don’t want to.”

“I know that too.” Her voice dropped lower, even sweeter. “But if at any point you really, truly want to come home, you tell a teacher to call me, and I will come and get you early. Straight away. Do you understand?”

He went quiet.

The teacher, standing close by, watched him listen.

“You only have to promise me you’ll try first,” Walburga said. “Try and get through the rest of the day the best you can. That’s all. Because I know you can do that. You’re my good, clever, brave boy.”

Regulus sniffled again.

“And you’ve done so well today,” she went on. “I’m so proud of you. So proud. Your teacher told me all about your science work, and I can’t wait to see everything you’ve done.”

That landed exactly where she meant it to.

His face crumpled a little less.

He swallowed.

“Promise me you’ll try?” Walburga asked softly.

A long little pause.

Then, quiet and rough from nearly crying, “I’ll try.”

“That’s my darling.”

He rubbed one sleeve hard under his nose.

Walburga did not let the silence turn heavy. She changed direction with the smoothness of someone who knew her son well enough to steer him by instinct. “Now then. Tell me what you want your father to bring you from McDonald’s.”

That worked even faster.

Regulus straightened a bit, still sniffling, but thinking now.

“A hamburger,” he said, voice very small but steadier. “No pickles.”

“Good. What else?”

“Chips.”

“Mmhm.”

“And the milkshake. Vanilla. And the little apple pie if they’ve got it.”

Walburga laughed softly, pure affection in it. “Of course. Anything else?”

He thought hard. “No cheese.”

“No cheese,” she repeated dutifully.

“And not too much ketchup.”

“I shall inform your father with all due seriousness.”

That got the faintest huff from him, almost a laugh.

“There’s my boy,” Walburga murmured, clearly hearing it too. “Much better.”

Regulus pressed the phone closer.

She let him settle into the comfort of her voice for a second before adding, almost casually, “And if you’re especially brave and you stay the whole day, perhaps we can call Grandpapa Arcturus later and ask him to come round.”

Regulus blinked.

The last of the misery on his face lifted with startled hope.

“Really?”

“Really. And perhaps,” Walburga said, now positively silky with bribery, “he might help you with one of those lovely space projects you’ve been telling me about.”

Regulus’s whole posture changed.

Not all at once, not magically, but enough. Enough that the teacher beside him could see the pull of the day reassembling itself in his head now: McDonald’s arriving, the rest of school manageable if he only had to try, then later Grandpapa Arcturus coming over and helping with planets or rockets or stars.

“Maybe the mobile,” Regulus whispered.

“The mobile sounds perfect.”

“He’s good at measuring.”

“He is.”

“And he knows things.”

“He does.”

Regulus sniffed once more, but this time it was only leftover shakiness, not fresh distress. “I want him to help with Jupiter because it’s hard.”

“Then you stay your brave self for the rest of the day and we shall see what can be arranged.”

He nodded before remembering she could not see him. “Okay.”

“Say it properly for me, darling.”

“I’ll try and stay the whole day,” he mumbled.

“That’s perfect. Mummy’s very proud.”

He closed his eyes for a second, leaning into the phone as if he could lean into her.

“I love you,” he whispered.

“Oh, I love you too, my sweet boy. More than the stars, and you know that’s a lot.”

That pulled a tiny smile out of him at last.

“A lot,” he agreed.

“Good. Now hand the phone back to your teacher and be very good while we sort your lunch.”

Regulus did not want to hand it back. That was obvious in the way he lingered, clutching the receiver one extra second, but eventually he obeyed and passed it over.

The teacher took it gently. “Thank you.”

As she spoke briefly to Walburga again, confirming arrangements, Regulus stayed close by instead of retreating to the chair straight away. He hovered at the teacher’s side, calmer now, jumper still pulled up to his mouth, but no longer curled in on himself quite so tightly.

When the call ended, the teacher set the phone down and looked at him.

“Well,” she said softly. “That seems sorted.”

Regulus nodded.

“Your father will bring your lunch,” she said. “And you can stay here quietly until it comes.”

He nodded again.

“And after that we’ll see about getting you back to class.”

This time the nod was smaller, but still real.

The teacher touched his shoulder lightly, just once. “Very brave.”

Regulus ducked his head, shy from the praise, then wandered back to the chair and climbed up into it again. He still curled up, because that was comfortable, but less tightly now. Less like a frightened little creature making himself vanish. He tucked his knees up, pulled the jumper around them, and settled in to wait with the promise of McDonald’s on its way and his mother’s voice still warm in his ears.

A few minutes passed in a hush of cartoon music and the soft flicker of the office television.

Regulus had ended up half-curled in the chair again, knees tucked up, jumper still pulled partly over them, watching The Pink Panther with the fixed tired concentration of a child still a bit wrung out from crying. Every now and then he glanced toward the door when footsteps passed outside, then back to the screen, then to the door again.

Then at last it opened.

Orion Black stepped through, one hand still on the handle, the other carrying the paper bag from McDonald’s along with his work bag and jacket. He looked slightly windblown, as though he had come as quickly as possible and not particularly cared what state that left him in.

The moment Regulus saw him, he lit up.

“Daddy!”

It came out half yell, half wail of relief.

He scrambled off the chair so quickly it rocked behind him and then he was running, little shoes slapping the floor, straight across the room. Orion’s whole face softened at once.

“There’s my boy,” he said warmly.

Regulus crashed into his legs and wrapped himself around them with all the force of someone who had been holding himself together on the promise of this exact thing. He clung tight, whining up at him, nuzzling into the dark fabric of Orion’s trousers as though he could get close enough to climb inside his shadow and stay there.

Orion chuckled softly, not even a little surprised.

“Oh, darling,” he murmured.

He set the food bag, his work bag, and his jacket down on the table first, then bent and scooped Regulus up with practised ease. Regulus went willingly at once, hooking himself around Orion and clinging hard, arms tight round his neck, face buried against his shoulder. Orion settled him onto his hip like he had done it a thousand times—which he probably had—and put one broad hand to the back of his little boy’s head, stroking slowly over his hair.

“Ssh,” Orion whispered. “I’ve got you. I’m here.”

Regulus made another small whiny sound and pressed closer.

“I know,” Orion said softly into his hair. “I know, sweetheart.”

He rocked him a little where he stood, one hand rubbing slow circles over his back, the other holding him firm and sure. Regulus stayed plastered to him, breathing in the smell of his father’s coat and aftershave and outside air and safety, all the worst of the day finally loosening now that there was someone familiar and solid to hang onto.

The teacher standing by the door smiled and quietly looked away to give them a little privacy.

Orion kissed the side of Regulus’s head. “Feeling a bit better now?”

Regulus sniffled against his collar. “A bit.”

“That’s my brave boy.”

Regulus tightened his grip again.

Then, muffled into Orion’s shoulder, he asked, “Will you stay with me for lunch?”

Orion did not hesitate even for a second.

“Of course I will.”

Regulus pulled back just enough to look at him, eyes still shiny. “Really?”

“Really.”

That was all the confirmation he needed. He immediately melted back against him.

Orion smiled and carried him over to the table, settling into the chair with Regulus still on his hip for a moment before carefully easing him down onto the seat beside him. He stayed close enough that their sides still touched.

“Now then,” Orion said, reaching for the McDonald’s bag. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

Regulus sniffed once more and watched with intense seriousness as Orion unpacked everything. The hamburger first, exactly wrapped. The chips. The vanilla milkshake. The little apple pie. Orion laid each one out neatly in front of him, unconsciously matching the sort of order Regulus liked anyway, straightening things on the table until they looked right.

“There,” he said. “No pickles. No cheese. Not too much ketchup.”

Regulus’s face brightened.

Then Orion reached into the Happy Meal box and pulled out the toy.

“Also,” he said lightly, “this came with it.”

Regulus gasped.

He took the toy at once and turned it over in both hands, examining it from every angle, momentarily distracted from all other misery by the very important business of discovering exactly what sort of treasure had arrived with lunch. Orion watched him with a fond little smile, one elbow resting on the table.

“You like it?”

Regulus nodded hard. “Yes.”

“Good.”

For a minute or two the room was quiet except for the soft rustle of wrappers and the chatter of the television in the corner. Orion kept an easy presence beside him, not hovering, not crowding, just there, which for Regulus seemed to make everything possible again.

Then Regulus paused halfway through reaching for his chips.

A thought had struck him.

He looked up at his father, suddenly anxious. “Did you get something for Sirius too?”

Orion blinked once, then laughed under his breath, affection all through it.

“You didn’t want your brother left out?”

Regulus shook his head at once, as though the very idea was appalling. “That’s mean.”

“Mm. It would be.”

He leaned down and reached into the larger paper bag again, drawing out another neatly wrapped little stash. “Good thing I know exactly what Sirius likes.”

Regulus’s eyes widened.

There it was: a separate bag with bits chosen just for Sirius, the sort Orion could probably have picked blindfolded by now.

Regulus’s whole face softened with relief. He gave a tiny sniff, still a bit tearful, and whispered, “Can I go give it to him?”

Orion glanced toward the teacher.

The teacher, who had been waiting near the door and had clearly been expecting something very like this, smiled and nodded. “We can do that. I’ll take him down quickly to the lunchroom, let him drop it off, and bring him right back.”

Orion looked at Regulus. “Hear that? Quick delivery mission.”

Regulus nodded eagerly, already sliding off the chair with the bag clutched in both hands.

“But then,” Orion said, catching his sleeve lightly before he could bolt, “you come straight back and eat your lunch properly. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Regulus said at once.

Orion smiled. “Good.”

The teacher stepped over and held the door for him. Regulus hurried to it with the McDonald’s bag for Sirius hugged against his chest like something precious.

Orion stayed where he was, one hand resting on the back of the chair Regulus had just vacated, watching him with that same soft expression.

“Off you go, then,” he said.

Regulus glanced back at him one last time, just to make sure his father really was staying.

Orion gave him a little nod. “I’ll be right here.”

That was enough.

Regulus turned and hurried out into the corridor beside the teacher, clutching the food for Sirius and already halfway into the importance of the task, while behind him Orion remained in the quiet little room waiting for his son to come back and finally have lunch in peace.

Regulus shot out into the corridor like a dart.

The teacher let out a startled little laugh and hurried after him at once, her shoes clicking fast against the floor as she caught up enough to keep beside him before he could vanish around a corner entirely. He was moving with fierce purpose now, the bag clutched in both hands, his whole small body angled forward with the urgency of a child on a mission.

“Slow down a little, Regulus,” she called softly, breathless but amused.

He did not really slow down.

Not much.

By the time they reached the lunchroom doors, he was nearly bouncing with the need to complete the task properly. The teacher opened the door for him and he hurried inside, only to stop short the moment the noise hit and all the tables spread out in front of him.

His eyes darted everywhere at once.

Children. Trays. coats on chair backs. noise and movement and far too many heads.

He couldn’t see Sirius.

At once the certainty went out of him a little. He stood just inside the doorway, clutching the McDonald’s bag tight, looking around with quick nervous little turns of his head.

The teacher came up beside him and rested a gentle hand near his shoulder without touching. “It’s all right. We’ll find him.”

Regulus swallowed and kept looking.

Then the teacher spotted him, halfway down one of the middle tables, standing on the bench a little to better tell some enormous dramatic story to a knot of other nine-year-olds who were all either laughing or shouting over him.

“There he is,” she murmured, steering Regulus lightly in the right direction.

Regulus saw him a second later and his whole face changed with relief.

He hurried across the lunchroom, weaving around benches and chairs, and when he reached the back of Sirius’s bench he reached out and tugged the back of his jumper.

“Si,” he whispered.

Sirius didn’t turn at first, still in the middle of some loud grand retelling with his hands flinging everywhere. “—and then he said I couldn’t climb it but I did, didn’t I, and—”

Regulus tugged again, a bit harder this time, and rose up on his toes. “Siri. Siri.”

That got him.

Sirius twisted round with a puzzled expression already halfway into an impatient what, then saw exactly who was there.

His whole face split into a grin.

“Reggie!”

The word came out like a cheer.

He hopped off the bench at once and spun round properly, all bright-eyed delight, instantly dropping the story and the audience and everything else. “Oi, look, it’s my baby brother— hello, you—”

Regulus, suddenly shy now that he had found him, pressed in close and clung to him with one arm while still holding up the paper bag in the other. Sirius made a pleased cooing sound immediately and wrapped an arm around him without hesitation, squeezing him tight and tipping his head down to inspect his face.

“You all right?” Sirius asked, grin softening a little around the edges as he checked him over. “What’s happened? Why’re you here?”

Regulus lifted the bag between them like an offering.

“For you,” he whispered.

Sirius blinked. “What?”

“Dad came,” Regulus explained in a rush, still quiet, still tucked against him. “And he brought lunch and he got you some too and I wanted to give it to you and now I have to go back to the other room to eat.”

For a split second Sirius just stared at the bag.

Then it clicked.

His eyes went huge.

“No way.”

He snatched the bag with scandalised joy and looked inside.

Then he let out a full-volume cheer loud enough to turn heads three tables over.

“McDonald’s!”

A few of his little friends immediately craned forward, scandalised and impressed.

Sirius held the bag up like a trophy. “See this? See this? Reg’s a legend.”

He threw an arm back round his brother and hauled him in for another crushing little cuddle, laughing and beaming and talking all at once. “You got me McDonald’s? You actual legend— thank you— that’s brilliant—”

Regulus gave a tiny pleased smile, shoulders creeping up with shy pride as Sirius made such a fuss.

Sirius cupped the side of his head for a second and squashed him close again. “Best brother in the world, you are.”

Then, of course, he had to immediately brag.

He turned back to the cluster of boys at the table and held the bag out for them to witness properly. “My brother got my dad to bring me McDonald’s,” he announced with immense importance. “Because he knows what I like.”

The other boys erupted at once.

“No he didn’t.”
“That’s not fair.”
“You’re so lucky.”

Sirius looked smug enough to burst. “I know.”

He glanced back down at Regulus then, and a little crease touched his brow at last as the delayed worry caught up with the excitement. “Why’re you in the other room?”

Regulus shifted slightly. “Lunch was bad.”

That was all.

But it was enough for Sirius’s expression to sharpen just a bit, concern flickering under the grin. He didn’t press, not here, not with everyone looking, only rubbed Regulus’s shoulder once and said, quieter, “All right. I’ll come find you later, yeah?”

Regulus nodded.

Sirius gave him one more quick cuddle, almost a squeeze and a nuzzle rolled into one, then said, “Thanks, Reg.”

Regulus ducked his head.

The teacher stepped in gently then, hand motioning toward the door. “Come on, Regulus. Back we go.”

Regulus let Sirius go at once, because the task was finished now, but he lingered just long enough for Sirius to ruffle his hair with his free hand and grin at him again over the top of the McDonald’s bag.

“Legend,” Sirius repeated to his friends, already turning back to them with renewed swagger. “Absolute legend.”

Regulus looked secretly pleased for half a second.

Then the teacher guided him away, steering him back through the lunchroom and out into the quieter corridor again while behind them Sirius’s voice rose at once, already loudly retelling the story of how his little brother had somehow managed to get their father to bring him McDonald’s in the middle of the school day.

By the time the teacher led him back to the little room, Regulus was half-running again.

The moment he saw Orion still there, waiting exactly where he had promised he would, he made a soft sound of relief and hurried straight to him. Orion had only just enough time to open one arm before Regulus collided with him and clung on, pressing in close as if he had been gone far longer than a few minutes.

“There you are,” Orion said warmly, laughing under his breath.

Regulus buried his face into his father’s side for a second.

Orion stroked a hand over his hair, then guided him gently back to the chair. “Up you get.”

He lifted him easily and settled him onto the seat again, close beside him, then nudged the food back into place in front of him. The cartoon was still on in the background, all bright music and neat harmless silliness, and the room remained blessedly quiet compared to the lunchroom outside.

“Now,” Orion said, peeling back the wrapper of the hamburger for him so it would be easier, “let’s actually eat this while it’s still warm.”

Regulus nodded and obeyed.

With Orion there, everything seemed easier again. He ate in little focused bites while his father stayed beside him, making sure he kept going, reminding him to have some chips, handing him the milkshake at the right moment, passing napkins when ketchup got on his fingers, straightening the wrapper when it crinkled too much. Every now and then Orion wiped at the corner of his mouth or brushed crumbs from his jumper with such absent gentle familiarity it was obvious this was not unusual work for him.

Regulus relaxed by degrees as he ate.

His shoulders dropped.

His breathing settled.

He leaned comfortably against Orion’s arm between bites, eyes flicking between the food and the television. By the time he got to the apple pie he was no longer holding himself tight at all. He looked sleepy with relief more than anything now, little and soft and safely occupied.

Orion watched him with that mixture of fondness and quiet worry only a parent could manage.

When Regulus had eaten enough to look properly restored, Orion sighed softly, smiling, and ran his hand down the back of his son’s head again.

“Better?” he asked.

Regulus nodded around a bite.

“Good.”

He waited until Regulus had swallowed and taken a sip of milkshake before asking, carefully casual, “What happened, then?”

Regulus looked down at the table first, thinking.

Then he told him.

In pieces at first, because that was how Regulus often told things: one part, then another, then a detail that mattered a great deal to him though perhaps not to anyone else. Orion listened without interrupting, only humming now and then to show he was following.

“Pandora asked if they could have some,” Regulus said, picking at the edge of a napkin. “And I said yes because that’s sharing.”

“Mm.”

“But then they had nearly all of it.”

A crease formed faintly between Orion’s brows.

“And then they gave me their lunch,” Regulus went on, quieter now. “But it was bad.”

“Bad how?”

Regulus made a face, searching. “Wet. And touching. And smelly.”

Orion nodded once. “All right.”

“And I didn’t know what to do.”

He said it matter-of-factly, not as a complaint, just the truth of it.

Orion’s hand stayed moving slowly over his hair.

Regulus glanced at him and then back down again. “I think maybe they were trying to be nice. But it wasn’t nice.”

“No,” Orion said softly. “It doesn’t sound very nice.”

Regulus frowned a little. “I’m confused why they’re talking to me today.”

Orion stayed quiet.

Regulus kept going, because once he had started, the whole oddness of the day seemed to want sorting out aloud.

“In class earlier Pandora told me Evan had a crush on me and wanted to be my boyfriend.”

Orion blinked once.

Regulus, wholly unaware of how bizarre that sounded from the mouth of an eight-year-old in the middle of an already difficult lunch, just continued on in perfect seriousness.

“And I said I didn’t like him like that because we don’t know each other and we never play and if he liked me he should have asked himself.”

A tiny helpless smile tugged at Orion’s mouth despite everything. “You said that?”

“Yes.”

“What happened then?”

“They got weird.”

Orion actually laughed, soft and brief. “Did they?”

Regulus nodded. “And then at lunch they sat next to me even though they never do.”

He frowned harder, still trying to solve it. “I don’t know why.”

Orion looked at him for a long moment.

The picture was clear enough to an adult eye. Far too clear. A pair of children testing, poking, needling, finding the odd lonely boy easy to play with because he took things literally and gave them reactions they hadn’t expected. Orion recognised it immediately for what it was, and the knowledge settled cold and quiet under his ribs.

But Regulus did not.

Regulus was not angry. Not wounded in the social way other children would have been. He had only been confused, then overwhelmed, then frightened by the food and the noise and the wrongness of it all. He still had no idea he had been picked on.

Orion was not going to be the one to shatter that all at once while Regulus was only just calm again.

So he only smoothed a hand down his son’s back and kept his voice even.

“Well,” he said gently, “sometimes people do odd things for silly reasons. That part isn’t your fault.”

Regulus leaned into his side, listening.

Orion glanced away for half a second, thoughtful now.

He would ask Sirius later, when they picked the boys up at the end of the day, to keep a closer eye on his little brother. Sirius might only be nine, loud and dramatic and far too pleased with himself half the time, but he adored Regulus with his whole chest and would watch those twins like a hawk if asked. Orion trusted that much at least.

And beyond that, there were other things he would have to start teaching Regulus more deliberately. Boundaries. Ownership. The fact that being polite did not mean giving away things he did not want to share. The fact that he was allowed to say no, even if people asked nicely. Especially then.

He looked back down at his son.

“Reggie,” he said quietly.

Regulus glanced up.

“If somebody asks to share and you don’t want to, you do know you’re allowed to say no, don’t you?”

Regulus paused.

The question clearly struck him as unfamiliar.

Orion kept his tone light and warm, not making it into a grand lesson yet, just laying the first stone. “You don’t have to share everything just because someone asks. Not if it’s yours. Not if you don’t want to.”

Regulus looked at the remains of his lunch and thought about that with enormous seriousness.

“But that’s rude,” he said at last.

“Not always.”

“It isn’t?”

“No.” Orion shook his head. “You can be kind and still have boundaries.”

Regulus blinked. “What’s boundaries?”

Orion smiled faintly. “They’re the lines around what belongs to you. Your things. Your space. Your choices. If you don’t want someone to take your food, or touch your work, or make you do something you don’t want to do, you’re allowed to say no.”

Regulus turned that over in his head for a while.

“Even if they want me to?”

“Even then.”

“Even if I already said yes?”

Orion’s expression softened. “If you change your mind because something feels wrong or bad, you can still say no after that too.”

That one landed deeper.

Regulus looked down at his fingers. “Oh.”

Orion kissed the top of his head.

“You’re allowed to have boundaries, darling,” he said. “That’s not being unkind. That’s looking after yourself.”

Regulus sat very still for a moment, absorbing it.

Then, quietly, “What if I don’t know how to say it?”

Orion’s hand tightened around him just slightly. “Then you ask a grown-up for help. A teacher, one of the lunch ladies, me, your mum. Anyone safe. You never have to manage all of it by yourself.”

Regulus nodded, small and thoughtful.

They sat together in silence for a minute after that, the television chattering on in the background while Regulus finished the last of his chips and Orion tidied wrappers into the bag. Orion wiped Regulus’s hands again, then his face, then straightened his collar where he had chewed it out of shape earlier.

Regulus leaned tiredly against him and watched the cartoon for a bit.

Orion rested his cheek briefly against the top of his son’s head and let himself just sit there with him, one arm around his shoulders, holding in the frown that wanted to settle properly now that he understood more of what had happened.

He did not say any of that aloud.

Not yet.

For now he only kept Regulus close, made sure he was calm, fed, and warm again, and quietly filed away everything he would need to do later—talk to Walburga, talk to Sirius, watch the Rosier twins, and begin teaching his sweet strange little boy that kindness did not mean surrendering every piece of himself to anyone who asked.

Eventually the cartoon ended, the last of the chips were gone, the wrappers had been folded away, and the room began to feel like a pause that was almost over.

The corridor outside had changed pitch again. The restless drift of lunchtime was thinning. Doors opened and shut farther away. Voices moved with more purpose now. Soon enough the bell would go, and Regulus would have to go back to class.

He knew it before anyone said it.

And the moment he knew it, he turned back into Orion and clung.

Not dramatic at first. Just a tightening of his arms, his fingers twisting into his father’s sleeve, his face pressing hard into Orion’s shoulder as if maybe he could simply stay there and refuse the next part of the day by sheer force of attachment.

Orion sighed softly, already understanding.

“Ah,” he murmured, rubbing a hand down Regulus’s back. “There it is.”

Regulus made a miserable little whining sound.

“I know,” Orion whispered.

The whining turned into tears with almost no warning. Not loud sobbing, not yet, but that awful small crying children did when they are trying not to cry and failing anyway. He buried his face harder against Orion, shoulders hitching, and clung like he meant to fuse himself there.

“Don’t want to go back,” he cried softly. “Want to go home.”

Orion held him tighter at once.

“I know you do.”

Regulus shook his head against him, tears smearing hot into the fabric of Orion’s shirt. “Want you and Mum.”

“You’ve got me right now,” Orion said, calm and low, one hand cupping the back of his head. “And Mummy will be there at the end of the day.”

“No, now,” Regulus whimpered.

Orion shut his eyes for half a second, because there was nothing in the world harder than a child wanting comfort you could not quite give them yet. Then he opened them again and kept his voice warm and steady.

“Listen to me, brave boy.”

Regulus sniffled miserably.

“You’ve only got two lessons left.”

That made no impression at all.

Orion kept going anyway. “Two lessons. Two hours. That’s all. And then school finishes, and Mummy and Daddy will come and pick you up and take you home.”

Regulus cried harder for a second, though quietly, exhausted by the day and the thought of having to keep doing it.

Orion stroked his hair back from his damp face. “You’ve done the hardest part already.”

“No.”

“Yes.” Orion kissed the side of his head. “Yes, you have.”

Regulus only clung tighter.

Orion shifted him gently so he could see his face. Regulus tried to hide it, but Orion would not let him fully disappear, only held him between steady hands and wiped a thumb under one wet eye.

“You just have to be my amazing brave boy for two more lessons,” he said softly.

Regulus’s face crumpled all over again.

“I know,” Orion said at once, before he could protest. “I know that feels like too much right now. But you only have to try. That’s all. Try.”

Regulus gave a thin little sob and looked at him through wet lashes.

“And if you really need to,” Orion went on, “if it gets too much, the teachers will ring us and we’ll come get you. Straight away. You know we will.”

That part Regulus believed at once. It was all over his face.

“But first,” Orion said, brushing another tear from his cheek, “you have to try.”

Regulus’s mouth wobbled. “Don’t want to.”

“You don’t have to want to,” Orion said gently. “You only have to do your best.”

Regulus stared at him, breathing raggedly.

Orion leaned in and pressed a kiss to one damp cheek, then the other, slow and deliberate and full of affection.

“And,” he added, because bribery had already proved useful once and there was no shame in deploying it again, “if you last the rest of the day, Grandpapa can come over later.”

That caught through the tears.

Regulus blinked.

Orion smiled faintly. “And we’ll have cheesy pasta.”

The crying stuttered.

“And cheesy garlic bread,” Orion said.

Regulus gave a tiny watery hiccup.

“Yes,” Orion said, amused despite himself. “Exactly that face. Proper cheesy garlic bread.”

That got the smallest possible laugh out of him, half broken by tears.

“And then Grandpapa can help you with your projects.”

Regulus sniffled hard. “Jupiter?”

“Jupiter,” Orion confirmed solemnly.

There was a long pause.

Regulus’s breathing slowly evened out, though tears were still sliding down his cheeks and making his eyelashes stick together. He leaned into Orion’s hands, miserable but listening now.

“So,” Orion said softly, “what do we do?”

Regulus swallowed. “Try.”

“That’s right.”

“And if I really need you—”

“You tell a teacher to call us.”

“And you’ll come.”

“Immediately.”

Regulus nodded shakily.

Orion wiped his face again with a handkerchief, gentle and methodical, then kissed one cheek, then the other, then his forehead for good measure. “That’s my clever boy.”

Regulus sniffled. “I’m not very brave.”

Orion’s expression went soft enough to ache. “You are heartbreakingly brave.”

Regulus clearly did not know what to do with that, so he only looked down.

Orion tipped his chin up lightly. “You are. Do you know how I know?”

A tiny head shake.

“Because brave doesn’t mean it isn’t hard. Brave means it is hard and you do it anyway.”

Regulus’s face tightened again, but this time with effort more than panic.

“You’re allowed to find it difficult,” Orion said. “That doesn’t make you less brave. It makes you my boy.”

At that, Regulus let out one more little cry and launched himself into Orion again, but it was softer this time, more a need to be held than a refusal of what came next. Orion held him close and rocked him once, twice, three times, until the crying ebbed back down into sniffles.

“There we are,” he whispered. “There’s my amazing brave boy.”

Eventually Regulus nodded against his shoulder.

“Can you do two more lessons?”

A pause.

Then, muffled but real, “Yes.”

“Good lad.”

Orion kissed his temple.

“Can you try your best?”

Another pause.

“Yes.”

“Perfect.”

Orion smiled softly and rubbed his back one last time before easing him upright again. He dried the last of his tears, straightened his jumper, smoothed his hair back into something closer to neat, and praised him all the while in that low affectionate voice that made the words feel less like pressure and more like shelter.

“You’ve done so well.”
“I’m very proud of you.”
“You’re being so sensible.”
“That’s it, darling.”
“Lovely boy.”

By the time the teacher came to collect him, Regulus was still a little blotchy around the eyes and still clinging to Orion’s hand, but he was standing. He was calm. He was trying.

And that, for now, was enough.

By the time the receptionist brought Regulus back down the corridor, he had gone quiet again.

Not distressed the way he had been before, not unravelled, but tender still. Used-up around the edges. His eyes were a little pink from crying, his lashes still clumped faintly in places, and every so often he sniffled and rubbed one sleeve against his nose before remembering he was trying very hard to be good.

The receptionist stayed beside him all the way to the classroom.

When they reached the door, the line for the next lesson had not quite formed yet, only a few children drifting back in pairs and little groups, voices rising and falling in that after-lunch way. Regulus went at once to the front, where he was meant to be, but instead of standing straight and waiting on his own like he had before, he pressed close to the receptionist and wrapped both arms around her leg.

She looked down at him and smiled softly.

“There we are,” she murmured. “Just a few minutes.”

Regulus only clung harder and gave a little sniff.

She rested a gentle hand on the top of his head and let him stay like that.

One by one, the other children started lining up behind him. Shoes squeaked against the floor. Someone whispered. Someone else giggled about something unrelated. A pair of boys shoved each other lightly and got a sharp look for it from farther down the corridor.

And then the twins appeared.

Pandora first, gliding into place with that watchful brightness always sitting somewhere behind her eyes. Evan just behind her, quieter, sharper, his gaze finding Regulus immediately and staying there.

Both of them slowed.

They took in the whole picture at once: Regulus at the front of the line, small and blotchy-eyed, clinging to the receptionist’s leg like he had been frightened or upset enough to need anchoring; the receptionist’s hand resting on his hair; the softness of the whole scene.

Pandora tilted her head.

Evan’s expression changed in a way so slight most people would never have noticed it. But it was there. A tightening. A fix of attention that became something more possessive and more restless all at once.

They were confused.

And curious.

Not with kindness, not quite. Not with the instinct to back away and let him be. The opposite of that. The strange narrowed fascination of children who had discovered a toy no one else seemed to want and therefore suddenly needed to have for themselves.

Evan stared at Regulus as though something hot and irritated and hungry had settled under his skin.

He wanted Regulus.

Not in any grown-up sense, not in any way he could have explained properly, only with the fierce greedy selfishness of a child who had been told no once and never recovered from it. He wanted Regulus to be his. Wanted him to look for him first, cling to him instead, cry at him and let him fix it. Wanted to be the only one allowed close enough for that. The only one who liked him. The only one who understood him. The only one Regulus turned to.

And because no one else really liked Regulus, because Regulus sat alone and read alone and drew alone and always seemed left to himself, the whole thing had begun to feel unfair in some private unreasonable way. Evan wanted to own that space before anyone else could. Wanted first claim.

Pandora’s interest was colder and brighter.

She watched Regulus with open fascination, eyes tracking every visible little detail: the way he stood pressed to the receptionist’s leg, the way he sniffled and would not look behind him at the line, the way his shoulders stayed half-curled even now. She wanted to take him apart and put him back together again, not cruelly exactly, but with the detached intensity of a child examining a rare insect or some odd machine. She wanted to know why he was like this. Why he missed bells and hid under coats and read through break and glowed in science and broke at lunch. She wanted to test him. Push here and watch what happened there. Offer one thing, remove another, see what changed. Not because she hated him. Because she was fascinated by him.

The line grew longer.

Regulus did not look back once.

He stayed where he was, cheek pressed to the receptionist’s skirt, sniffling into the fabric every now and then, one hand twisting in the cloth.

Pandora and Evan exchanged the briefest glance.

Neither of them spoke.

Then at last the classroom door opened.

The teacher stepped out and her face softened the moment she saw him there with the receptionist. She said a quiet thank you to the older woman, then came straight over and crouched down in front of Regulus.

“Well, hello there.”

Regulus looked at her.

His face crumpled just slightly again, not into fresh tears, but in that way children’s faces do when they are trying very hard not to begin all over again just because someone gentle has noticed them.

The teacher smiled softly. “You came back.”

He nodded.

“I knew you would.”

That earned another little sniff.

The receptionist gave his shoulder a light pat and passed him over without fuss. “He’s been very brave.”

“I can see that.”

Then the teacher held out both hands to him.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s make a plan.”

Regulus hesitated, then unwrapped himself from the receptionist’s leg and let the teacher take his hands. She held them warm and steady between her own and stayed kneeling there, right in front of the line and the corridor and everyone else, as though none of that mattered as much as getting him through the next two hours.

“All right,” she said gently. “The next lesson is reading, and after that it’s handwriting.”

Regulus’s mouth pulled down a tiny bit at handwriting.

The teacher noticed. “I know. Not your favourite.”

He shook his head once.

“But we only need to get through one, then the other. Not all at once.” She squeezed his hands lightly. “One lesson at a time. Can you do that?”

He thought about it. Nodded.

“Good.” Her voice stayed calm and practical, giving shape to things. “So for reading, you may sit at the end of the row by the window if you like. That way there’s less noise around you.”

Regulus listened very seriously.

“And if it feels too loud, you put your hand up and I’ll find you somewhere quieter for a few minutes.”

Another nod.

“For handwriting,” she went on, “you can use the softer pencil if the scratchy one is bothering you.”

That mattered more. His eyes flicked up properly.

“And,” she added, “you don’t have to do the whole page in one go. You can do half, then stop, then the other half.”

Regulus blinked. “Really?”

“Really.”

He absorbed that.

“If you start feeling wobbly again,” she said, “you tell me. Or you tell the assistant. Or you put your hand up and I’ll come over. You don’t have to sit there all alone feeling awful.”

He nodded again, slower this time.

The teacher smiled. “Good. What else helps?”

Regulus frowned in thought.

“Knowing,” he said after a moment. “Knowing what’s next.”

“Excellent. Then I’ll tell you before anything changes.”

That seemed to settle something in him.

“And after handwriting,” she said, “school finishes. Then Mummy and Daddy come.”

He took a breath. “And Grandpapa.”

“And Grandpapa,” she agreed solemnly.

That finally pulled a tiny smile out of him.

Behind them, the line was utterly silent now, far more invested in this than any row of children ought to have been. Pandora and Evan watched every second. So did a few others, though with far less complicated thoughts behind it.

The teacher kept hold of Regulus’s hands another moment longer.

“So,” she said. “Our plan is: reading by the window, handwriting in two pieces, softer pencil, tell me if you need help, and then home.”

Regulus repeated it softly, like memorising instructions. “Reading by the window. Two pieces. Softer pencil. Tell you. Then home.”

“Perfect.”

She gave his hands one last squeeze, then let go and rose. “You can do this.”

Regulus sniffled, rubbed his nose with his sleeve, and nodded.

And because he had a plan now, because the shape of the next two lessons had been laid out clearly enough for him to hold onto, he stepped forward when the teacher ushered the class inside.

Small still. Tired still. But moving.

Pandora watched him go with that same bright, intent curiosity.

Evan watched too, jaw set a little tighter than before, eyes fixed on the boy who had cried at someone else and clung to someone else and still somehow made himself into the centre of everything without ever seeming to try.

And Regulus, none the wiser about any of it, followed the plan the teacher had given him and walked back into the classroom.

By the time everyone was back in the classroom and seated, the day had begun to feel long and soft around the edges, like everything was wearing thin.

Regulus sat where the teacher had planned for him, by the window, exactly as promised.

The first lesson started.

Reading.

That one was easy.

The moment the books were opened and the room settled into the quieter rhythm of pages turning and voices softening, something in Regulus eased properly for the first time since lunch. He curled up over his book in his seat, one knee tipped slightly inward against the chair leg, shoulders rounded, entirely absorbed again. The teacher checked on him often, little glances, soft pauses by his desk, the occasional whispered “All right?” that he answered with small nods, and each time she moved on satisfied.

He was fine.

More than fine, really.

Reading asked very little of him except stillness and attention, and Regulus had both in abundance when the world was not actively trying to make itself impossible. He stayed tucked into his corner by the window, book open, lashes low, turning pages with quiet care while the afternoon light shifted slowly across the room.

Pandora looked at him more than once.

So did Evan.

Regulus did not notice either of them.

That lesson passed without incident.

Then the second one began.

Handwriting.

The teacher saw the change in him almost immediately.

The book went away. The copybook came out. The scratch of pencils began. The classroom felt louder again somehow, not in volume but in texture, every noise sharper. Regulus sat up more stiffly this time. He picked up the softer pencil the teacher had left ready for him, and for a while that helped. He started the first line carefully enough, brow knitting, lips pressing together.

But handwriting was slow in all the wrong ways.

Repetitive. Scratchy even with the better pencil. Demanding neatness when his hand already wanted to go faster than the page allowed. Requiring him to stay inside lines when his mind had already leapt three steps ahead. The letters blurred into annoyance. His grip tightened. He erased too hard once and nearly tore the paper. His breathing shifted. One foot started tapping under the desk.

The teacher caught it before he properly tipped.

She came over quickly and crouched beside him. “Half first, remember?”

Regulus stared at the page, jaw tight. “It’s wrong.”

“It isn’t wrong,” she said gently. “You’re frustrated.”

That made his eyes sting a little, because it was true and he hated that it was true.

She turned the book slightly for him. “Do this line, then stop.”

He sniffed and obeyed.

A few minutes later she was back again with quiet praise for the shape of his letters, then a pause, then another little break, exactly as promised. When his hand began to tense she let him shake it out. When the noise from the room made him go distant she spoke softly and brought him back. When he pressed too hard and got angry with the page she took the pencil, sharpened it again, and gave it back like the act itself might reset the world a bit.

He struggled.

That was obvious.

At one point his eyes watered with pure frustration and he hit the side of his fist lightly against his own thigh under the desk, and the teacher immediately moved his book down, rested her hand briefly on the corner of the page, and whispered, “Breathe first.”

So he did.

Then he kept going.

It was not easy. It was not graceful. But by sheer effort and the careful scaffolding of adults who knew how to catch him before he fell too far, Regulus got through it.

When the final line was done, the teacher leaned close and said, “There. Finished.”

He looked down at the page as if he did not quite believe it.

Then he let out one long tired breath.

The end of the school day came quickly after that.

Copybooks shut. Pencils away. Chairs scraped. The room loosened around the edges as the teacher called for tidy-up time. Regulus packed more slowly than the others, careful as always, slipping his work away properly and checking twice that nothing bent.

Then, once everything was away, the teacher had them all sit on the carpet criss-cross for the end-of-day talk.

Regulus folded himself down near the front, smaller now with tiredness, but listening.

“All right, everybody,” the teacher said, once they had settled. “A few reminders before home time.”

A little chorus of groans answered her, mostly playful.

She ignored them with long practice.

“Tomorrow is Star of the Week for our class,” she said, and that got more attention immediately. “So we’ll be talking about that in the morning.”

A few children sat straighter.

Pandora’s eyes sharpened.

Evan leaned back on his hands, listening.

“And tomorrow we’ve also got the big assembly,” the teacher went on, “where they’ll do the star students.”

That earned the expected mixture of excitement and whispers.

“Also,” she said, lifting a finger, “our class assembly is coming up soon, and after next week we’ll be starting auditions for our little show. I’ll hand out scripts tomorrow so you can begin practising at home.”

That caused a ripple of noise all its own. Some children brightened immediately. Others looked horrified at the very idea of auditions. One little girl already looked like she had mentally won the lead.

Regulus, for once, looked only mildly puzzled. The thought seemed to drift past him without sticking, his energy too worn thin by the rest of the day.

“And,” the teacher added, “do not forget your permission slips for the zoo trip.”

That got cheers.

Actual cheers.

“Not one of you is coming on that coach without a signed slip,” she said firmly over them, smiling despite herself. “So take them home, give them to your grown-ups, and bring them back.”

Then the carpet talk was over and the whole class rose in one untidy wave.

The teacher walked them out to the corridor to fetch bags and coats. Regulus got his carefully, making sure his science papers were still safe, then collected his coat and slipped one arm in before pausing for help with the other. The teacher noticed at once and steadied it for him.

“There.”

He nodded.

Then she walked them all outside to meet their parents.

The late afternoon air hit cool and clean after the classroom. Children scattered toward waiting mothers and fathers and nannies and older siblings in that end-of-day rush of relief. Voices rose. Car doors slammed somewhere beyond the gates.

The teacher kept Regulus close to her side while they waited.

He stood there in that tired, half-curled way he had by the end of the day, bag clutched to his chest, eyes scanning until at last he spotted them.

“Mum,” he breathed.

Walburga and Orion were crossing the pavement together, and the moment Walburga reached him he went straight up into her arms. She scooped him up without effort, rich dark coat wrapping around him as he hid his face in her shoulder and clung. Walburga cooed at once, kissing his temple, smoothing his hair back, her whole expression going soft with love.

“There’s my baby,” she murmured.

Orion came up beside them, one hand immediately going to Regulus’s back, and the teacher smiled.

“He made it through the day,” she said, with a note of genuine pride.

Walburga let out a delighted little sound. “Did he?”

“He did,” said the teacher. “And he did beautifully in science earlier. Truly beautifully.”

That got exactly the response it deserved.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Walburga cooed, pulling Regulus back just enough to look at him. “Did you?”

Orion laughed softly. “Of course he did.”

The teacher smiled wider now, turning a little so they could all hear. “He finished the worksheet first, got everything right, added extra detail, told me a whole stream of facts about Apollo 13, the moon, stars, astronauts, his projects at home—”

Walburga gave a cheer right there in the schoolyard.

Orion let out a low impressed whistle.

Regulus, red around the eyes and exhausted as he was, still brightened instantly under the praise and buried his face back into Walburga with a shy pleased little grin.

“He also finished every extra task I gave him,” the teacher added, almost laughing now. “Every one.”

Walburga kissed his hair. “That’s my clever, clever boy.”

Orion rubbed his back. “I’m not even slightly surprised.”

The teacher glanced between them. “And just to check—you are still coming on the zoo trip as a chaperone?”

“Yes, of course,” Walburga said at once.

“Absolutely,” Orion agreed.

“We volunteered for exactly that reason,” Walburga added, adjusting Regulus higher on her hip. “He’ll want one of us there.”

The teacher nodded, visibly relieved. “I thought so. It’ll be helpful. He’ll do much better with one of you close by.”

“Then one of us will be there,” Orion said simply.

The teacher hesitated only a second before softening a little further. “And—I probably shouldn’t say too much before tomorrow—but he may be in the running for star student this week.”

Walburga’s face lit up.

Orion actually laughed aloud.

Regulus, hearing only the words star and student and his own importance somewhere in the middle of it, blinked and then hid again in his mother’s shoulder, though very obviously pleased.

“Oh, I knew it,” Walburga said, delighted. “I knew it.”

The teacher smiled, but the smile gentled into something more serious after a moment.

“There is one other thing,” she said.

The Blacks looked at her.

She kept her voice careful, kind. “I know we’ve spoken around this before. And I know you’ve been uncertain.”

Walburga’s expression shifted. Orion’s did too.

The teacher glanced at Regulus, still curled into his mother, then back at them. “But I do think it would be for the best if you had him tested. Properly assessed.”

Silence, brief and weighted.

The teacher went on softly. “I am fairly certain Regulus is autistic.”

Walburga sighed first.

Orion’s mouth tightened, though not with anger—more with the weary recognition of hearing said aloud something he had likely begun to suspect and not wanted pressed into shape yet.

The teacher kept her tone gentle. “If he has a diagnosis, we can help him even more than we already are. There are additional accommodations we can put in place. More support. More understanding written into how we handle things for him.”

Walburga looked down at her son, at the way he tucked himself in close, at the tired little trust of him, and her face softened all over again.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “I know.”

Orion exhaled slowly. “We’ve been… hoping perhaps he’d simply grow into himself in a way the school would eventually stop worrying about.”

The teacher gave a sympathetic little smile. “He will grow into himself. This wouldn’t stop that. It would only help us meet him where he already is.”

That landed.

Walburga and Orion exchanged a glance.

Then Walburga nodded.

“We’ll do it.”

Orion nodded too, resigned but resolved now. “It is for the best.”

The teacher looked relieved. “Thank you.”

Walburga gave a small elegant shrug that was almost tired. “Luckily, we can go private. We’ll get it arranged as soon as possible.”

“As soon as possible,” Orion agreed.

“And thank you,” Walburga said, more softly now. “For today. For seeing him properly.”

The teacher’s face warmed. “He makes it very easy to want to.”

That earned her a tiny watery smile from Regulus himself, hidden as he was against his mother.

Orion reached up and squeezed the back of his son’s neck gently. “Come on, brave boy. Home.”

“Grandpapa,” Regulus mumbled at once into Walburga’s shoulder.

Walburga laughed softly. “Yes, darling. We’ll ring Grandpapa.”

“And cheesy pasta,” he added, voice muffled and hopeful.

“And cheesy pasta,” Orion promised.

“And garlic bread,” Regulus said, making sure no one forgot the truly important part.

Orion smiled. “Obviously.”

That finally earned a proper little smile out of him.

The teacher watched them go then: Walburga carrying Regulus close, Orion beside them with the bag and coat and all the practical pieces of the day, the three of them moving as one warm enclosed thing toward home.

And behind them, tucked safely into Regulus’s bag, were pages of planets and astronauts and stars, waiting to be pinned to bedroom walls and fridges and admired exactly as much as they deserved.

They crossed the grounds together, away from the younger classrooms and toward the part of the school where the Year Fours were beginning to spill out in a louder, wilder tide of bodies and noise.

Regulus stayed tucked into Walburga, one arm round her neck, his bag bouncing lightly against Orion’s side as they walked. He was worn out now, all the day settling heavily into his bones, but safe in that loose sleepy way children got when they knew the hard part was over.

Then, across the pavement, Sirius saw them.

His whole face lit up like someone had set fire to it.

“MUM! DAD! REGGIE!”

He screamed it at full volume and then came tearing across the ground at such speed that Orion instinctively angled half a step forward in case he had to intercept the collision. But Sirius swerved at the last second, because of course he did, and instead began running circles round his father, laughing like a maniac and tugging at his sleeve.

“Dad, Dad, Dad, come on, come on, play tag— just one— just one— you’re it if you touch me— no, that counts—”

Orion sighed in the long-suffering way of a father who had endured this exact ambush many times before.

“I am not playing tag in the school car park.”

Sirius cackled and darted round him again anyway, hair wild, school tie halfway twisted, whole body made of motion and delight.

Then he looked up at Walburga.

And immediately changed target.

His face softened into blatant cooing.

“Aww, my baby,” he said, trotting straight up to them. “Hi, Reggie.”

Regulus, tucked against Walburga’s shoulder, blinked down at him.

Sirius put both hands up at once. “Gimme.”

Walburga laughed. “Excuse you?”

“Gimme him.”

“He is not a parcel.”

“He’s my baby.”

“He is my baby,” Walburga corrected.

“No, he’s mine,” Sirius said at once, scandalised by the very notion. Then, looking up at Regulus with outrageous sweetness, “You want big brother, don’t you?”

Regulus, tired and clingy and still emotionally wrung out enough to want all familiar affection being offered, looked at Sirius and gave the smallest little nod.

That was all Sirius needed.

He gasped in triumph. “See?”

Walburga chuckled. “Oh, honestly.”

But she handed Regulus over.

Sirius took him with all the seriousness of someone accepting custody of a royal infant. He got both arms around him, shifted him up properly onto his hip, and immediately strutted backward a step like he had won something enormous. Regulus wrapped himself round him without fuss, arms round Sirius’s shoulders, face tucking into his brother’s neck while Sirius grinned like the sun.

“There we are,” Sirius cooed, bouncing him lightly. “I’ve got you.”

Regulus made a small tired sound and clung tighter.

Sirius softened at once.

“All right, all right,” he murmured, rubbing his back in clumsy earnest little circles. “Don’t cry, baby. Big brother’s got you.”

Walburga and Orion exchanged that very specific parental look reserved for moments when one child decided he was basically the third parent and expected formal recognition for it.

Sirius, meanwhile, was already walking in little loops with Regulus on his hip as if motion itself might comfort him more. Regulus stayed plastered to him, exhausted enough not to care that Sirius’s carrying style was far less sensible than either of their parents’.

Then Sirius’s head snapped up.

He looked at Walburga. Then Orion.

Then back at Regulus.

Then at them again.

“Why was he upset?”

There it was.

Not playful now. Not distracted. Sharp and immediate and very Sirius in a different way altogether.

Walburga adjusted her handbag on her shoulder. “He had a difficult time at lunch.”

“What happened at lunch?”

Orion answered this time, because Sirius was staring at them with the fixed intensity of a guard dog who had just heard the gate rattle.

“Some children sat with him,” Orion said evenly. “They took rather a lot of his food when he felt he had to share it, then tried to replace it with school lunch, which overwhelmed him badly.”

Sirius stopped walking.

Regulus felt the change and peered up a tiny bit from his shoulder.

Sirius’s whole face had sharpened.

“Who?”

Walburga gave him a look. “Sirius.”

“No, who?”

“The Rosier twins,” Orion said calmly.

Sirius’s jaw dropped open. “Evan and Pandora?”

“Yes.”

“Why were they even near him?”

“That,” Orion said dryly, “is an excellent question.”

Sirius looked murderous for about half a second.

Then he tightened his hold on Regulus instead, protective instinct overriding all else. “They’re weird,” he announced fiercely. “I don’t like them.”

Regulus, still curled into him, mumbled, “They’re confusing.”

“That too,” Sirius said at once, tone softening immediately for him. “Very confusing. Stupid, actually.”

Walburga lifted an eyebrow. “Language.”

“They’re stupidly confusing,” Sirius corrected with zero sincerity.

Orion hid a smile.

Sirius looked back down at Regulus and tipped his forehead briefly against the side of his head. “Did they make you sad?”

Regulus thought about it with solemn tired honesty. “They made lunch bad.”

That was apparently enough to fuel Sirius’s outrage for another week.

He huffed hard. “Right. Fine. That’s it. I’m watching them tomorrow.”

Walburga gave a little amused sigh. “You are not starting a vendetta.”

“I’m not,” Sirius said indignantly. “I’m being protective.”

“You’re nine.”

“And he’s my baby.”

Regulus, hearing that, clung a bit tighter in obvious approval.

Sirius preened instantly.

Then Orion, who knew exactly how to redirect a child like Sirius, said, “On the bright side, Regulus has earned us all quite an impressive dinner arrangement tonight.”

That caught at once.

Sirius whipped round so fast he nearly spun them all with him. “What?”

Walburga smiled. “If Regulus was very brave and stayed all day, which he did—”

“I did,” Regulus mumbled into Sirius’s shoulder.

“Yes, you did, darling,” she cooed.

“—then Grandpapa is coming over,” Orion finished, “and we’re having cheesy pasta and cheesy garlic bread.”

For one beat Sirius just stared.

Then he screamed again.

“YES!”

He actually bounced with Regulus still on his hip, making Walburga reach out in reflexive alarm.

“Sirius, for heaven’s sake—”

But Sirius was too thrilled to listen.

“Cheesy pasta? Garlic bread? Grandpapa? Reggie, you absolute genius!”

He squeezed Regulus in a fierce delighted hug that nearly folded him in half. Regulus gave a tired little laugh into his neck for the first time in ages, and Sirius lit up all over again at the sound of it.

“You’re the best,” Sirius declared. “The actual best. You always get us the best things.”

Walburga laughed under her breath. “That is not quite how any of this works.”

“It is,” Sirius said confidently. “It keeps happening.”

And in Sirius’s mind, it probably did. Regulus was always bringing strange little treasures into their lives: extra sweets from a shop because a grown-up had found him charming, some new project that turned into family excitement, special dinners promised because he had been brave, stars and planets and facts and bizarre requests that somehow bent the whole household into orbit around him. To Sirius, this was not manipulation or favour-trading or any adult version of events.

It was simply proof, renewed daily, that his little brother was the coolest person in the world.

He adored him with the clean terrifying devotion only children were capable of.

He looked down at Regulus now, all fierce pride and tenderness. “You know you’re amazing, don’t you?”

Regulus blinked sleepily at him. “Mm.”

Sirius nodded as though this was a perfectly satisfactory answer. “Good.”

Then, because his mind had circled back to the important thing, he looked at Orion and Walburga again and said, with dreadful calm for a child his age, “Tomorrow I’m sitting near him if I can.”

Walburga gave Orion another look.

Orion, for his part, was clearly not altogether opposed to the plan. “We’ll discuss appropriate ways to look after your brother.”

Sirius narrowed his eyes. “I can do that.”

“I know you think you can.”

“I can.”

Walburga smiled faintly. “You may keep an eye on him. You may not duel anyone.”

Sirius looked personally attacked by the limitation.

Regulus, half-hidden in his shoulder, whispered, “Don’t duel in primary school.”

That made Orion laugh outright.

Walburga covered a smile with one gloved hand.

Sirius looked at Regulus, aghast. “I wasn’t going to duel in primary school.”

A pause.

“Probably.”

Regulus made another sleepy little laugh, and Sirius instantly gentled again, shifting him higher and rubbing his back like he had been doing it forever.

They kept walking across the grounds like that: Orion with the bags, Walburga elegant and watchful beside them, and Sirius carrying Regulus as though he had won a great and holy prize.

And Regulus, though exhausted and blotchy-eyed and drooping now with the longness of the day, stayed wrapped around his brother and let himself be carried homeward through the fading afternoon with the certain knowledge that there would be cheesy pasta, cheesy garlic bread, Grandpapa Arcturus, and all the people who loved him waiting on the other side of the school gates.

By the time they reached the car, both boys were flagging.

Sirius still had enough energy to talk, obviously—Sirius always had enough energy to talk—but even he had gone a bit looser around the edges, his outrage about the day beginning to settle into muttering rather than full performance. Regulus, meanwhile, was nearly boneless with tiredness, all cling and droop and soft blinking eyes.

They got everyone in with the sort of practised routine families built without thinking.

Orion in the front, already setting his bag down and reaching for the keys.

Walburga in the back.

Regulus in the middle seat beside her, bag tucked by his feet, coat rumpled, still half-curled inward with the day written all over him.

Sirius on the other side, immediately angling himself the second he sat down so Regulus could lean on him if he wanted.

Regulus did.

He tipped sideways almost at once, shoulder and head settling against Sirius like that had been the plan all along. Sirius, who would have cheerfully made a song and dance about this any other day, only shifted a bit to make it easier and then sat very still with visible pride.

Orion started the engine.

The car hummed softly to life.

For a little while there was only the low sound of the road, the quiet rustle of bags and coats, and Walburga unlocking her phone and opening her calendar with the focused expression of a woman about to organise something properly.

Regulus barely noticed. He was leaning heavily into Sirius now, one hand loose in his lap, his other still clutching the little Happy Meal toy. Sirius glanced down at him every few seconds like a dragon checking on treasure.

Walburga, meanwhile, had already begun looking things up.

She found the clinic she wanted first, then another, then two more. Private. Fast. Thorough. The sort of places people like them could simply ring and book instead of waiting months and months while the world dragged its feet. Her mouth tightened a little as she scrolled, not angry exactly, only efficient.

“Well,” she said at last, voice low and crisp, “this one does a full developmental assessment.”

Orion glanced at her in the mirror. “How full?”

“Questionnaires first, apparently,” she said, scrolling again. “Parent history, school reports, behaviour observations, then a face-to-face assessment. Several appointments, not one.”

Sirius, still glaring faintly out of the window as if the Rosier twins might somehow be visible in the hedges, muttered, “Good. They should assess those two as well for being horrible.”

Regulus, eyes half-shut, made a tired little sound. “They’re not horrible.”

Sirius looked down at him, scandalised all over again. “They took your lunch.”

“They were sharing wrong.”

“That is horrible.”

Regulus frowned sleepily against his shoulder. “They were confusing.”

“Confusing and horrible,” Sirius corrected.

Walburga, still scrolling, said absently, “There are interviews with us, observations with him, and apparently they may want information from school before and after. Standardised measures. Cognitive profile. Behavioural profile. Sensory questions.”

Orion made a small acknowledging noise.

Regulus did not really listen. He was too busy being tired and leaning.

Sirius, however, was still muttering. “I don’t care if they meant it. They were weird with him in class too.”

Regulus lifted his head just enough to protest softly, “It’s not their fault.”

Sirius threw both hands up. “Reg, whose fault is it then?”

Regulus thought for a while.

“The lunch’s.”

Walburga actually laughed.

Orion did too, though quieter.

Sirius stared at his brother as if faced with impossible philosophy. “No, because the lunch didn’t walk itself over to you.”

Regulus had no answer to that, so he only tucked himself closer again.

Walburga kept reading.

“This clinic says the first appointment is a parent consultation, then teacher forms, then his assessment days, then feedback. They separate out communication, behaviour, sensory profile, adaptive functioning…” She paused. “Mm. And here— they mention developmental history in detail. Pregnancy, infancy, milestones, play, routine, food, school behaviour, social differences.”

Orion’s eyes flicked to the mirror again. “Earliest appointment?”

Walburga clicked to another page. “If we book privately—”

“We are.”

“Yes, obviously.” She scrolled. “Earliest initial consultation… next Thursday.”

“That soon?”

“They had a cancellation.”

“Take it.”

“I intend to.”

She tapped something, then kept going. “Another place could do the first meeting sooner, but their full assessment dates are later. This one is faster overall.” A pause. “And more expensive.”

Orion made a dry sound. “We’ll survive.”

“Clearly.”

Regulus shifted in the middle seat, tired enough now that the rise and fall of adult voices was becoming part of the car rather than something separate. Walburga glanced at him and softened before looking back down at her phone.

“It says they’ll want school input.” She looked up toward the windscreen. “We’ll need his teacher to write something.”

“She will,” Orion said.

Walburga nodded. “And probably examples from home.”

That drew a quieter silence from both of them.

Then Orion said, gently enough that only she really heard the weight of it, “There are plenty.”

Walburga’s expression softened, then pinched for half a second around the eyes before smoothing itself out again. “Yes,” she said softly. “I know.”

Sirius, who had not been listening to the adult half of the conversation because he was still privately conducting a small internal war against the Rosiers, muttered, “If they sit near him tomorrow, I’m moving.”

Walburga didn’t look up from the phone. “You are not moving classrooms by force.”

“I meant moving myself.”

“Mm.”

“I’m serious.”

Orion met Walburga’s eyes in the rear-view mirror then.

A quiet look.

Not dramatic. Not spoken aloud. Only a small exchange of recognition passing between them over the top of Sirius’s head and Regulus’s bent one.

Orion was already thinking the same thing he had been thinking since lunch: that Sirius needed to keep a closer eye on his brother, that the twins were interested in Regulus in a way that felt all wrong, that kindness and boundaries were now going to have to be taught more deliberately than they had hoped. Walburga caught all of that in the glance and returned it with a look of her own that said yes, later, tonight, properly.

Regulus missed it entirely.

He was too busy defending the very people who had upset him.

“They didn’t know,” he murmured, sleepy and sincere. “I didn’t tell them.”

Sirius groaned at the ceiling. “That’s not better.”

“It is a little better,” Walburga said, still tapping through the booking forms.

Sirius folded his arms. “No, because they should know not to steal people’s lunch.”

“Borrow,” Regulus muttered.

“Steal.”

“Share.”

“Steal.”

Regulus made a tiny tired whining noise and pressed his face into Sirius’s shoulder to escape the argument.

Sirius shut up at once.

“All right, all right,” he said, instantly soft again. “Don’t get upset. I’m done.”

He adjusted himself so Regulus could lean more comfortably and looked out the window again with exaggerated offence, as if he were magnanimously agreeing to stop being correct for the sake of peace.

Walburga finished the booking screen.

“Well,” she said, satisfied now. “Next Thursday at ten-thirty for the initial consultation. Forms sent by post and by email. Parent questionnaires first. Then they’ll schedule the observational sessions after they’ve reviewed them.”

Orion nodded. “Good.”

“They want school notes in advance if possible.”

“We’ll arrange it.”

“And apparently they prefer both parents at the first appointment.”

Orion gave her a look in the mirror. “Do they?”

Walburga smiled faintly. “They do.”

“Then both parents it is.”

Sirius looked over now, finally noticing enough to frown. “Where’s Reg going?”

“For an assessment,” Walburga said.

“What kind?”

“The kind that might help us understand him better.”

Sirius looked down at Regulus, then wrapped one arm a little more securely around him. “I already understand him.”

That made Walburga laugh softly again.

“I know you think you do.”

“I do.”

Regulus, eyes nearly shut now, mumbled, “Siri understands some bits.”

“See?” Sirius said at once.

Orion smiled to himself and turned the car onto the road that would take them home.

The rest of the drive settled into a quieter rhythm after that.

Walburga checked the confirmation twice and tucked the phone away.

Sirius kept muttering the occasional murderous little aside about the Rosiers under his breath, though more for his own satisfaction now than because he expected anyone to agree.

Regulus stayed in the middle, warm and drooping and defended from both sides, leaning into his brother while the car carried them toward home.

Walburga had barely tucked her phone away after the booking confirmation before she seemed to think of the next thing all at once.

“Right,” she said. “Arcturus.”

Regulus stirred immediately at the name.

Sirius perked up too. “Are you calling Grandpapa now?”

“Of course I am.”

She pulled the phone back out and began dialling while Orion drove, one hand easy on the wheel, the other tapping once against the door in quiet rhythm with the road. In the back, Regulus straightened just enough from where he was leaned against Sirius, his tired little face brightening again with that specific hopeful energy reserved for favourite people.

The line rang.

Then clicked.

Arcturus answered.

Walburga’s whole voice softened by half a shade at once. “Hello, Papa.”

From the front, Orion lifted his voice just enough to carry. “Hello, Father.”

There was the faint sound of Arcturus laughing warmly on the other end before he even properly replied to either of them, clearly pleased to have caught the whole family in one go.

Walburga smiled and got straight to it. “We’re on our way home from school. Regulus had rather a difficult lunch and a somewhat overwhelming day, but he was very brave and got through the whole thing, so we promised he could see you this evening if he managed it.”

That alone was enough to make Regulus go soft with relief all over again, but Walburga kept going, explaining in calm efficient little pieces what had happened at lunch, how the teachers had handled it, how Orion had brought McDonald’s, how Regulus had stayed the rest of the day anyway, and how now the promised reward had properly come due.

“And,” she added, glancing at her son, “he would very much like your help with one of his space projects.”

“What bit?” Sirius asked at once, leaning closer as though Grandpapa might hear him better if he physically inserted himself into the phone call.

Walburga smiled faintly and answered for Regulus. “The planets mobile. Jupiter in particular, apparently. Measuring.”

At that, Arcturus agreed at once.

Not a pause. Not a practical hmm let me see. Immediate, delighted consent.

“Of course we’re coming,” he said, voice deep and warm even through the receiver. “Melania and I will come as soon as possible. We’re hardly going to abandon our grandbabies on a night involving bravery and Jupiter.”

Sirius whooped.

Regulus made a small happy sound and reached for the phone already, one hand opening and closing in grabby little motions.

Walburga laughed and moved the phone just out of reach for another second.

“We’re doing cheesy pasta and cheesy garlic bread,” she told Arcturus, “and the boys would evidently like that information treated with great respect.”

“It shall be,” Arcturus said gravely.

Then, with the timing of a grandfather who knew his audience perfectly, he added, “May I speak to my boys?”

That was all it took.

Regulus made a soft urgent little noise and practically crawled into Walburga’s lap to get at the phone. Sirius immediately leaned across too, because obviously no one in the history of the world had ever been better at sharing space than siblings in the back of a car.

Walburga passed the phone into the middle like she was handing over a sacred relic.

Regulus took it in both hands at once and clutched it to his chest before bringing it to his ear. Sirius, not content to wait his turn like a sane person, plastered himself shoulder-to-shoulder against him and spoke straight into the same gap by default.

“Grandpapa,” Regulus said, soft and pleased.

“Grandpapa!” Sirius shouted.

Arcturus laughed properly this time. “There they are.”

Regulus cuddled the phone closer, nearly nuzzling it. “You’re coming.”

“I am.”

“With Nana.”

“With Nana.”

That got a bright tired smile from him.

Sirius, already unable to bear the pace of a normal conversation, blurted, “Reg won us dinner and garlic bread and you’re helping with Jupiter and also I won PE today.”

Arcturus hummed approvingly. “Did you?”

“I was the fastest.”

“That sounds right.”

“And then later I got in a fight.”

Walburga closed her eyes.

Orion made a pained little sound from the front. “Sirius.”

“What?” Sirius said defensively into the phone. “I won.”

Arcturus, infuriatingly amused rather than appalled, asked, “How precisely?”

Sirius said this with immense pride. “I threw a chair.”

There was a brief, perfect silence inside the car.

Then Orion said, very flatly, “Wonderful.”

Walburga pinched the bridge of her nose.

Regulus, meanwhile, did not seem especially alarmed by this revelation. He only shifted the phone a bit and said, with sleepy seriousness, “You’re not meant to throw chairs.”

Sirius looked at him as if betrayed. “He started it.”

Melania’s voice cut into the call suddenly then, bright and cooing and unmistakably delighted to have caught that exact moment.

“My babies,” she said warmly. “What on earth am I hearing?”

“Nana!” Sirius shouted.

Regulus’s face lit up again and he hugged the phone tighter. “Nana.”

“There are my darling boys,” Melania cooed. “Let me guess— one of you has had a terribly long day and the other one has committed furniture-based violence.”

Sirius looked vindicated. “See? She gets me.”

Walburga gave a tiny laugh despite herself.

From the front Orion called back, “Hello, Mother.”

Melania’s voice brightened further. “Hello, darling.”

Then she was back to the boys at once, because of course she was. “Let me speak to my babies properly. Regulus, my sweet thing, how are you feeling now?”

Regulus leaned into Sirius again and answered honestly. “Tired.”

“Oh, love.”

“But Grandpapa’s helping with Jupiter.”

“He certainly is.”

“And we’re having cheesy pasta.”

“Well now that sounds like a proper recovery plan.”

Sirius cut in loudly, because he had clearly decided all conversations ought to include him at maximum volume. “And garlic bread.”

“Obviously garlic bread,” Melania said gravely.

That pleased him.

Then she asked them both about their days properly, and for a few minutes the phone call became exactly what they needed it to be: warm, silly, interested, full of indulgent little questions and delighted noises in all the right places.

Regulus, still cuddling the phone, told them about science and the extra worksheets and Apollo 13 and the family star list and that his teacher maybe maybe thought he might get star student. He said it quietly, almost shyly, but both grandparents reacted as though he had announced he was the first child ever launched into orbit.

Sirius, not to be outdone, talked over half of it to explain PE in dramatic detail, how he had been the fastest, how the fight had absolutely not been his fault except a bit, how the chair thing had been necessary, and what he wanted to do once they got home, which seemed to include eating all the garlic bread in the house and perhaps making Grandpapa watch him race Regulus’s astronaut toy across the sitting room carpet.

Melania cooed over both of them in turns.

Arcturus laughed and promised to inspect Jupiter personally.

Sirius announced grandly that he would also help.

Regulus immediately objected in a tiny tired voice, “No, you’ll squash it.”

Sirius gasped. “I would not.”

“You would by accident.”

“That is slander.”

Arcturus, very sensibly, said, “Perhaps Sirius can be in charge of handing us things instead.”

Sirius accepted this compromise as though he had been appointed to a cabinet position.

By the time the call was winding down, both boys had relaxed into that dreamy half-home state children got on the drive back from school, talking easier now that the day was breaking apart behind them.

Finally Walburga reached back for the phone before they turned into the last stretch of road.

“All right, enough monopolising your grandparents.”

Sirius clutched at it. “No—”

Regulus hugged it one last time before giving it up.

Walburga took it back with a smile and spoke to Arcturus again, confirming what time they’d arrive and that yes, Melania should absolutely come too and yes, the boys were already impossible with excitement.

Then she ended the call.

In the little silence that followed, Regulus settled straight back against Sirius, tired and content and held together now by the shape of the evening ahead.

Sirius put an arm around him at once and announced to no one in particular, “I’m telling Grandpapa the full chair story later because Mum’s making it sound bad.”

“It is bad,” Orion said.

“It was impressive,” Sirius corrected.

Walburga sighed, but there was laughter under it.

And Regulus, eyes drooping now, mumbled into Sirius’s shoulder, “Don’t throw chairs near Jupiter.”

That made Orion laugh aloud.

Walburga covered a smile.

Sirius looked down at his brother, deeply solemn. “Fine. Not near Jupiter.”