Never-Ending Midnight Sun

When Regulus Black is forgotten at King’s Cross, he stops waiting to be remembered.

One impulsive train ticket later, he wakes up in Italy with too much money, no plan, and an entire summer ahead of him. What begins as an accident becomes a rebellion: new clothes, false papers, late nights, street races, magic, and four Italian boys who look at him like he is something worth keeping.

By the time Regulus returns to Hogwarts, he is not the boy who was left behind.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for other works inspired by this one.)

Work Text:

By the time the last of the trunks had stopped clattering and the last of the parents had stopped fussing, Platform Nine and Three-Quarters had begun to feel less like a place and more like the aftermath of one.

Steam still hung in the air in long ghostly ribbons, curling beneath the iron roof, dissolving around the pillars and benches and abandoned sweet wrappers. The Hogwarts Express sat breathing at the tracks like some great red beast exhausted from its long yearly labour, its scarlet sides dulled by soot, its windows reflecting the scattered shimmer of summer light. Somewhere further down the platform, a porter grumbled under his breath while levitating a trolley full of forgotten cases. A girl’s laugh echoed once, then vanished through the barrier. A mother called someone’s name. A father complained about traffic.

Then, slowly, even that faded.

Regulus Black stood beside a pillar with one gloved hand resting on the handle of his trunk.

He had not moved in nearly twenty minutes.

Not properly.

He had shifted his weight once, from one foot to the other. He had smoothed the cuff of his sleeve twice. He had looked at the barrier three times. He had watched five families leave, then four, then three, then a pair of first-years with matching plaits, then a tall seventh-year dragging a plant that kept trying to bite him.

He had seen Evan and Pandora leave with their parents.

Their mother had kissed Pandora’s forehead. Their father had clapped Evan on the shoulder. Pandora had turned once before leaving, her pale hair catching in the steam like moonlight snagged in cobwebs, and she had lifted a hand to Regulus.

Regulus had lifted two fingers back.

He had seen Dorcas leave with her father. Dorcas had shoved one arm into her coat wrong, sworn viciously at the sleeve, then laughed when her father fixed it without comment. She had glanced at Regulus too, brow lifted, the kind of look that said, You coming?

Regulus had pretended not to understand.

He had seen Barty leave with his mum. Barty had complained dramatically the entire time, dragging his feet, his tie already undone, his curls a disaster, his voice bouncing across the platform like he was personally offended by the entire concept of going home.

His mother had touched his cheek.

Barty had gone quiet after that.

Regulus had looked away.

He had seen Sirius leave earlier with Potter and Potter’s parents.

That had been harder not to watch.

He had not meant to look. He had told himself he was above looking. He had stood very still with his chin lifted and his expression schooled into something sleek and indifferent, something worthy of the Black name, something that could not be bruised by a brother’s back.

But Sirius had laughed.

And Regulus had looked.

He always did, in the end.

Sirius had been carrying his trunk like it weighed nothing, throwing some comment over his shoulder at Potter, bright and loose and free in the way he always became around people who were not Regulus. Potter’s mother had tucked a hand gently around Sirius’s elbow as though he belonged there. Potter’s father had said something that made him grin. Potter had bumped Sirius with his shoulder.

Sirius had not looked back.

Not once.

Not even by accident.

Regulus had watched him disappear through the barrier.

The space where he had been remained loud for several seconds after he was gone.

Then it went quiet.

Now the platform was emptying properly, draining itself of noise and colour and movement, leaving Regulus standing in the wreckage of everyone else’s welcome home.

His trunk stood beside him. His school bag hung off one shoulder. His robes were neat. His hair was combed. His face was smooth.

He looked exactly like the sort of boy someone would come to collect.

No one did.

Regulus glanced at the clock.

Then at the barrier.

Then at the clock again.

A witch in emerald travelling robes hurried past him, dragging a sulking child behind her by the wrist. The child stared openly at Regulus as they passed.

Regulus stared back.

The child looked away first.

Good.

He flexed his fingers once around the trunk handle.

“They’re not coming,” he said aloud.

His voice sounded strange in the thinning air.

Not because the words were new. They were not new at all. They were so familiar they might as well have been carved into his bones, tucked neatly beneath his ribs where no one had to look at them.

They’re not coming.

It was not dramatic. It was not tragic. It was not even surprising.

His parents did not come to collect him from King’s Cross.

They never did.

Sometimes Kreacher appeared, wringing his hands and muttering apologies that were not his fault. Sometimes one of his parents remembered to arrange a car. Sometimes instructions appeared by owl three days before term ended, crisp and formal and bloodless, informing him precisely how he was expected to return to Grimmauld Place as though he were a misplaced parcel of silverware.

This year, there had been nothing.

No owl.

No message.

No Kreacher.

No carriage.

No person.

No family.

Regulus laughed once.

It was small and sharp and ugly enough that the porter down the platform glanced over.

Regulus looked at him.

The porter suddenly found his trolley very interesting.

Regulus released the trunk handle and turned his wrist, watching the cuff of his shirt slide down against his glove. His robes were too warm now. The summer air beneath the roof was thick with old steam and engine heat. His throat felt tight in the way it did when he refused to be upset hard enough that it became physical, like swallowing wire.

“They forgot,” he murmured.

The words did not echo.

They did not need to.

His parents had forgotten him entirely.

Not misplaced.

Not delayed.

Forgotten.

Their son. Their heir now, technically, since Sirius had fled and torn the house open behind him like a wound. Their remaining child. Their perfect child. Their polished child. Their obedient one. Their spare made central. Their Regulus.

Forgotten on a train platform in London at fifteen years old, holding his trunk while the world went home.

Something inside him went very, very still.

It was not sadness.

Sadness was soft. Sadness begged. Sadness wanted someone to notice it.

This was colder.

A thin black line drawn through him, clean as ink.

The platform gave another sigh of steam. The Hogwarts Express clicked and settled on the tracks. Voices faded beyond the barrier, swallowed by the ordinary world.

Regulus looked down at his trunk.

Then he looked toward the exit.

Then he did something he had never done before.

He stopped waiting.

He took out his wand.

With a flick, his trunk shrank down small enough to fit into his coat pocket. His school bag followed, then the cage, then every last item he had brought back from Hogwarts. Tiny, neat, contained. Easy to carry. Easy to vanish with.

He slipped them all into his pockets.

Then he turned and walked.

He did not walk toward the barrier as someone lost might walk. He did not hesitate, did not glance behind him, did not look toward the spot where Sirius had disappeared. He moved with the precise, elegant calm of a boy raised in a house where panic was punished and dignity was armour. His shoes clicked softly against the platform stone. His robes whispered around his ankles.

A woman standing near the barrier gave him a sympathetic look.

Regulus’s expression did not change.

“Poor thing,” she whispered to the wizard beside her.

Regulus passed them and said, without stopping, “I can hear you.”

The woman went red.

He stepped through the barrier.

The magical platform folded away behind him.

The world snapped into noise.

King’s Cross on the Muggle side was alive in a completely different way, all rushing feet and tinny announcements and wheels rattling over floor tiles. Suitcases thudded. Newspapers rustled. Someone swore when coffee splashed over his hand. A child cried. A group of tourists gathered under a sign and argued with a map. Above it all, the station roof arched enormous and indifferent, light pouring through glass and metal like the inside of a clock.

Regulus stopped just beyond the barrier, hidden from magic, surrounded by Muggles.

For a moment, the sheer wrongness of it nearly made him turn back.

Muggles moved around him in every direction, too loud, too close, too unaware. A man in a brown jacket brushed past his shoulder and did not apologise. A woman with red sunglasses stepped around him, muttering something about children standing in the way. Regulus stiffened.

Then he remembered there was nowhere behind him worth returning to.

So he walked.

At first, he wandered through the magical side’s edges, drifting between the places that did not quite exist unless one knew how to look. A narrow booth selling international Floo tokens. A silver door tucked between two Muggle shops, invisible to anyone without magic. A goblin-run exchange office disguised as an old tobacconist. A corridor that bent oddly if watched from the corner of the eye.

Regulus walked into the exchange office.

The goblin behind the counter looked up from a ledger.

He had spectacles perched low on his hooked nose and a face like carved walnut.

“Name,” he said.

“Regulus Arcturus Black.”

The goblin blinked once.

Then he sat slightly straighter.

“Vault key?”

Regulus removed it from the chain beneath his shirt and placed it on the counter.

The goblin looked at the key, then at Regulus.

“You are requesting access?”

“Yes.”

“To which vault?”

Regulus looked around the small office. The air smelled of metal, dust, old paper, and greed. Behind the goblin, rows of brass boxes lined the wall, each one stamped with numbers that shifted when stared at directly.

“All of them,” Regulus said.

The goblin’s brow twitched.

“All of them,” he repeated.

“Yes.”

“There are several under your access.”

“I know.”

“Family-linked?”

“I know.”

“Personal?”

“I know.”

“Educational funds?”

“I know.”

“Trust holdings?”

“I know.”

The goblin tapped one long nail against the desk.

“And how much would you like to withdraw, Mr Black?”

Regulus smiled.

It was not kind.

“Everything.”

The goblin stared at him.

Regulus stared back.

Outside, someone laughed in the station. The sound came muffled through the walls, bright and distant and stupid.

The goblin leaned back slowly.

“Everything,” he said.

“Every coin.”

“That is a significant amount.”

“I know.”

“Some accounts will require confirmation.”

Regulus placed both gloved hands on the counter and leaned forward just enough for his voice to lower.

“Then confirm them.”

The goblin’s eyes gleamed.

“Your parents may object.”

“My parents are not here.”

“No,” said the goblin. “They are not.”

The silence after that was interesting.

Regulus did not like interesting silence. Interesting silence meant someone had seen something he had not meant to show them.

The goblin turned away and began pulling ledgers from beneath the counter. One after another. Thick black books with silver latches. A smaller green one. A folded parchment sealed with wax. The air grew heavy with the smell of old money being disturbed.

“Sign here.”

Regulus signed.

“And here.”

He signed.

“And here, here, and here.”

He signed.

The goblin watched every movement with bright, unpleasant fascination.

“Do you require it in Galleons?”

“No.”

The goblin paused.

“No?”

“No.”

“Conversion?”

“Yes.”

“To Muggle currency?”

Regulus’s fingers tightened slightly around the quill.

“Yes.”

The goblin made a sound like a knife being sharpened.

“Running away, Mr Black?”

Regulus looked at him through his lashes.

“Taking a walk.”

“With the entire contents of every vault and fund accessible to you.”

“A long walk.”

The goblin showed his teeth.

It might have been a smile.

“Very good.”

The process took longer than Regulus wanted and less time than it probably should have. Goblins, he found, enjoyed decisive financial violence. Especially when it came wrapped in old family names and spite. By the end of it, several sealed packets had been reduced, converted, folded, charmed, and packed into a sleek leather money pouch that weighed far less than it should have and contained far more than any fifteen-year-old had any sensible business carrying.

Regulus slipped it into the inside pocket of his coat.

The goblin handed back his key.

“Anything else, Mr Black?”

Regulus tucked the chain beneath his shirt again.

“No.”

“Enjoy your walk.”

Regulus paused at the door.

Then he glanced back.

“I intend to.”

He stepped out before the goblin could answer.

The station seemed louder afterward. Or perhaps Regulus had gone quieter.

He walked without a destination, letting the current of bodies carry around him without touching him. He passed ticket offices, boards full of flickering destinations, shops selling newspapers and sandwiches, displays of crisps, drinks, chocolate bars, flowers, cheap novels, and things he did not immediately recognise. The Muggle world was cluttered with packaging. Everything came wrapped, labelled, priced, stacked.

He should have hated it.

He mostly found it useful.

At a kiosk, he bought something to eat and drink.

The girl behind the counter had pink chewing gum and a bored expression.

“That all?” she asked.

Regulus looked down at the items he had placed there. A bottle of water. A packet of crisps. A sandwich he had chosen because the label had the fewest unfamiliar words. A chocolate bar.

“Yes.”

She rang it up.

Regulus handed over a note.

She stared at it.

Then at him.

“You got anything smaller?”

Regulus blinked.

“No.”

“It’s a fifty.”

“Yes.”

“For a sandwich?”

“And the other things.”

The girl stared a moment longer, then shrugged and opened the till.

“Posh kids,” she muttered.

Regulus lifted one eyebrow.

“I beg your pardon?”

She froze.

He took his change when she handed it over.

“Nothing,” she said quickly.

“I thought not.”

He picked up the food and walked away.

He ate the sandwich standing near a pillar, careful not to get crumbs on himself. It was cold and bland and too soft, but it was food, and it was his, and no one had instructed him when to eat it or how much. The crisps were strange. Too salty. He ate them anyway. The water tasted of plastic. He drank half of it.

Above him, the departure boards kept changing.

Letters flickered and clattered.

Destinations appeared and vanished.

Peterborough. Cambridge. Leeds. Edinburgh. York. Dover. Paris. Manchester. Nottingham. Brighton. Somewhere. Anywhere. Elsewhere.

Regulus watched them.

For the first time all day, something inside him loosened.

He could go home.

He could be sensible.

He could step outside, find a way back to Grimmauld Place, arrive late enough that perhaps his mother would notice only to punish him for making her feel guilty. He could endure dinner in silence. He could listen to his father ask questions he did not care about the answers to. He could go to his room. He could unpack. He could spend the summer in that house, breathing dust and old blood and Sirius’s absence.

Or.

Regulus walked to the ticket counter.

There was a queue. Of course there was a queue. Muggles seemed fond of arranging themselves in lines, then resenting the existence of those lines as though they had not made them.

He stood behind a man in a grey suit who kept checking his watch.

The woman behind the glass looked tired enough to have personally fought every train in Britain.

When Regulus reached the front, she said, “Where to?”

Regulus opened his mouth.

Nothing came out.

Because he did not know.

He looked over her shoulder, where more destination names shimmered across boards and posters and signs. There were too many. It was absurd that the world had so many places in it. It seemed excessive. Indulgent. Poorly supervised.

“Where to?” the woman repeated.

Regulus looked back at her.

There was a moment.

Small.

Ordinary.

Insignificant, probably, to anyone else.

A single second in a train station in June, with half a sandwich sitting unpleasantly in his stomach and every coin he could reach tucked against his ribs, and no one waiting for him anywhere.

Then Regulus said, “Wherever the next first-class ticket is going.”

The woman stared at him.

“Sorry?”

“A ticket,” Regulus said. “First class. Whatever leaves soonest.”

“Right, but where are you trying to get to?”

“I just told you.”

“You don’t know where you’re going?”

“No.”

She blinked.

“Are you lost?”

Regulus gave her a flat look.

“No.”

“You’re a bit young to be travelling by yourself.”

“I’m fifteen.”

“That is young.”

“Not catastrophically.”

The man behind him made an impatient sound.

Regulus did not turn around.

The woman looked past Regulus, perhaps checking for some adult who might claim him. No one did.

Her mouth tightened.

“Do your parents know you’re travelling?”

Regulus smiled.

It felt like glass.

“No.”

“That’s—”

“I have money.”

“That’s not really the point.”

“It is usually the point.”

She stared at him again, then sighed like someone deciding she was not paid enough to untangle whatever this was.

“Fine. One first-class ticket. Next available.”

She typed. Clicked. Looked at the screen.

“This one leaves in about twenty minutes.”

“Fine.”

“It’s not cheap.”

Regulus reached into his pocket.

“It rarely is.”

She told him the price.

He paid it without blinking.

Her eyebrows rose.

The ticket printed with a small mechanical whirr.

She slid it beneath the glass.

“There. Platform’s on there. Better hurry.”

Regulus took it.

He did not look at the destination.

Not really.

He glanced only at the platform number.

“Thank you.”

“Yeah,” she said, still watching him oddly. “Safe journey.”

Regulus tucked the ticket into his hand and walked away.

He did not hurry.

The platform was on the Muggle side, broad and busy, with a sleek train waiting beneath the roof and people moving around it in a practiced rush. Regulus followed the signs, ticket held lightly between two fingers. The name of the service was printed everywhere, but he did not pay attention. There were too many notices. Too many arrows. Too many announcements blurring together overhead.

First class was quieter.

That, at least, he appreciated.

He found his carriage, stepped inside, and immediately decided that Muggles were occasionally capable of competence. The seats were large. The aisle was clean. The windows were wide. There was a faint smell of fabric, perfume, metal, and coffee. People spoke in low voices or read newspapers. No one looked at him for more than a second.

Perfect.

Regulus found his seat.

He sat by the window, because if he was going nowhere, he might as well watch the world leave him behind.

His pocketed luggage pressed faintly against his thigh. His money pouch sat warm against his chest. His wand was in his sleeve. His ticket lay on the small table in front of him, destination-side down.

He did not turn it over.

A man across the aisle glanced at him over a newspaper.

“Travelling alone?”

Regulus looked at him.

The man cleared his throat and retreated behind the paper.

Good.

A whistle sounded somewhere outside. Doors hissed. A voice over the announcement system said something Regulus did not bother parsing. The carriage shifted with the small collective adjustment of passengers settling in.

Then the train began to move.

Slowly at first.

A pull, a sigh, a gentle roll.

King’s Cross slid sideways beyond the glass.

The platform drifted past in panels: a woman waving, a man checking his phone, a child pressing both hands to the window of another carriage, a guard in a cap, a bin, a sign, a blur of brick.

Regulus watched until the station disappeared.

The train gathered speed.

London unfolded around him in grey rooftops, brick walls, graffiti, back gardens, chimneys, wires, roads, bridges, flats, glimpses of washing lines and windows and lives stacked carelessly on top of one another. He had seen London before, obviously. He lived there, technically. But this London felt different because he was not being driven through it with tinted windows and instructions. He was moving through it without permission.

His mouth twitched.

“Idiots,” he murmured.

He did not know whether he meant his parents or everyone.

Possibly both.

A woman with a trolley came through after a while.

“Anything from the trolley?”

Regulus almost laughed.

It felt absurdly familiar and entirely wrong.

“What do you have?”

She listed things. Tea. Coffee. Juice. Biscuits. Sandwiches. Cake. Wine, which she looked at him and did not offer. He bought tea because it seemed safe, then cake because he could, then a little packet of biscuits because no one was there to tell him not to spoil his appetite.

The tea was terrible.

He drank it anyway.

The cake was better.

He ate it slowly, watching the city thin into fields.

The rhythm of the train settled under him. Metal on track. Soft murmurs. Pages turning. Cups clinking. The world beyond the window widened into summer greens and passing roads, then cuttings and tunnels and stations where people got on and off and Regulus still did not look properly at the destination printed on his ticket.

He told himself it was because he did not care.

That was mostly true.

He did care a little.

Not enough to stop.

His eyelids grew heavy.

It had been a long day. A long year. A long life, for fifteen. His body, traitorous and young, began to loosen into the warmth of the seat. He shifted, folded his arms, angled himself slightly toward the window, and told himself he was only going to close his eyes for a minute.

Just a minute.

The train hummed beneath him.

Summer light spilled over his face.

No one called his name.

No one came looking.

Regulus slept.

At first, sleep took him gently.

Then completely.

He slipped under without dreams for a while, lost in the soft dark where he did not have to be anyone’s son, anyone’s brother, anyone’s heir, anyone’s perfect pure-blood boy with polished shoes and a spine full of knives. He was simply a body in motion. A boy carried across the world by a machine that did not know his name.

When dreams came, they were fractured.

Steam.

Sirius’s back.

His mother’s voice saying, Stand properly.

A ticket turning over and over in his hand but never showing words.

Barty laughing in Italian too quickly for Regulus to catch, then slower, teasing him, rolling the syllables at him until Regulus snapped, “I understood you the first time,” and Barty grinned, “Did you, though?”

A door closing.

A train whistle.

The barrier at King’s Cross becoming the front door of Grimmauld Place becoming a mouth.

Then nothing.

When Regulus woke, the light was different.

That was the first thing.

It was not the grey-gold light of England in late afternoon. It was warmer. Broader. It pressed against the window in thick honeyed slabs, turning the carriage edges soft. His neck ached. His mouth tasted stale. His tea cup had vanished, cleared away while he slept.

He blinked.

For a moment he had absolutely no idea where he was.

Then he remembered.

Train.

Ticket.

Nowhere.

His whole body snapped upright.

Outside the window, the landscape was moving past in colours that felt wrong.

Too bright.

Too open.

Sun-baked earth. Distant hills. A flare of terracotta roofs. Slender trees cutting dark shapes against the gold. A station sign flashed by too quickly to read, but the lettering looked nothing like it should have.

Regulus stared.

His heart gave one hard thud.

He looked toward the little digital clock at the end of the carriage.

Fourteen hours had passed.

Regulus sat very still.

That, he thought, could not be right.

Fourteen hours.

No train to a random English city took fourteen hours unless something had gone very wrong, or unless Muggles had designed an especially incompetent route, which was possible, but not likely enough to be comforting.

Around him, people were gathering their belongings.

The carriage had changed while he slept. Some passengers were gone. Others had appeared. Voices moved through the air, and several of them were not speaking English.

Regulus turned his head very slowly.

A woman behind him was speaking rapid Italian into a little black telephone.

Italian.

Regulus stared at the back of her head.

“No,” he whispered.

The train began to slow.

Metal screeched softly underfoot.

The announcement overhead crackled.

A voice spoke in Italian.

Regulus understood enough.

Enough for his blood to go cold.

The voice repeated in English, but by then Regulus was already reaching for the ticket on the table with fingers that had gone stiff.

He turned it over.

Read the destination.

Once.

Twice.

Then a third time, because apparently his mind had chosen this moment to become a useless decorative object.

He looked out of the window.

The train slid into a station beneath a blaze of late sunlight.

Signs rushed past.

Italian signs.

Italian advertisements.

Italian platform numbers.

Italian people.

Italy.

Regulus Black, fifteen years old, heir to a deranged pure-blood household and recently forgotten at King’s Cross by his own parents, had accidentally bought a first-class ticket out of England, slept through everything, and woken up in fucking Italy.

For several seconds, he did nothing.

Then he said, very quietly, “Oh.”

The train stopped.

People stood. Bags were taken down. A man bumped the aisle seat and said something apologetic in Italian. Regulus responded automatically.

“It’s fine.”

The man smiled, surprised.

Regulus barely noticed.

He stood because everyone else was standing, because staying seated felt more deranged than moving. He checked his pockets by instinct. Luggage, present. Wand, present. Money, present. Ticket, damning.

He stepped into the aisle.

The air in the carriage shifted as the doors opened, warm and dry and carrying the smell of sun-heated stone, coffee, perfume, tobacco, and something savoury drifting from somewhere beyond the platform.

Regulus followed the other passengers out.

His shoes touched the platform.

He stopped dead.

The station opened around him in a flood of sound.

Voices rose and collided, bright and fast. Announcements echoed overhead. People kissed cheeks, embraced, argued, laughed, dragged suitcases, called across the platform. Sunlight slanted through the glass and iron above, gilding everything, catching on hair and watches and the polished sides of trains. Somewhere nearby, someone was laughing so hard they could barely breathe. Somewhere else, a child was complaining loudly about hunger. A pigeon strutted beneath a bench like it owned international rail travel.

Regulus stood in the middle of it all, alone, immaculate, and catastrophically far from London.

He looked up at a station sign.

Then around.

Then down at his ticket.

Then back up again.

“Italy,” he said.

A passing woman glanced at him.

Regulus looked at her.

She hurried on.

He walked slowly toward a pillar and stood beside it, because if one was going to have a quiet crisis, one should at least not block foot traffic.

His mind began to assemble facts with the clipped efficiency of terror wearing formal robes.

He was in Italy.

No one knew he was in Italy.

His parents did not know because his parents had forgotten he existed.

Kreacher did not know because Kreacher had not been sent.

His friends did not know because they had already left.

Sirius did not know because Sirius had not looked back.

He had money.

A frankly obscene amount of money.

He had his wand.

He had luggage.

He could speak Italian well enough to manage. Barty’s mother was Italian, and Barty, being Barty, had decided years ago that this meant everyone around him deserved to be harassed in the language whenever he was bored. Regulus had learned partly out of irritation and partly out of pride, because it was unbearable to have Barty say things under his breath and not know whether he was being insulted.

He could read enough signs.

He could ask questions.

He could buy things.

He could find somewhere to stay.

He could, theoretically, turn around and find a train back.

Regulus looked toward the opposite platforms.

A train back.

Back to England.

Back to Grimmauld Place.

Back to the house that had forgotten him at King’s Cross.

A hot thread of anger moved through his chest, slow and bright.

He imagined arriving home.

He imagined the front door.

His mother’s face.

Not fear. Not relief. Not apology.

Irritation.

Where have you been?

As though he had inconvenienced her.

As though being forgotten was another way he had failed.

His father might lower the paper and say, Don’t be dramatic, Regulus.

Don’t be dramatic.

Regulus almost smiled.

He looked around at the station again.

The sunlight looked like a dare.

Someone nearby said, “Scusi,” brushing past with a suitcase.

Regulus stepped aside automatically.

Then he heard his own voice in his head, sharp and precise.

Fuck it.

The thought was so clear he nearly laughed.

Fuck it.

He had spent fifteen years being collected, directed, arranged, corrected, dressed, inspected, instructed, and remembered only when useful.

He had spent the last hour of King’s Cross waiting to be claimed like luggage no one wanted.

He had every coin he could reach sitting against his ribs.

He was in Italy.

Italy.

Regulus glanced down at himself. School robes. Too formal. Too warm. Too English. His tie was still knotted. His hair was neat, though sleep had softened the edges of it. He looked like a boy who had fallen out of a portrait and landed in a train station by mistake.

That could be fixed.

He looked toward the exit signs.

Then toward a café.

Then toward the city beyond the station doors, where heat shimmered faintly and traffic moved like restless insects.

A laugh began somewhere inside him.

It did not escape at first.

It sat behind his teeth, stunned by its own existence.

Then Regulus Black smirked.

Not the polite, cruel little expression he wore in corridors.

Not the careful one he used at dinner.

This was different.

This was private.

Dangerous.

Alive.

He tucked the ticket into his pocket.

“Right,” he said under his breath, in Italian this time, testing the shape of it on his tongue. “A holiday, then.”

The words sounded absurd.

Wonderful.

He started walking.

The first few steps felt illegal.

The next few felt better.

By the time he reached the station concourse, he had loosened his tie.

By the time he passed a row of shops, he had removed it entirely and tucked it into his pocket with the shrunken pieces of his old life.

The station was enormous, all high ceilings and polished floors and glass-fronted shops spilling warm light. Regulus slowed near a display of sunglasses, then decided that was ridiculous, then turned back and bought a pair anyway because the sun outside looked violent and because no one was there to tell him he was being frivolous.

The shop assistant smiled at him.

“Buongiorno.”

“Buongiorno,” Regulus replied.

Her smile sharpened with recognition of his accent.

“English?”

“Unfortunately.”

She laughed.

Regulus blinked, then realised he had made a joke.

Accidentally.

Possibly.

He decided to pretend it had been intentional.

“Holiday?” she asked while wrapping the case.

Regulus considered that.

Then said, “Yes.”

“First time?”

“Yes.”

“Alone?”

His mouth twitched.

“Yes.”

Her brows rose, but she did not pry. Perhaps Italians had better manners than the English. Or perhaps she simply had customers to deal with and no interest in the strange boy buying sunglasses with the face of someone who had just robbed his own future.

“Enjoy,” she said, handing them over.

“I will.”

It came out more firmly than he expected.

He put the sunglasses on as he walked away.

The world darkened slightly and became more manageable.

Good.

He found a bathroom next, locked himself in a stall, and restored his luggage just enough to retrieve different clothes. Not too much. Not enough to make noise or draw suspicion. Just a small pull of fabric, carefully charmed. He changed with the efficiency of someone who had dressed under pressure before, folding his school robes away, replacing them with dark trousers, a white shirt, and a lightweight black jacket that made him look less like a misplaced Hogwarts student and more like a young aristocrat doing something mildly illegal on the continent.

Which, to be fair, was not far off.

He looked at himself in the mirror.

Fifteen.

Pale.

Composed.

A little sleep-creased.

A little furious.

The sunglasses made him look older, or at least less available for questions.

He ran wet fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead. It fell into place almost immediately. Black family hair was vain even in rebellion.

“Pathetic,” he told his reflection.

His reflection looked unconvinced.

He left.

At the café, he stood in line behind a woman ordering with the intensity of a battlefield commander. Regulus listened carefully, catching most of it. When it was his turn, the man behind the counter looked at him expectantly.

Regulus ordered coffee.

The man asked what kind.

Regulus froze.

There were kinds?

Obviously there were kinds. Muggles did nothing simply. Wizards were no better, admittedly, but Regulus had been emotionally prepared for coffee as a concept, not a taxonomy.

The man waited.

Regulus chose a word he recognised from Barty’s dramatic rants.

“Espresso.”

The man nodded.

Regulus felt absurdly triumphant.

He also bought a pastry because it looked good and he had slept through at least two meals.

The espresso was tiny.

Regulus stared at it.

“This,” he said quietly, “is a thimble.”

The man behind the counter looked over.

Regulus lifted the cup slightly.

“It is very small.”

The man laughed.

“It is espresso.”

“It is a threat.”

The man laughed harder.

Regulus, who had not meant to be funny twice in one day, narrowed his eyes and drank it.

The coffee hit him like a hex.

He nearly coughed, refused to cough on principle, and set the cup down with great dignity while his soul attempted to exit his body through his eyebrows.

“Good?” the man asked, grinning.

Regulus looked at the empty cup.

Then at the man.

Then said, “Another.”

The man seemed delighted.

Regulus ate the pastry standing at the counter. It flaked all over his fingers and tasted of butter and sugar and something faintly citrus. It was better than anything at King’s Cross. Better than most things at Grimmauld Place, where food was expensive but joyless and everything tasted faintly of silver polish and emotional repression.

He bought a bottle of water.

Then another pastry.

Then, because the man behind the counter still seemed amused by him, Regulus asked, “Hotels?”

The man tilted his head.

“You need hotel?”

“Yes.”

“What kind?”

Regulus thought of his money pouch.

“Good.”

The man made an approving noise and pointed him toward a sign.

“Outside. Taxi. Ask for city centre. Many hotels. You want very good? Expensive?”

“Yes.”

The man looked him over, not rudely, but curiously.

“You are young.”

“I’ve been told.”

“Parents?”

“No.”

The man’s expression changed slightly.

Regulus hated that.

He straightened.

“I am meeting them,” he lied smoothly.

“Ah.”

“Yes.”

The man did not believe him.

Regulus did not care.

“Grazie,” he said.

“Prego,” said the man. Then, as Regulus turned away, “Careful, English boy.”

Regulus paused.

Then looked back over one shoulder.

“I usually am.”

This was not true, apparently, because he had gone to sleep on a train and woken up in another country.

But it sounded good.

Outside the station, Italy hit him full in the face.

Heat.

Sun.

Noise.

Movement.

The air felt alive in a way London never did, as though everything had been painted with a heavier hand. Cars slid past in impatient streams. Scooters darted between them like spells gone feral. People crossed roads with terrifying confidence. Buildings rose beyond the station, warm-coloured and unfamiliar, balconies edged with plants, windows open to the heat. Somewhere, church bells rang. Somewhere else, someone shouted from a car window.

Regulus stood beneath the station entrance and breathed.

The air tasted different.

He had not known air could do that.

A taxi driver leaned against his car nearby, smoking.

Regulus walked over.

The driver looked him up and down.

“Taxi?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

Regulus paused.

Then said, “A good hotel.”

The driver took the cigarette from his mouth.

“Which hotel?”

“A good one.”

The driver stared.

Regulus stared back through his sunglasses.

After a moment, the driver shrugged.

“Expensive?”

“Yes.”

The driver grinned.

“Va bene. Get in.”

Regulus got in.

The taxi smelled of leather, tobacco, and something citrus. The driver pulled into traffic with a level of aggression Regulus found almost comforting. It reminded him of Slytherin corridors between classes.

“You English?” the driver asked.

“Yes.”

“First time Italy?”

“Yes.”

“Holiday?”

Regulus looked out the window as the city moved around him, gold and stone and shadow.

“Yes.”

“Family?”

“No.”

“Friends?”

“No.”

The driver glanced at him in the mirror.

Regulus did not look back.

After a beat, the driver said, “Good. Alone is good sometimes.”

Regulus turned his head slightly.

The driver shrugged, swerving around a bus.

“You do what you want. Eat when you want. Walk where you want. No arguing.”

Regulus considered that.

Then he said, “That is the plan.”

The driver nodded solemnly, as though this was a respectable and sacred plan.

“Yes. Good plan.”

Regulus almost smiled again.

The city outside seemed to unfold forever. He watched streets stream past, watched people sitting outside cafés, watched laundry moving from balconies, watched sunlight burn along the edges of old stone. He did not know where he was exactly. He knew he was in Italy. That was enough for now.

His mind tried once, weakly, to remind him that this was insane.

He ignored it.

Insanity, he felt, had been standing alone on a platform waiting for people who had never once deserved that kind of faith.

This was something else.

This was movement.

The hotel the driver chose was absurd.

Regulus knew it the second the taxi pulled up outside. The building was pale stone with tall windows, polished brass, and doormen who looked like they had been born silently judging luggage quality. Good. Excellent. He could work with judgement. Judgement was familiar ground.

The driver twisted around.

“This good?”

Regulus looked out.

“Yes.”

“Very expensive.”

“Fine.”

The driver grinned again.

“You say that easy.”

“It is easy.”

“Lucky boy.”

Regulus reached into his pocket and paid him too much.

The driver looked at the notes, then back at him.

“Very lucky boy.”

Regulus opened the door.

“No,” he said, stepping out. “Just temporarily well-funded.”

The driver laughed so loudly one of the doormen glanced over.

Regulus restored his trunk discreetly just enough to make it look like he had normal luggage, then let one of the doormen take it. The man asked something polite. Regulus answered in Italian. The man’s expression flickered, impressed despite himself.

Inside, the hotel lobby was cool and gleaming, all marble floors and flowers and soft lighting. The air smelled of lilies and expensive soap. It was the sort of place his mother would approve of, which almost made him leave, but then he remembered she was not here, and that made staying feel pleasantly spiteful.

At the front desk, a woman smiled.

“Good afternoon.”

Regulus answered in Italian first, then switched when she did.

“I need a room.”

“For how many nights?”

He had no idea.

The question hung there, enormous in its simplicity.

How many nights?

One, if he panicked.

Two, if he was cautious.

A week, if he was insane.

A summer, if he was free.

Regulus placed one hand lightly on the desk.

“Start with a week.”

The woman’s fingers paused over the keys.

“A week?”

“Yes.”

“Of course. Single room?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a reservation?”

“No.”

She typed for a moment.

“We have a deluxe room available.”

“Fine.”

She quoted the rate.

Regulus did not blink.

The woman’s smile became more professional.

“May I have your passport?”

Regulus stopped.

Ah.

There it was.

The small practical problem sitting in the middle of his grand rebellion like a troll under a bridge.

Passport.

He was a wizard. Wizards did not precisely need passports when travelling magically, and he had not intended to travel internationally by Muggle train because he had not intended anything at all.

He did not have one.

For one sharp second, he imagined the entire thing collapsing right there at the polished desk. No room. No place. No plan. Just a fifteen-year-old boy with too much money and a school trunk in a foreign country, undone by paperwork.

Then his expression smoothed.

“My parents have it,” he said.

The lie came easily now. That was useful. “They will arrive separately.”

The woman hesitated.

“We need identification for check-in.”

Regulus leaned slightly closer, lowering his voice as though sharing an inconvenience between civilised people.

“They arranged the booking badly. I have had a long journey. I can pay in advance.”

Her gaze flickered over him. His clothes. His accent. His money. His posture.

Old money had a language. Regulus had been raised fluent.

“I understand,” she said slowly. “One moment, please.”

She disappeared into an office.

Regulus stood very still and did not allow himself to fidget.

A family crossed the lobby behind him, speaking French. A man in a linen suit laughed near the bar. Somewhere, a piano played softly. Regulus stared at a vase of white flowers and considered whether he would have to confund someone before he had even unpacked.

The woman returned with an older man in a dark suit.

The manager, probably.

Wonderful.

“Good afternoon,” the man said.

“Good afternoon.”

“There is an issue with identification?”

“My parents have my documents,” Regulus said. “They are delayed. I arrived ahead of them.”

“I see.”

Regulus held his gaze.

The manager had clever eyes.

Regulus disliked him immediately.

“And their names?”

Regulus gave the names smoothly.

The manager’s expression altered.

Not dramatically. Not enough for most people to notice.

But Regulus noticed.

The Black name travelled in certain circles. Even in Muggle spaces, old wealth leaked through history like blood through cloth. Perhaps the manager knew the name from some society column. Perhaps from banking. Perhaps from nothing more than the way Regulus said it, as though daring the world to challenge him.

The manager inclined his head.

“Of course. We can make a note temporarily. Payment in advance for the week, and we will require documentation when your parents arrive.”

“Of course.”

They would not arrive.

That was a later problem.

Regulus was discovering he quite liked later problems. They were so much less irritating than immediate ones.

He paid.

The woman gave him a key.

The manager smiled politely.

“Enjoy your stay.”

Regulus took the key.

“I intend to.”

His room was high up, with a balcony overlooking a street that glowed beneath the lowering sun.

The bellman placed his trunk near the wardrobe and explained several things Regulus only half listened to. Air conditioning. Breakfast hours. Telephone. Dining room. Laundry. Regulus nodded as though he understood every Muggle appliance in the room on an intimate level.

When the bellman left, the door clicked shut behind him.

Regulus stood in the silence.

A hotel room.

In Italy.

Paid for by money he had taken from vaults his family had forgotten he could access.

No one knew where he was.

No one could tell him to stand straight.

No one could call him ungrateful.

No one could compare him to Sirius or praise him for not being Sirius or look at him like he was what remained after the better son had burned his way out.

No one could summon him to dinner.

No one could ask why his hands shook.

Regulus crossed the room slowly.

He opened the balcony doors.

Warm air spilled in, carrying the sounds of the street below: engines, voices, cutlery, footsteps, laughter, a distant siren, someone calling a name from an open window.

He stepped onto the balcony.

The city spread in fragments around him, gold at the edges, alive and careless and utterly uninterested in the House of Black.

Regulus gripped the railing.

For a moment, his face did something unsafe.

It almost crumpled.

He stopped it before it could.

Barely.

His breath caught once.

Then again.

He looked out over the rooftops and swallowed hard, furious with himself.

“Absolutely not,” he whispered.

The city did not answer.

Good.

He would not cry over being forgotten.

He would not.

Crying would imply surprise, and Regulus Black refused to insult himself that way.

He straightened, removed the sunglasses, and placed them on the small table beside him. His eyes stung. From the sun, obviously. From the wind. From exhaustion. From anything other than the truth.

A church bell rang somewhere, deep and golden.

Regulus inhaled slowly.

Then exhaled.

“Fine,” he said to the city.

The city shimmered.

“Fine.”

He went back inside and unpacked only what he needed. Clothes. Toiletries. His wand. A book. The money pouch, which he hid with three locking charms and one nasty little jinx beneath the false bottom of a drawer. His school things remained shrunken and packed away. Hogwarts felt suddenly distant, like a dream he had sweated through and woken from.

In the bathroom, he washed his face.

The water ran cool over his wrists.

He looked at himself again in the mirror.

Still fifteen.

Still pale.

Still here.

He changed into something lighter and rolled his sleeves to his elbows. It felt improper. Excellent. He considered writing a note, then laughed at the thought. To whom? His parents? Dear Mother and Father, you forgot me at King’s Cross so I have taken a large portion of our liquid assets and gone abroad. Warm regards, your remaining son.

Tempting.

But no.

No messages.

No explanations.

No little polite owl carrying his location back in its claws.

They had forgotten him.

Let them remember on their own.

If they did.

Regulus left the hotel as the evening began to soften.

The man at the front desk nodded.

“Going out, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Do you need directions?”

Regulus paused.

Probably.

“No.”

The man hesitated, then smiled.

“Very good.”

Regulus stepped into the evening.

He walked.

At first, he kept to larger streets, orienting himself by memory and signs and the hotel’s position behind him. He passed restaurants setting tables outside, their white cloths snapping in the light breeze. He passed shops with windows full of leather bags, gold jewellery, books, clothes, shoes. He passed a fountain where people sat along the edge, talking with their hands. He passed a narrow street where laundry hung overhead like flags of ordinary life.

He bought gelato from a shop with a blue awning.

The woman behind the counter asked what flavour.

Regulus looked at the rows of colour.

“Which is best?”

She smiled.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On who you are.”

Regulus stared.

That seemed unnecessarily philosophical for dessert.

“I don’t know,” he said before he could stop himself.

The woman studied him for a second.

Then she pointed.

“Pistachio.”

Regulus looked at it.

“Why?”

“You look like pistachio.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“No,” she said cheerfully. “But I do.”

He bought pistachio.

It was, annoyingly, excellent.

He ate it while walking, which would have horrified his mother and therefore improved the flavour by at least thirty percent. The evening air warmed his face. People moved around him without knowing him. No one whispered Black. No one looked for Sirius in the shape of his jaw. No one expected anything.

At one point, he passed a group of boys around his age laughing too loudly near the steps of a church. One of them said something to him in Italian, quick and teasing, too fast for Regulus to catch fully.

Regulus stopped.

The boy grinned.

Regulus lifted his chin and replied, “Repeat it slowly if you want to be clever.”

The others howled.

The boy put both hands up, laughing.

“English?”

“Yes.”

“You speak Italian?”

“Better when people don’t mumble.”

More laughter.

The boy said something else, slower this time, asking where Regulus was from.

“London.”

“Alone?”

Regulus took another bite of gelato.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Because my parents forgot me.

Because my brother didn’t look back.

Because I bought the first ticket I could and woke up here.

Because no one came.

Because fuck them.

Regulus swallowed.

“Holiday.”

The boy seemed to accept this completely.

“Italy better than London,” he declared.

Regulus thought about Grimmauld Place. About King’s Cross. About the platform emptying.

“Yes,” he said. “It is.”

The boys invited him to sit.

He did not.

Not yet.

He was not ready for company that did not come preloaded with history and obligation. It felt too slippery. Too bright.

Instead, he inclined his head and walked on, their voices fading behind him.

The sky deepened.

Streetlights flickered on.

The city changed colour again, gold becoming amber, then rose, then blue-shadowed and silver at the edges. Regulus wandered through streets until the hotel became a distant concern, then found his way back with only two wrong turns and one brief conversation with an elderly man who corrected his pronunciation three times and seemed personally invested in his survival.

By the time Regulus returned to the hotel, he was tired in a way that felt clean.

Not drained.

Not hollow.

Just tired.

At the desk, the same man looked up.

“Good evening, sir.”

“Good evening.”

“Did you find your way?”

“Eventually.”

The man smiled.

“Then you are already doing well.”

Regulus considered that as he took the lift upstairs.

Already doing well.

What a strange measurement.

No one at home would have called wandering lost around an Italian city an achievement. No one at home would have praised him for finding his way back. At home, anything less than perfection was failure, and perfection was only noticed when useful.

He unlocked his room.

The silence inside greeted him like a secret.

Regulus ordered dinner from room service because he could not face the dining room and because speaking to people had exhausted whatever reckless spark had carried him through the afternoon. When the food arrived, he tipped too much again, then ate on the balcony with his sleeves still rolled up and his shoes kicked off beneath the table.

Pasta.

Bread.

Water.

A dessert he had ordered because the menu description looked pretty.

He ate slowly.

Below, the street breathed and glittered.

At some point, he laughed.

Not loudly.

Just once.

A soft, disbelieving thing.

“I am in Italy,” he said to the night.

The night, being more polite than his family, allowed him the statement without correction.

After dinner, he sat there for a long time.

He thought about his parents realising.

Would they realise tonight?

Tomorrow?

Would Kreacher panic? Would his mother rage? Would his father send letters? Would they assume he had gone to some acceptable pure-blood family? Would they blame Hogwarts? Would they blame Sirius? They usually found a way to blame Sirius, even absent.

Would Sirius hear?

The thought slipped in before he could stop it.

Would Sirius hear that Regulus had vanished from King’s Cross?

Would he care?

Regulus’s fingers tightened around the arm of the balcony chair.

He pictured Sirius laughing in Potter’s house. Safe. Wanted. Fed. Warm. Surrounded by people who chose him loudly.

Sirius had not looked back.

Regulus closed his eyes.

“No messages,” he said.

It came out firmer this time.

“No one.”

He would not send an owl to Evan. Not to Pandora. Not to Dorcas. Not to Barty. They were home with families who had arrived. They did not need his shadow falling across their summer. He did not want questions. He did not want pity. He did not want someone else’s parent deciding he was a situation.

He did not send one to Sirius.

Especially not Sirius.

He was not lost.

He had decided.

There was a difference.

Regulus stood and went inside.

He locked the balcony doors. Checked the wards he had placed around the room. Checked the money. Checked his wand. Checked the door twice. Old habits had sharp teeth.

Then he got into the enormous hotel bed.

The sheets were cool and clean. The pillows were too soft. The room smelled faintly of lilies and sun-warmed curtains.

He lay flat on his back, staring at the ceiling.

No portraits muttered.

No footsteps moved outside his bedroom door.

No one shouted downstairs.

No house-elf appeared wringing his hands.

No one knocked.

No one remembered him.

For once, that meant no one could reach him.

His mouth curved in the dark.

A small smirk.

Sleep crept in slowly this time, warm at the edges.

Tomorrow, he would buy clothes that did not look like they had been chosen under the supervision of dead ancestors. He would learn the streets. He would eat whatever he wanted. He would sit in cafés and read. He would spend too much money. He would speak Italian badly and improve out of spite. He would go where the sun was.

He would have a holiday.

A real one.

A fucking Italian holiday.

Regulus turned onto his side, facing the balcony doors, where the city lights glowed faintly through the curtains.

For the first time since the train had pulled into King’s Cross, he felt the platform emptying behind him instead of around him.

Let them forget.

Let them wonder.

Let the whole ugly house choke on its own silence.

Regulus Black closed his eyes in Italy, fifteen years old and unclaimed, with all his luggage hidden in his pockets and a stolen summer opening before him like a door.

And in the dark, just before sleep took him, he smiled.

Morning arrived in Italy with absolutely no respect for restraint.

It came through the curtains in gold strips, spilling over the hotel carpet, crawling up the edge of the bed, touching Regulus’s face with warm fingers until he frowned in his sleep and turned away from it.

For several seconds after waking, he did not move.

He lay under the sheets with his eyes half-open, staring at the unfamiliar wall opposite him, waiting for the world to become what it usually was.

Dark wallpaper.

Heavy curtains.

The cold, preserved silence of Grimmauld Place.

The distant threat of his mother’s voice.

The old wood smell of a house too proud to rot properly.

Instead, there was sunlight.

Real sunlight, not the thin grey London kind that looked apologetic for existing. This sun came in boldly, arrogantly, like it owned the room and had only tolerated the curtains as a temporary inconvenience. Somewhere beyond the balcony doors, traffic hummed and rose. A horn snapped sharply. Someone laughed below on the street. A bird made an ugly, determined noise from somewhere nearby, as though personally committed to ruining the dignity of morning.

Regulus blinked.

Then remembered.

Italy.

He was in Italy.

Still.

He had not dreamt it. He had not woken up back in London with his trunk beside him and disappointment folded neatly at the foot of his bed. He was not at Grimmauld Place. He was not on the platform. He was not waiting.

He was in a hotel room in Italy with stolen freedom in the drawer and no one knowing where he was.

A slow smile pulled at his mouth.

He stayed very still for another moment, letting the fact settle over him like silk.

Then he sat up.

His hair fell into his eyes, softer from sleep, and he pushed it back with one hand. The room was quiet behind the muffled city noise. His clothes from yesterday lay folded over the chair. The sunglasses sat on the bedside table. His wand was tucked beneath the second pillow, because even in rebellion, Regulus Black was not a fool.

He reached for it first.

The room was undisturbed. His charms were intact. The money remained locked beneath the drawer. His luggage was where he had left it. Nothing had happened in the night.

No one had found him.

Excellent.

He got out of bed and crossed to the balcony doors, opening them just enough to let in the morning air.

Warmth slipped through immediately.

The street below was already alive. A delivery van idled outside a shop. Two women stood beneath an awning having a conversation so intense it looked like it required witnesses. A man in a white shirt walked past holding a newspaper under his arm and a cigarette between his fingers. Someone was sweeping the pavement. Somewhere close, coffee was being made, the smell dark and bitter and alive.

Regulus leaned against the doorframe, watching.

He had no schedule.

The thought was so strange it almost irritated him.

No lessons. No prefect duties. No formal breakfast where silence meant survival. No mother deciding what he wore. No father expecting him to sit at the table like an heir and not a child. No Kreacher watching him with wet anxious eyes. No Sirius-shaped absence sitting across from him like a second plate.

Nothing.

The whole day sat in front of him empty and gleaming.

He could do anything.

This was, briefly, inconvenient. Regulus was used to having too many expectations, not none at all. A free day felt almost rude. He had to decide what to do with it himself.

He shut the balcony doors.

“Shopping,” he said aloud.

The room did not object.

So shopping it was.

He dressed carefully, because carelessness was for people who could afford to look harmless. He chose dark trousers, a pale shirt, a jacket light enough for the weather, and the sunglasses because they made strangers less likely to attempt concern at him. He checked his money, his wand, his key, and his pockets. He left his tie behind on purpose.

That felt almost obscene.

No tie.

In public.

His mother would have looked at him as though he had stepped into the street unclothed.

Regulus smirked at himself in the mirror.

“Good.”

Downstairs, the lobby smelled of flowers and polished stone. A woman at reception greeted him brightly enough that Regulus suspected she had been trained by professionals to pretend all guests were delightful. The manager from yesterday appeared near the desk and gave him a brief, measuring look.

“Good morning, Mr Black.”

“Good morning.”

“Will your parents be joining you today?”

Regulus did not miss a beat.

“Possibly later.”

“Of course.”

The manager’s smile was polite.

Regulus’s was worse.

He walked out before anything else could be asked.

The city received him with heat, noise, and movement. Morning light flashed off windows and car windscreens. People crossed the street as if death was something that happened to other people. Scooters darted close enough to the pavement to make Regulus consider hexing one out of pure principle.

He did not.

Mostly because he was on holiday.

He found shops easily. Italy, he was learning, believed in display windows as a form of seduction. Clothes hung behind glass like promises. Shoes sat beneath careful lighting. Jewellery glittered in velvet trays. Bags, jackets, belts, scarves, shirts in fabrics that looked softer than most of his childhood.

Regulus began cautiously.

Then less cautiously.

Then not cautiously at all.

The first shop assistant tried to guide him toward something “classic.”

Regulus looked at the plain navy shirt she held up and said, “Do I look like I’ve come here to be punished?”

She blinked.

Then laughed.

“No?”

“No.”

“Then what do you want?”

Regulus looked around the shop, eyes moving over silk shirts, fitted jackets, loose trousers, thin scarves, dark red fabric, black leather, silver buckles, soft cotton, sharp collars.

“I don’t know,” he said, then corrected himself. “Something better.”

That became the rule.

Something better.

Better than school robes. Better than mourning-house formalwear. Better than the outfits chosen for him because they made him look like a smaller, more obedient version of his father. Better than the Black family palette of black, darker black, funeral black, and emotionally repressed green.

He bought a dark wine-red shirt because the colour looked violent in the light.

He bought black trousers that fit properly instead of politely.

He bought a loose white linen shirt after touching the sleeve and immediately deciding he needed to own whatever fabric felt like that.

He bought sunglasses with thinner frames.

He bought rings. Not family rings. Not heirloom rings. His rings. Silver, one with a dark stone, one plain and sharp-edged, one delicate enough to be almost cruel.

He bought a black jacket so soft it felt like a secret.

He bought shoes because the pair in the window looked like they belonged to someone with fewer rules.

He bought a scarf he did not need.

He bought another because he liked the colour.

By the third shop, the assistants had stopped asking whether he was sure.

By the fourth, Regulus had discovered the most wonderful use for magic in a Muggle shopping district: not being forced to carry anything.

The moment he left each shop, he stepped somewhere discreet — an alley mouth, a doorway, the corner beside a delivery entrance — tapped the bags lightly with his wand, and sent them back to the hotel room under a tight charm. Nothing dramatic. Nothing visible. Just a little fold in space and a clean vanishing.

It was exquisite.

He would buy something, watch the assistant wrap it, thank them with immaculate manners, leave the shop, and then with one sharp movement of his wrist, send it away.

No heavy bags.

No inconvenience.

No one to tell him he was spending too much.

No one to ask why he needed more clothes.

No one to say, That doesn’t suit you, Regulus.

He decided everything suited him if he liked it enough.

At one point, he caught sight of himself in a shop mirror: sunglasses pushed into his hair, new ring on his finger, shirt sleeves rolled, posture still too polished but expression different. Sharper. Lighter. Dangerous in a way that did not feel borrowed from his family.

He almost did not recognise himself.

Then he did, and that was better.

By midday, he had eaten two pastries, bought an unnecessary amount of clothes, acquired a small bottle of perfume from a woman who insisted it was “not sweet, not soft, more like smoke and citrus and trouble,” and sent everything back to his hotel room with enough smug satisfaction to power a small curse.

The perfume woman had been correct.

It smelled like trouble.

Regulus liked it immediately.

Lunch happened almost by accident.

He had turned down a narrow street because there was shade there and because the sound of the main road had begun to press against his skull. The street curved, cobbled and warm, with buildings leaning close on either side and plants spilling from little balconies overhead. Halfway down, tables were set outside a small restaurant beneath faded red awnings.

Someone was eating pasta at one of them.

Regulus stopped.

The waiter noticed him hovering and came over.

“Table?”

Regulus looked at the plate again.

“Yes.”

“One?”

“Yes.”

The waiter did not make a face about it. Italy, Regulus decided, was gaining points.

He was seated at a small table near the edge of the shade. The menu was in Italian. He understood enough of it and guessed the rest with reckless confidence. He ordered pasta, sparkling water, bread, and something the waiter recommended with such conviction that Regulus trusted him out of curiosity.

He sat back and watched the street.

A cat appeared from nowhere, sleek and grey, and sat beneath the opposite chair as though expecting tribute.

Regulus looked down at it.

“No.”

The cat blinked.

“No,” Regulus repeated.

The cat remained.

When the bread arrived, Regulus broke off a tiny piece and dropped it.

The cat ate it.

“This is not a pattern,” Regulus informed it.

The cat stared at him.

Regulus dropped another piece.

The cat stayed for the entire meal.

“You’re shameless,” Regulus murmured.

The waiter, passing by, heard him and laughed.

“She likes you.”

“She likes bread.”

“Same thing.”

Regulus looked down at the cat.

The cat looked back, unblinking and superior.

Fair enough.

The food was absurdly good.

So good, in fact, that Regulus grew suspicious halfway through, as though pleasure that immediate and uncomplicated must have some hidden cost. It did not. It was just pasta. Rich, warm, bright with tomato and herbs, enough to make him slow down without meaning to. The bread was soft inside and crisp outside. The water sparkled sharply against his tongue. The recommended dish turned out to be something fried and golden and excellent.

Regulus ate until he was full.

Not politely satisfied.

Full.

The distinction mattered.

Afterward, he ordered coffee and drank it without making a face this time.

Progress.

The waiter returned with the bill and glanced at the empty plates.

“Good?”

Regulus leaned back in his chair.

“Very.”

“You come back.”

It was not really a question.

Regulus looked at the cat, who was now washing one paw beneath the chair like she had always lived there and he was the temporary feature.

“Perhaps.”

“She will expect you.”

“I’m not responsible for her expectations.”

The waiter grinned.

“She will disagree.”

Regulus paid and stood.

The cat followed him three steps down the street, then abandoned him immediately when another table received bread.

“Typical,” Regulus said.

But he was smiling when he said it.

The afternoon stretched ahead, hot and glittering.

Regulus wandered.

He moved without plan, turning wherever something caught his attention. A fountain flashing white in the sun. A church doorway open onto cool shadow. A bookshop with cramped shelves and dust in the window. A music shop where records were stacked in bright sleeves he could not interpret. A market stall selling cheap bracelets and tiny painted icons. He bought nothing there, then doubled back and bought one bracelet because the woman running the stall told him it protected against bad luck and Regulus found that funny enough to reward.

“Bad luck?” she said, tying it around his wrist.

“I’ve had some.”

She tied the knot tight.

“Then now less.”

Regulus looked at the little dark thread around his wrist.

“Convenient.”

“Very.”

He left it on.

By late afternoon, the heat had softened and the city had begun shifting toward evening. The sky remained bright, but shadows stretched longer across the pavements. Regulus had reached a broad square he vaguely recognised from his wandering the previous night. There were steps near one side, sun-warmed stone, groups of people scattered across them talking, smoking, laughing, leaning into one another as if the world had never once asked them to stand straight.

Regulus slowed.

He was considering whether to find something entertaining or return to the hotel and inspect his purchases when someone shouted.

“English!”

Regulus stopped.

He knew that voice.

Or rather, he knew the shape of the interruption.

He turned his head slowly.

Across the square, the boys from yesterday were gathered on the steps like they had been arranged there for maximum inconvenience. Four of them today, not three. All around his age, maybe a little older, though Regulus trusted no teenage boy’s claim of age on sight. They were sprawled in the sun with the careless arrogance of stray cats and minor princes, dark hair, brown limbs, open shirts, loose jackets, cigarettes passed between fingers, laughter sharp enough to turn heads.

The one who had spoken yesterday stood and lifted both arms like he had discovered a national treasure.

“London!”

Regulus stared at him blandly.

“That is not my name.”

The boy grinned.

“Today it is.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

The boy turned to his friends with theatrical delight.

“He says no like a prince.”

One of the others cupped his hands around his mouth and called, “Pretty English prince!”

Regulus lifted an eyebrow.

Ah.

So that was the mood.

He should have walked away.

He did not.

He crossed the square slowly, not toward them exactly, but near enough to make clear he was allowing the interaction to continue under supervision. The boys watched him approach with visible interest. Regulus felt their attention move over him — clothes, face, sunglasses, rings, the expensive cut of his jacket, the faintness of his accent when he spoke.

The loud one hopped down from the step.

He had black curls, a narrow face, and the kind of smile that suggested he had never once been properly afraid of consequences.

“What is your name, then?”

Regulus paused just out of reach.

“Why?”

“So I don’t call you London.”

“London is better than whatever you’ll do with my actual name.”

The boy clutched his chest.

“You wound me.”

“You seem sturdy.”

The others laughed.

One with a silver chain around his neck leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

“He’s mean.”

The loud one grinned wider.

“I like mean.”

Regulus looked at him over the rim of his sunglasses.

“I guessed.”

That got a louder reaction.

The boy with the chain whistled. Another one swore appreciatively under his breath. The fourth, who had been quiet until now, tilted his head and studied Regulus with frank amusement.

“Regulus,” Regulus said finally.

The loud one blinked.

Then his face lit up.

“Regulus?”

“Yes.”

“Like a star?”

Regulus’s mouth tightened.

“Yes.”

“That is not a name. That is a rich person’s curse.”

Regulus’s expression sharpened.

The boy immediately held up both hands, still laughing.

“A beautiful curse.”

“Better.”

“I am Matteo,” the boy said, then pointed at the others. “Luca. Nico. Adriano.”

Luca was the one with the chain. Nico was broad-shouldered and already smirking at him like they were sharing a joke Regulus had not agreed to. Adriano was the quiet one, long-legged and watchful, with a cigarette he mostly seemed to forget to smoke.

Matteo looked Regulus up and down, far too obviously.

“You look different today.”

“I was wearing school robes yesterday.”

“Ah.” Matteo leaned closer. “Today is better.”

Regulus smiled, small and slow.

“I’m devastated by your approval.”

Luca made a noise like he had been punched.

“Dio, he talks like he bites.”

“I do bite,” Regulus said.

There was a brief silence.

Then all four of them erupted.

Matteo actually bent at the waist laughing. Nico said something fast in Italian that Regulus caught only pieces of, but the tone was clear enough. Adriano looked away with a grin, shaking his head. Luca pointed at Regulus like he had become an event.

Regulus stood there with his hands in his pockets, pretending he was not enjoying himself.

He was.

Annoyingly.

Matteo recovered first.

“Come sit.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I don’t follow orders from strangers on steps.”

“We are not strangers. I told you names.”

“That is not how intimacy works.”

Nico laughed and patted the space beside him.

“Sit, star boy.”

Regulus looked at the step, then at Nico, then at the square around them.

“No.”

Luca tilted his head.

“You scared?”

Regulus looked at him.

Luca’s grin faltered slightly.

“No,” Regulus said.

Softly.

The air shifted just a little.

Not enough to become serious, but enough for them to understand that “scared” was not a hook to pull unless they wanted teeth on the other end.

Matteo, apparently clever when it suited him, threw an arm around Luca’s shoulders and shoved him lightly.

“Don’t be stupid. He’s too pretty to be scared.”

Regulus gave him a cold look.

Matteo grinned like that was a reward.

“Pretty?” Regulus repeated.

“Yes.”

“How original.”

“Beautiful, then.”

“Still obvious.”

“Cruel?”

“Closer.”

“Dangerous?”

Regulus tipped his head.

“Trying too hard.”

Adriano finally spoke, voice lazy.

“Expensive.”

Regulus turned to him.

Adriano’s eyes moved once over the sunglasses, the jacket, the rings, the shoes.

“Very expensive,” he said.

Regulus smiled.

“Accurate.”

Matteo pointed at Adriano as though betrayed.

“You cannot flirt by saying expensive.”

Adriano shrugged.

“He liked mine best.”

Regulus, unwillingly, laughed under his breath.

All four boys froze.

It was not a large laugh. Barely anything, really. But they caught it like dogs catching the scent of blood.

Matteo’s grin went feral.

“There. He can laugh.”

“No.”

“I heard it.”

“You hallucinated.”

“With witnesses.”

“Unreliable witnesses.”

Luca raised a hand.

“I am very reliable.”

“You look like you lie professionally.”

Luca lowered his hand.

“That is fair.”

Matteo stepped closer, enough that Regulus had to tilt his chin up slightly to keep eye contact. It irritated him. Most things about being fifteen irritated him, but being short irritated him especially.

Matteo noticed.

Of course he did.

His grin softened into something wicked.

“You are very small.”

Regulus smiled.

“You are very loud.”

“You like it.”

“I tolerate it.”

“For now.”

Nico leaned back on his palms, watching them like entertainment had been delivered directly to his afternoon.

“You’re here alone, Regulus?”

“Yes.”

“In hotel?”

“Yes.”

“Which hotel?”

Regulus gave him a look.

Nico laughed.

“Okay, okay. Secret.”

“Correct.”

Matteo rocked back on his heels.

“You want to do something tonight?”

Regulus narrowed his eyes.

“I am doing something now.”

“This is nothing.”

“You make a compelling case for leaving.”

“No, no, listen.” Matteo spread his hands. “Tonight, party. Music. Dancing. People. Fun.”

Regulus stared.

“Dancing.”

“Yes.”

“People.”

“Yes.”

“Fun.”

“Yes.”

“How dreadful.”

Luca laughed. “He says fun like it is a disease.”

“It often is.”

Matteo ignored that entirely.

“You come with us.”

“No.”

“You don’t know what it is yet.”

“I know you’re inviting me, which is already suspicious.”

Nico put a hand over his heart.

“He thinks we are dangerous.”

“You are teenage boys loitering in a square and shouting at strangers.”

Adriano exhaled smoke and said, “He has a point.”

Matteo shot him a look.

Then turned back to Regulus, undeterred.

“Come out tonight. We know a place.”

“A place.”

“A club.”

Regulus stared at him.

Matteo grinned.

Regulus stared harder.

“You’re fifteen,” he said.

“Sixteen,” Matteo corrected quickly.

Regulus looked at the others.

Luca said, “Sixteen.”

Nico said, “Sixteen.”

Adriano, after the smallest pause, said, “Nearly.”

Regulus gave him a dry look.

Adriano shrugged.

“At heart.”

“You cannot legally get into clubs.”

Matteo’s smile became radiant.

“Legally? No.”

Regulus looked between them.

Then at their faces.

Then at the unmistakable smugness blooming across all four of them.

“Absolutely not.”

Matteo reached into his pocket.

Regulus watched him.

The boy pulled out an identity card with a flourish so dramatic he might as well have produced a dove.

Luca produced one too.

Nico did the same.

Adriano merely held his between two fingers and raised his eyebrows.

Regulus leaned in slightly despite himself.

The documents looked convincing at a glance. Good enough for dim lighting and bored door staff, certainly. Their faces were there, their names adjusted, ages politely fictional.

Regulus should have been appalled.

He was mostly impressed.

Matteo waggled his card.

“See?”

Regulus folded his arms.

“They’re fake.”

“Obviously.”

“You’re showing me fake identification in public.”

Matteo glanced around, then tucked it away.

“You are very dramatic.”

“I am cautious.”

“You came to Italy alone.”

Regulus stopped.

Matteo looked delighted with himself.

“That is not cautious.”

Regulus hated that he was right.

“I came by accident,” Regulus said.

All four boys stared.

Then Luca slowly leaned forward.

“By accident?”

Regulus immediately regretted speaking.

Matteo’s eyes widened.

“You accidentally came to Italy?”

“No.”

“You said—”

“I misspoke.”

Nico started laughing.

“You bought wrong ticket?”

“No.”

“You got on wrong train?”

“No.”

“You slept?”

Regulus’s expression went murderous.

The boys exploded.

Matteo stumbled backward, clutching at Nico’s shoulder. Luca slapped the step. Adriano laughed silently at first, then gave up and laughed properly, head tipped back, cigarette forgotten between his fingers.

Regulus stood rigid in the middle of their amusement.

“I hate all of you.”

Matteo, wheezing, pointed at him.

“He slept to Italy.”

“I did not sleep to Italy.”

“You woke up like, ah, where is London?”

“I’m leaving.”

“No, no, no.” Matteo caught his sleeve lightly, not enough to hold him, just enough to ask. “Stay. That is the best thing I have ever heard.”

Regulus looked down at Matteo’s hand.

Matteo released him instantly.

Good.

Regulus looked back up.

“If you tell anyone—”

“We will tell everyone,” Luca said.

Regulus’s eyes cut to him.

Luca corrected quickly, “No one. We tell no one.”

Adriano grinned.

“It is safe with us, star boy.”

“Nothing is safe with you.”

“Also true.”

Matteo recovered, still grinning.

“You need an ID.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“I am not going clubbing with you.”

“You are absolutely going clubbing with us.”

“I am absolutely not.”

“You have money?”

Regulus’s expression flattened.

Matteo held up his hands.

“Not to steal. To pay the man.”

“What man?”

“The man.”

“That is not ominous at all.”

Nico stood, stretching.

“We know someone. He makes documents.”

Regulus looked at the fake IDs again as Luca flashed his briefly.

Documents.

The word slid into place with the hotel desk. The manager’s clever eyes. Passport, please. Documentation when your parents arrive. Later problems, it turned out, had become today problems much faster than expected.

A fake ID for a club was one thing.

A fake passport was another.

Regulus could hear his father’s voice in his head. Cold. Disgusted. Muggle forgery. Criminal foolishness. Reckless. Undignified.

Regulus smiled.

“When?”

Matteo’s eyebrows shot up.

Luca whooped.

Nico pointed at him. “He wants it.”

“I did not say that.”

“You did with your face.”

“My face said nothing.”

“Your face said crime.”

Regulus’s smile widened slightly.

“My face often does.”

Matteo looked enchanted.

“You are coming with us.”

“For documents,” Regulus said. “Not for whatever other nonsense you’ve decided.”

“Yes, yes. Documents first. Nonsense later.”

Regulus should not have followed them.

He knew that.

He knew it in the same clear, chilly part of his mind that knew exactly how many exits were in the square, which pockets held what, and how quickly he could draw his wand without being noticed. Following four strange boys through a foreign city to meet a “man” who made fake documents was the sort of thing that, in any reasonable story, preceded disaster.

But Regulus had already been forgotten at King’s Cross, emptied his accounts, and fled to Italy by accident.

Reasonable had missed its train.

He followed.

The boys moved through the city like they belonged to it. Not in the old-money way Regulus had been taught to belong to places, through ownership and portraiture and names carved into silver. They belonged by use. By knowing which alleys cut through to busier streets, which shopkeepers shouted but did not mean it, which fountains had drinkable water, which corners hid shade, which policemen were bored, which doors opened if knocked on twice.

Matteo walked backward half the time, facing Regulus.

“You have a hotel,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You have money.”

“Yes.”

“You have no parents here.”

“Yes.”

“You are mysterious.”

“I’m private.”

“You are running away.”

Regulus’s face went still.

Matteo noticed again.

He was too observant for someone so loud.

The boy slowed, letting the others move a few steps ahead.

“I don’t ask,” he said, quieter.

Regulus looked at him.

Matteo shrugged, smile smaller now.

“Everyone runs from something.”

Regulus said nothing.

Matteo nodded once, as though that was answer enough, then brightened deliberately.

“But you run very far. England to Italy. Very stylish.”

Regulus huffed.

It was almost a laugh.

“Shut up.”

“There. Friends now.”

“No.”

“Almost friends.”

“No.”

“Future friends.”

“Unlikely.”

“Destined friends.”

“You’re becoming less convincing.”

Luca called back, “He likes you, Matteo.”

Regulus said, “I do not.”

Matteo said, “He does.”

Nico said, “He hasn’t cursed you yet.”

Regulus paused.

The boys did not notice the significance of that.

Regulus did.

He kept walking.

They reached a narrower part of the city, less polished than the streets near his hotel, where the buildings leaned closer and the pavements were cracked. Laundry hung above them. A radio played somewhere behind shutters. A dog barked from a balcony with immense self-importance.

Luca led them to a door beside a closed-looking tailor’s shop and knocked twice, paused, then knocked once more.

Regulus looked at Matteo.

“Subtle.”

Matteo beamed.

“I know.”

The door opened a crack.

A man looked out.

He was not old, exactly, but older than them. Mid-twenties, perhaps. Dark hair, narrow eyes, shirt open at the throat, expression immediately exhausted by the sight of Matteo.

“No,” the man said.

Matteo pushed the door wider with a grin.

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Marco.”

“No.”

“I brought money.”

The man’s eyes flicked to Regulus.

Then back to Matteo.

“You brought a rich child.”

Regulus said, “The rich child understands Italian.”

Marco looked at him again.

This time properly.

There was a pause.

Then Marco opened the door.

“Inside. Quickly.”

The room beyond was small and dim, with a desk, two chairs, stacks of paper, a fan turning lazily in one corner, and a calendar on the wall showing a beach so blue it looked fictional. It did not look like the lair of a criminal mastermind. It looked like an office that had lost an argument with cigarettes.

Regulus stayed near the door.

Nico and Luca flopped into the chairs like they had been there a hundred times. Matteo leaned against the desk. Adriano stood near the window, keeping watch without making a show of it.

Marco looked at Regulus.

“What do you need?”

Regulus looked at Matteo.

Matteo looked back innocently.

Regulus sighed through his nose.

“Identification.”

“What kind?”

“The useful kind.”

Marco’s mouth twitched.

“You have a name?”

Regulus hesitated.

Every instinct in him snarled.

Names were hooks. Names were chains. Names were how families found you. Names were how portraits screamed, how letters arrived, how people knew where to press.

“Regulus,” he said.

Marco waited.

Regulus did not give the rest.

Marco understood.

“Age?”

“Eighteen.”

Luca snorted.

Regulus looked at him.

Luca immediately found the ceiling fascinating.

Marco sat behind the desk and pulled a notebook toward him.

“Eighteen for clubs is easy. Passport is harder.”

Regulus felt the room sharpen.

Matteo’s eyes flicked to him.

“You need passport?”

Regulus looked at Marco.

“Yes.”

The fan turned. Paper shifted on the desk.

Marco leaned back.

“That is not for children playing party.”

“I am not playing.”

“No?”

“No.”

Marco studied him with the same unpleasant cleverness as the hotel manager, but less polished. More street-level. More practical. Like he was weighing not whether Regulus was respectable, but whether he was trouble worth charging extra for.

“You understand what you ask?”

“Yes.”

“You understand it costs.”

“Yes.”

“You understand it takes time.”

“How much?”

Marco named a price.

Luca made a low whistle.

Matteo muttered, “Dio.”

Regulus reached into his jacket and removed the necessary amount without changing expression.

The room went quiet.

Marco looked at the money.

Then at Regulus.

Then at the money again.

Nico sat up a little.

Adriano’s gaze sharpened.

Matteo’s grin faded into something more thoughtful.

Regulus placed the money on the desk.

“I need whatever documents are required to avoid tiresome questions,” he said. “Hotel. Travel. Age. Identity. Nothing dramatic.”

Marco gave a short laugh.

“That is dramatic.”

“Then do it quietly.”

Matteo whispered, delighted, “Do it quietly.”

Regulus ignored him.

Marco picked up the money, counted it, and apparently decided that rich English children with sharp faces and no surname were exactly his business model.

“Photo,” Marco said.

Regulus looked unimpressed.

Marco pointed to a stool near the wall.

“Sit.”

Regulus sat.

Matteo immediately leaned close to Luca and whispered something.

Regulus said, without looking at him, “I can hear you.”

Matteo straightened.

“I said nothing.”

“You breathed mischievously.”

Nico choked.

Marco took the photograph with an old camera, then frowned.

“Again. Less like you want to murder me.”

“That is just my face.”

“Different face.”

Regulus adjusted his expression by perhaps half a degree.

Marco stared.

“Fine.”

The process was tedious in precisely the way Muggle paperwork always appeared to be tedious: names, dates, places, signatures, measurements, questions that were both invasive and boring. Regulus answered what he had to and invented what he did not. He chose details with care. Not too grand. Not too memorable. Not too close to truth. Marco wrote quickly, occasionally asking him to repeat a word because Regulus’s accent wrapped around Italian strangely when he grew impatient.

Matteo offered suggestions.

All of them were terrible.

“Alessandro,” he said. “That should be your fake name.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“It sounds like someone who owns too many white trousers.”

Luca said, “Tommaso.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Boring.”

Nico said, “Lorenzo.”

Regulus considered it.

Everyone noticed.

Matteo gasped.

“You like Lorenzo?”

“No.”

“You paused.”

“I was thinking.”

“You like it.”

“I hate all of you.”

Marco rubbed his forehead.

“I need a name.”

Regulus looked at the papers.

Then said, “Leo.”

The room went briefly quiet.

Adriano’s mouth curved.

“Little lion?”

Regulus shot him a dark look.

“No.”

“Regulus. Leo. Stars and lions.” Adriano shrugged. “It fits.”

Regulus did not respond.

He hated that it did.

Marco wrote it down.

The club ID was finished first. A simple thing, neat enough, convincing enough. Regulus took it and examined the photograph with distaste.

“I look unpleasant.”

Matteo leaned over his shoulder.

“You look beautiful.”

“I look like I’m plotting.”

“Beautifully.”

Regulus glanced sideways at him.

Matteo grinned.

“You flirt like a head injury.”

Matteo placed a hand on his chest.

“And yet you keep answering.”

“Someone has to manage the conversation.”

Luca groaned loudly.

“He’s so mean. Can we keep him?”

“No,” Regulus and Marco said at the same time.

The passport and other papers would take longer, Marco explained. Not too long, but not immediate. He gave Regulus a time to return and a warning not to lose the temporary papers unless he wanted to pay again.

Regulus slipped everything carefully into the inside pocket of his jacket.

Marco held his gaze.

“You are staying in the city?”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“A week.”

“Maybe longer?”

Regulus’s face did not change.

“Maybe.”

Marco nodded once.

“Then don’t be stupid.”

Matteo laughed.

“He is with us tonight. Too late.”

Marco pointed at him.

“You especially don’t be stupid.”

Matteo looked offended.

“I am never stupid.”

Everyone in the room reacted at once.

Luca laughed. Nico muttered something under his breath. Adriano closed his eyes. Marco said, “Get out.”

Matteo threw both arms wide.

“No respect.”

“Out.”

They went.

Back outside, the late afternoon had turned softer, the heat less punishing now that the sun had begun to lower. Regulus stepped into the street and inhaled slowly, the new documents tucked against his chest beside the money and the hidden wand.

He had identification now.

Fake identification, yes.

But still.

A hotel problem solved. A travel problem softened. A door unlocked that had not been open in the morning.

He should have felt guilty.

He felt efficient.

Matteo fell into step beside him.

“You are very rich.”

Regulus looked ahead.

“You are very observant.”

“No, really.”

“Yes, really.”

“Are you prince?”

“No.”

“Duke?”

“No.”

“Son of criminal?”

Regulus smiled faintly.

“Depends who you ask.”

Matteo stared at him.

Then laughed, delighted all over again.

Luca appeared on Regulus’s other side, walking backward.

“You come tonight now. You have ID.”

“I got the ID because I needed documents.”

“And because destiny wants you to dance.”

“I assure you, destiny has better things to do.”

Nico snorted.

“Not tonight.”

Adriano walked a few paces behind them, quiet as before, but Regulus could feel his attention. Not threatening. Just there.

“You have clothes?” Luca asked.

Regulus thought of the many, many purchases now presumably waiting in his hotel room.

“Yes.”

“Good clothes?”

Regulus looked at him.

Luca held up both hands.

“Stupid question.”

“Very.”

Matteo leaned in.

“Wear something pretty.”

“No.”

“Something expensive.”

“Everything I own is expensive.”

“Something that says…” Matteo made a vague shape in the air with both hands. “I am Regulus, I accidentally came to Italy, now I ruin lives.”

Regulus stopped walking.

The other boys nearly collided with one another.

“That,” Regulus said, “is the first intelligent thing you’ve said.”

Matteo looked thrilled.

Luca pointed at him. “He likes it.”

“I like accurate branding.”

Nico laughed.

They walked him back toward the better part of the city, and Regulus realised only halfway there that they had somehow learned the direction of his hotel without him telling them the name. He slowed.

Matteo noticed.

“Relax,” he said. “We saw you go this way yesterday.”

“That is not relaxing.”

“We are not murderers.”

“An incredibly normal thing to announce.”

Luca said, “Matteo only murders fashion.”

Matteo kicked at him.

Nico added, “And sometimes songs.”

Adriano said, “And conversations.”

Regulus murmured, “Finally, evidence.”

Matteo gasped.

“You wound me again.”

“You’re surviving.”

“Barely.”

They reached the street of the hotel just as evening began settling in earnest. The building rose ahead, pale and elegant, the doormen polished and composed. Regulus became sharply aware of the contrast: himself, newly dressed and still too proper; the boys around him, loud and sun-warmed and careless, carrying smoke and laughter and minor crime in their pockets.

The doorman looked at them.

Then at Regulus.

Regulus looked back.

The doorman opened the door without comment.

Wise.

Matteo stopped just short of the entrance and gave a low whistle.

“This is your hotel?”

Regulus slid his hands into his pockets.

“For now.”

Luca stepped closer, gaze moving over the building, then back to Regulus.

“For now,” he repeated, amused. “Listen to him.”

Nico leaned toward Matteo and said, badly mimicking Regulus’s accent, “For now.”

Regulus said, “That was offensive to at least three nations.”

Adriano laughed softly.

Matteo turned to Regulus with a grin bright enough to be a public nuisance.

“We come here at seven.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“I haven’t agreed.”

“You will.”

“I might have plans.”

“You don’t.”

“I could.”

“With who?”

Regulus paused.

Matteo’s grin widened.

“Exactly.”

Regulus hated him a little.

Not seriously.

Enough.

Luca circled half a step around him, looking him over with theatrical interest, hand at his chin like an artist assessing a marble statue. His gaze lingered too long, shameless and exaggerated, especially when Regulus shifted his weight and the cut of his trousers caught the light.

Regulus’s eyebrow climbed.

“Are you finished?”

Luca sighed dramatically.

“No.”

Regulus’s mouth curved.

“Tragic.”

Luca looked at Matteo.

“He knows.”

Matteo nodded solemnly.

“He knows.”

Nico said, “Wear the black trousers.”

Regulus gave him a bland look.

“You haven’t seen my black trousers.”

Nico grinned.

“I believe in them.”

Adriano, leaning against the wall now, looked Regulus up and down once, slow but not crude, and said, “Wear something you can run in.”

That made Regulus turn.

Adriano smiled faintly.

“Just in case.”

Regulus studied him.

There it was again. The watchfulness. The intelligence under the laziness. The quiet understanding that fun and danger often shared a door and only announced themselves after entering.

Regulus liked him better for that.

“I can run in most things,” Regulus said.

Matteo looked delighted.

“Good. Wear something pretty for us, star boy.”

“For you?”

“For all of us.”

“No.”

“For the city, then.”

Regulus considered that.

“Maybe.”

Luca clutched Matteo’s arm.

“He said maybe.”

“I heard.”

“Progress.”

Regulus stepped backward toward the hotel entrance.

“You’re all ridiculous.”

Matteo bowed.

“Seven.”

“I may not come down.”

“You will.”

“I may hex you.”

“You won’t.”

Regulus smiled slowly.

“Don’t become too confident.”

Matteo’s grin faltered for half a second, then returned even brighter.

“Seven,” he repeated.

The boys began to walk away, still laughing among themselves, still glancing back too often. Luca turned around twice. Nico called something Regulus refused to dignify with a response. Matteo walked backward until Adriano shoved him before he hit a passing woman. Adriano, last to turn away, lifted two fingers in a lazy salute.

Regulus watched them disappear into the evening crowd.

Then he turned and entered the hotel.

The lobby was cool after the street, quiet in comparison, all marble and flowers and soft steps. The man at the desk looked up with professional neutrality that did not quite manage to hide curiosity.

“Good afternoon, Mr Black.”

“Good afternoon.”

“Friends of yours?”

Regulus paused.

The question should have been simple.

Were they?

No.

Obviously not.

They were strange boys from a square who shouted at him, flirted badly, laughed too loudly, knew a document forger, and had somehow decided he was joining them tonight as though his agreement was a decorative formality.

Not friends.

Not yet.

Possibly never.

Still.

Regulus looked back through the glass doors, where the street beyond glowed warm and alive.

“Acquaintances,” he said.

The desk man smiled faintly.

“Of course.”

Regulus took the lift up alone.

The moment his room door closed behind him, he leaned back against it and let the silence settle.

Then he started laughing.

Quietly at first.

Then more.

Not because anything was particularly funny, though a great deal of it was absurd. Not because he trusted those boys, because he did not. Not because he was suddenly carefree, because he was not and would probably never be.

He laughed because yesterday he had been standing on a platform waiting to be remembered.

Today, he had bought half a wardrobe, fed a street cat, acquired false documents from a man named Marco, been invited clubbing by a pack of Italian boys with criminal confidence, and was expected downstairs at seven wearing something pretty.

It was objectively deranged.

Regulus covered his mouth with one hand, eyes bright.

“Merlin,” he whispered.

Then he pushed away from the door.

His purchases had arrived exactly where he had charmed them to appear, piled across the bed and chairs in neat enchanted stacks. Bags from shops lined the room like evidence. Tissue paper spilled over the duvet. Boxes sat on the floor. Rings, shirts, jackets, trousers, shoes, scarves, perfume.

For a moment, he simply stared.

Then he walked to the bed and began opening everything.

The first shirt was the wine-red one. He held it up against himself in the mirror and tilted his head.

Too obvious?

Perhaps.

Good.

The black trousers Nico had somehow spiritually believed in were excellent. Regulus tried them on and had to admit, privately and with deep irritation, that the boy had been correct. They fit better than anything he had owned before. Not improper. Not exactly. Just sharp. Intentional. The sort of clothes that did not apologise for being looked at.

Regulus studied himself in the mirror.

Then reached for the black jacket.

Then the rings.

Then the perfume.

Smoke and citrus and trouble.

He sprayed it once, cautiously.

The scent settled into the air.

Regulus smiled.

He looked different.

Not older, exactly. Not fully. His face still had the fine, unsoftened edges of fifteen, his body still in that strange in-between place of youth and inheritance. But he looked less like someone being sent somewhere and more like someone arriving.

There was a difference.

He loosened the top buttons of the wine-red shirt, then narrowed his eyes at himself.

Too much?

He fastened one again.

Then unfastened it.

Then muttered, “Ridiculous,” and left it.

He pushed his hair back, then let a few strands fall forward because it looked better and no one was there to make him correct it. He slid the dark-stone ring onto his finger. Then the silver band. Then adjusted the bracelet from the market, the one allegedly guarding him against bad luck.

He looked down at it.

“Do your job,” he told it.

The bracelet, being thread, made no promises.

Outside, the light changed slowly.

Regulus checked the temporary ID again and tucked it away.

Then the room phone rang.

He nearly hexed it.

The sound shrilled through the room, bright and mechanical and deeply offensive. Regulus stared at it with his wand already half-raised before remembering, unfortunately, that Muggle hotels communicated through these things.

He picked it up carefully.

“Yes?”

“Mr Black?” came the voice from reception. “Your guests have arrived.”

Regulus looked at the clock.

Seven exactly.

Of course.

A smile spread across his face before he could stop it.

“Have they?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are they behaving?”

There was a pause.

Then the receptionist said, with magnificent restraint, “They are… present.”

Regulus closed his eyes briefly.

“I’ll be down.”

He hung up.

For a moment, he stood still in the middle of the room, listening to the low thrum of the city beyond the balcony doors and the silence of his own pulse.

He could stay.

He could lock the door. Read. Sleep. Be sensible. Avoid the obvious chaos waiting in the lobby wearing cheap cologne and bad intentions.

Instead, Regulus picked up his sunglasses, checked his wand one last time, and walked to the door.

By the time he reached the lift, he was smirking.

By the time the doors opened onto the lobby, he had perfected the expression into something calm, bored, and mildly poisonous.

The boys were impossible to miss.

They had taken over the lobby simply by existing in it wrong. Matteo was leaning against a marble column like he had been commissioned to ruin the elegance of the room. Luca stood beside him, talking with his hands. Nico was peering at an enormous floral arrangement as though considering whether it was real. Adriano, at least, looked composed, though even he had the faint air of someone who enjoyed being unwelcome in expensive places.

The receptionist looked relieved when Regulus appeared.

Matteo turned first.

His mouth opened.

Then shut.

Luca stopped mid-sentence.

Nico straightened.

Adriano’s eyebrows rose slightly.

Regulus descended the last few steps of the lobby with both hands in his jacket pockets.

“Well?” he said. “Are you coming, or are you planning to haunt the flowers all evening?”

Matteo found his voice.

“Dio.”

Luca grinned slowly.

“He wore something pretty.”

Regulus looked at him.

“For the city.”

Matteo pushed off the column, still staring.

“The city says thank you.”

Regulus walked past them toward the doors.

“Tell the city it’s welcome.”

Nico laughed and hurried after him.

Behind them, Luca muttered something about the trousers.

Regulus, without turning around, said, “I heard that.”

Luca replied, utterly unrepentant, “Good.”

Adriano opened the hotel door for him with a small, amused bow.

Regulus paused just long enough to look him up and down.

“Trying manners tonight?”

“Temporarily.”

“How brave.”

Adriano’s smile sharpened.

Matteo slipped past them both into the evening.

“Come on, star boy,” he called. “Tonight, Italy teaches you fun.”

Regulus stepped out beneath the warm darkening sky, the city opening around him in laughter and lights and heat.

He slid his sunglasses onto his face, even though the sun was nearly gone.

“Fine,” he said.

And followed.

They went to Marco first.

Not because Matteo wanted to, apparently, because Matteo spent the entire walk complaining about errands as though he had not been the one to declare himself responsible for the night’s grand adventure with the confidence of a general leading troops into battle.

“We are late,” he announced, walking backward down the street with both arms out. “The music has started without us. The night is crying. Somewhere, a beautiful girl is dancing alone because I am here doing paperwork with an English aristocrat.”

Regulus, walking beside Adriano with his hands tucked into the pockets of his black jacket, glanced at him over the edge of his sunglasses.

“You overestimate the grief of strangers.”

Luca made a wounded noise. “He is worse dressed up.”

“He’s better dressed up,” Nico corrected.

“He is more dangerous dressed up,” Adriano said mildly.

Matteo spun, pointing at him. “That. Exactly. Dangerous. He looks like he steals inheritances.”

Regulus smiled faintly.

“How oddly specific.”

Matteo’s eyes gleamed.

“Do you?”

Regulus did not answer.

That was, apparently, answer enough.

The boys howled.

They were already too loud and they had not even reached the club yet. They moved as a disorderly little pack, half-spilling across the pavement, shouldering one another, laughing at things Regulus only half understood, then repeating them slower when he lifted an eyebrow. They smelled of smoke, cologne, hair product, warm skin, and summer evening. Luca had changed into a shirt open too low at the throat and a chain that flashed beneath streetlights. Nico wore a jacket slung over one shoulder and kept stealing glances at Regulus’s trousers with a shamelessness that was beginning to become almost impressive. Adriano had dressed the simplest, all dark shirt and lazy elegance, but there was a sharpness to him, a quiet sort of readiness, as though he knew exactly where every exit was without needing to look.

Regulus appreciated that.

Matteo was impossible. That seemed to be the beginning and end of his entire personal style. He had added rings, a jacket with too much confidence, and the sort of grin that belonged on wanted posters.

They reached Marco’s door through the same narrow street as before, though now the windows above glowed warm and voices drifted down from open shutters. Somewhere, someone was playing music too loudly. Somewhere else, a man shouted at another man with the passion of someone discussing either politics or dinner.

Luca knocked.

The door opened almost immediately.

Marco stood there with a cigarette in one hand and the expression of a man regretting several previous life choices.

“You’re late,” he said.

Matteo spread his arms. “Beauty takes time.”

Marco looked at Regulus.

“Clearly.”

Matteo clutched his chest. “I am insulted.”

“You are always insulted.”

“I am sensitive.”

“You are loud.”

“Both can be true.”

Marco stepped back. “Inside. Quickly. I don’t need all of you decorating my doorway.”

The office looked even smaller at night. The fan turned slowly in the corner, stirring warm air around papers, ink, cigarette smoke, and the strange oily smell of machines Regulus did not recognise and did not bother asking about. The beach calendar on the wall looked more fictional than ever beneath the yellow lamp.

Regulus stayed standing.

Marco went to the desk and opened a drawer.

“You have good timing,” he said, removing a flat envelope. “I finished five minutes ago.”

Matteo leaned over the desk. “You said we were late.”

“You are. He is lucky.”

Regulus took the envelope when Marco held it out.

It was heavier than expected.

Inside were papers. Cards. A passport. A neat little stack of identity, false but solid in his hands. Useful lies, crisp and new, ready to be believed by people who only looked closely enough to avoid responsibility.

Regulus opened the passport first.

Leo.

Not Regulus Black.

Not heir.

Not son.

Not forgotten.

Leo.

The photograph looked back at him, pale and sharp and faintly murderous despite Marco’s attempts.

Regulus’s mouth twitched.

Marco watched him carefully. “It will pass if no one looks too hard.”

“Most people don’t,” Regulus said.

Marco’s gaze flicked toward Matteo and the others.

“No. They don’t.”

Adriano, from near the window, smiled without looking over.

Regulus slipped the passport and documents into the inside pocket of his jacket.

Marco held out a hand.

Regulus paid the rest.

Marco counted quickly. “You lose these, you don’t know me.”

“I barely know you now.”

“Good.”

Matteo draped himself dramatically against the desk. “Marco, wish us a beautiful night.”

Marco pointed at him with the cigarette. “Don’t get arrested.”

“That is not beautiful.”

“It would be for me.”

Luca laughed and tugged Matteo away by the back of his jacket. “Come on.”

As they filed out, Marco caught Regulus’s eye.

“Careful,” he said.

It was not said like a joke.

Regulus paused at the doorway.

He could have answered with something sharp. He could have told Marco he did not need advice. He could have performed the polished little superiority that came as easily to him as breathing.

Instead, he gave a small nod.

Then he followed the boys into the street.

The night had deepened while they were inside.

Italy after dark was not quieter. It was simply lit differently. The city had turned amber and black and blue, streetlamps shining over stone, restaurant tables crowded under awnings, glasses flashing, laughter rising and falling like sparks. The air was warm enough that Regulus could feel it through the thin fabric of his shirt. Music leaked from doorways. Scooters growled past. Women in bright dresses leaned into conversations. Men shouted greetings across streets as though distance was a personal insult.

Regulus stepped into it with false papers against his chest and something bright moving beneath his ribs.

Matteo appeared beside him.

“You are smiling.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“You do this.” Matteo imitated the tiniest upward curve of a mouth.

Regulus stared at him.

Matteo immediately stopped. “Terrifying. But beautiful.”

“You keep adding beautiful to things as though it will make you less irritating.”

“It works?”

“No.”

“Ah.” Matteo nodded solemnly. “You say no, but your face says maybe.”

“My face says you should walk into traffic.”

Luca, overhearing, burst out laughing.

Nico slung an arm around Luca’s shoulders and leaned close to Regulus. “He likes when you threaten him.”

“I do not threaten,” Regulus said. “I warn.”

Adriano murmured, “That sounds worse.”

“It is.”

Matteo looked delighted.

The club was down a side street with a door that looked unmarked until one noticed the line of people curling outside it, pressed together in restless clusters, all bright clothes and cigarettes and perfume and anticipation. Bass thudded through the walls, low enough to feel before hear, a heartbeat trapped beneath concrete. A red light burned above the entrance. The doorman looked bored in the specific way of men who had decided nothing was impressive.

Regulus slowed.

The line was long.

Matteo did not even look at it.

“This way.”

“Of course,” Regulus muttered.

They slipped past the waiting crowd with the confidence of boys who had either done this before or were too stupid to understand refusal as a concept. Possibly both.

A few people shouted complaints.

Matteo blew them a kiss.

Regulus said, “You’re going to get punched.”

“Not tonight.”

“You’ve scheduled it?”

“Next week.”

At the door, the doorman looked at Matteo.

Then at Luca.

Then Nico.

Then Adriano.

Then Regulus.

His gaze paused.

Regulus let his expression go blank and bored, the way he had been taught to look at people hired to manage thresholds. Not pleading. Not eager. Not uncertain.

The doorman held out his hand.

Matteo produced his fake ID with a flourish.

Luca did the same.

Nico leaned lazily against the wall while his was checked.

Adriano offered his without comment.

Regulus drew out the card Marco had made.

The doorman took it.

The bass pulsed through the pavement.

For one thin second, Regulus thought of the hotel manager asking for a passport. Of King’s Cross. Of his mother’s mouth shaping disappointment. Of every locked door he had ever stood in front of.

The doorman glanced at the card.

Then at Regulus.

Then back at the card.

Regulus raised one eyebrow, just slightly, as though he was the one being inconvenienced.

The doorman handed it back and nodded.

Matteo threw an arm into the air.

“See? Easy.”

Regulus slipped the card away.

“I was never worried.”

Adriano’s mouth curved.

“You were a little worried.”

“I was professionally attentive.”

“Of course.”

They went inside.

The club swallowed them whole.

Regulus had never been anywhere like it.

The first thing was the sound. It hit him physically, all bass and drums and synth and voices tangled together until thought became something that had to fight for space. The second was the light. Red, violet, gold, blue, flashing across faces, cutting bodies into fragments, making every movement look half-spell, half-fever. The air was warm and dense, packed with perfume, sweat, smoke, alcohol, and heat. People pressed close everywhere. Dancing. Talking. Laughing. Drinking. Touching shoulders. Throwing their heads back. Living too loudly.

For one second, Regulus froze.

Not visibly.

Never visibly.

But inside, every instinct went sharp.

Too many people.

Too much noise.

Too close.

Then Matteo turned around, grabbed his wrist loosely, and grinned.

“Don’t think,” he shouted over the music.

Regulus stared at him.

Matteo leaned closer. “Thinking is for morning.”

That was possibly the stupidest thing Regulus had heard all summer.

It was also, inconveniently, exactly what he needed.

Luca appeared on his other side and pressed a drink into Matteo’s hand from somewhere Regulus had not seen him go. Nico was already moving toward the bar, calling for them to follow. Adriano stayed just behind Regulus long enough to make sure he was moving, not trapped.

Regulus noticed.

Then he let himself be pulled.

The first drink was bright, sharp, and unpleasantly sweet.

Regulus held it beneath his nose and frowned.

“What is this?”

Matteo shouted something.

Regulus could not hear him.

“What?”

Matteo leaned in until his mouth was near Regulus’s ear. “Don’t ask!”

Regulus looked at the cup again.

“That’s not reassuring.”

Luca clinked his glass against Regulus’s. “To bad decisions!”

Regulus glanced at him.

Then at the drink.

Then at the room around him.

The lights flashed red across his hands.

“To education,” he said, and drank.

It burned less than he expected.

That was the first surprise.

It was sweet and cold and hit the back of his throat with a little kick that made him blink, but it did not make him cough. He had expected to hate it immediately, expected to grimace and be mocked and spend the rest of the night refusing to participate on principle.

Instead, he looked down at the glass.

Then finished it.

Matteo’s jaw dropped.

Luca shouted, “Oh!”

Nico pointed at him from near the bar, delighted.

Regulus handed the empty glass back to Matteo.

“That was tolerable.”

Matteo stared.

“Tolerable?”

“Yes.”

“That was strong.”

“Was it?”

Luca grabbed his own head. “Was it?”

Adriano laughed, low and surprised.

Matteo’s grin returned slowly. “Oh, star boy. You are dangerous.”

Regulus shrugged.

“I was thirsty.”

That became the beginning of the night in earnest.

The second drink was worse.

The third was better.

The fourth tasted like fruit and poor judgement.

By the fifth, Regulus had stopped analysing the flavour and started laughing when Luca tried to explain something with his whole body and nearly hit Nico in the face. By the sixth, the music no longer felt like an assault; it felt like a current. Something under his skin. Something lifting him by the ribs and dragging him into motion.

He danced.

Badly at first, or perhaps only stiffly. Regulus did not do things badly if he could help it. He began the way he began everything, with observation. How people shifted weight. How they moved hips and shoulders. How they leaned into rhythm. How they made it look careless when actually everyone was paying attention to everyone. It was a kind of language. Bodies speaking in heat and light.

He could learn languages.

Matteo danced like he spoke: loudly, recklessly, with unnecessary flourish. Luca danced like he wanted to be watched and had never once doubted that he would be. Nico laughed through every movement, pulling people in, spinning away, returning. Adriano danced only when he wanted to and somehow managed to look impossible when he did, loose and controlled at once, like smoke deciding to have bones.

Regulus watched.

Then moved.

At some point, Matteo shouted, “There! Yes!”

Regulus looked at him.

Matteo leaned closer, breath warm and sweet with drink. “You found it.”

“Found what?”

“The music.”

Regulus rolled his eyes.

But he was smiling.

The drinks softened things.

Not blurred. Not at first. Regulus’s mind remained clear enough to catalogue exits, count the boys, track the money in his pocket, notice who looked too long, who moved too close, who was harmless, who was not. But the hard edges inside him began to loosen. The precise little locks he kept around his face and voice and hands clicked open one by one.

He laughed more.

That was the first sign.

Not polite huffs. Not sharp little breathy things he could deny if challenged. Real laughter. Sudden, bright, surprised laughter that kept escaping him whenever Matteo said something ridiculous or Luca pretended to faint from the cruelty of Regulus’s insults or Nico stole Matteo’s drink and tried to deny it while still holding the evidence.

The boys noticed immediately.

Of course they did.

They treated it like victory.

“There he is!” Luca shouted when Regulus laughed so hard he had to grip the edge of the bar. “There is the prince!”

“Do not call me that,” Regulus said, but he was giggling, actually giggling, which ruined the threat entirely.

Matteo looked as though he had discovered religion.

“He giggles.”

“I do not.”

“You did!”

“No.”

“You did.”

“I will ruin you.”

“You are giggling while threatening me.”

Regulus pressed the back of his hand against his mouth, eyes bright with drink and lights.

“That makes it worse.”

“That makes it adorable.”

Regulus gasped, offended. “Absolutely not.”

Nico leaned in from behind Matteo. “A little.”

Regulus pointed at him. “You’re on thin ice.”

“We are in Italy. There is no ice.”

“Then I’ll make some.”

Adriano, who had been quietly amused against the bar, lifted his glass.

“That I believe.”

The affection came next.

That was unexpected.

Regulus had not considered what sort of drunk he might be, mostly because Regulus had never been drunk. He had assumed, if anything, that he would become colder. Sharper. More cutting. Some glittering, vicious version of himself with better posture and less restraint.

Instead, by some catastrophic betrayal of biology, he became warm.

Not soft exactly.

Never soft.

But warm.

He leaned closer when he spoke because the music was loud and because balance had become a more collaborative project. He touched arms to get attention. He let Luca sling an arm around his shoulders and did not immediately remove it. He grabbed Matteo’s sleeve when laughing at something Nico said and forgot to let go. He leaned against Adriano at the bar for three entire minutes before realising what he was doing.

Adriano did not move.

Regulus tipped his head back to look at him.

“You’re tall.”

Adriano glanced down.

“Yes.”

“Rude.”

“Sorry.”

“You should be.”

Adriano smiled into his drink.

Regulus poked him in the chest.

“You’re laughing at me.”

“A little.”

“Don’t.”

“I’m trying.”

“You’re failing.”

“Yes.”

Regulus narrowed his eyes, then leaned more heavily against him out of spite.

Adriano looked down at the top of his head with open amusement.

Matteo returned from the bar, saw them, and stopped dead.

“No,” he said. “No, no. He chooses Adriano?”

Regulus lifted one hand without moving. “I choose silence.”

Luca appeared beside Matteo. “He is using Adriano as furniture.”

“Expensive furniture,” Regulus corrected.

Adriano raised his eyebrows. “Thank you?”

“You’re welcome.”

Nico nearly choked on his drink.

The flirting came so naturally once the alcohol had warmed his blood that Regulus almost did not notice at first.

Almost.

He noticed when Luca leaned too close and said, “You know, your mouth is less mean when you smile.”

Regulus looked at him through half-lidded eyes.

“That’s because you’re distracted.”

Luca’s grin spread.

“Is that what you’re doing? Distracting me?”

Regulus smiled sweetly.

“Is it working?”

Luca stared at him for one entire second, then turned away with a hand over his face.

Matteo shouted, “Luca is dead!”

“I am not dead,” Luca said into his palm. “I am injured.”

Regulus looked delighted.

Nico tried next, because apparently they had no survival instinct.

“You flirt like you’re duelling.”

Regulus swirled the remains of his drink.

“Then stop losing.”

Nico laughed so hard he had to sit down.

Adriano did not flirt as loudly as the others. He simply watched Regulus with that calm, dark amusement and occasionally said something precise enough to make Regulus turn his head. Once, when someone in the crowd bumped hard into Regulus’s shoulder and kept going, Adriano’s hand came to rest between Regulus’s shoulder blades, steadying him before he could stumble.

Regulus looked at the hand.

Then at Adriano.

Adriano said, “Balance.”

“I have balance.”

“Of course.”

Regulus leaned closer, smiling.

“I fly.”

Adriano’s brows drew together.

“What?”

Regulus froze.

Then laughed too brightly.

“Nothing.”

Adriano studied him a second longer.

Regulus looked away.

No magic.

No Hogwarts.

No brooms.

No truth.

Not tonight.

Tonight he was Leo on paper, Regulus in the mouth of boys who barely knew him, English in the club lights, star boy when Matteo became poetic and annoying. Tonight he was not explaining the impossible to anyone.

So he took another drink and dragged Luca back toward the dance floor before Adriano could ask again.

The hours lost their edges.

The club became pieces.

Matteo spinning Regulus under one arm and nearly losing him into a group of girls who laughed and spun him back.

Luca shouting the wrong words to a song directly into Nico’s face.

Nico trying to teach Regulus a dance step, only for Regulus to learn it faster than him and look unbearably smug.

Adriano appearing with water at some point and pressing it into Regulus’s hand without making a speech about it.

Regulus drinking it because he was reckless, not stupid.

Matteo clapping when he did.

Regulus telling him, “Do that again and I’ll throw the glass at you.”

Matteo clapping softer.

More laughter.

More music.

More warmth.

The first time Regulus genuinely clung to someone, it was Matteo, because the floor shifted in a way floors were not meant to shift and Matteo happened to be nearest. Regulus caught his jacket in both hands, frowning down as if the floor had personally betrayed him.

Matteo went very still.

Then very pleased.

“Careful, star boy.”

Regulus looked up.

The lights painted Matteo’s face red, then blue, then gold.

“I am careful.”

“You are holding me.”

“You were available.”

“I can be available more.”

Regulus laughed, bright and helpless.

“That was terrible.”

“But you laughed.”

“I’m drunk.”

“And honest.”

“I’m never honest.”

Matteo’s smile softened unexpectedly.

“No?”

Regulus’s grip on his jacket loosened.

For a second, the noise seemed far away.

“No,” he said.

Matteo looked at him.

Then the moment broke because Luca barrelled into them from the side shouting something about Nico cheating at something that did not appear to have rules.

Regulus was swept back into the night.

By the time they finally stumbled out of the club, the city had gone late and luminous.

The air outside felt almost cool against Regulus’s flushed face. He inhaled greedily, the street tilting slightly beneath his feet, then righting itself with suspicious delay. His ears rang. His body hummed. The world was too bright at the edges and too funny in the middle.

Luca came out laughing, one arm around Nico’s neck.

Nico was insisting, “I did not cheat!”

“You cheated,” Luca said.

“There were no rules!”

“That is what cheaters say.”

Matteo emerged behind them, singing something loudly and badly enough that a woman in the street yelled at him from across the road.

Matteo blew her a kiss.

She made a rude gesture.

Regulus laughed so hard he had to bend forward.

Adriano came out last, looking the least drunk but still looser than before, hair slightly mussed, mouth curved with private amusement.

“You alive?” he asked Regulus.

Regulus straightened with enormous dignity.

“I am thriving.”

“You are swaying.”

“I’m moving with the planet.”

“The planet is not doing that.”

“Then it should try harder.”

Matteo threw an arm around Regulus’s shoulders.

“He is poetic now.”

“I’ve been poetic,” Regulus objected.

“You were mean.”

“I contain multitudes.”

Luca gasped. “He contains multitudes!”

Nico pointed at Regulus. “Small multitudes.”

Regulus glared.

Everyone laughed.

They wandered without destination, spilling from street to street among other late-night drinkers and dancers and people who had no intention of admitting the night was ending. Restaurants were closing, chairs stacked against tables, but bars still glowed. Neon signs flickered in windows. Bottles clinked. Someone played guitar badly near a fountain while several people sang along worse. A group of girls passed them arm in arm, glitter on their cheeks, laughing as Matteo bowed dramatically.

Regulus walked between Matteo and Adriano at first.

Then between Luca and Nico.

Then, at some point, not much walking happened from him at all.

It began when he tripped over absolutely nothing.

He caught himself perfectly, in his opinion.

Nico disagreed.

“Absolutely not,” Nico said. “He is done walking.”

“I am not.”

“You tried to fight the pavement.”

“The pavement started it.”

Luca crouched in front of him with his back offered. “Come on.”

Regulus stared down at him.

“What are you doing?”

“Carrying you.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“I have dignity.”

Matteo leaned in. “You named the pavement your enemy.”

Regulus considered this.

Then climbed onto Luca’s back.

Luca stood with a triumphant sound while Regulus hooked his arms loosely around his neck, cheek nearly against the side of his head. He was warm and laughing and smelled like smoke, cologne, and club heat.

“You’re comfortable,” Regulus said, surprised.

Luca looked over his shoulder as much as he could.

“Thank you?”

“Don’t become arrogant.”

“Too late.”

Nico walked beside them, grinning up at Regulus. “How is the view, prince?”

Regulus rested his chin on Luca’s shoulder.

“Improved.”

Matteo clutched his heart again. “He wounds us from above now.”

Adriano walked with his hands in his pockets, watching them with lazy amusement. “Safer up there.”

Regulus hummed.

“I am always safe.”

All four boys reacted to that with various levels of disbelief.

Matteo said, “You accidentally travelled to Italy.”

Luca said, “You followed us to Marco.”

Nico said, “You drank everything we gave you.”

Adriano said, “You are on Luca’s back.”

Regulus lifted one finger.

“All calculated.”

“Lies,” Matteo sang.

“Strategy,” Regulus corrected.

“Drunk strategy.”

“The best kind.”

They moved through a wider street strung with lights, not fairy lights exactly but glowing strands crossing above the road from building to building, turning the night gold. The effect made everything look staged. People drifted beneath them in clusters, laughing too loud, leaning on one another, arguing, kissing cheeks, sharing cigarettes, shouting for taxis. The city did not sleep. It only changed costumes.

Regulus tipped his head back to look at the lights overhead.

They blurred slightly into halos.

“Pretty,” he murmured.

Luca tilted his head. “What?”

“The lights.”

Matteo gasped. “He admits something is pretty.”

“I admit many things.”

“No, you insult many things.”

“Some things deserve honesty.”

Adriano looked up too.

“They put them up for summer.”

Regulus watched the glowing lines sway faintly.

“Good.”

It was not a word big enough for what he meant, but it was all he had and he was too drunk to go searching for better ones.

Good.

The night. The lights. The warmth. The fact no one knew where he was and for once that felt like freedom instead of abandonment. The fact Luca was carrying him without making him feel weak. The fact Matteo kept looking back to make sure he was laughing. The fact Nico had stolen a napkin from the club and was now wearing it tucked into his collar like a cravat for reasons known only to himself. The fact Adriano kept watching the street edges while pretending not to.

Good.

They reached another square, larger and brighter, where the night had gathered more thickly. A crowd had formed near the far side, loose and restless. Engines growled somewhere beyond it, low and eager. The sound pulled at Regulus’s attention before he understood why.

Luca stopped.

Nico looked up.

Matteo’s grin changed instantly.

“Oh,” he said.

Adriano sighed.

“No.”

Matteo turned slowly toward him.

“Yes.”

“No,” Adriano repeated.

Luca bounced slightly on his heels, nearly jostling Regulus off his back.

Regulus tightened his arms around Luca’s neck.

“Careful.”

“Sorry, star boy.”

Regulus peered over Luca’s shoulder.

“What is it?”

Nico’s grin was sharp now. “Races.”

Regulus blinked.

“Races.”

“Street races,” Luca said.

Regulus looked toward the sound again.

The crowd shifted, and through the gaps he saw them: bikes lined beneath the lights, sleek and dark, metal catching gold from the lamps. Young men clustered around them in jackets and helmets, some seated astride, some leaning against walls, some talking with the coiled energy of people about to do something stupid in front of witnesses. The street beyond opened long and bright, stretching past closed shops and shadowed balconies, its stones gleaming under the lights.

Regulus’s pulse changed.

He did not know the machines.

Not really.

He knew brooms. He knew the living pull of polished wood beneath his hands, the instant response to balance, thigh, wrist, breath. He knew cold air tearing at his face over the Quidditch pitch. He knew speed as a language. He knew how to lean into danger until it became obedient.

These were not brooms.

But they hummed with the same invitation.

Matteo approached the edge of the crowd with the confidence of someone terrible at self-preservation. A taller boy with a shaved head and a leather jacket looked over.

“Matteo!”

Matteo spread his arms. “Still alive!”

“Unfortunately,” Adriano muttered.

The older boy laughed and clasped Matteo’s hand, pulling him into a rough half-embrace. He looked the rest of them over, eyes catching on Regulus where he remained on Luca’s back.

“Who’s this?”

“English,” Matteo said.

Regulus lifted his head.

“Regulus.”

The older boy’s eyebrows rose.

“Fancy.”

“He is fancy,” Luca said.

Regulus tugged lightly at Luca’s hair.

“Ow.”

“Behave.”

The older boy laughed. “You want to race?”

Matteo grinned.

“Yes.”

Adriano immediately said, “No.”

Luca said, “Yes.”

Nico said, “Obviously.”

Regulus slid down from Luca’s back before anyone could object, landing more steadily than expected. The world tilted once, then steadied. He fixed his jacket, lifted his chin, and looked at the bikes.

The older boy noticed.

“You ride?”

Regulus opened his mouth.

Adriano answered first.

“No.”

Regulus looked at him.

Adriano looked back.

“You don’t.”

Regulus turned to the older boy.

“I learn quickly.”

Matteo made a delighted sound.

“No,” Adriano said again.

Regulus smiled.

Adriano’s eyes narrowed.

That smile had started problems before.

The older boy looked amused. “First lap, passenger. Then maybe.”

Regulus considered arguing.

Then remembered that he was, despite everything, not entirely suicidal.

“Fine.”

“Helmets,” the older boy called.

Someone passed them over.

The helmet placed into Regulus’s hands was black with scratches across one side. He stared at it.

It smelled faintly of leather, rubber, and someone else’s hair.

“No,” he said.

Matteo laughed. “You want a crown instead?”

“I want hygiene.”

Luca took the helmet from him, wiped the inside with the edge of his shirt with absolutely no useful effect, and presented it again.

“Royal service.”

Regulus stared.

“That changed nothing.”

“It changed the spirit.”

“The spirit is disgusting.”

Nico handed him another helmet. “This one is better.”

Regulus inspected it.

Marginally better.

He accepted it.

Before he could put it on, Adriano stepped in front of him and took it from his hands.

Regulus blinked.

“I can manage.”

“I know.”

Adriano turned the helmet, checked the strap, then lowered it carefully over Regulus’s head.

The world muffled slightly.

Regulus looked up at him through the visor opening.

Adriano’s fingers moved under his chin, adjusting the strap with surprising gentleness.

“You are drunk,” Adriano said quietly.

“So are you.”

“Less.”

“How tragic for you.”

Adriano’s mouth twitched, but his eyes stayed serious.

“First lap behind me.”

Regulus tilted his head.

“Are you giving orders?”

“Yes.”

“How bold.”

“You can argue after.”

“I can argue now.”

“You can. But you won’t.”

Regulus smiled slowly.

Adriano fastened the strap.

“Confident.”

“Careful,” Adriano corrected.

Regulus studied him.

Then, because he was drunk and affectionate and his tongue had become less loyal than usual, he said, “That’s almost sweet.”

Adriano paused.

Matteo, nearby, gasped loudly.

Adriano’s expression did not change much, but something pleased moved through it.

“Almost,” he said.

Regulus rolled his eyes and turned away before anyone could enjoy his warmth too openly.

The bikes were assigned with very little ceremony and far too much shouting. Matteo took one with red along the side. Luca and Nico argued over another until the older boy snapped at them. Adriano took a black bike and swung one leg over with the ease of someone who had absolutely done this before despite his earlier disapproval.

Regulus stood beside him.

The helmet made everything strange. Sound became thick. The lights smeared at the edges of his vision. His pulse thudded under his jaw.

Adriano looked back. “Get on.”

Regulus climbed on behind him.

It was awkward for approximately one second, then instinct solved the problem. He settled close, knees bracketing the bike, hands hovering uncertainly before Adriano reached back, caught his wrists, and pulled Regulus’s arms around his waist.

“Hold on.”

Regulus’s chest met Adriano’s back.

The bike vibrated beneath them, not alive, no, but awake. Restless. Waiting.

Regulus’s fingers curled against Adriano’s shirt.

“This is loud.”

Adriano glanced back slightly.

“You wanted entertainment.”

“I wanted something entertaining. Not death by machinery.”

“You’ll like it.”

“You don’t know that.”

Adriano revved the engine.

Regulus’s whole body startled against him.

Adriano laughed.

Regulus pinched his side.

“Ow.”

“I already hate it.”

“No, you don’t.”

He did not.

That was the problem.

The riders lined up.

The crowd pressed close along the edges of the street, shouting, laughing, waving them forward. Someone lifted an arm. The air trembled with engine noise. Matteo looked over from his bike and blew Regulus a kiss through his visor. Regulus lifted two fingers in a gesture that made Matteo laugh so hard he nearly slipped.

Luca shouted something unintelligible.

Nico whooped.

Adriano leaned forward.

Regulus tightened his hold.

The arm dropped.

The bikes launched.

For one blinding second, Regulus forgot how to breathe.

The force of it slammed through him, not like Apparition, not like a broom takeoff, something heavier, rougher, mechanical violence turned into motion. The street ripped open ahead. Lights streamed past. The crowd became a blur of faces and sound. Wind punched at his jacket, tore at the edges of his sleeves, pressed his shirt against his skin.

Regulus clung to Adriano and laughed.

It burst out of him before he could stop it, wild and bright and swallowed by the helmet. The bike leaned into the first bend, and instinct grabbed him by the bones. He moved with it. Not against. With. His body understood before his mind did, following the shift of balance, the angle, the pull, the delicate edge between control and disaster.

Adriano felt it.

Regulus knew he did by the way his shoulders shifted, by the quick glance he threw back after the bend.

The street stretched ahead, lit in gold.

They accelerated.

Regulus’s fear vanished.

Not because it was safe.

Because it was not.

Because safety had nothing to do with it.

This was speed.

This was air.

This was every forbidden thing the summer had been teaching him to want.

The city became lines. Stone. Light. Heat. Engine. Breath. Adriano’s body in front of him, solid beneath his hands. The bike beneath them, not a broom but close enough, close enough that Regulus’s blood sang in recognition.

He leaned before Adriano did on the next turn.

Adriano shouted something that might have been a laugh.

They completed the lap in a rush of noise and screeching brakes, pulling back into the square amid shouting from the crowd. Regulus’s heart was hammering. His hands were shaking. His face hurt.

Adriano killed the engine and twisted to look at him.

Regulus lifted the visor.

He was grinning.

Not smirking.

Not smiling.

Grinning.

Adriano stared.

“Oh,” he said.

Regulus laughed breathlessly. “Again.”

Matteo appeared beside them, yanking off his helmet. His hair was a disaster, eyes bright.

“Did you see him? He loved it.”

“I did not.”

“You are smiling like a criminal.”

“I smile like that often.”

“No, this is worse.”

Luca rode in behind them, whooping loudly. Nico followed, shouting that Matteo had cut him off, which Matteo denied with theatrical outrage and absolutely no credibility.

The older boy approached, grinning at Regulus.

“So. English. You want to try?”

Adriano immediately said, “No.”

Regulus said, “Yes.”

Adriano turned.

Regulus swung one leg off the bike and stood. The ground wobbled slightly, but that was irrelevant. His veins were full of light.

“You said maybe,” Regulus told the older boy.

“I did.”

“Now I say yes.”

Adriano removed his helmet fully. “Regulus.”

Regulus looked at him.

There was warning in his voice.

Concern, too.

Regulus did not know what to do with that, so he smiled.

“I’ll be careful.”

Matteo burst out laughing. “No, you won’t.”

“I’ll be skilled.”

“That is different.”

“Yes.”

The older boy considered him for a moment.

Then held out the handlebars.

“Slow first.”

Regulus took them.

Adriano muttered something under his breath that sounded like a prayer and an insult having a fight.

Luca bounced on his toes. “Let him. Let him. He has the face.”

“What face?” Nico asked.

“The face like he will either win or haunt us.”

Matteo pointed. “Exactly.”

Regulus ignored them and focused.

The bike was not a broom.

That became clear immediately.

It was heavier. Slower to answer. It did not respond to magic or intention or the minute flex of fingers in quite the same way. It had mechanics, weight, friction, a growling impatience beneath the body. But it did respond. Not to magic, perhaps, but to balance. Pressure. Nerve. Timing.

Regulus could work with timing.

The older boy explained controls quickly.

Regulus listened.

Not because he liked being instructed, but because surviving was generally useful. He repeated nothing aloud. He simply absorbed. Hand. Foot. Throttle. Brake. Balance. Don’t fight the turn. Don’t freeze. Don’t overcorrect.

Similar to a broom, his mind supplied.

Not the same.

Similar enough.

He mounted carefully.

The bike shifted beneath him.

His body adjusted.

The boys had gone quiet, or as quiet as they were capable of being.

Matteo stood with both hands clasped in front of his mouth, eyes wide with glee.

Luca held Regulus’s helmet out.

Regulus took it.

This time, he put it on himself.

Adriano stepped close anyway, checking the strap with one tug.

Regulus looked through the visor at him.

“I did it.”

“I’m checking.”

“You’re fussy.”

“You’re drunk.”

“You keep saying that.”

“It keeps being true.”

Regulus leaned closer, voice dropping.

“I flew better drunk than most people do sober.”

Adriano’s eyes sharpened.

Again, that word.

Flew.

Regulus realised too late.

Then the older boy called for the second round, and the moment disappeared beneath engine noise.

The riders lined up again.

This time Regulus was alone.

The bike vibrated beneath him like a dangerous secret. His hands settled. His feet found place. He breathed once, slowly, and the world narrowed.

Light.

Road.

Sound.

Balance.

The boys shouted around him.

Matteo: “Star boy!”

Luca: “Don’t die!”

Nico: “Win first, die after!”

Adriano: “Regulus!”

Regulus turned his helmet slightly.

Adriano stood at the edge of the line, jaw tense.

“Think,” he called.

Regulus smiled behind the visor.

Then the arm dropped.

The bikes surged forward.

For half a second, Regulus nearly lost it.

The machine kicked harder than expected, front lifting light, the engine snarling beneath him. His stomach dropped. The world lurched.

Then his body remembered.

Not this machine.

Not this street.

But motion.

He leaned in. Corrected. Balanced. Opened the throttle with more confidence than wisdom and felt the bike answer.

The street came at him.

No.

He went at the street.

The first few seconds were pure survival, every thought stripped to sensation. The handlebars trembled under his grip. Wind crashed into him. Lights shattered across his visor. Another rider pulled ahead on his left. Matteo, probably, red flashing in the corner of his eye. Someone shouted from the crowd.

Regulus chased.

The first turn came sharp.

He remembered Adriano’s body leaning. Remembered the older boy’s explanation. Remembered broom curves over the Quidditch pitch, the way fear made people stiff and stiffness made them fall.

So he did not stiffen.

He leaned.

The bike curved beneath him like it had been waiting for permission.

Regulus laughed.

Then he accelerated.

The second stretch opened wider, and something clicked into place. Not perfectly. Not safely. But beautifully. He understood the weight now. Understood the delay. Understood that the machine did not read his mind, so his body had to speak louder. More deliberate. Less magic, more muscle.

That was fine.

Regulus had been raised in a house where survival required translating silence into action.

He could speak machine.

He overtook Luca first.

Luca yelled something so loud Regulus heard it even through the helmet.

He overtook Nico on the outside of the next bend, cutting cleaner than he had any right to, the bike dipping low enough that the street seemed to tilt up toward his shoulder. The crowd roared.

Nico’s head snapped toward him.

Regulus did not look back.

Matteo was ahead.

Of course Matteo was ahead, red bike tearing down the lit street like a match struck against stone. Regulus saw him glance back once, saw the exact moment Matteo realised who was behind him.

Even through the helmet, even at speed, Regulus could feel his grin.

Matteo leaned forward.

Regulus did too.

The road narrowed between two rows of closed shops, shutters gleaming under amber lamps. The bike thundered beneath him. Every part of him was awake now, sharpened past drunkenness into something cleaner. The alcohol remained, bright and reckless in his blood, but speed burned through the fog and left only instinct.

Matteo took the next turn wide.

Regulus saw the opening.

Small.

Stupid.

Perfect.

He cut inside.

For one breath, the world narrowed to inches: Matteo’s bike to his left, stone wall to his right, the scream of engines, the bright slash of a streetlamp across his visor. Regulus leaned hard, heart in his throat, body aligned so precisely with the machine that it felt less ridden than worn.

Then he was through.

Ahead.

First.

The crowd noise hit him before the realisation did.

He was leading.

Regulus Black, fifteen, drunk on stolen summer and his first night out, riding a Muggle bike through lit Italian streets with fake documents in his pocket and no one in the world knowing where he was, was leading.

He grinned so hard it was almost painful.

The final stretch opened before him.

He did not slow.

The finish was not marked in any official way, just the place where the crowd thickened and the shouting peaked and someone waved both arms like a lunatic beneath the lights. Regulus shot past it first, engine snarling, laughter trapped inside his helmet.

He braked too sharply.

The bike skidded slightly.

For half a second, it wobbled.

Adriano lunged from the edge of the crowd as Regulus caught it himself, one foot hitting the ground, body snapping upright, breath tearing from him in a wild laugh.

The square erupted.

Matteo pulled in seconds later, nearly crashing from laughing too hard.

Luca arrived shouting.

Nico followed, pounding one fist against his handlebars.

Regulus killed the engine because someone yelled at him to and he remembered, belatedly, that machines did not stop simply because one was finished with them.

His hands shook around the grips.

Adriano reached him first.

He grabbed the side of Regulus’s helmet and lifted the visor.

Regulus looked up at him, flushed and bright-eyed.

Adriano stared at him.

Then said, very evenly, “Are you insane?”

Regulus burst out laughing.

Adriano shook him once, not hard. “Are you insane?”

“I won.”

“You nearly died.”

“I won.”

“You nearly hit a wall.”

“I didn’t.”

“You don’t know how to ride.”

“Apparently I do.”

Adriano stared another second.

Then, impossibly, he laughed.

It broke out of him with a kind of helpless disbelief, his forehead dropping briefly against the top of Regulus’s helmet.

“You are insane.”

Regulus, still breathless, smiled.

“Maybe.”

Matteo skidded up beside them, ripped his helmet off, and pointed at Regulus like he had seen a miracle.

“You!” he shouted. “You lying little English demon!”

Regulus pushed his own helmet back, hair damp and messy beneath it.

“I did not lie.”

“You said you don’t ride!”

“I don’t.”

“You just won!”

“I learned.”

Luca threw his helmet down and grabbed Regulus by both shoulders.

“You learned? You learned during the race?”

“Yes.”

Nico looked at Matteo.

Matteo looked at Nico.

Then they both started yelling at once.

The older riders crowded closer, laughing, shouting questions, clapping Regulus on the back hard enough that he nearly stumbled. He would have snapped at them if he had not been too drunk on adrenaline to care. The older boy with the shaved head was grinning at him like he had personally created entertainment.

“Where did you learn that?”

Regulus wiped his hair back from his forehead.

“School.”

There was a pause.

Then Matteo dissolved.

“School,” he repeated, nearly wheezing. “His school teaches street racing.”

Regulus’s mouth curved.

“Only the better ones.”

Luca howled.

Nico draped himself over Matteo’s shoulder, shaking with laughter.

Adriano was still watching Regulus too closely.

Regulus ignored him because ignoring things had worked excellently for him so far this summer.

The crowd began to break apart slowly, some people demanding another race, others wandering off toward different noise, different trouble. The bikes were reclaimed. Helmets gathered. Someone shoved a bottle of water at Regulus and this time it was Luca who uncapped it for him and ordered him to drink with the gravity of a healer on a battlefield.

Regulus drank.

Some of it spilled down his chin.

Matteo made a strangled sound.

Regulus lowered the bottle.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re lying.”

“You are very pretty after crimes.”

Regulus looked at him.

Then, because the night had ruined him, because he was warm and happy and alive in a way that felt almost unbearable, he giggled.

Matteo made another wounded noise.

“Stop doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“Being—” Matteo waved both hands at him. “This.”

Regulus took another sip of water, smiling around the bottle.

Luca leaned toward Nico. “We cannot let him go back to England.”

Regulus lowered the bottle.

“I am eventually going back to England.”

Nico shook his head. “No.”

“No?”

“No. Italy claims you.”

Matteo nodded solemnly. “By right of conquest.”

“I conquered you.”

“Exactly. Now you belong here.”

“That is not how conquest works.”

“It is tonight.”

Adriano took the bottle from Regulus before he could spill more of it and said, “Hotel.”

The others groaned.

“No,” Matteo complained. “The night is young.”

“The night is old,” Adriano said. “He is drunk, he raced, and Marco told us not to be stupid.”

“Marco is not my father.”

“No one would survive being your father,” Luca said.

Matteo pointed at him. “True.”

Regulus leaned slightly into Luca’s side without meaning to.

Luca noticed instantly and wrapped an arm around him, triumphant.

“Hotel,” Adriano repeated.

Regulus sighed.

“I’m not tired.”

“You’re leaning on Luca.”

“I’m using available infrastructure.”

Luca beamed. “I am infrastructure.”

Nico patted his shoulder. “Strong infrastructure.”

Matteo came around to Regulus’s other side and took his hand with dramatic tenderness.

“Come, star boy. We return you to your palace.”

Regulus looked down at their joined hands.

He should have pulled away.

He did not.

The walk back was slower.

The city had quieted slightly, though not enough to feel asleep. The lights overhead still glowed. The streets still held drinkers and smokers and wanderers, but the edges had softened. Regulus moved between Matteo and Luca now, sometimes walking, sometimes being half-guided, half-carried when his steps forgot to organise themselves properly. Nico walked ahead narrating Regulus’s victory with increasing exaggeration.

“And then,” Nico declared, standing on a low wall and throwing one arm out, “the English prince flies through the turn—”

“Rides,” Adriano corrected.

“Flies,” Regulus said.

Everyone looked at him.

Regulus blinked.

Then smiled vaguely. “Feels like flying.”

Adriano’s eyes held on him again.

Matteo squeezed his hand.

“You like flying?”

Regulus looked up at the lights.

“Yes.”

Something about the answer came out too honest.

No one laughed that time.

Then Luca, mercifully loud, said, “I like when my feet are on the ground and my face is not broken.”

“You lost,” Regulus said.

Luca gasped. “He attacks me when I am kind.”

“You lost kindly.”

“That is worse.”

Matteo leaned into Regulus’s shoulder, laughing.

Regulus laughed too.

By the time the hotel came into view, pale and polished and absurdly proper beneath its lamps, Regulus’s hair was ruined, his shirt was creased, his rings were warm against his fingers, and the bracelet from the market had survived the night’s reckless attempt to disprove its usefulness.

The doorman saw them approach.

His face remained professionally blank.

Heroic, really.

Matteo stopped just before the entrance and turned Regulus to face him by both shoulders.

“Tomorrow,” he said.

Regulus frowned. “What?”

“We see you tomorrow.”

“Do we?”

“Yes.”

“I may be busy.”

“Doing what?”

Regulus opened his mouth.

Nothing came out.

Matteo smiled smugly.

“Exactly.”

Regulus narrowed his eyes. “You’re becoming bold.”

“I watched you win a race drunk after one lesson. I must be bold now or lose courage forever.”

“That sentence was nonsense.”

“It was beautiful.”

“It was nonsense.”

Luca stepped forward and, before Regulus could evade, pressed a noisy kiss to the side of his helmet-mussed hair.

Regulus froze.

Luca danced back immediately, hands raised.

“Goodnight, champion.”

Regulus stared at him, scandalised and warm.

“You are unbearable.”

“Yes,” Luca said happily.

Nico ruffled Regulus’s hair.

Regulus slapped his hand away.

“Touch my hair again and lose the hand.”

Nico grinned. “There he is.”

Adriano stood a little apart, watching with that same quiet amusement. When Regulus looked at him, he stepped closer.

“You okay getting upstairs?”

Regulus lifted his chin.

“Obviously.”

Adriano did not move.

Regulus sighed.

“Yes.”

“Drink water.”

“I have.”

“More.”

“You’re not my keeper.”

“No,” Adriano said. “But someone should be.”

Regulus stared at him.

Something in his chest turned over, uncomfortable and bright.

Matteo, either oblivious or pretending to be, threw an arm around Adriano’s shoulders and dragged him backward.

“Leave him. He will sleep like a prince and dream of victory.”

“I don’t dream,” Regulus said.

Luca called, “Tonight you will.”

Nico added, “Of us losing beautifully.”

Matteo blew another kiss. “Seven tomorrow?”

Regulus rolled his eyes.

“No.”

“Eight?”

“No.”

“Six?”

“No.”

“Good. Seven.”

Regulus was laughing when the doorman opened the hotel door.

He stepped inside without answering.

The lobby was almost empty, hushed and cool and smelling of flowers. The sudden quiet made the night outside feel impossible, like something feverish he had imagined. The receptionist glanced up from behind the desk and took in Regulus’s hair, his creased shirt, his flushed face, the faint glitter of sweat at his throat, the reckless brightness still clinging to him like perfume.

For one long moment, neither of them spoke.

Then the receptionist said, very carefully, “Good evening, Mr Black.”

Regulus leaned one elbow against the desk.

“Good morning, I think.”

The receptionist glanced at the clock.

“Technically, yes.”

Regulus nodded solemnly.

“Technicalities matter.”

“Did you have a pleasant evening?”

Regulus considered the club, the drinks, Matteo’s ridiculous grin, Luca carrying him under the lights, Nico shouting about victory, Adriano fastening his helmet, the bike roaring beneath him, the street opening up like a dare.

Then he smiled.

“Yes.”

The receptionist’s mouth twitched.

“I’m glad.”

Regulus pushed himself away from the desk with great dignity and only a slight delay in balance.

The lift ride upstairs felt longer than usual.

His reflection in the mirrored wall looked back at him: hair messy, eyes bright, mouth still curved, wine-red shirt open at the throat, jacket hanging slightly crooked, rings flashing under the light. He looked nothing like the boy who had stood on Platform Nine and Three-Quarters.

Or perhaps he looked exactly like him, but after someone had struck a match inside his ribs.

When he reached his room, he fumbled the key only once, which he felt was respectable.

Inside, silence welcomed him.

He shut the door, leaned back against it, and laughed again.

Softly this time.

Disbelieving.

The room was still full of shopping bags and tissue paper. His balcony curtains moved faintly in the air conditioning. The city glowed beyond the glass. His false passport sat hidden in his jacket pocket. His money remained warded. His wand was still tucked in his sleeve. His whole body hummed with music and engine and night.

He crossed to the mirror.

Stopped.

Looked at himself.

Then lifted one hand and touched the side of his hair where Luca had kissed him.

His smile faded into something smaller.

Not unhappy.

Just startled.

Affection was so much easier when it came wrapped in chaos. When it did not ask permission. When it did not arrive as pity. When it was noisy and stupid and gone again before it could become dangerous.

He liked those boys.

The realisation was inconvenient.

He liked Matteo’s ridiculous confidence. Luca’s shameless warmth. Nico’s laughter. Adriano’s quiet carefulness. He liked that none of them knew what his surname meant. Not really. He liked that they called him star boy as though it was a joke and not a legacy. He liked that they expected him to come downstairs because they wanted him there, not because he was required.

He liked that when they looked at him, they saw something bright.

Not remaining.

Not replacement.

Not the son who stayed.

Regulus swallowed.

The room wavered slightly.

He blamed the alcohol.

He removed his jacket and took out the documents, checking them once before locking them away with the money. He took off his rings one by one, then put two back on because he liked how they looked and he was not ready to stop being the version of himself who wore them. He drank water because Adriano’s voice was irritatingly persistent in memory. Then more water because Luca’s imaginary victory speech in his head was becoming unbearable.

He opened the balcony doors and stepped outside.

The air was cooler now, the street below mostly quiet. A taxi rolled past. Somewhere, laughter floated up from far away. The sky above the city was dark and thinly starred, not clear enough for proper constellations but enough.

Regulus leaned on the railing.

His hands still remembered the bike.

His body remembered the turn.

His chest remembered the moment he took the lead.

He looked up.

“Flying,” he whispered.

The word dissolved into the night.

A broom was better.

Obviously.

A broom was cleaner. Freer. Quieter in the soul. A broom belonged to his world, to magic, to cold air over green pitch and the snap of robes in wind. But the bike had been something else. Something brutal and bright. Something Muggle and alive and not beneath him at all, despite everything he had been taught.

He thought of telling Barty.

Then stopped.

No messages.

He thought of Evan laughing. Pandora asking what the machine sounded like. Dorcas calling him an idiot with too much money and too little supervision.

No messages.

He thought of Sirius.

He stopped that faster.

The city below flickered.

Regulus closed his eyes, still swaying faintly with the ghost of speed.

For once, the silence around him did not feel like being forgotten.

It felt like having a secret.

His secret.

His fake passport.

His Italian boys.

His first drink.

His first race.

His first night of no one knowing enough to stop him.

Regulus smiled into the dark, small and wicked and young.

Then he went back inside, left the balcony doors cracked open to the night, and collapsed onto the bed fully dressed, one arm flung over his eyes, the bracelet against his wrist, the scent of smoke and citrus and summer still clinging to his skin.

He was asleep before he could decide whether tomorrow at seven was a no or a yes.

Weeks passed, and Italy kept him.

Not literally.

Regulus could have left at any time. That was the beautiful, frightening thing about it. There was no locked door. No ancestral house crouched around him with portraits hissing from the walls. No mother waiting in the drawing room with her mouth shaped like accusation. No father lowering a newspaper as though Regulus’s very existence had interrupted something more important.

There were train stations, roads, hotel doors, city squares, sun-drenched streets, boys who shouted his name like it belonged to summer instead of a star chart, and a country that seemed entirely uninterested in returning him to the shape he had been before.

So he stayed.

At first, it was only supposed to be a week.

That was what he had told the hotel.

A week.

A clean, manageable lie.

One week of rebellion. One week of silence. One week of not being found because no one had remembered to look.

Then the week ended, and Regulus went down to the front desk wearing black sunglasses, a loose white shirt, two silver rings, and the expression of someone prepared to make money do what money did best.

“I’ll be extending my stay,” he said.

The receptionist, who by then had witnessed Matteo leaning dramatically over the desk at least three times, Luca attempting to flirt with a marble statue, Nico smuggling pastries into the lobby in his jacket, and Adriano silently apologising with his eyes from behind them, did not even blink.

“Of course, Mr Black. How much longer?”

Regulus paused.

Behind him, Matteo whispered, “Forever.”

Regulus said, “Another week.”

Matteo groaned like a man betrayed by kings.

The receptionist’s mouth twitched.

“Of course.”

Then another week became two.

Then two became most of July.

Then July slipped into August, golden and reckless, and by then Italy had sunk into Regulus’s skin so deeply he could not imagine simply peeling it away.

The boys took it upon themselves to educate him.

This was how Matteo put it.

“Your life before us was tragic,” he declared one morning, sprawled upside down across the end of Regulus’s hotel bed while Regulus sat by the window reading a newspaper in Italian and pretending not to listen. “Very tragic. English. Cold. Sad food. No music in the streets. Probably no good shoes.”

Regulus turned a page.

“I had shoes.”

“Bad shoes.”

“Expensive shoes.”

“Expensive can still be bad.”

Luca, lying on the floor with his legs propped against the wall, pointed up at Regulus. “He knows this now. We taught him taste.”

Regulus looked over the newspaper.

“You taught me how to commit traffic offences.”

Nico, sitting in the armchair eating grapes directly from the bunch, nodded solemnly. “Taste.”

Adriano, the only one pretending to have sense, stood on the balcony smoking and said, “We also taught him which coffee to order.”

“That was useful,” Regulus admitted.

Matteo sat up so fast he nearly fell off the bed. “He praises us!”

“I praised coffee.”

“Through us.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

Matteo clutched at his chest. “Cold. Cruel. Beautiful.”

Regulus smiled behind the newspaper.

That was another thing that changed.

He smiled more.

Not all at once. Not easily at first. His face was stubborn. It had been trained for stillness, for coldness, for the kind of composure that made adults nod approvingly and other children avoid standing too close. At the beginning, his smiles came like contraband: small, sharp, smuggled out when the boys were particularly ridiculous and he could not quite stop them.

But Italy had heat.

And the boys had no restraint.

Between the two, Regulus began to thaw.

He laughed in cafés with his elbows on the table. He smirked over sunglasses. He learned how to lean into conversations instead of holding himself apart from them like a blade. He discovered that being touched did not always mean being corrected, examined, claimed, or punished. Sometimes it meant Luca hooking an arm around his shoulders because he was telling a story with too many gestures and needed Regulus as part of the scenery. Sometimes it meant Matteo grabbing his hand to drag him down a side street because he had heard music. Sometimes it meant Nico resting his chin on Regulus’s shoulder to read a menu aloud badly on purpose until Regulus shoved him away, laughing. Sometimes it meant Adriano’s fingers at the back of his jacket, gentle and quiet, steering him away from traffic before a scooter made him regret his lack of attention.

The first day trip was Matteo’s idea.

This meant, naturally, it was barely planned.

He burst into Regulus’s hotel room one morning, hair damp, sunglasses crooked, voice already loud enough to disturb three floors.

“We go to Florence.”

Regulus, still in bed, opened one eye.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“You have not heard the plan.”

“The plan is Florence.”

“Yes.”

“I have heard enough.”

Matteo kicked the bed.

Regulus kicked back beneath the sheet.

Luca appeared behind Matteo holding two coffees and wearing a grin that suggested betrayal had already occurred. “We bought you breakfast.”

Regulus opened the other eye.

Nico leaned around the doorway. “And pastries.”

Regulus sat up slightly.

Adriano appeared last, calm as ever. “The train leaves in forty minutes.”

Regulus stared at him.

“You were part of this?”

“I tried to make them give you an hour.”

Regulus pointed at him. “Traitor.”

Adriano shrugged. “Eat quickly.”

They went to Florence.

Regulus complained all the way to the station, then on the train, then while Matteo stole part of his pastry, then when Luca insisted the light suited him and tried to take a photograph of him against the window. He complained until they arrived.

Then he stopped.

Florence was impossible.

That was the only word for it. Impossible. Warm stone and domes and bridges and art pressed into the bones of the city. It did not feel built so much as accumulated, centuries stacked under the sun, beauty made arrogant through survival. Regulus stood in the middle of a square with his sunglasses lowered down his nose, looking up at architecture that seemed to have been carved by people who believed beauty was a form of power.

For once, Matteo had the grace not to interrupt immediately.

Luca did, because Luca had no such grace.

“You like it.”

Regulus did not look away.

“It’s acceptable.”

Nico laughed. “He loves it.”

“I said acceptable.”

Adriano stood beside him, hands in his pockets. “That means he loves it.”

Regulus glanced at him.

Adriano smiled faintly.

Regulus looked back at the building.

“It is… very acceptable.”

They spent the day wandering. They climbed too many steps. Regulus bought a sketchbook he never intended to use, then surprised himself by sketching the curve of a dome while sitting outside a café with an espresso. Matteo leaned over to look and went uncharacteristically quiet.

“You draw?”

“No.”

“That is drawing.”

“It’s lines.”

“Good lines.”

Regulus shut the sketchbook.

Matteo smiled, softer than usual. “Secret artist.”

“Secret nuisance,” Regulus corrected.

“That too.”

In Venice, Luca got them lost within ten minutes.

This was impressive because he had loudly claimed to know exactly where he was going.

“We are not lost,” Luca insisted, standing on a bridge and staring at three identical narrow streets.

Nico folded his arms. “Then where are we?”

“Venice.”

Regulus said, “That is not helpful.”

“It is accurate.”

Adriano leaned against the bridge railing. “Accuracy is not usefulness.”

Matteo pointed at a canal. “We follow the water.”

Regulus looked around slowly.

“There is water everywhere.”

“Yes. Good. Many options.”

“That is exactly the problem.”

They got lost for two hours.

Regulus loved it.

He would never admit it, but he did. He loved the twisting alleys, the sudden canals flashing green and gold between buildings, the bridges, the masks in shop windows, the smell of water and stone and summer. He bought a black carnival mask edged in silver because Matteo said it looked like something a villain would wear to seduce a prince, and Regulus said, “That sentence made no sense,” then bought it anyway.

At one point, they took a gondola because Nico insisted it was necessary for culture.

Their gondolier looked at all five of them, then at Regulus seated in the middle wearing sunglasses, rings, and the air of a bored young lord surrounded by devoted troublemakers.

“Family?” the gondolier asked.

Matteo answered immediately, “Yes.”

Regulus turned his head.

“No.”

Luca leaned against his shoulder. “Yes.”

“No.”

Nico grinned. “He is our difficult cousin.”

Regulus said, “I’m going to push you into the canal.”

Adriano, sitting opposite, said, “That sounds like family.”

The gondolier laughed for the rest of the ride.

In Naples, they ate until Regulus thought he might die.

Matteo declared that Regulus had not properly lived until he had eaten pizza in Naples, which Regulus had found irritatingly dramatic until the pizza arrived. Then he took one bite, went silent, and refused to speak for nearly two minutes.

The boys watched him with the focused attention of scientists observing an experiment.

Finally, Regulus said, “Fine.”

Matteo slammed both hands on the table. “Fine?”

Regulus took another bite.

“Fine.”

Luca laughed so hard he leaned into Nico.

Adriano smiled into his glass.

Nico pointed at Regulus’s plate. “He’s going to order another.”

Regulus did not look up. “I am.”

Matteo practically levitated with victory.

In Rome, they walked ruins beneath a white-hot sun, and Regulus wore a sleeveless black top Luca had dared him into buying. He pretended not to notice the way all four of them kept looking at his arms, the new freckles scattered across his shoulders, the warm flush that had begun to gather over his pale skin after weeks of Italian sun.

He noticed.

Obviously.

He let them look.

That was new too.

The letting.

At Grimmauld Place, being looked at meant assessment. Is he proper? Is he pale? Is he composed? Is he better than Sirius? Is he enough? Is he useful? Is he ours?

In Italy, being looked at meant Matteo walking into a bollard because Regulus had stretched with his arms above his head. It meant Luca muttering, “Madonna,” under his breath when Regulus came down to the lobby in new trousers. It meant Nico fanning himself theatrically with a menu. It meant Adriano looking away first when Regulus caught him, which was so rare that Regulus treasured it like a stolen jewel.

At the Colosseum, Matteo declared, “You would have been very popular here.”

Regulus looked at him.

“As a gladiator?”

“No. As the emperor’s spoiled favourite.”

Luca said, “Spoiled, yes.”

Nico said, “Favourite, definitely.”

Adriano said, “Dangerous enough for politics.”

Regulus tilted his head, considering.

“Would I get a balcony?”

Matteo grinned.

“You would get whatever you wanted.”

Regulus smiled.

“That sounds correct.”

That was how they spoke to him now.

Like wanting things was not shameful.

Like indulgence was not weakness.

Like Regulus demanding the best seat, the better drink, the softer shirt, the last pastry, the window table, the longer route, the song again, the race again, the pretty view, the later checkout, the brighter club, the quieter morning, was not arrogance to be punished, but simply Regulus being Regulus.

And they gave in.

Constantly.

Ridiculously.

Beautifully.

At some point, Nico started calling them Regulus’s court.

Luca improved it to “his royal guard.”

Matteo, with the sort of grin that deserved consequence, called them his harem.

Regulus had looked up from his drink very slowly.

“My what?”

Matteo leaned back in his chair, utterly unafraid because he was drunk and because Regulus had been smiling at him for days now, which had apparently convinced Matteo he was immortal.

“Your harem.”

Luca pointed between the four of them. “He’s not wrong.”

Nico raised his glass. “We are devoted.”

Adriano, who had more sense than the others and still not enough, took a sip of his drink and said, “Unfortunately.”

Regulus stared at them.

They stared back, grinning like idiots, like sinners, like boys who had decided devotion was more fun when it was shameless.

Regulus should have scolded them.

He should have cut the joke down neatly and cruelly and made them regret it.

Instead, he leaned back, one ankle crossed over his knee, sunglasses pushed into his blonding hair, and smiled.

Not denying it.

Not confirming it.

Just smiling.

Matteo clutched his chest.

“Oh, he likes it.”

“I said nothing.”

“You smiled.”

“I do that sometimes now.”

“Yes,” Luca said warmly. “Because of us.”

Regulus pointed at him. “Don’t get sentimental.”

“Too late.”

Nico leaned across the table. “So it is official?”

“What is?”

“This,” Nico said, gesturing at all of them.

Regulus looked at their faces.

Matteo, bright and eager and ridiculous.

Luca, warm and shameless, already halfway in love with the answer he wanted.

Nico, grinning but watching closely.

Adriano, quieter, careful, but not detached. Never detached. Not anymore.

Something inside Regulus turned soft and dangerous.

Official.

He had grown up around official things. Betrothals. Names. Bloodlines. Contracts. Invitations printed on thick paper. Family trees. Rules written by dead men and enforced by living cowards. Official had always meant trapped.

But this was not that.

This was a table in an Italian bar, four boys looking at him like he had walked out of the summer sun and ruined them permanently, and Regulus realising he did not want to give them back.

So he smiled wider and lifted his glass.

“If you behave.”

Matteo shouted so loudly the waiter nearly dropped a tray.

They did not behave.

Not once.

They went clubbing often enough that the hotel staff stopped pretending surprise when Regulus came back at two in the morning, then three, then once at dawn with glitter on his cheek, Matteo’s jacket over his shoulders, and Luca carrying his shoes because Regulus had declared them temporarily oppressive.

The club nights changed too.

At first, the boys had dragged Regulus into them. Later, Regulus chose.

This club, not that one.

That shirt, not this one.

No, Matteo, we are not going back to the place with the sticky floor.

Yes, Luca, I know the music is better there, but the drinks are vile.

Nico, if you steal my sunglasses again I’ll charm them to bite.

Adriano, stop looking smug because you agree with me.

He danced like he had learned joy as a physical skill.

His body loosened over the weeks, not careless exactly, but more willing to be seen. He moved with the same quick intelligence he brought to everything: learning rhythm, using balance, turning stiffness into style. He liked the lights. He liked the crush of the music when he chose it. He liked the way people looked at him and did not see a Black heir, did not see a boy abandoned on a platform, did not see family history written in dark ink.

They saw a pretty rich boy with sun-kissed skin, silver rings, a sharp mouth, and a smirk that promised trouble.

Regulus found he liked being that.

He liked it too much, perhaps.

He liked leaning against Matteo in the corner of a club, laughing against his shoulder while Matteo told a story with his hands. He liked Luca pulling him into the middle of the dance floor and spinning him until Regulus was breathless and snarling through laughter. He liked Nico stealing kisses from his knuckles in public just to make him roll his eyes. He liked Adriano pressing water into his hand, then letting Regulus tug him down by the collar so he could murmur, “Stop taking care of me so loudly,” into his ear.

“I’m subtle,” Adriano said once.

Regulus laughed against his neck.

“You’re really not.”

The hotel room became theirs slowly.

At first, Regulus only brought them up after nights out because the lobby was not somewhere one could properly collapse while drunk and laughing, and because he trusted his room more than he trusted the city at three in the morning. They sprawled across the carpet, the bed, the balcony chairs. Matteo raided the minibar and called it theft against the wealthy, which Regulus pointed out was absurd because Regulus was the wealthy being billed for it.

“Yes,” Matteo said, holding up a tiny bottle. “But spiritually, I am stealing from the hotel.”

“Spiritually, you’re an idiot.”

“And yet you adore me.”

Regulus threw a pillow at his head.

They ordered room service at disgraceful hours. Nico always over-ordered. Luca always ate half of Regulus’s chips and then pretended he had not. Adriano always cleaned up enough afterward that Regulus noticed, though he never mentioned it until one night when he was half-asleep on the balcony sofa and said, “You don’t have to do that.”

Adriano, gathering empty glasses, paused.

“I know.”

“Then why?”

“So you wake up to less mess.”

Regulus opened one eye.

That should not have mattered.

It did.

He closed his eye again.

“You’re annoying.”

Adriano’s voice was soft. “Sleep, star boy.”

The making out started like everything else: as a dare, then a joke, then not a joke at all.

Matteo kissed him first.

Of course he did.

They were on the balcony after a club night, both warm with drink, the others inside arguing over music. Regulus had been leaning against the railing, shirt loose at the throat, hair falling into his eyes, when Matteo said, unusually quiet, “You know I am going to kiss you eventually.”

Regulus looked at him.

“Eventually?”

Matteo swallowed, but smiled.

“Maybe now.”

Regulus considered him for a long second.

Then said, “You talk too much.”

And pulled him in.

After that, the room tilted into something new.

Not immediately, not all at once, not clumsy in a way that made things break. It unfolded over days, then weeks. Kisses in corners. Kisses in clubs. Luca catching Regulus by the waist in the hotel room and asking, half-laughing and half-serious, “Me too?” as though Regulus had not known for days that he wanted to. Nico kissing him after a race, both of them breathless and grinning, Regulus still shaking with speed. Adriano waiting longer than the rest, watching, letting Regulus come to him, until one quiet night Regulus sat beside him on the balcony and said, “Are you always this patient?”

Adriano looked at him.

“No.”

“Then don’t be.”

That was that.

By mid-August, there was no real pretending.

Regulus kissed all of them. Wanted all of them. Let himself be wanted by all of them. Sometimes it was laughter and tangled limbs and someone knocking over a glass while trying to get to him first. Sometimes it was softer than Regulus knew what to do with, a door closing, the city outside glowing beyond the balcony, a hand sliding carefully into his hair, a voice asking, “Yes?” and Regulus answering without flinching.

There were nights when one of them stayed.

Then nights when another did.

Then nights when it was understood, not discussed too carefully because careful discussion would make it too fragile, that what happened behind Regulus’s hotel door was not merely kissing anymore. They shared his bed in the adult, unmistakable way that made Luca grin at him over breakfast like a man blessed, made Matteo smug enough to be insufferable for an entire day, made Nico go strangely tender with him afterward, made Adriano press a kiss to the inside of his wrist when he thought Regulus was not paying attention.

Regulus always paid attention.

The boys were ridiculous about it.

Whipped, Nico called it one morning, pointing at Matteo when Matteo abandoned his own breakfast because Regulus had looked vaguely interested in it.

“You’re whipped,” Nico said.

Matteo handed Regulus the plate. “Gladly.”

Luca leaned back, grinning. “We all are.”

Regulus looked up from the stolen breakfast.

“Are you?”

Adriano did not even hesitate.

“Yes.”

Regulus froze for half a second.

Matteo noticed, because Matteo noticed too much when it mattered.

Then Matteo grinned, loud and bright, saving him from the softness of it. “He knows. Look at him. He sits there like a spoiled cat.”

“I am not a cat.”

Luca reached over and scratched lightly beneath Regulus’s chin.

Regulus slapped his hand away.

“Do that again and die.”

Nico sighed dreamily. “Spoiled cat.”

Regulus looked at Adriano for support.

Adriano only smiled.

“Traitor,” Regulus muttered.

“You like us like this,” Adriano said.

Regulus looked around at them.

Matteo’s grin. Luca’s warmth. Nico’s amusement. Adriano’s steady gaze.

They were all looking at him as if the answer was already written.

Regulus took another bite of Matteo’s breakfast.

“Maybe.”

They celebrated that maybe for two days.

Magic revealed itself by accident in the most Regulus way possible: because Matteo stole his sunglasses one too many times.

They were in Regulus’s room, late afternoon spilling gold across the bed, all of them half-lazy from heat and lunch and the sort of day that had involved nothing more strenuous than a market, a fountain, and Nico trying to haggle with a woman who absolutely destroyed him.

Matteo snatched the sunglasses from Regulus’s face and put them on.

Regulus, stretched across the bed on his stomach with a magazine open in front of him, did not move.

“Give them back.”

Matteo tilted his head. “No.”

“Matteo.”

“Ooh. Full name.”

“They’re mine.”

“Everything here is yours.”

“Yes. Well done. Return them.”

Matteo danced backward toward the balcony. Luca laughed from the chair. Nico looked up from the floor, already delighted. Adriano, sitting by the window, said, “I would give them back.”

Matteo ignored him.

Fatal error.

Regulus flicked two fingers without thinking.

His wand was not even in his hand.

The sunglasses snapped off Matteo’s face, shot across the room, and landed neatly in Regulus’s waiting hand.

The room went silent.

Regulus blinked.

The boys stared.

The sunglasses sat in his hand like evidence.

Matteo’s mouth opened.

Closed.

Opened again.

“What,” he said slowly, “the fuck was that?”

Regulus sat up.

For one brief, icy second, the old fear returned. Not fear of them exactly, but fear of exposure. Of being seen too clearly. Of worlds colliding. Of wand, law, secrecy, consequence.

Then Luca whispered, “Do it again.”

Regulus stared at him.

Nico sat upright. “Can you move other things?”

Adriano’s gaze had sharpened, but not with fear. With recognition, almost. Not of magic itself, but of the fact Regulus had been hiding something large and dangerous.

Matteo stepped closer, eyes enormous.

“You are a witch?”

Regulus’s face twisted.

“Wizard.”

“You are a wizard?”

“Yes.”

“A real wizard?”

“No, Matteo, a decorative one.”

Luca shot to his feet. “That is why you said you fly.”

Regulus looked at him.

“Broom?” Nico asked, bright with sudden understanding.

Regulus cursed under his breath.

Matteo made a sound that began as shock and became delight.

“You fly on broomsticks?”

“Sometimes.”

“Like stories?”

“Not like your stories.”

“Show us.”

“No.”

“Show us.”

“No.”

Luca grabbed Regulus by both shoulders. “Can you curse people?”

“Yes.”

Luca released him instantly.

Regulus smiled.

Nico asked, “Can you make money?”

“No.”

Matteo looked disappointed.

Adriano asked, “Can you make us not get caught?”

Regulus slowly turned to him.

Adriano smiled faintly.

Regulus began laughing.

The fear broke apart under it.

They did not care.

Or rather, they cared tremendously, but not in the right way. Not with horror. Not with revulsion. Not with the brittle disgust his parents reserved for Muggles or the wide-eyed terror wizards imagined Muggles would have. The boys were fascinated. Excited. Offended they had not been told sooner.

Matteo spent the next hour demanding demonstrations.

Regulus refused most of them.

Then gave in because Matteo was persistent and Regulus was, apparently, very weak when adored.

He summoned a glass from across the room. Luca shouted.

He changed the colour of Nico’s shirt from blue to green. Nico looked down, screamed, then demanded purple instead.

He lit a flame at the tip of his finger. Matteo fell backward onto the bed.

He charmed a bottle to pour drinks by itself, and Adriano looked at it with such immediate practical interest that Regulus pointed at him and said, “No.”

Adriano smiled. “I said nothing.”

“You were thinking.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“It would be useful.”

“That is exactly why no.”

But eventually, magic became part of the summer too.

Carefully. Quietly. Mostly in the room or empty streets late at night. Regulus used it to send shopping back, unlock a door when Matteo forgot a key, clean spilled wine from Luca’s shirt, cool drinks without ice, make cards shuffle themselves, make Nico’s cigarette vanish whenever he annoyed him, fix a broken sandal, silence the room when music became too loud, charm the balcony lights to glow soft silver instead of yellow.

The boys loved it most when it helped them misbehave.

Of course they did.

“Just a small charm,” Matteo would say, eyes gleaming outside some club.

“No.”

“To make him let us in faster.”

“No.”

“You did it last time.”

“I did not.”

“You looked at him and he moved.”

“That was my face.”

“Your face is magic.”

“Unfortunately, no.”

Nico asked once if Regulus could charm the bike engines to go faster.

Regulus looked at him like he had suggested juggling knives over a sleeping baby.

“I could.”

Nico grinned.

“No.”

The grin faded.

Adriano smiled into his drink.

Regulus used magic in races only once, and not to win.

One night, Luca’s bike fishtailed too hard on a turn, a real ugly slip that made the crowd gasp and Regulus’s blood go cold. He flicked his wand inside his sleeve before thinking, just enough to steady the back wheel, just enough that Luca corrected instead of crashing.

No one saw.

Except Adriano.

Of course.

Later, while Matteo and Nico were shouting at Luca for scaring them and Luca was pretending not to be shaken, Adriano stood beside Regulus beneath a streetlamp.

“You helped.”

Regulus watched Luca laugh too loudly.

“Yes.”

“Can they know?”

“No.”

Adriano nodded.

Then, quietly, “Thank you.”

Regulus swallowed.

“Don’t make a habit of almost dying.”

“That is mostly Matteo’s department.”

“True.”

Summer ripened.

Regulus changed.

It happened in ways he did not notice until he did.

His skin warmed beneath the sun, no longer the untouched pale his mother had always praised as proper. A golden flush settled over his nose, cheeks, shoulders, arms. Freckles appeared first faintly, then everywhere, scattered across him like someone had flicked paint from a brush. He found one on his hip one morning and stared at it for a full minute like it had personally betrayed the House of Black.

Luca, half-asleep beside him, opened one eye.

“What?”

Regulus pointed.

“Freckle.”

Luca blinked.

Then laughed into the pillow.

“It’s cute.”

“It’s a flaw.”

“It’s cute.”

“It’s sun damage.”

“It’s cute sun damage.”

Regulus shoved him.

The hair came later.

It started because Matteo said blond would suit him.

Regulus said absolutely not.

Then Luca said it would look unfair.

Regulus said he did not make decisions based on fairness.

Then Nico said he probably could not pull it off.

Regulus booked an appointment within the hour.

Adriano, traitor that he was, only said, “Careful with bleach.”

Regulus spent three hours in a salon and emerged with his dark hair transformed: not pale white-blond, not soft, but a sunlit, sharp sort of blond that caught gold under light and made his grey eyes look colder, brighter, stranger. The roots remained shadowed enough to keep it from looking too clean. It should not have worked.

It worked disgustingly well.

When he walked into the hotel lobby, all four boys were waiting.

Matteo actually dropped his cigarette.

Luca’s mouth fell open.

Nico whispered something that sounded religious.

Adriano looked at him once, slowly, and then looked away with his jaw tight.

Regulus stopped in front of them, one hand in the pocket of his black trousers.

“Well?”

Matteo pointed at him.

“No.”

Regulus raised an eyebrow.

“No?”

“No, this is unfair. You were already impossible.”

Luca circled him. “Turn.”

“No.”

“Turn.”

Regulus turned, because he wanted to.

Luca made a pained sound.

Nico sat down on the nearest lobby chair like his legs had given out.

Adriano finally looked back.

“It suits you.”

Regulus smiled.

“I know.”

And he did.

That was the thing.

He knew now.

His style shifted with it. Not all at once, but piece by piece, like shedding a skin in public. The polished aristocratic clothes remained, but they bent into something sharper, messier, brighter. Club-rave punk, Nico called it one night, delighted, after Regulus came out in black boots, slim trousers with silver hardware, a sleeveless top under a loose mesh shirt, rings stacked across his fingers, a choker Luca had bought as a joke and Regulus had worn because it looked good, and eyeliner Matteo had begged to apply and then nearly ruined because his hands shook too much.

“I am steady!” Matteo insisted.

“You are trembling.”

“Because this is important.”

“It’s eyeliner.”

“It is art.”

Adriano took the pencil from him.

Matteo gasped. “Betrayal.”

Adriano tilted Regulus’s chin up with two fingers. “Hold still.”

Regulus did.

Adriano’s hand was steady.

The line came out clean and dark.

Regulus looked in the mirror afterward and went quiet.

Not because he disliked it.

Because he looked like someone else.

No.

That was not right.

He looked like himself.

That was worse.

Better.

Terrifying.

The blond hair, the sun on his skin, the freckles, the rings, the silver, the black, the smirk, the looseness in his shoulders, the way his eyes looked lined in dark and lit from within.

He looked like a boy who had escaped and remembered to become beautiful out of spite.

Matteo rested his chin on Regulus’s shoulder and stared at their reflection.

“Our baby is deadly.”

Regulus rolled his eyes.

“I’m not your baby.”

Luca, from the bed, said, “Yes, you are.”

Nico nodded. “Completely.”

Adriano smiled, still holding the eyeliner.

Regulus looked at all of them in the mirror.

He should have argued harder.

He did not.

He only smiled.

The end of summer arrived rudely.

Regulus knew it was coming. Of course he knew. Hogwarts letters had ways of finding people, even people hiding under false names in foreign hotels with magical wards and too many secrets. His letter arrived by owl one evening while the boys were arguing over whether they could teach Regulus to properly cook something without burning down the hotel.

The owl landed on the balcony railing.

Everyone froze.

Matteo pointed. “Magic bird.”

Regulus stood.

The owl held out its leg.

Regulus took the letter.

The familiar crest stared up at him.

For a moment, the room narrowed.

Hogwarts.

The word opened a door in his chest.

The castle. The lake. The dungeons. The Slytherin common room. Evan. Pandora. Dorcas. Barty. Lessons. Quidditch. Sirius in red and gold. James Potter’s loud laugh. The platform. The train.

Home, maybe.

Not Grimmauld Place.

Never that.

But something.

Matteo’s voice softened behind him. “School?”

Regulus did not look back.

“Yes.”

Luca said, “You have to go.”

It was not a question.

Regulus opened the letter.

Read it.

The words were normal. Bland. Lists. Dates. Expectations. Supplies. Return.

Return.

His fingers tightened slightly.

Then loosened.

He waited for dread.

It came, but not as much as before.

It moved through him like an old ghost, familiar but weaker in daylight.

He had to go back.

Back to his life. Back to Hogwarts. Back to the world that knew his name and thought it knew what it meant. Back to corridors where people would stare, whisper, ask questions. Back to friends who would notice everything. Back to Sirius, who might or might not look this time.

Regulus closed the letter.

He breathed in.

Smoke and citrus. Warm hotel room. Luca’s cologne. Matteo’s cigarette. Nico’s stolen fruit. Adriano’s quiet presence. Summer air.

He was not the same boy who had left.

No.

Not left.

Vanished.

He was not the same boy who had woken up in Italy by accident.

He knew who he was now.

Not entirely. Not perfectly. He was not stupid enough to think one summer solved a life.

But he knew enough.

He liked who he had become.

He liked the ease in his own skin. The sharpness that belonged to him instead of his family. The flirtation. The teasing. The cooing warmth that came out when he drank and sometimes even when he didn’t. The way he reached for people now without always hating himself for it. The way he could be spoiled, demanding, bright, wicked, affectionate, and still himself.

He liked the new look.

He liked the blond hair.

He liked the freckles, though he would never admit that to Luca.

He liked the clothes.

He liked the way the boys looked at him like he was ruin and reward wrapped in black mesh and silver rings.

He liked Italy.

He liked them.

Regulus turned around.

All four boys were watching him.

Matteo’s usual grin was gone.

Luca looked too serious.

Nico’s face had gone soft in a way he was clearly trying to hide.

Adriano held his gaze steadily, like he already knew the answer and was bracing for it anyway.

Regulus lifted the letter.

“I leave at the end of the month.”

Matteo said immediately, “No.”

Regulus smiled faintly.

“Yes.”

“No.”

“You cannot argue with term dates.”

“I can argue with anything.”

“That’s true,” Nico murmured.

Luca came closer. “For how long?”

“Until Christmas, unless I leave for half-term.”

“You come back for half-term,” Matteo said.

Regulus raised an eyebrow. “Do I?”

“Yes.”

Luca nodded. “And Christmas.”

Nico added, “And Easter.”

Adriano said, “And next summer.”

Regulus looked at him.

Adriano shrugged one shoulder. “You have a room here now.”

“I have a hotel bill.”

“You have us.”

The room went quiet.

Regulus felt the words hit somewhere beneath his ribs.

You have us.

Not we have you.

Not you belong to us.

Not stay because we say so.

You have us.

Like an offering.

Like a fact.

He swallowed.

Matteo, unable to bear tenderness without making it loud, threw himself forward and wrapped both arms around Regulus dramatically.

“Our baby goes to magic school.”

Regulus made a strangled sound as Luca joined from the side.

“I am not your baby.”

Nico wrapped around them both. “Completely our baby.”

“I hate this.”

Adriano stepped closer, slower, then put one hand lightly at the back of Regulus’s neck.

Regulus stopped struggling.

Matteo’s voice came muffled against his shoulder. “We come with you to the train.”

Regulus blinked.

“What?”

“To London,” Luca said immediately.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

Nico pulled back enough to grin at him. “We see off our wizard.”

“You cannot just travel to London because I’m going back to school.”

Matteo looked genuinely offended. “Why not?”

“Because—” Regulus stopped.

Because what?

Because normal people did not do that?

They had long ago proven themselves uninterested in normal.

Because it was expensive?

Regulus could solve that.

Because it was too much?

It was.

It was much too much.

It was exactly the sort of thing that made his throat tight.

Adriano’s thumb moved once at the back of his neck, grounding.

“We’ll come,” he said simply. “Not forever. Just to see you off.”

Luca smiled. “And to make sure England gives you back.”

“England doesn’t own me,” Regulus said.

Matteo pulled back and cupped Regulus’s face with both hands. “Exactly.”

Regulus stared at him.

Matteo smiled.

“So we remind it.”

That decided it.

Or perhaps it had already been decided the moment Matteo said no.

The last weeks became brighter because they were ending.

They did everything with urgency now, though no one said so at first. Another club. Another race. Another day trip, this time to Milan, where they bought clothes and Regulus found a jacket with straps and silver zips that made Matteo walk into a shop display. Another night by the fountain. Another breakfast on the balcony. Another afternoon spent lying tangled in the hotel room with the curtains half-drawn against the heat, music playing low, Regulus’s head on Luca’s stomach while Nico painted black polish onto his nails and Matteo argued that one nail should be silver.

Regulus let him have two.

Adriano watched from the chair, smiling.

“What?” Regulus asked.

“Nothing.”

“You’re smiling.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Adriano looked at him for a moment.

“Because you look happy.”

Regulus went still.

Matteo, for once in his life, said nothing.

Luca’s hand paused in Regulus’s hair.

Nico pretended to focus very hard on the nail polish.

Regulus looked down at his hand, at the black shining wetly on his nails, at the silver rings, at the market bracelet still tied around his wrist.

Then he said, quietly, “I am.”

No one teased him for it.

Which was kind of them.

Terrible, but kind.

The day they left for London, Regulus stood in his hotel room and looked at the wreckage of summer.

Shopping bags, now mostly packed. Clothes folded and charmed smaller. Shoes lined up. Documents hidden safely. Letters tucked away. A black carnival mask from Venice. A sketchbook from Florence. A ridiculous keychain from Naples that Luca had bought him because it was ugly. A silver lighter Matteo had given him despite Regulus not smoking. A small leather bracelet from Nico. A ring from Adriano, plain and dark and heavy, given without ceremony one morning with only, “This suited you.”

Regulus wore it now.

He wore black boots, fitted dark trousers with silver hardware, a sleeveless black top beneath a cropped jacket, rings on both hands, black polish on his nails, sunglasses tucked into his newly blond hair. The freckles across his nose and cheeks stood out against skin warmed by weeks of sun. His old Hogwarts trunk sat shrunken in one pocket. The rest of his summer fit into charmed cases and hidden spaces.

He looked in the mirror.

For a second, he tried to find the boy from King’s Cross.

The one in school robes, waiting beside a pillar. Pale. Perfect. Forgotten.

He was still there somewhere.

Regulus did not hate him.

That surprised him.

He had thought, perhaps, that becoming new meant despising the old version for being weak enough to wait.

But he did not.

That boy had been lonely. That was all. Lonely and young and trained to mistake endurance for duty.

Regulus touched the bracelet at his wrist.

“Ready?” Adriano asked from the doorway.

Regulus looked at him in the mirror.

“No.”

Adriano smiled faintly.

Regulus smiled back.

“Yes.”

Downstairs, the hotel staff gathered with the restrained curiosity of people who had watched a scandalous little summer unfold in expensive rooms and had become fond despite themselves. The receptionist wished him safe travels. The manager shook his hand and very politely did not mention that Regulus’s parents had, somehow, never arrived.

“Will you be staying with us again, Mr Black?” he asked.

Regulus glanced at the boys waiting by the entrance.

Matteo had sunglasses on indoors. Luca was holding three bags that did not belong to him. Nico was trying to convince the doorman to accept a grape. Adriano was watching Regulus.

“Yes,” Regulus said. “I expect so.”

The manager smiled.

“We look forward to it.”

Outside, the taxi could barely contain all of them.

This did not stop them.

Matteo sat half on Luca’s lap. Nico complained that his leg was trapped. Luca said he was suffering beautifully. Adriano took the front seat because someone had to provide the driver with an illusion of sanity. Regulus ended up wedged between Nico and the door, one knee pressed against Matteo’s, sunglasses on, pretending he was not emotional.

Matteo noticed anyway.

He always did.

He reached over and linked their fingers.

Regulus looked down.

Then out the window.

He did not pull away.

The station was loud, bright, and busy.

Not the same one he had arrived at, or perhaps it only felt different because he was different. People rushed with luggage. Announcements echoed overhead. Trains waited sleek and silver beneath the roof. The air smelled of coffee, hot metal, perfume, and departure.

Regulus stood on the platform with his boys around him and felt the shape of a circle closing.

Weeks ago, he had stepped off a train here alone, shocked, furious, abandoned, carrying a life shrunken into his pockets.

Now he stood with Matteo shouting at Nico for losing a ticket that was in his own hand, Luca leaning against Regulus’s shoulder, Adriano checking the platform number, and all of them preparing to endure fourteen hours in first class back to London because apparently love, devotion, stupidity, and international rail travel had become the same thing.

Matteo waved his ticket.

“First class,” he said, delighted. “Your natural habitat.”

Regulus looked at him over his sunglasses.

“You’re going to be insufferable.”

“For fourteen hours.”

“Longer,” Luca said cheerfully. “He’ll talk about this forever.”

Nico grinned. “We are going to England.”

“You are going to London,” Regulus corrected. “Briefly.”

“To see magic train?” Matteo asked.

“No.”

“To see magic school?”

“No.”

“To see magic owl?”

“No.”

“To see English people suffer because you became hotter in Italy?”

Regulus paused.

Luca pointed at him. “That one, yes.”

Adriano smiled. “Definitely that one.”

Regulus tried not to smile.

Failed.

The train doors opened.

People began boarding.

For a moment, none of them moved.

Then Nico clapped his hands together. “Fourteen hours. We need supplies.”

“We have supplies,” Adriano said.

“Do we have enough?”

“No amount would be enough for you,” Regulus said.

Nico beamed. “He knows me.”

Luca leaned down to Regulus’s ear. “You nervous?”

Regulus looked toward the train.

London waited at the end of it.

King’s Cross.

The barrier.

Hogwarts Express.

His friends.

His brother.

His name.

His life.

He felt nerves, yes. They moved beneath his skin, silver and sharp. But they did not own him.

Not now.

He had crossed the summer and come back carrying himself.

Regulus lifted his chin.

“No.”

Luca smiled like he understood the lie and loved him for it anyway.

Matteo bounced on his heels. “Come on, star boy.”

Adriano lifted Regulus’s bag before Regulus could take it.

“I can carry that.”

“I know.”

Regulus rolled his eyes.

But he let him.

They boarded the train in a messy little procession of too much luggage, too much noise, and far too much beauty for one first-class carriage to handle gracefully.

The seats were wide. The windows were broad. The table between them gleamed. Regulus took the window seat because no one argued with him about that anymore. Luca dropped beside him. Matteo threw himself opposite. Nico claimed the other seat and immediately began investigating the complimentary menu. Adriano stowed the bags, then sat with the calm satisfaction of someone who had successfully delivered chaos into containment.

The train hummed beneath them.

Regulus looked out at the platform.

Italy shone beyond the glass.

Warm stone. Voices. Sunlight. The place that had not saved him exactly, because Regulus disliked the idea of needing saving, but had given him enough room to save himself.

Matteo kicked his shoe lightly under the table.

Regulus looked at him.

Matteo grinned.

“Regulus.”

“What?”

“We are coming back.”

Regulus looked at Luca, at Nico, at Adriano.

All three of them were watching him with the same certainty.

Not asking.

Promising.

The train began to move.

Slowly at first.

A gentle pull.

A shift.

The platform slid away.

Regulus pressed his fingers lightly against the window ledge, rings catching the light.

For one dangerous second, his throat tightened.

Then Luca leaned into his side. Nico started loudly reading out food options in a terrible English accent. Matteo declared they needed champagne before Adriano reminded him, dryly, that perhaps they should wait at least until the train had left the station properly.

Regulus laughed.

The sound came easily now.

Bright and real and his.

Outside, Italy began to blur.

Ahead, England waited.

But Regulus Black sat in first class with blond hair, sun-kissed skin, freckles across his nose, silver on his fingers, magic hidden up his sleeve, false documents tucked away, four boys grinning around him like devoted trouble given human form, and a summer alive beneath his ribs.

He was going back.

Not returning.

There was a difference.

Regulus smirked, leaned back in his seat, and stretched one leg lazily beneath the table.

“All right,” he said. “Fourteen hours.”

Matteo’s grin turned wicked.

Luca laughed.

Nico lifted a menu like a battle plan.

Adriano settled back, eyes warm.

Regulus looked at them all and smiled.

“Entertain me.”

The train back to London felt longer than the one that had taken Regulus away from it.

Not because of distance.

The distance was the same, or close enough for Muggle railways, which Regulus had learned were both miraculous and deeply annoying depending on whether they were currently doing what they were meant to do. The first journey had swallowed him whole while he slept, carrying him across borders without permission from his own awareness. He had woken in Italy like a boy surfacing from one life into another.

This time, he stayed awake for most of it.

That made all the difference.

Fourteen hours became a country unravelling backward outside the window. Italian sunlight. Station glass. Long fields. Tunnels. Changing announcements. Matteo falling asleep with his cheek pressed against his folded arms on the table. Luca stealing the blanket from Nico and then loudly denying it while still wrapped in it. Nico spending half an hour trying to pronounce English town names from the route map until Regulus threatened to charm his tongue to the roof of his mouth. Adriano sitting beside the aisle with one ankle crossed over the other, pretending not to watch Regulus every few minutes to check if he was all right.

Regulus was all right.

Mostly.

He sat by the window in a comfortable casual outfit that still would have given his mother heart palpitations: soft black trousers, expensive trainers, a loose grey top under a cropped dark jacket, silver rings, black polish chipped faintly at two nails, sunglasses perched on his nose despite being indoors half the time. His blond hair fell messily around his face, pushed back only when he remembered to care. The sun had left him warmer than he had been in June, freckles scattered across his nose and cheekbones and shoulders beneath the collar of his shirt.

He looked like summer had claimed him by the throat and kissed colour into him.

He looked like trouble.

He looked like himself.

Matteo woke somewhere after the sixth hour, blinked blearily, saw Regulus gazing out of the window, and immediately reached across the table to grab his hand.

Regulus looked down.

Then at him.

“What?”

Matteo’s voice was rough with sleep. “Nothing.”

“You grabbed me for nothing?”

“Yes.”

“How efficient.”

Matteo smiled, still half-asleep, thumb dragging once over Regulus’s knuckles.

Luca, who was absolutely pretending to be asleep beside Regulus and doing it terribly, opened one eye.

“Why does he get the hand?”

“Because I took it,” Matteo said.

Luca sat up. “I want the hand.”

“You have the shoulder.”

“I want both.”

“You cannot have both.”

Regulus leaned back in his seat and allowed the argument to happen around him with the serene air of a monarch watching peasants fight over grain.

Nico lowered his magazine.

“I want a hand.”

“You’re across the table,” Luca said.

“Then pass one.”

Regulus looked at him over his sunglasses. “I’m not detachable.”

Matteo brought Regulus’s hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it smugly.

Luca gasped. “Unfair.”

Regulus arched an eyebrow.

Matteo grinned against his knuckles.

Adriano, without looking up from the book he had been pretending to read for an hour, said, “He is enjoying this.”

Regulus smiled.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Nico pointed at him. “Look at his face.”

“My face is neutral.”

“Your face is unbearable.”

“Good.”

By the ninth hour, Luca had Regulus’s other hand.

By the tenth, Nico had taken one of Regulus’s rings off and put it on himself, then declared it a sacred token, then had it stolen back with a flick of Regulus’s fingers and a silent little summoning charm that made Matteo whisper, “Magic is cheating,” in a tone suggesting he loved it dearly.

By the twelfth, Matteo had started making elaborate plans for Regulus’s next return.

“Half-term,” he said, counting on his fingers. “You come back. We go south. More sun. More food. More racing.”

“No racing,” Adriano said automatically.

Regulus and Matteo both looked at him.

Adriano sighed.

“Less racing.”

Luca leaned his head against Regulus’s shoulder. “He says that like we believe him.”

Regulus tilted his head so it rested lightly against Luca’s hair.

“He worries.”

Adriano looked up.

Regulus smiled sweetly at him.

“You do.”

Adriano’s expression softened despite himself.

“Yes.”

The table went quiet for a breath too long.

Nico ruined it out of mercy. “Disgusting. We have become sentimental.”

Matteo groaned. “Horrible. Someone insult me.”

Regulus did not miss a beat.

“Your hair has looked tragic since Milan.”

Matteo sat up, horrified. “Take that back.”

“No.”

“Regulus.”

“No.”

“Star boy.”

“No.”

“Baby.”

Regulus lowered his sunglasses down his nose.

Matteo grinned.

Luca muttered, “That one always works.”

“It does not.”

“You looked.”

“I was preparing violence.”

Nico lifted both hands. “Affectionate violence.”

Regulus leaned back again, smirking.

“Possibly.”

The last hour into London wrapped itself around him strangely.

Outside, the sky had dulled into English grey. Not entirely. Not the worst of it. But after weeks of Italian light, the clouded softness felt like stepping into a room where everyone had been speaking in whispers. Buildings thickened. Lines of houses appeared. Roads. Walls. Familiar colours. Brick. Wet stone. Old soot. A kind of restraint in the landscape itself.

Regulus watched it all through dark lenses.

He had thought it might feel like a leash tightening.

It did not.

It felt like walking back into a place that had once mistaken itself for a cage, only now he knew where the doors were.

Matteo nudged his foot under the table.

Regulus glanced at him.

“You okay?”

Regulus looked back out the window.

“Yes.”

It was true enough.

The train slid into King’s Cross with a long metallic sigh.

The platform appeared outside in sections: signs, concrete, people waiting, bags, station lights, a man with a newspaper tucked under his arm, a child pointing at the train, ordinary London life rushing around the tracks without any awareness that Regulus Black had left it one boy and returned another.

The doors opened.

The five of them stepped down together.

And immediately began arguing.

“I have his bag,” Adriano said, already lifting it.

Matteo grabbed the strap. “I had it first.”

“You did not.”

“Spiritually.”

“That means nothing.”

Luca hooked his arm through Regulus’s. “I will hold Regulus.”

Regulus looked down at the arm.

Nico appeared on his other side. “No, I will.”

“You can’t both hold me.”

Luca and Nico exchanged a look.

Regulus sighed.

“Don’t.”

They both took one of his hands.

Regulus allowed it for exactly four steps because it made them happy and because, privately, he liked the warmth of them on either side.

Matteo noticed and made an offended noise.

“What about me?”

“You’re holding my bag hostage,” Regulus said.

Matteo looked down at the bag, then up again. “I can do both.”

“You cannot.”

“I can.”

Adriano calmly took the bag from Matteo while Matteo was distracted.

Matteo gasped as though robbed by a trusted friend.

“Betrayal.”

“You are blocking traffic,” Adriano said.

“This is emotional traffic.”

“This is King’s Cross.”

Regulus smiled despite himself.

They moved through the station badly.

Not inefficiently, exactly. They were all perfectly capable of moving when required. But they moved like a little storm, arguing over who got to carry what, who got to walk closest, who got to guide Regulus through the crowd as though he had not been born in the country they were currently in. People stared. Not many. Enough.

Regulus kept his sunglasses on.

Let them stare.

Matteo carried one of his smaller bags for three minutes, then swapped with Luca because Luca insisted he was stronger, which led to Nico making a comment about Luca’s arms, which led to Luca flexing in the middle of the station, which led to Regulus saying, “You look like an idiot,” which made Luca grin as though Regulus had handed him a flower.

Adriano walked half a step behind them, carrying the actual important bag with the quiet competence of someone who had accepted his role as the only adult in a disaster and was suffering with dignity.

Regulus did not tell them when they were near the barrier.

He simply led them toward it.

The wall between platforms stood ahead, ordinary and brick and unnoticed by the Muggles moving around them. Regulus slowed just enough to feel the old prickle of magic beneath the noise. The hidden platform waited behind it. Hogwarts waited beyond that.

Matteo looked at the wall.

Then at Regulus.

“This is wrong.”

Regulus smirked.

“No.”

Luca frowned. “There is no door.”

“Correct.”

Nico leaned closer to the brick, suspicious. “Is it invisible?”

“No.”

Adriano’s gaze moved from the wall to Regulus’s face.

“Magic?”

Regulus’s smirk widened.

“Yes.”

Matteo’s whole expression lit up.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

Regulus slipped his sunglasses up just enough to look at him properly. “Try to keep up.”

Then he walked straight through the wall.

The magic folded coolly around him.

For half a heartbeat, there was the familiar sensation of passing between worlds, like stepping through water without getting wet.

Then Platform Nine and Three-Quarters opened around him.

Steam.

Stone.

Owls.

Students.

Trunks.

Families.

Voices.

The scarlet absence of the train not yet arrived, the crowd gathered in anticipation, the platform already alive despite the Hogwarts Express still being somewhere down the line. People clustered under the iron roof, parents fussing with collars, children chasing cats, older students shouting across the platform at friends they had not seen since June. The air smelled of smoke waiting to happen, polished leather, animal feathers, sweets, and the strange bright fear of a new school year.

Regulus stepped aside.

A second later, Matteo came through the wall behind him and stumbled so hard he nearly collided with Regulus.

“Holy—”

Luca shot out next, laughing before he had even fully landed.

Nico followed with both hands in the air. “Again.”

Adriano emerged last, composed except for the way his eyes had gone wide.

Matteo spun in place.

The platform stretched before them in full magical chaos.

An owl hooted directly overhead.

Luca ducked.

Nico grabbed Matteo’s sleeve. “Did you see that?”

“I see everything. I see too much. Regulus, your country is insane.”

Regulus pushed his sunglasses back down over his eyes.

“My country?”

“Your magic country.”

“Technically, yes.”

Adriano looked around slowly, taking in floating trunks, enchanted cages, a mother scolding a levitating suitcase, two boys chasing a toad that had grown wings.

“You went to school from here?”

“Yes.”

Matteo turned back to Regulus with a grin so bright it looked painful.

“You were going to keep this from us?”

“I was considering it.”

“Cruel.”

“Practical.”

“Cruel.”

“Both.”

The platform was crowded enough that Regulus felt eyes slide over him, then return.

He knew what they were seeing.

They had expected Regulus Black in dark robes, pale and neat and sharp, perhaps slightly taller than last year, perhaps more polished, perhaps more severe after another summer in that house.

Instead, he stood there with sun on his skin, freckles across his face, blond hair pushed loose beneath sunglasses, black nails, silver rings, casual clothes, Italian boys surrounding him like beautiful bodyguards and poorly behaved worshippers.

It was satisfying.

Horrifying, perhaps, eventually.

But mostly satisfying.

The Hogwarts Express had not arrived yet. The rails lay empty, the crowd pressed back from the edge, anticipation buzzing under the roof.

Regulus chose a place along the platform near a stone ledge and stopped.

Immediately, the boys reorganised around him.

Luca took his bag.

Matteo tried to take Regulus’s hand again.

Nico took the other first.

Matteo gasped.

Adriano, apparently finished watching them be ridiculous, stepped behind Regulus, put both hands lightly at his hips, and lifted him up onto the ledge like he weighed nothing.

Regulus made a small sound of surprise, then caught himself, sitting neatly on the stone with one leg bent and the other swinging slightly.

He stared at Adriano over his sunglasses.

“Excuse me?”

Adriano rested one hand on the ledge beside him.

“So you don’t have to stand.”

Regulus blinked.

Nico leaned in from one side. “He looks better up there.”

“Displayed,” Luca said, delighted.

“I am not being displayed.”

Matteo stepped between Regulus’s knees and looked up at him with enormous satisfaction.

“Yes, you are.”

Regulus’s mouth twitched.

He kicked one foot gently against Matteo’s thigh.

“Move.”

Matteo caught his ankle lightly before letting it go. “No.”

Regulus narrowed his eyes.

Matteo only grinned.

They surrounded him without thinking, as though they had done it a hundred times, because they had. Matteo in front, Luca leaning against the ledge at his side, Nico with one elbow braced near Regulus’s hip, Adriano standing close enough that his shoulder nearly touched Regulus’s knee. Their bodies formed a loose little wall between him and the crowd.

Not trapping him.

Holding the world off.

Regulus felt something in him ease.

Luca tilted his head, studying Regulus like this was a hobby.

“You know, English light makes you look different.”

Regulus lifted a brow.

“Worse?”

“Still pretty.”

Matteo scoffed. “Prettier. More dramatic.”

Nico nodded. “The blond hair is illegal here too.”

“It is not illegal anywhere,” Regulus said.

“It should be,” Luca said. “For public safety.”

Adriano reached up and slid one fallen piece of blond hair away from Regulus’s sunglasses.

Regulus did not move.

Matteo sighed loudly.

“Our star boy returns to school and breaks every heart on the platform.”

“I haven’t done anything.”

“You are sitting.”

“That is hardly scandalous.”

Nico grinned. “You do it scandalously.”

Regulus laughed.

It came out easy and low, his shoulders loose, one hand resting on the ledge, rings glinting.

That was when someone screamed his name.

“REGULUS?”

The sound cracked across the platform so violently that several owls startled.

Regulus turned his head.

The crowd parted in a blur of robes, trunks, and shocked faces.

Barty Crouch Jr. was running toward him like the concept of dignity had personally offended him and been discarded at birth. His hair was a mess, his school robes half-open, his tie already ruined despite the train not even having arrived. His eyes were enormous.

Behind him, Evan Rosier followed fast, pale face blank with shock in a way that meant his mind was doing twelve things at once. Pandora was half-running, half-floating with her hair loose around her face, staring as though Regulus had crawled out of a prophecy. Dorcas was right behind them, sharp-eyed and open-mouthed, looking between Regulus and the four boys surrounding him with increasing disbelief.

Barty skidded to a stop so hard he nearly slipped.

“REG?”

Regulus pushed his sunglasses up into his hair, using the motion to sweep the blond strands back from his face.

Barty made a strangled sound.

Evan stopped dead.

Pandora gasped.

Dorcas shouted, “What the fuck?”

Regulus smiled.

“Hello.”

Barty stared at him.

Then pointed.

Then lowered his hand.

Then pointed again.

“Your hair.”

“Yes.”

“Your face.”

“I have one.”

“Your hair.”

“You said that.”

“Your—” Barty gestured helplessly at all of him. “Everything.”

Regulus lifted a hand and gave a small, lazy wave.

“Missed you too.”

Pandora came closer, eyes wide and shining, her gaze moving over his freckles, his rings, his clothes, the sunglasses, the blond hair, the relaxed slant of his body on the ledge.

“You look like sunlight did something illegal to you,” she whispered.

Regulus smiled wider.

“How poetic.”

Dorcas jabbed a finger at him. “Where the hell have you been?”

Regulus’s smile did not falter, but something in the air tightened.

Barty stepped forward, voice cracking between fury and relief.

“Where have you been all summer? You vanished. No letters. No owl. Nothing. Everyone thought you were missing.”

Regulus blinked.

The word struck oddly.

Missing.

He looked at them more carefully then.

Barty’s face was not simply shocked. It was pale beneath the flush of running, eyes bright with panic that had not finished leaving him. Evan’s hands were clenched at his sides. Pandora looked like she might either hug him or start crying, which with Pandora could be either joy or catastrophe. Dorcas’s anger sat over fear like armour.

They had thought he was missing.

Not forgotten.

Missing.

A few steps away, the Gryffindor reunion near another cluster of trunks had gone quiet.

Sirius Black turned first.

Then James Potter beside him.

Then Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, Lily Evans, Mary Macdonald, Marlene McKinnon, Alice Fortescue, Frank Longbottom, Fabian Prewett, and Gideon Prewett, all pulled by Barty’s scream and the shape of Regulus’s name in the air.

They looked over.

Saw him.

And stopped.

Sirius went white.

James’s mouth fell open.

Lily actually lowered the book she had been holding mid-sentence.

Mary grabbed Marlene’s arm so hard Marlene yelped.

Frank blinked like he was trying to make the sight rearrange itself into something sensible.

Alice whispered, “Is that Regulus Black?”

Peter said, “His hair’s blond.”

Remus, very quietly, said, “Oh.”

Then they were moving too.

Sirius fastest at first, then suddenly slowing as though he had hit invisible glass.

Regulus saw him.

Of course he did.

He would have known Sirius in any crowd, any country, any life.

Sirius stared at him like the platform had opened and produced a ghost wearing sunglasses.

Regulus held his gaze for one second.

Then looked back to Barty.

“I was in Italy.”

Barty stared.

Evan stared.

Dorcas stared.

Pandora blinked slowly.

“In Italy,” Evan repeated.

“Yes.”

“All summer?”

“Yes.”

“You were in Italy all summer,” Dorcas said.

“That is what I said.”

Barty made a noise so high and offended it barely counted as language.

“You were in Italy?”

Regulus shrugged.

“It was nice.”

“It was nice?” Barty echoed, half-screaming. “You vanished from King’s Cross, didn’t write anyone, apparently became—” He gestured again, wildly. “This, and all you have to say is Italy was nice?”

Regulus tilted his head.

“It was very nice.”

Behind Barty, the Gryffindors had reached them.

James was staring at Regulus’s hair.

Peter was staring at Matteo.

Mary was staring at Luca.

Marlene was staring at all four Italian boys with blatant curiosity.

Lily was staring at Regulus like she was trying to solve him as an equation and none of the numbers were behaving.

Remus looked between Regulus and Sirius, then back again, expression careful.

Fabian leaned toward Gideon and whispered, “That is Regulus, right?”

Gideon whispered back, “Unless the Blacks have started producing fashionable ghosts.”

Alice looked utterly lost.

Frank, bless him, seemed concerned mostly with whether someone should be calming Barty down.

Sirius stood at the edge of the group, eyes fixed on Regulus’s face.

“What do you mean,” Sirius said slowly, “everyone thought you were missing?”

The Gryffindors went still.

Regulus looked at him.

Barty spun toward Sirius.

“What do you mean what do we mean? He disappeared after the train got in! No one knew where he was!”

James glanced sharply at Sirius.

“Sirius?”

Sirius did not look away from Regulus.

Regulus’s face remained smooth.

Almost.

“I wasn’t missing,” Regulus said.

Dorcas snapped, “Then what were you?”

Regulus smiled.

“On holiday.”

Barty looked like he might explode.

Evan dragged both hands down his face.

Pandora clasped her hands together beneath her chin and whispered, “You absolute disaster.”

Nico leaned toward Matteo and murmured in Italian, “These are the school people?”

Matteo whispered back, “I think the loud one is Barty.”

Barty’s head snapped toward him.

“You speak Italian?”

Matteo grinned. “Better than English.”

Regulus said, “This is Matteo.”

Matteo bowed extravagantly.

Regulus gestured lazily to the others. “Luca. Nico. Adriano.”

Luca lifted a hand with shameless cheer.

Nico smiled like he already knew everyone’s secrets.

Adriano gave a polite nod, eyes moving calmly over the gathered crowd, lingering briefly on Sirius.

Dorcas planted her hands on her hips.

“And who the hell are they?”

Regulus’s smirk returned fully.

The sort of smirk Italy had sharpened into something devastating.

Barty saw it and went still.

“Oh no,” he said.

Regulus crossed one ankle over the other where he sat on the ledge.

“My Italian harem of male lovers.”

For one blessed second, no one made a sound.

Then the platform detonated.

Barty screamed.

Dorcas shouted, “YOUR WHAT?”

Evan said, “Regulus.”

Pandora gasped, then covered her mouth, eyes sparkling.

James choked.

Peter’s eyes went enormous.

Mary shrieked so loudly Marlene nearly dropped her bag.

Marlene screamed, “I KNEW THERE WAS SOMETHING GOING ON.”

Lily said, “You absolutely did not.”

Alice stared at Frank, then back at Regulus.

Frank looked like he wanted to step politely into the tracks.

Fabian burst out laughing.

Gideon clapped both hands over his mouth.

Remus closed his eyes.

Sirius looked like someone had hit him with a chair.

Regulus, radiant with smug satisfaction, added, “And I occasionally sleep with them.”

Barty made a noise like his soul had left his body and tripped on the way out.

“REGULUS ARCTURUS BLACK!”

Regulus winced.

“Don’t full-name me. It’s common.”

The four boys, however, reacted to Regulus’s declaration as though he had just crowned them publicly.

Matteo melted first, actually bringing one hand to his chest like he had been struck.

“Harem,” he repeated, delighted.

Luca stepped closer to Regulus’s side, eyes shining. “He admits it.”

“I heard,” Nico said, looking insufferably pleased.

Adriano’s mouth curved, slow and warm.

Regulus glanced at them. “Don’t look so pleased with yourselves.”

“We are pleased with you,” Matteo said, then caught Regulus’s hand and kissed the back of it.

Regulus allowed it.

This made Barty scream again.

Luca caught Regulus’s other wrist and kissed his pulse.

Mary grabbed Lily’s sleeve. “Oh my God.”

Marlene grabbed Mary’s sleeve. “Oh my God.”

Pandora made a tiny overwhelmed sound, somewhere between joy and disbelief.

Nico leaned in and kissed Regulus’s forearm just above Luca’s hand, making Regulus huff a laugh.

Adriano, more subtle than the others but not by much, lifted Regulus’s fingers and pressed a kiss to the inside of his palm.

Sirius stared.

James muttered, “Mate, breathe.”

Sirius did not seem to hear him.

Barty pointed at Matteo, then Luca, then Nico, then Adriano.

“You— you— all of you?”

Matteo smiled broadly. “Yes.”

Luca said, “Very proudly.”

Nico said, “Officially, apparently.”

Adriano said nothing.

He only looked up at Regulus from beneath his lashes, and Regulus’s smirk turned softer.

Dorcas turned to Regulus, scandalised. “You left England for one summer and came back with four boyfriends?”

Regulus considered.

“They came separately.”

Evan made a strangled sound.

Barty bent at the waist like the sentence had physically wounded him.

Pandora whispered, “He’s funny now.”

Regulus pointed at her. “I was always funny.”

“No,” Evan said immediately.

Regulus looked at him.

Evan stared back, deadpan. “You were terrifying.”

“I can be both.”

Matteo nodded. “He is both.”

Luca leaned against the ledge. “Mostly pretty.”

Nico said, “Mostly spoiled.”

Adriano said, “Mostly trouble.”

Regulus smiled.

“All true.”

This only made the staring worse.

Because it was not simply the hair, though the hair was enough. Blond. Regulus Black had blond hair. Not a charm. Not a trick. Blond hair falling messily around his face, pushed back into place by the sunglasses in it. It was not simply the skin, though the sun-kissed warmth and freckles made him look like someone had taken the porcelain Black family heir and left him in golden light until he became real. It was not simply the clothes, either, the comfortable casual fit still carrying the edges of his new style: silver, black, soft fabric, easy confidence, rich-boy slouch sharpened into club-kid arrogance.

It was his face.

He was relaxed.

Regulus Black was sitting on a ledge on Platform Nine and Three-Quarters surrounded by four beautiful Italian boys, smiling like he had never been taught not to.

He laughed when Luca whispered something near his ear.

He flicked Matteo lightly on the forehead when Matteo tried to kiss his knuckles again for dramatic effect.

He rolled his eyes at Nico but leaned toward him anyway.

He let Adriano’s hand rest at his waist without stiffening.

He teased Barty instead of shutting down under the weight of concern.

He looked chill.

Regulus Black looked chill.

The entire platform seemed to be struggling with the concept.

Sirius’s voice came out rough. “You didn’t write.”

Regulus’s gaze shifted to him.

The noise around them thinned for a moment.

“No.”

Sirius swallowed.

“You were gone all summer.”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t write.”

Regulus pushed the sunglasses higher into his hair, fully exposing his eyes.

They were still grey. Still sharp.

But brighter now.

“You didn’t look back.”

The sentence landed cleanly.

Not shouted.

Not dramatic.

Just laid between them like a card on a table.

James looked at Sirius.

Lily’s face changed.

Remus looked down.

Barty’s rage paused, redirected by sudden understanding.

Sirius flinched.

Regulus smiled again, but this one was smaller.

Then he turned back to Pandora as though nothing had happened.

“So,” he said, “how was your summer?”

Pandora stared at him.

Then started laughing.

Not because it was funny.

Because it was impossible not to.

Barty lunged forward and grabbed Regulus’s face between both hands, ignoring the immediate sharp attention from all four Italian boys.

“You absolute horrible nightmare,” Barty said, voice shaking. “Do you have any idea what we thought?”

Regulus blinked at him.

Barty’s hands were warm against his cheeks.

Regulus, who once would have pulled away instantly from being held like that in public, only sighed.

“I assumed you were busy.”

“Busy?” Barty’s voice cracked. “Busy?”

Evan stepped close, eyes narrowed.

“We thought your parents had done something.”

Regulus’s expression changed.

Only slightly.

Enough.

Dorcas saw it.

Barty saw it.

Sirius saw it too.

Regulus looked away first, back toward the empty tracks.

“They didn’t come,” he said.

The platform noise pressed around them.

Barty’s hands fell slowly from his face.

“What?”

Regulus shrugged.

“At King’s Cross. They didn’t come. Kreacher didn’t come either. So I left.”

The Gryffindors went silent.

Sirius looked like he had stopped breathing again.

Evan’s face went cold.

Pandora whispered, “Oh, Reg.”

Dorcas looked furious enough to bite stone.

Barty’s voice dropped. “They forgot?”

Regulus’s mouth curved, but there was no humour in it.

“Apparently.”

No one knew what to say to that.

So Matteo did.

Not because he understood the history.

Not because he knew the Black family, or Grimmauld Place, or Sirius, or what it meant for Regulus to be left standing alone on a platform with a trunk and no one coming.

But because Matteo knew enough.

He stepped forward, slid both arms around Regulus’s waist where he sat on the ledge, and rested his cheek against Regulus’s stomach for one dramatic second.

“Their loss,” he said.

Luca leaned in at Regulus’s side. “Our gain.”

Nico nodded. “Italy improved him.”

Adriano said quietly, “He improved himself.”

Regulus looked down at him.

For once, he had no immediate insult ready.

Pandora made a wounded little sound.

“I like them,” she whispered.

Dorcas looked at the four boys, still suspicious, still furious, still Dorcas.

“I haven’t decided.”

Matteo turned his smile on her.

Dorcas pointed at him. “That won’t work on me.”

Matteo looked delighted. “Challenge.”

Barty stepped between them. “Do not flirt with Dorcas while I’m having a breakdown.”

“I flirt when nervous,” Matteo said.

“You are not nervous.”

“I could become nervous.”

“Regulus,” Barty said, turning back to him, “control your harem.”

Regulus grinned.

The platform screamed again.

Because Regulus grinned.

Openly.

Brightly.

Without hiding it behind a hand or turning it into a sneer.

James actually grabbed Sirius’s sleeve.

“Did you see that?”

Sirius snapped, “Yes, I saw that.”

Lily murmured, “He looks… happy.”

Mary said, “He looks fit.”

Marlene nodded. “Insanely fit.”

Frank coughed.

Alice elbowed him.

Fabian leaned closer to Gideon. “This is the best start of term we’ve ever had.”

Gideon nodded. “Nothing will top this. We should leave school now.”

Remus, who had remained mostly quiet, looked at Regulus carefully.

“You’re all right?”

Regulus tilted his head.

Remus did not look away.

Regulus’s smirk softened just slightly.

“Yes.”

It sounded true.

That shocked them more than anything.

The whistle came before the train appeared.

A distant cry of steam and iron down the line.

The platform shifted instantly. Parents began gathering children. Students reached for trunks. Owls hooted. Cats yowled. Voices rose. The Hogwarts Express began pulling into the platform in a scarlet rush, steam blooming beneath the roof, windows gleaming, great wheels slowing along the track.

The moment broke into movement.

Regulus looked toward the train.

His train.

Hogwarts.

The boys followed his gaze.

Matteo’s expression changed first.

“No.”

Regulus looked at him.

“We knew this part was coming.”

“I reject it.”

“You cannot reject a train.”

“I reject many things.”

Luca’s arms slid around Regulus’s waist from the side. “Don’t go yet.”

“I have to.”

“No.”

Nico leaned in, hands at Regulus’s knees. “Five more minutes.”

“That is not how boarding works.”

“We bribe the train.”

“It is a train.”

“You’re magic.”

Regulus laughed. “I’m not charming the Hogwarts Express to wait for me.”

Matteo tugged at his hips where Regulus still sat on the ledge, pulling him forward slightly but not letting him down.

“Come back with us.”

Regulus arched a brow.

“To Italy?”

“Yes.”

“My school is here.”

“You have already learned enough.”

“I have not.”

“You learned crime, dancing, racing, magic—”

“I already knew magic.”

“Fine. You learned better magic.”

“That’s not how that works.”

Luca buried his face briefly against Regulus’s side. “We’ll be tragic without you.”

“You’re already tragic.”

Nico sighed. “Cruel until the end.”

Adriano stepped in front of him, quieter than the others.

“You have the address?”

Regulus’s amusement eased.

“Yes.”

“All of them?”

“Yes.”

“Letters.”

“Yes.”

“Half-term.”

Regulus smiled. “Yes.”

“Promise.”

Regulus held his gaze.

The train hissed beside them.

Students moved around them, staring openly now, because the sight of Regulus Black being held hostage by four Italian boys while his Slytherin friends and half of Gryffindor watched in emotional ruin was not exactly discreet.

Regulus said, “I promise.”

Adriano nodded once.

Matteo groaned dramatically, then leaned in and cupped Regulus’s face.

“You write first.”

“I might be busy.”

Matteo’s eyes narrowed.

Regulus smiled.

“I’ll write.”

Matteo kissed his cheek.

Then his other cheek.

Then his forehead.

Then Luca shoved him aside.

“My turn.”

Regulus huffed. “You’re all unbearable.”

“Yes,” Luca said, and kissed his cheek, then his jaw, then the corner of his mouth, grinning when Regulus rolled his eyes and caught the front of his shirt to pull him closer properly.

Barty made a strangled noise behind them.

“I’m witnessing too much.”

Dorcas said, “You’re witnessing history.”

Evan muttered, “I’m witnessing Regulus become someone I have to rethink entirely.”

Pandora clasped her hands together. “It’s beautiful.”

Sirius said nothing.

James glanced at him, worried.

Luca pulled back slowly, looking dazed and smug.

Nico slid in next, taking Regulus’s hand first and kissing the rings one by one like an absolute menace.

Regulus smiled down at him.

“You’re performing.”

“For them,” Nico said, nodding toward the gathered audience.

Regulus glanced over.

Every single person looked guilty and continued staring.

Regulus laughed again.

Nico looked triumphant, then leaned in and kissed him properly, one hand at the side of Regulus’s neck, careful and warm.

Mary whispered, “Oh my God.”

Marlene whispered, “This is better than magazines.”

Lily whispered, “Marlene.”

“What? It is.”

Nico pulled away and tapped Regulus’s chin.

“Don’t forget us.”

Regulus’s smirk returned.

“As if you’d let me.”

“Exactly.”

Adriano came last.

By then, the train doors were open. More students were boarding. The platform had become a storm of goodbye hugs, last-minute instructions, trunks levitating through doors, owls being wrestled into cages, parents crying, students pretending not to.

Adriano did not rush.

He stepped between Regulus’s knees where Matteo had stood earlier, hands settling at Regulus’s waist with a familiarity that made Sirius’s jaw tighten.

Regulus looked down at him.

Adriano looked up.

No grand performance. No dramatic groan. No loud declaration.

Just Adriano.

“You’re sure?” he asked quietly.

Regulus knew what he meant.

Not about the train.

About going back.

About stepping into the old world with this new skin.

About carrying Italy into Hogwarts and refusing to fold himself smaller again.

Regulus lifted one hand and touched Adriano’s cheek.

“Yes.”

Adriano turned his face slightly into the touch, then leaned up and kissed him.

The platform noise blurred.

Regulus closed his eyes.

The kiss was slower than the others, less theatrical, which somehow made it more devastating. Adriano’s hands tightened once at his waist, like he was memorising the shape of him before letting go. Regulus’s fingers slid into his hair. For a few seconds, there was only warmth, the smell of smoke and travel and Adriano’s cologne, the steady pressure of someone saying goodbye without making goodbye feel like abandonment.

When Adriano pulled back, Regulus’s eyes opened slowly.

Matteo made a soft dying noise somewhere to the side.

Luca muttered, “That was unfairly good.”

Nico nodded. “Very strong ending.”

Adriano ignored them.

Regulus smiled faintly.

Then the final boarding call rang down the platform.

Barty snapped back into motion.

“Regulus. Train. Now.”

Regulus looked at him.

Barty pointed at the door. “Do not make me carry you.”

Matteo immediately said, “I can carry him.”

“So can I,” Luca said.

Nico said, “We all can.”

Adriano said, “He can walk.”

Regulus slid down from the ledge.

All four boys immediately tried to keep hold of him.

Matteo caught his hips. Luca’s hand closed around his waist. Nico grabbed his sleeve. Adriano’s fingers lingered at the small of his back.

Regulus stood among them, laughing under his breath.

“I have to go.”

“No,” Matteo said into his shoulder.

“Yes.”

“Five more years.”

“No.”

“Five more minutes.”

“No.”

“One more kiss.”

“You’ve had one.”

“Another.”

Regulus looked toward the train.

Then toward his friends.

Barty looked like he was moments from either crying or hexing Matteo. Evan watched with a complicated expression. Pandora was glowing with fondness. Dorcas’s arms were crossed, but her mouth kept twitching like she was fighting a smile.

The Gryffindors remained nearby in varying stages of astonishment.

Sirius still had not spoken.

Regulus looked back at Matteo.

Then he caught Matteo by the collar and kissed him.

Matteo melted so dramatically that Luca had to grab his jacket to keep him upright when Regulus released him.

“Pathetic,” Regulus murmured.

Matteo, dazed, smiled. “Yours.”

The word struck the platform like another spell.

Regulus’s expression softened.

Then sharpened again before anyone could make a thing of it.

Luca demanded his final kiss with a hand raised like he was in class.

Regulus sighed.

“You are so embarrassing.”

“Yes.”

Regulus kissed him anyway.

Luca wrapped both arms around him and lifted him slightly off his feet for one second, making Regulus give an indignant little sound against his mouth before laughing.

“Put me down.”

“No.”

“Luca.”

Luca set him down.

“Only because you said my name like that.”

Barty made another pained sound.

Nico stepped in, all grin and bright eyes, and Regulus kissed him before he could say anything stupid.

Nico said something stupid anyway afterward.

“I win.”

Regulus blinked.

“What?”

“I got kissed first this time.”

“You did not.”

“In spirit.”

Matteo shouted, “No one respects spirit when I use it.”

Regulus shook his head, smiling.

Adriano did not ask again.

He only came close, cupped Regulus’s face with both hands, and kissed him once more, brief but deep enough that Regulus’s fingers caught at his wrist.

When he pulled back, Adriano said, “Go.”

Regulus swallowed.

Then nodded.

Luca handed him his bag.

Matteo kissed his hand one last time.

Nico adjusted the sunglasses in Regulus’s hair like he was preparing him for battle.

Adriano stepped back first.

That made the others step back too.

Regulus stood facing them, suddenly with space between his body and theirs.

It felt colder immediately.

Matteo pointed at him, eyes too bright.

“Write.”

“I will.”

“Come back.”

“I will.”

“Don’t let England make you boring.”

Regulus’s smirk returned, slow and beautiful.

“It couldn’t if it tried.”

Luca clutched his chest. “That’s our baby.”

“I am not—”

“All aboard!”

Barty grabbed Regulus’s wrist.

“Now.”

Regulus let himself be pulled, still smirking, still looking back as he stepped onto the train.

The Slytherins surged in around him.

Barty immediately began talking at a speed that would have impressed a curse.

“You are explaining everything. Everything. Italy. Hair. Harem. Magic. Missing. All of it. I want dates. I want names. I want crimes.”

Regulus glanced back through the open train door.

The four boys stood on the platform together.

Matteo blew him a kiss with both hands.

Luca waved one of Regulus’s scarves that he had apparently stolen.

Nico shouted, “Half-term!”

Adriano lifted a hand.

Regulus raised his own.

A small wave.

Not dramatic.

Not desperate.

A promise.

Outside, the whistle blew.

Steam curled.

The door began to close.

Matteo shouted something in Italian that made Luca laugh, Nico cheer, and Adriano shake his head.

Regulus laughed too.

Barty stared at him.

“What did he say?”

Regulus leaned against the window as the train shifted beneath them.

“He said England borrowed me.”

Dorcas came up beside Barty, watching the platform slide slowly away.

“And?”

Regulus smiled as the four boys moved with the train, walking alongside it for as long as they could, still waving, still shouting, still refusing to let the goodbye be quiet.

Regulus kept his hand against the glass.

“And Italy gets me back.”

The train gathered speed.

The platform began to blur.

Matteo ran a few steps, shouting Regulus’s name.

Luca nearly tripped over him.

Nico grabbed them both.

Adriano stayed still at the edge of the platform, watching until distance swallowed his face.

Then King’s Cross slipped away.

The tunnel took the light.

Regulus lowered his hand from the glass.

For a moment, the reflection in the window stared back at him: blond hair, freckles, sunglasses pushed into it, black nails, silver rings, mouth still curved.

Behind him, Barty said faintly, “You have a harem.”

Regulus turned.

Every Slytherin friend he had stood there staring.

Beyond them, through the carriage door, the Gryffindors were openly peering in from the corridor.

Sirius among them.

Regulus’s smirk grew.

“I know.”

Pandora whispered, “He knows.”

Evan sat down heavily. “We need a compartment.”

Dorcas pointed at Regulus. “You are not escaping this conversation.”

Regulus pushed his sunglasses down over his eyes.

“I wasn’t planning to.”

Barty narrowed his eyes.

Regulus walked past them toward the corridor, relaxed and sun-warm and impossible, his bag over one shoulder, his summer trailing after him like perfume.

“After all,” he said lightly, “we have the whole train ride.”

Barty screamed again.

And Regulus laughed.

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