Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The corridor was supposed to be empty.

It was one of those thin, draughty passages near the Charms corridor where the torches never quite burned evenly and the portraits had learned, over the centuries, to pretend they were asleep whenever students came skulking through after curfew. The flagstones held the day’s cold in them. The windows were black mirrors. The castle breathed in little groans around the staircases, old wood shifting, stone murmuring, wind pressing ghostly hands against the glass.

Regulus Black walked through it alone, bored out of his mind.

He had his prefect badge pinned straight. His tie was neat. His robes hung perfect. Everything about him was arranged like he had been placed there deliberately: polished shoes, sharp jaw, cold eyes, dark curls brushed back from his forehead with the kind of care that looked effortless because he would rather die than admit to effort. He carried himself the way Slytherins learned to when they were being watched and the way Blacks learned to when they were not allowed to stop being watched even in their own bedrooms.

At that particular moment, though, there was no one to watch him.

So he looked softer.

Not soft, exactly. Regulus Black could have found a way to look judgmental while drowning. But alone, with nobody in the corridor, with the castle quiet and the only sound his shoes made against the stones, he let his shoulders loosen by half an inch. He looked around once, slow and careful, then let out a tiny sigh through his nose.

“Ridiculous,” he muttered to himself.

He was bored. Prefect rounds were always boring, which was either the point or a punishment disguised as responsibility. He had confiscated one exploding quill from a second-year Ravenclaw, sent two giggling Hufflepuffs back to their dormitory, and stared long enough at a suit of armour holding a pumpkin that the armour had silently put it down and turned its helmet away in shame.

Now the corridor was empty, the night was dragging, and Regulus had started counting the cracks between stones just to have something to do.

He did not notice the four Gryffindors crouched around the corner.

In fairness, they were trying very hard not to be noticed.

James Potter was on one knee with his wand in his mouth and both hands full of enchanted string. Sirius Black was holding a paper bag that hissed every time it moved. Peter Pettigrew was peering nervously over his shoulder every three seconds, his cheeks pale with excitement and fear. Remus Lupin had the expression of a boy who knew this was a terrible idea but had brought three books and therefore technically counted as supervision.

“We are going to get murdered,” Peter whispered.

“Only if you keep breathing like a kettle,” Sirius whispered back.

“I can’t help it.”

“Try.”

James spat his wand into his hand. “Nobody is getting murdered. This is art.”

Remus looked at the length of string tied around a cluster of charmed dungbombs, two fireworks, and a folded banner that was supposed to unfurl over the Slytherin table at breakfast reading SALAZAR WAS A SOCK-PUPPET. “Art has really declined.”

“You’ll thank me when we’re legends.”

“We’re already legends,” Sirius said, grinning.

Remus gave him a look. “You once got your head stuck in a banister.”

“And people remember it, Moony. That is literally legend behaviour.”

Peter made a small strangled noise. “Someone’s coming.”

They all froze.

Regulus passed the corner without turning.

Sirius’s face changed.

It was quick, there and gone if one blinked, but Remus saw it because Remus saw most things he was not supposed to. Sirius went from mischievous and bright to flat in an instant. His mouth hardened. His grip tightened around the hissing bag. His little brother walked past, not seeing them, not hearing them, completely unaware of Sirius tucked away in the shadows with his friends.

Regulus did not look like a child at all now. He looked like their enemy. Slytherin. Black. Pure-blood. Cold little copy of everything Sirius had run from.

James leaned closer and whispered, “Is that—”

“Don’t,” Sirius said.

One syllable. Sharp as snapped bone.

James shut his mouth.

Peter glanced between them and shrank further into the corner.

Regulus stopped a few yards away.

All four Marauders held their breath.

The Slytherin prefect tilted his head, apparently staring at nothing. Then he lifted one hand and dragged his fingers lightly along the edge of a tapestry where the stitching had begun to come loose.

It was a tiny, absent motion.

So tiny it should not have mattered.

But Sirius stared at it like he had been punched.

Because he knew that movement. He remembered a much smaller hand doing that along curtains at Grimmauld Place. Along the hem of Walburga’s robes when Regulus had been too small to know better. Along Sirius’s sleeve when thunder rattled the windows and he had wanted comfort but knew better than to ask for it aloud.

Sirius looked away first.

James cleared his throat silently and lifted his wand again, over-careful now, aiming at the string. The spell was simple. A tiny charm to bind the last loop, nothing more. It was supposed to fasten, tighten, and hold until morning.

Then Peter’s elbow knocked into Sirius’s ribs.

Sirius jerked.

The paper bag hissed.

James flinched.

His wand snapped sideways.

The spell fired.

A bright, silvery-blue bolt ricocheted off the brass foot of the suit of armour, flashed across the corridor, and struck Regulus Black squarely in the back.

For one second, the world went very quiet.

Regulus stiffened.

His wand slipped out of his hand.

Then he hit the floor.

Not dramatically. Not like duelling practice. Not like fainting girls in portraits or Quidditch players thrown from brooms. His knees gave first, his body folding sharply and helplessly, and then he was down on the stone with a sound that made Sirius go white.

“Regulus,” Sirius breathed.

Then all four of them were moving.

James shoved the prank supplies aside so fast one of the dungbombs bounced off Peter’s shoe and rolled under the tapestry. Remus grabbed Peter by the back of his robes before he could trip over the enchanted string. Sirius was already in the corridor, already running, already dropping beside the still heap of black robes.

“Regulus?” he snapped. “Regulus, get up.”

No answer.

James stumbled to a halt beside him, wand up, face drained. “I didn’t mean— I swear, I didn’t—”

“What spell was that?” Sirius demanded.

“The binding charm.”

“That wasn’t a binding charm.”

“I know that now.”

“Sirius,” Remus said quietly.

Sirius looked down.

The robes were moving.

Shrinking.

For a horrible heartbeat, Sirius thought Regulus was disappearing. The long black robes collapsed inward. The sleeves shortened. The shoes grew smaller with a faint creak of magic. The pale hand on the floor changed shape, fingers shortening, knuckles softening, the sharp elegance of teenage bones melting backward into the round softness of childhood.

The dark curls slipped loose.

The prefect badge shrank until it was absurdly small.

The boy on the floor was not sixteen anymore.

He was tiny.

Five, maybe. No older.

A little boy lay swallowed in a perfectly shrunken Slytherin uniform, cheek pressed to the cold flagstones, black curls a mess over his forehead. His lashes were thick against his face. His hands were small. His knees were tucked slightly beneath him like he had fallen mid-step and curled on instinct.

Peter made a sound like a mouse being strangled. “Oh, no.”

James whispered, “Oh, hell.”

Remus looked as though his mind had gone very far away and come back carrying every curse word in the English language.

Sirius did not speak.

He could not.

Because he knew this face.

Not exactly like this. Not this precise age, perhaps, not this exact softness. Memory was unreliable when it came to childhood, especially childhood in a house like Grimmauld Place. But Sirius knew the cheeks. The tiny nose. The curve of the mouth. The long eyelashes. The little crease between his brows even unconscious, like he was thinking very hard about something.

He knew him.

Reggie.

The little boy on the floor stirred.

All four boys went rigid.

A tiny hand flexed against the stone. Regulus made a small, confused noise, half whimper and half hum, and pushed himself up with clumsy elbows. His head wobbled. He sat back on his knees, swaying, and blinked at them.

His eyes were enormous.

Grey, bright, sleepy, and absolutely terrified.

“Quoi?” he whispered.

The French came out soft and instinctive.

Sirius’s lungs stopped working.

Regulus looked from Sirius to James to Remus to Peter. His lower lip trembled once before he pressed it very hard between his teeth.

“Where is…?” His voice was tiny. High. Rough with confusion. “Where is my room?”

Nobody answered.

Because none of them knew what to do with a five-year-old Regulus Black sitting on the floor after curfew in a school corridor, wearing a Slytherin uniform and looking like he was seconds away from either crying or apologising for existing.

James found his voice first, because James Potter had never suffered from a long-term inability to make noise.

“Regulus?”

The little boy flinched at the sound of his name.

Not badly. Not dramatically. Just enough.

Enough that Remus noticed.

Enough that Sirius noticed and felt something cold go straight through him.

Regulus looked at James with cautious confusion. “You know my name?”

James swallowed. “Yeah.”

“Are you… are you one of Maman’s friends?”

Sirius made a faint, broken sound.

Regulus’s attention snapped to him.

For a moment, his face emptied in concentration. He stared at Sirius, eyes narrowing a little, head tilting, curls falling into his eyes. Something like recognition flickered there, almost catching.

Sirius leaned forward despite himself.

“Reggie?”

The little boy blinked.

The almost-recognition vanished.

He shrank back.

“I am Regulus,” he said politely, careful as a child reciting at a dinner table. “Not Reggie.”

The words landed soft.

They broke something anyway.

Sirius sat back on his heels as if shoved.

James looked at him quickly. Peter looked at the floor. Remus looked at Regulus.

The little boy’s gaze darted to all their robes. Red. Gold. Lions.

His eyes widened.

“You are Gryffindors,” he whispered.

James tried for a smile. It came out like a grimace. “Yeah. We are.”

Regulus’s tiny fingers curled in the front of his robes. “I am not s’posed to talk to Gryffindors.”

“Who told you that?” Remus asked gently.

Regulus looked at him like that was a stupid question but was too polite to say so. “Everybody.”

Peter crouched slightly behind James. “Right. Well. That’s… that’s awkward.”

The little boy’s eyes went to Peter, then down to Peter’s shoes, then up again. “Did I do bad?”

“No,” James said immediately. Too loudly.

Regulus flinched again.

James visibly died a little.

Remus shot him a look and softened his voice. “No. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Regulus studied him for a long, serious moment. “Then why am I on the floor?”

Nobody answered quickly enough.

Regulus’s eyes filled.

He blinked very fast. He did not cry. That was worse. He sat on his knees in the middle of the corridor, tiny and shaking, and tried so obviously not to cry that Peter looked like he might start doing it for him.

“I can stand,” Regulus said, though nobody had asked. “I can. I am not baby.”

He pushed himself up.

His legs buckled immediately.

Sirius caught him.

It was instinct.

He moved before thinking, arms going around a body so small and warm and real that the past came slamming through him like a curse. Regulus was light. Too light. Sirius remembered that too. He remembered carrying his little brother down a hallway after a nightmare, whispering nonsense in French because Regulus had refused to be comforted in English when he was frightened. He remembered a small hand gripping his shirt. He remembered being necessary.

Regulus froze in his arms.

Every part of him went still.

Not relaxed. Not comforted.

Still.

Like prey.

Sirius loosened his grip at once.

“Sorry,” he said, too hoarse. “I’m not— I’m not going to hurt you.”

Regulus turned his head slowly and stared at Sirius’s face from very close up. He seemed fascinated now, fear mingling with curiosity.

“You have my eyes,” he said.

Sirius looked away.

James’s expression crumpled.

Remus exhaled slowly through his nose.

Peter whispered, “Bloody hell.”

Regulus looked back at him. “That is a bad word.”

Peter blinked. “Er. Yeah. Sorry.”

“You have to put a coin in the jar.”

“The what?”

“The swear jar,” Regulus said, with the firm authority of a tiny person explaining civilisation. “But Maman does not do it because she says grown-ups do not have to.”

Sirius’s jaw tightened so hard it clicked.

Remus, very gently, said, “Do you know where you are?”

Regulus looked around. “A castle?”

“Yes. Hogwarts.”

Regulus’s face brightened so suddenly that it was like someone had opened a curtain.

“Hogwarts?” he gasped.

All four boys stared.

He smiled.

It was small, shy, uncertain, and devastating.

Dimples appeared in both cheeks.

Actual dimples.

Sirius forgot how to breathe for the second time in five minutes.

James’s mouth fell open.

Peter clutched his own chest like he had been stabbed.

Remus went utterly still.

Regulus Black smiled, and he looked nothing like the boy who stalked through corridors with cutting silence and cold eyes. He looked bright. He looked alive. He looked like sunlight had found its way into the wrong family and been punished for it.

“I go Hogwarts?” little Regulus asked, bouncing once in Sirius’s arms before remembering himself and going stiff again. “I am big enough?”

“Not— not exactly,” James said.

Regulus’s face fell. “Oh.”

“No, I mean, you do go here. Just not like this.”

“Like what?”

The four Marauders exchanged a look.

Peter whispered, “We should get a professor.”

“No,” Sirius snapped.

Remus’s eyes narrowed. “Sirius.”

“No.” Sirius adjusted Regulus carefully, though the little boy remained rigid against him. “If we tell a professor, they ask why we were out. They ask what spell we used. They write to home.”

At that, Regulus made a tiny noise.

Almost too quiet to hear.

But Sirius felt it against his chest.

A little breath catching.

Remus looked at Regulus. “You don’t want anyone writing home?”

Regulus stared at the floor.

His small hands twisted together.

“Maman gets cross when owls come,” he whispered. “If it is bad. If it says I am bad.”

James’s face went hard in a new way. Not angry at Regulus. Angry somewhere else. Somewhere older.

Peter looked sick.

Remus crouched down so he was closer to Regulus’s height, even though Sirius was still holding him. “No one is writing home tonight.”

Regulus looked at him carefully. “Promise?”

Remus did not hesitate. “Promise.”

Regulus searched his face like promises were things that might bite. Then he nodded once, solemn.

“Okay.”

James dragged both hands through his hair. It stuck up even worse. “Right. Okay. So, the spell wears off… when?”

Remus’s mouth tightened. “I’d need to know what spell it became after it hit the armour.”

“It was an accident,” James said, miserable.

“I know.”

“It bounced.”

“I know.”

“Stop knowing things in that voice.”

Remus ignored him. “We need somewhere to take him.”

“Slytherin,” Peter said weakly, then immediately shook his head. “No. No, obviously not. That would be— he’s tiny.”

“He doesn’t remember them,” James said. “Any of them.”

“He doesn’t remember us either,” Peter said.

Sirius looked down at Regulus, whose attention had drifted to a moth circling one of the torches. The little boy’s eyes tracked it with rapt fascination.

“Slytherin would eat him alive,” Sirius said.

Regulus gasped.

They all looked at him.

“There is snakes?” he whispered.

James blinked. “What?”

“In Slytherin. Snakes eat people?”

Peter opened his mouth.

Remus clapped a hand over it before he could speak.

“No,” Remus said. “No snakes eating people.”

Regulus looked a little disappointed. “Oh.”

“You wanted there to be people-eating snakes?”

“No.” Regulus hesitated. “Maybe a little bit.”

James gave a sudden, helpless laugh.

Regulus looked at him, startled.

James clapped a hand over his mouth. “Sorry. Sorry, I’m not laughing at you.”

Regulus frowned. “You are.”

“Not meanly.”

Regulus considered this with grave suspicion. “Okay.”

Sirius swallowed.

The child in his arms smelled faintly of cold stone, old wool, and something floral that dragged Sirius back so violently he almost dropped him. Not perfume. Laundry. Grimmauld Place linens. Regulus’s childhood things washed separately because Walburga insisted children’s clothes were always sticky, even when they were clean.

Sirius hated that he remembered.

He hated more that he had forgotten.

“We take him to Gryffindor,” James said.

Peter stared. “Are we allowed to do that?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Brilliant.”

Remus glanced down the corridor. “We can’t stay here. Filch will come eventually.”

Regulus leaned a little to see around Sirius’s shoulder. “Who is Filch?”

“A man with a cat,” James said.

Regulus lit up again. “A cat?”

“A mean cat.”

Regulus’s face softened with immediate sympathy. “Maybe she is just sad.”

James froze.

Peter made a small wounded noise.

Marauders, as a collective, were not emotionally prepared for Regulus Black defending Mrs Norris.

Sirius tightened his arms before he could stop himself.

Regulus noticed. His little body went stiff again.

Sirius loosened at once.

“Sorry.”

Regulus looked at him. “You say sorry lots.”

Sirius’s mouth twisted. “Not usually.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m an idiot.”

Regulus gasped again, scandalised. “That is rude to yourself.”

James turned away and pressed his fist against his mouth.

Peter looked like someone had kicked him in the soul.

Remus stood. “Gryffindor. Now. Before we all have a collective breakdown in the corridor.”

Regulus blinked at him. “What is a collect-if?”

“Something we’re doing.”

“Oh.” He nodded, accepting this.

They moved quickly.

James went ahead, wand ready, checking corners. Remus followed with the abandoned prank supplies bundled under one arm because apparently even in crisis James refused to leave evidence. Peter scurried behind them, whispering warnings whenever a staircase creaked or a portrait snored too loudly.

Sirius carried Regulus.

He expected protest. He expected squirming. He expected little Regulus to demand to walk because the older Regulus would have bitten someone before accepting help.

Instead, after several long moments, Regulus slowly relaxed against him.

Just a little.

His cheek came to rest near Sirius’s collarbone. His tiny fingers held Sirius’s robes, not tightly, but enough. Sirius stared straight ahead and did not allow himself to feel anything about it.

Then Regulus whispered, “You are warm.”

Sirius stumbled.

James looked back. “You all right?”

“Fine.”

Regulus patted Sirius’s chest, clumsy and sympathetic. “Careful.”

James turned forward again with an expression of such fierce internal pain that Remus had to shove him through the next passage.

They reached the portrait of the Fat Lady in one piece, which was more than any of them deserved.

The Fat Lady opened one painted eye. “Password?”

“Lemon sherbet,” James said.

She looked at the tiny Slytherin in Sirius’s arms.

Her eyebrows rose so high they nearly vanished into her hairline.

“Sirius Black,” she said.

“Not now.”

“Is that—?”

“Not. Now.”

The portrait sniffed. “Well, really.”

She swung open.

Noise spilled out.

The Gryffindor common room was not asleep. Gryffindors, as a species, treated curfew less like a rule and more like a rumour started by unfun people. The fire was low but warm, throwing amber light over red armchairs and battered tables. Lily Evans was sitting cross-legged on the rug with a book open in her lap and a cup of tea beside her. Mary Macdonald was braiding Marlene McKinnon’s hair while Marlene complained about sitting still. Alice Fortescue and Frank Longbottom were playing exploding snap at the table, both of them flinching every time the cards sparked. Fabian and Gideon Prewett were arguing over a chessboard where half the pieces had given up and begun lying down dramatically.

Everyone looked up as the portrait opened.

Marlene started, “You lot are—”

Then she saw Sirius.

Then she saw what Sirius was holding.

Silence fell like a dropped curtain.

Lily was the first to stand.

“What did you do?”

The question was aimed at James with the weary precision of long practice.

James opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, then pointed at Sirius. “Why assume me?”

Lily stared.

James deflated. “Fair.”

Mary rose slowly, braid forgotten in her hand. “Is that a child?”

“No,” Peter said, panicked.

Everyone looked at him.

Peter swallowed. “Yes.”

Frank leaned sideways to see better. “Is that a Slytherin child?”

Fabian squinted. “Tiny snake.”

Gideon leaned in beside him. “Really tiny snake.”

Regulus, overwhelmed by the sudden room full of people, turned his face into Sirius’s robes.

Sirius’s expression flashed vicious.

“Don’t call him that.”

The room went still again.

Marlene stared at him. “Since when do you care what anyone calls Regulus?”

Regulus peeked out.

His big grey eyes moved around the room, catching on each face, each robe, each shocked stare. He shrank under the attention. His lower lip trembled again.

“I am not a snake,” he whispered into Sirius’s collar. “I am a boy.”

Mary’s face changed first.

Softened. Broke.

“Oh,” she said quietly.

Lily moved forward slowly, hands visible, voice gentle. “What happened?”

Remus answered before James could find some way to make it worse. “A spell hit him. It de-aged him. He doesn’t remember anything past being about five.”

Alice pushed a hand over her mouth. “Oh, Merlin.”

Frank’s brows drew together. “Does he know where he is?”

“Hogwarts,” Regulus said, muffled. Then, after a second, he lifted his head a little because he was apparently incapable of letting an answer be incomplete. “But I am not big enough yet. Maybe. I am confused.”

Mary made another soft sound.

Marlene looked at James. “You hit him with a spell?”

James winced. “Accidentally.”

Lily closed her eyes. “Of course you did.”

“It was not meant for him!”

“That makes it better, does it?”

“No, Evans, weirdly enough, I’m aware this is bad.”

Regulus flinched at the raised voices.

Every argument died instantly.

The common room seemed to notice him all over again. The tiny body in oversized-but-shrunken robes. The pale cheeks. The anxious hands. The way he looked ready to apologise for standing in the wrong place even though he was not standing at all.

Sirius felt him trembling.

He did not know what to do with that.

Little Regulus looked up at him and whispered, “Are they cross with me?”

“No,” Sirius said, too fast. “No. Not with you.”

Regulus looked unconvinced.

Lily walked forward and crouched several feet away, giving him space. “Hello, Regulus. I’m Lily.”

Regulus looked at her hair with open wonder.

“Your hair is fire,” he whispered.

Lily blinked.

Mary smiled despite herself.

Marlene muttered, “He’s not wrong.”

Lily’s mouth twitched. “Thank you.”

“Does it burn?”

“No.”

“Oh.” Regulus leaned a little away from Sirius, curiosity winning over fear. “Can I touch?”

Sirius went still.

Everyone did.

Regulus immediately seemed to realise he had asked too much. He tucked his hands against his chest. “Sorry. Sorry. I know no touching. I forgot.”

The words came out small and automatic.

Sirius stared at him.

Lily’s face went carefully blank in the way people went blank when feeling too much.

“You don’t have to apologise for asking,” she said softly. “And yes, you can touch my hair if you want.”

Regulus looked at Sirius like he expected him to confirm this was not a trap.

Sirius could barely speak. “You can.”

Regulus slid down from Sirius’s arms cautiously.

The second his feet touched the carpet, he swayed. Sirius’s hands hovered, but Regulus steadied himself with enormous dignity, smoothing the front of his tiny robes.

Then he took three careful steps toward Lily and reached out with one finger.

He touched the end of one red curl.

His eyes went round.

“Soft,” he breathed.

Lily smiled. “It is.”

Regulus gave a tiny, pleased giggle.

The sound hit the room like a spell.

Sirius had heard Regulus laugh before.

Not recently. Not at Hogwarts. Not once in years. But he remembered a little boy under a dining table, trying not to laugh while Sirius made faces across the room. He remembered childish hiccup-giggles muffled into pillows. He remembered chasing Regulus down a hallway and catching him around the middle while both of them laughed so hard Walburga had come out and screamed them silent.

The common room had no such memories.

To them, Regulus Black was a cutting glare at the Slytherin table. A sharp remark in the corridor. A cold little prince with perfect manners and cruel eyes. Someone who looked at Gryffindors like they were dirt under expensive shoes.

Now he stood in front of Lily Evans in a tiny uniform, petting her hair with one finger, giggling because it was soft.

Frank sat down very slowly.

Alice wiped at her eyes and pretended she was scratching her cheek.

Marlene looked furious in the way she looked when she was trying not to be upset.

Mary whispered, “He’s lovely.”

Sirius heard it.

He hated her a little for being right.

Regulus turned toward the rest of them, emboldened for approximately three seconds before remembering there were many strangers. He hurried back toward Sirius, tripped over nothing, windmilled both arms, and would have face-planted into the rug if James had not lunged forward and caught him by the back of his robes.

Regulus dangled.

Everyone froze.

James froze most of all.

He was holding five-year-old Regulus Black off the floor like a kitten rescued from a curtain.

Regulus blinked down at the carpet.

Then he turned his head to look at James over his shoulder.

“You caught me.”

James swallowed. “Yeah.”

Regulus smiled at him.

Dimples again.

“Merci.”

James looked like he was about to cry.

He carefully set Regulus upright. “You’re welcome.”

Regulus patted his own robes down, then looked up at James with sudden fascination. “You have messy hair.”

A startled laugh escaped Mary.

James touched his hair defensively. “It’s meant to look like this.”

Regulus frowned, deeply concerned. “Why?”

The common room cracked.

Not loudly. Not quite laughter yet. Something broke through the horror for a second, a ripple of helpless amusement that passed through everyone except James, who looked personally attacked by a five-year-old.

Sirius made a noise that might have been a laugh if it had not hurt so much.

James crouched in front of Regulus and attempted dignity. “Because it looks cool.”

Regulus studied him.

Long pause.

“No.”

Fabian collapsed backward against the sofa.

Gideon wheezed.

Marlene shouted into a cushion.

James put a hand over his heart. “I have been slain.”

Regulus startled. “No!”

James immediately dropped the act. “No, no, sorry, not really.”

Regulus’s eyes were wide. His hands fluttered, unsure what to do. “You said slain.”

“I was joking.”

“Oh.” Regulus frowned. “That was not a good joke.”

“You’re right. It was not.”

“He’s got you there, mate,” Frank said.

James shot him a wounded look.

Regulus turned toward Frank next, attention hopping like a little bird. “You are very tall.”

Frank smiled gently. “I suppose I am.”

“Do you play Quidditch?”

“No.”

Regulus looked scandalised. “Why?”

Frank blinked. “I’m not very good.”

Regulus walked toward him, suddenly earnest. “You can practise. You got to practise lots. If you fall, you get up again unless you are dead. Then you cannot.”

Alice choked on air.

Frank’s smile faded into something sadder. “That’s… practical.”

Regulus nodded very seriously. “I am going to play Quidditch. I am going to be very good.”

Sirius closed his eyes.

He was.

He would be.

Tiny Regulus spun toward Sirius. “Do you play?”

Sirius opened his eyes.

Everyone looked at him.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I do.”

Regulus lit up. “Are you good?”

James spluttered.

Sirius almost smiled. Almost. “I’m all right.”

James threw both hands up. “All right?”

Regulus ignored him, stepping closer to Sirius. “Can you fly high?”

“Very high.”

“Can you go upside down?”

“Yes.”

Regulus bounced on his toes, unable to help it. “Can I see?”

“Not tonight,” Remus said gently.

Regulus turned. His attention snapped to Remus’s book still tucked under his arm. “You read lots?”

Remus glanced down at the book. “Yes.”

“Me too,” Regulus said proudly. “I read big books.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. I know dinosaurs.”

Every head in the room turned slightly, like flowers toward the sun.

James whispered, “Dinosaurs?”

Regulus’s entire face changed.

If Quidditch had lit him up, dinosaurs set him on fire.

“There is so many,” he said, words tumbling faster now, French accent thickening as excitement made him forget to shape the English carefully. “There is Tyrannosaurus rex but not biggest, people think because teeth, but Spinosaurus is bigger maybe and it has a sail like a boat but not a boat because dinosaur, and Stegosaurus got plates but the brain is little maybe, but that does not mean he is stupid because people say little brain means stupid but maybe he just thinks different, and Triceratops has three horns and a big frill and I like him because he is like— like—”

He threw his hands beside his head, fingers spread.

“Very fancy angry cow.”

The common room lost the battle.

Laughter burst everywhere.

Not cruel.

Warm. Sudden. Helpless.

Regulus startled at first, shoulders flying up. Then he realised they were laughing the not-mean way. His face went pink. His smile returned, shy and pleased, dimples flashing like secrets.

“I know more,” he offered.

Mary slid down to sit on the rug. “Tell us.”

Regulus stared at her. “Really?”

“Really.”

He looked around like checking for permission. When no one stopped him, he launched himself into explanation so fast he nearly tripped over his own tongue.

“There is Ankylosaurus and he has armour like a knight and a big tail club, boom, and Velociraptor is not so big like in stories, it is little but clever, and Parasaurolophus has a thing on his head and maybe it makes sounds like a trumpet, and Brachiosaurus is very big and eats leaves and I think if he lives now he can look in windows and that is rude but maybe he does not know because he is too tall.”

Mary nodded solemnly. “That would be rude.”

“Only if he does it on purpose,” Alice said.

Regulus turned to Alice with delight. “Yes! Yes, because accident is not naughty.”

Every Marauder in the room flinched.

James looked down at his hands.

Sirius stared at Regulus.

Accident is not naughty.

Nobody spoke for a moment.

Regulus, distracted by his own thought, bounced twice and then wandered toward the chessboard where Fabian and Gideon’s pieces were still theatrically dying. His energy seemed to come in sparks: fear, then curiosity, then joy, then a flicker of caution, then movement again. He touched nothing, but leaned close enough that one black knight sat upright and saluted him.

Regulus gasped.

“They move!”

Gideon smiled. “They do.”

“Are they alive?”

“Sort of.”

Regulus crouched too fast, lost balance, and sat down abruptly on the rug.

He blinked.

Then giggled.

“I fell.”

Sirius took half a step before stopping himself.

Frank noticed.

So did Remus.

Regulus stayed on the floor, apparently unbothered now that the floor was soft. He leaned forward on hands and knees and stared at the chess pieces.

The tiny uniform shifted as he moved.

His sleeve rode up.

Mary’s smile vanished.

Lily saw her face and looked.

Then Lily went still.

On Regulus’s small forearm, just above the wrist, were thin pale lines.

Not many. Not fresh. But visible.

Too straight. Too deliberate.

They did not belong on a five-year-old.

They did not belong anywhere, but especially not there.

Lily’s eyes snapped to Remus.

Remus had seen too.

So had James.

Sirius followed their gazes and went cold all the way through.

“No,” he whispered.

Regulus glanced up. “No what?”

Sirius crossed the room in two strides and crouched beside him, not touching, staring at his arm.

Regulus followed his gaze and frowned as though noticing the marks for the first time.

“Oh,” he said.

His voice was smaller now.

James crouched too, careful. “Regulus, do you know where those came from?”

Regulus rubbed at the pale lines with his other hand. “I dunno.”

“Do they hurt?”

“No.”

Sirius’s breathing went uneven.

Regulus frowned harder, confused and a little frightened by their faces. “Did I do bad?”

“No,” Sirius said. His voice cracked. “No, you didn’t.”

Regulus looked at the marks again. “Maman says scars are ugly.”

Marlene swore under her breath.

Regulus looked up sharply. “Coin.”

Marlene pressed both hands over her mouth.

Gideon stood abruptly and turned toward the fire, shoulders tense.

Fabian stared at the chessboard like he wanted to smash it.

Lily’s voice was steady only because she was forcing it. “Scars aren’t ugly.”

Regulus considered her with the kind of suspicion that meant he had been told otherwise by someone taller and louder. “They are not?”

“No.”

He looked down at his arm. “These are little.”

Sirius’s eyes burned.

There were other marks too. Now that they were looking, they could see them. Faint ones on his wrist. A pale, ugly twisting mark near the edge of his sleeve that looked like a curse scar. A darkened bruise-like shadow near his collarbone, visible where the tiny shirt had shifted. His uniform had shrunk, yes, but it had not covered what magic had dragged with him from sixteen into five.

It was all wrong.

The body was small and soft and new.

The damage was not.

Remus crouched beside Sirius, face grave. “Regulus, can I see your arm for a moment?”

Regulus immediately pulled both arms to his chest.

“No.”

Remus nodded. “That’s all right.”

Regulus looked surprised.

Remus remained still. “You don’t have to.”

The little boy stared at him. “I don’t?”

“No.”

Regulus’s mouth parted slightly.

The room felt too warm.

Too quiet.

Then Regulus slowly, cautiously extended his arm.

Not because he had to.

Because Remus had told him he did not.

Remus looked without touching. His eyes moved over the curse mark, the faint lines, the little bruised shadows that might have been spell residue or something older.

His expression did not change.

But his voice, when it came, was very gentle.

“Thank you.”

Regulus tucked his arm back and hugged it against himself.

“You are not going to tell Maman?”

Sirius’s head snapped up. “No.”

Regulus looked at him.

Sirius swallowed hard. “No one is telling her anything.”

“But she knows everything,” Regulus whispered.

Nobody laughed.

Because he believed it.

Because little children in houses like that always did.

James sat down on the rug like his legs had decided they were finished. “Regulus.”

The little boy looked at him.

James tried and failed to find an expression that did not look ruined. “Does your mum… hurt you?”

The entire room seemed to hold its breath.

Regulus stared.

Then he blinked.

Then he tilted his head.

“Hurt?” he repeated, as if the word had many meanings and he was sorting through which one James could possibly mean.

James’s hands curled against his knees. “Like… spells. Or hitting. Or shouting.”

Regulus looked down at the chess pieces.

“They teach,” he said carefully.

Sirius made a noise that was barely human.

Regulus looked up quickly. “I am learning. I am small but I learn fast. I don’t cry so much now.”

Lily covered her mouth.

Mary’s eyes filled again.

Marlene stood so fast the chair behind her scraped. “I’m going to kill someone.”

Regulus’s eyes went huge.

Alice caught Marlene’s wrist. “Marlene.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“You said kill,” Regulus whispered.

Marlene’s fury shattered instantly. She crouched, keeping her distance. “I didn’t mean you. I promise.”

Regulus watched her with trembling focus. “You are loud.”

Marlene exhaled. “Yeah. I am.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m angry.”

Regulus’s shoulders rose. “At me?”

“No, sweetheart.”

The word slipped out before she could stop it.

Regulus froze.

Marlene looked horrified at herself. “Sorry.”

Regulus did not move for a second.

Then, very quietly, he asked, “What is sweetheart?”

Mary’s face crumpled.

Gideon turned fully away.

Frank stared at the ceiling.

Marlene looked as though she had been hexed.

“It’s…” Alice said softly from beside her. “It’s a kind thing to call someone.”

Regulus’s brows drew together.

“Why?”

“Because they’re loved,” Alice said.

The silence after that was unbearable.

Regulus looked more confused than anything.

Not sad. Not surprised.

Confused.

Like love was a language he had not yet been taught.

Sirius stood suddenly and walked away.

He made it four steps before punching the back of an armchair.

The common room jumped.

Regulus scrambled backward on the rug.

“No, no, no,” Peter said quickly, kneeling between Regulus and the armchair without seeming to think about it. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Sirius turned around, horror blooming across his face. “Reggie—”

Regulus stared at him, breathing fast.

Sirius took one step forward.

Regulus flinched back.

Sirius stopped.

It destroyed him.

Not visibly, not all at once, but some part of him folded inward and did not come back out.

“I’m sorry,” Sirius said. “I wasn’t angry at you.”

Regulus stared at him with huge wet eyes.

“You were loud,” he whispered.

“I know.”

“You hit the chair.”

“I know.”

Regulus’s lip trembled. “Chairs do not do bad.”

James looked like he might never recover.

Sirius’s laugh came out broken and awful. “No. No, they don’t.”

Regulus swallowed. “You have to say sorry to it.”

The room held still.

Sirius turned to the chair.

“I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely.

The chair, being a chair, did not respond.

Regulus watched it suspiciously.

Then he nodded. “Okay.”

Peter made a tiny sound and dropped his face into his hands.

Regulus looked at him, alarmed. “Are you sad?”

Peter lifted his head. His eyes were red. “A bit.”

“Why?”

Peter stared at him.

The honest answer was sitting in front of him in tiny robes with dimples and scars and no memory of becoming someone they all hated.

Peter could not say it.

So he said, “Because we hurt you by accident.”

Regulus crawled closer on the rug and patted Peter’s knee.

It was so clumsy. So careful.

“Accident is not naughty,” he reminded him.

Peter burst into tears.

“Oh, for Merlin’s sake,” James whispered, but his own voice was thick.

Regulus looked horrified. “I made him cry.”

“No,” Remus said. “No, you didn’t.”

“But I patted him.”

“It was a nice pat.”

Regulus looked doubtful.

Peter sniffed violently. “It was a very nice pat.”

Regulus smiled, uncertain but pleased. Dimples again, terrible and sweet.

“Okay.”

Lily rose and went to the girls’ staircase, returning a moment later with a folded blanket. Red, soft, slightly frayed at one edge. She held it out but did not come too close.

“Would you like this?”

Regulus looked at the blanket.

Then at Lily.

Then at the blanket.

“Is it mine?”

“It can be for now.”

Regulus did not take it. “I have to give it back.”

“Yes. Later.”

“If I make it dirty, I can clean it.”

“That’s all right.”

“If I rip it, I can sew.”

Lily blinked. “You can sew?”

Regulus nodded, suddenly proud again. “A little. Kreacher shows me. But I am not s’posed to tell because Maman says boys do not need to do that and house-elves should not teach Blacks. But Kreacher says little masters can know secret things.”

Sirius looked like he might be sick.

James’s gaze flicked to him.

Kreacher.

That name belonged to a house none of them discussed unless Sirius was drunk on rage or bitterness, and even then only in pieces. A house of dark wallpaper and screaming portraits. A house Sirius had escaped. A house Regulus had not.

Lily placed the blanket on the rug near Regulus.

He touched it with one finger, the way he had touched her hair.

Softness seemed to be something he did not trust all at once.

After a moment, he pulled it into his lap and rubbed the edge between his fingers.

“Merci,” he whispered.

“You’re welcome.”

He looked up at Mary. “Do you have dinosaurs?”

Mary blinked. “On me?”

“In your room.”

“No. Sorry.”

Regulus sagged slightly.

James stood so abruptly everyone turned.

“I have a dragon.”

Sirius stared at him. “What?”

James was already halfway toward the boys’ staircase. “A little toy one. From home. It flaps when you tap it.”

Regulus’s head snapped up.

“A dragon?”

James pointed at him. “Don’t move.”

Regulus froze completely.

James winced. “No, not like— I mean, stay there if you want. You can move. Moving is allowed. Movement is encouraged. Moony, fix my words.”

Remus rubbed his forehead. “He’s getting a dragon toy. You don’t have to stay still.”

“Oh.” Regulus relaxed. “Okay.”

James sprinted up the stairs.

Marlene dropped onto the sofa, elbows on knees, staring at Regulus. “He’s actually five.”

Alice sat beside her. “Yes.”

“No, I know, but he’s actually five.”

“Yes, Marlene.”

“He called a Triceratops a fancy angry cow.”

“Yes.”

Marlene pressed her palms to her eyes. “I hate this.”

Regulus looked up from the blanket. “You hate cows?”

Frank made a choking sound.

Marlene lowered her hands. “No. Cows are fine.”

“Do you hate me?”

The question was soft.

Casual, almost.

Like he had asked if she liked tea.

It ruined the room.

Marlene slid off the sofa and onto the rug, staying several feet away. “No.”

Regulus looked unconvinced. “You can say. I do not cry.”

Sirius closed his eyes again.

Marlene’s voice shook. “I don’t hate you.”

“But you know me?”

“Sort of.”

“Do I do bad?”

Marlene looked at Sirius, then James’s empty staircase, then Lily, then back at Regulus.

“You’re…” She struggled. “You’re older usually.”

Regulus nodded slowly. “Bigger.”

“Yeah. Bigger.”

“Am I mean?”

No one spoke.

Regulus read the silence with frightening ease for a child.

“Oh,” he said.

He looked down at the blanket, rubbing it faster between his fingers.

“I can be better.”

The words were quiet.

Automatic.

Practised.

Sirius sank down into the nearest chair like his bones had gone.

Remus looked at him and saw, with painful clarity, the shape of the thing Sirius had never said. Not properly. Not in any way that mattered.

That Sirius had not simply left a house.

He had left someone in it.

And whatever that someone had become, he had once been this.

A little boy with a French accent and dimples, promising he could be better because he thought meanness was a failing that could be trained out with enough fear.

James thundered back down the stairs, nearly slipped on the last step, and skidded into the room holding a small red dragon.

It was battered but charming, with one slightly bent wing and gold-painted eyes. He tapped its head with his wand and it fluttered up, circling clumsily above his palm.

Regulus gasped so sharply it was nearly a shriek.

Then he clapped both hands over his mouth.

The dragon fluttered toward him, trailing little sparks from its nostrils. Regulus sat utterly still, eyes shining, as it landed on the blanket in his lap.

“It is little,” he whispered.

James sat cross-legged nearby. “Yeah.”

“Does he have name?”

“Er.” James glanced around. “No.”

Regulus looked horrified. “He does not have a name?”

“Terrible parenting,” Remus said solemnly.

James pointed at him. “Unhelpful.”

Regulus leaned very close to the dragon. It flapped its wings and sneezed a puff of smoke.

Regulus giggled.

Peter sniffed hard again.

Regulus whispered, “Bonjour, Monsieur Dragon.”

The dragon chirped.

Regulus looked around with sudden importance. “He is Monsieur Dragon.”

Fabian nodded gravely. “A fine name.”

Gideon added, “Dignified.”

Regulus smiled at them both. “You look same.”

“We’re twins,” Gideon said.

Regulus brightened. “Like two dinosaurs from same egg.”

Fabian opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Looked at Gideon.

Gideon nodded thoughtfully. “That is exactly what we are.”

Regulus laughed again, louder this time.

It was a bubbling, breathless sound, high and bright. The dragon hopped in his lap. Regulus leaned back, giggling harder, and Mary made a noise like she was being physically crushed by cuteness.

“He has dimples,” she whispered.

Sirius stared at the fire.

“Yeah,” he said.

Everyone looked at him.

His voice had gone distant. “He used to.”

Regulus looked up. “I used to what?”

Sirius’s eyes flicked to him. “Smile.”

Regulus tilted his head. “I smile now.”

“Yeah.”

“Do I stop?”

No one had an answer.

The fire popped.

Regulus seemed to sense, again, that he had stepped into something grown and broken. He hugged the blanket tighter.

“Maybe I forget how,” he said.

Lily’s eyes filled at once.

“No,” James said suddenly.

Regulus looked at him.

James leaned forward, elbows on knees. His voice was fierce. “No. You don’t forget how. People can make it hard, but that’s different. It’s not gone.”

Regulus frowned. “Like when you put a toy in a box and forget?”

James nodded like this was the most important theory ever proposed. “Exactly like that.”

“But it is still in the box.”

“Exactly.”

Regulus looked down at the dragon in his lap. “Then you can find it.”

“Yes.”

Regulus nodded very seriously. “Okay.”

Sirius pressed the heel of his hand against his eye.

Remus saw.

He looked away, giving him that much mercy.

For a little while, the room shifted into something strange and fragile.

Not normal. Never normal.

But less sharp.

Regulus sat on the rug with James’s toy dragon in his lap and the red blanket around his shoulders like a cloak. He asked everyone questions with the reckless curiosity of a child whose fear kept losing against interest.

Mary had “very shiny eyes” and did not know if dragons liked toast. Lily’s hair still did not burn, which Regulus checked twice. Alice had nice hands and laughed “like bells but little ones.” Frank was “as tall as a tree but not green.” Fabian and Gideon were “egg brothers.” Peter looked “like he knows where biscuits are,” which Peter found so flattering he nearly cried again. Marlene was “scary but in a good way, like a knight with a sword.”

Marlene silently mouthed, “I’m a knight,” at Mary and looked absurdly proud.

Remus became an immediate favourite because he answered every dinosaur question seriously.

“No, I don’t think a dragon counts as a dinosaur,” Remus said.

Regulus frowned so hard his little nose wrinkled. “Why?”

“Different classifications.”

“What is class-if-fi-ca-shuns?”

“Groups.”

“Oh.” Regulus considered this. “Like houses.”

“Yes, a little.”

“Dragons are Slytherin,” Regulus declared.

James gasped. “How dare you.”

Regulus hugged Monsieur Dragon protectively. “He is green inside.”

“He is red outside.”

“That is his business.”

Remus smiled into his hand.

Sirius watched from the armchair, quieter than anyone had ever seen him. He had not joined in much. He answered when Regulus asked him something, but he did not reach again. He did not risk making him flinch.

Regulus noticed anyway.

Of course he did.

He noticed everything in scattered bursts: the dragon’s wing, the chess pieces, the fire, Mary’s braid, Sirius’s silence.

After asking Remus whether a dragon could fight a T. rex and accepting the answer “depends on the dragon,” Regulus stood up suddenly and toddled toward Sirius.

Sirius went still.

Regulus stopped in front of him.

Tiny. Barely reaching Sirius’s knee.

“You are sad,” Regulus said.

Sirius swallowed. “No.”

Regulus gave him a deeply unimpressed look.

It was so familiar, so sharply Regulus despite the soft cheeks and childish mouth, that James almost laughed and almost sobbed at the same time.

“You are lying,” Regulus said.

Sirius huffed a faint laugh. “Yeah. I am.”

“That is naughty.”

“I know.”

“Why you sad?”

The room quieted again.

Sirius looked at his little brother.

His brother.

This tiny child who did not know him.

This tiny child who did not remember being left behind or learning to stop smiling or becoming the boy Sirius could not look at without seeing every hallway he had escaped.

“I knew you,” Sirius said.

Regulus blinked. “When?”

“When you were little.”

“I am little.”

Sirius’s mouth twitched painfully. “Yeah. You are.”

Regulus stepped closer and put one hand on Sirius’s knee. “Was I nice?”

Sirius broke.

Not loudly. Not the way Peter had. Sirius had always been good at turning pain into performance, but this was too deep for drama. His face simply crumpled, just for a second before he looked away.

Regulus looked alarmed. “I was not nice?”

“You were,” Sirius said quickly. “You were lovely.”

Regulus stared at him.

Sirius forced himself to look back.

“You were my favourite person.”

The room stopped breathing.

Regulus’s eyes widened.

“Really?”

Sirius nodded.

“More than dragons?”

Despite everything, Sirius gave a broken laugh. “More than dragons.”

Regulus looked awed.

Then suspicious.

“Why don’t I know you?”

Sirius had no answer that would not destroy them both.

So he told a smaller truth.

“Because something went wrong.”

Regulus’s little fingers tightened on his knee. “Can you fix it?”

Sirius looked at him for a long moment.

“I don’t know.”

Regulus nodded slowly. He seemed to accept uncertainty better than lies. Then he climbed, with great effort and very little grace, onto Sirius’s lap.

Sirius froze completely.

Regulus settled himself sideways across Sirius’s thighs, dragging the blanket and dragon with him, elbow digging directly into Sirius’s stomach.

“Oof,” Sirius said.

“Sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

Regulus shifted, accidentally kneeing him.

“Ow.”

“Sorry!”

“It’s fine.”

Regulus went very still. “I can get down.”

“No.” Sirius’s arms hovered helplessly. “No, you can stay. If you want.”

Regulus studied him.

Then leaned against his chest.

Just like in the corridor.

This time, Sirius let his arms close slowly around him.

The common room watched the older Black brother hold the younger one like he was something breakable that had already been broken once.

Regulus rubbed the dragon’s bent wing.

“Your heart is loud,” he informed Sirius.

Sirius looked down at him. “Is it?”

“Yes. Boom boom boom.” Regulus tapped Sirius’s chest with one finger. “Like dragon feet.”

James whispered, “Dragon feet.”

Lily shushed him, but she was crying now, silently.

Sirius pressed his cheek carefully to Regulus’s curls.

Regulus allowed it.

For three whole breaths, he allowed it.

Then he said, “You smell like trouble.”

A laugh burst out of James so violently he nearly fell sideways.

Even Sirius laughed then. Properly, though it cracked halfway through.

Regulus smiled against his chest, pleased with himself.

The moment could have stayed soft.

It did not.

Because Regulus shifted, reaching for the dragon when it fluttered toward the arm of the chair, and his robe collar slipped wide enough to expose the mark at the base of his throat.

Sirius saw it first.

He went rigid.

Regulus felt it and looked up. “What?”

Sirius did not answer.

Lily was on her feet in an instant. “Sirius?”

Regulus touched his own neck. His fingers brushed the mark.

It was not a bruise.

Not exactly.

It had the faint, branching shape of spell damage, like lightning trapped beneath skin. A curse scar. Old and silvered, but angry at the edges as if magic remembered pain even after time did not.

Remus’s face went ash-grey.

James whispered, “Is that from—”

“Don’t,” Sirius said.

Regulus touched the scar again, curious. “I have another?”

Sirius’s arms tightened before he could stop himself.

Regulus looked down at the grip.

Sirius forced himself to loosen.

“What do you mean, another?” Lily asked softly.

Regulus pushed back his sleeve and pointed at the twist near his wrist. “This one. And this one. And the little lines. I dunno why. They are like secret drawings.”

Marlene stood again, shaking.

Mary grabbed her hand.

Frank’s jaw clenched.

Alice’s eyes had gone cold in a way none of them had seen before.

Regulus looked around, confused by their faces. “Are secret drawings bad?”

“No,” Remus said, voice rough. “No.”

“But you all look bad.”

“We’re upset,” Alice said.

“Because drawings?”

“Because someone hurt you.”

Regulus stared at her.

Then he looked down at himself like the idea had never occurred to him.

“Oh,” he said. “But I am not hurt now.”

That was somehow worse.

James got up and walked to the window.

Peter sat very still, hands clasped so tightly his knuckles were white.

Sirius looked at the scar on Regulus’s neck and heard his mother’s voice in memory.

Not words. Just tone.

That high, cruel precision. The way Walburga could make a room shrink. The way Orion could go silent and somehow that was worse.

He had known. Of course he had known. He had grown up there. He had scars of his own.

But knowing and seeing were different beasts.

Seeing five-year-old Regulus wearing scars he did not understand made the years between childhood and Hogwarts look like a corridor lined with locked doors, and behind every door was something Sirius had chosen not to hear.

Regulus leaned back to look at him. “Your face is doing the sad again.”

Sirius’s throat closed.

Regulus lifted one tiny hand and poked the corner of Sirius’s mouth.

“Smile goes here,” he said.

A sound moved through the room, wounded and soft.

Sirius tried.

It was terrible.

Regulus frowned. “No. Bad smile.”

James laughed once, helplessly.

Sirius gave a real, broken little smile then because he could not help it.

Regulus nodded, satisfied. “Better.”

Then, with the ruthless attention span of a five-year-old, he twisted in Sirius’s lap and pointed at the chessboard.

“Can horses fight castles?”

Fabian rubbed both hands over his face. “I’ll explain chess to him or I’ll throw myself out the window.”

Gideon stood. “I’ll assist.”

“In chess or the window?”

“Yes.”

Regulus wriggled down from Sirius’s lap, landed on his feet, overbalanced, and grabbed Sirius’s knee to steady himself.

“Careful,” Sirius murmured.

Regulus looked up. “I am careful.”

He turned around and immediately walked into the side of the armchair.

James barked a laugh.

Regulus stared at the chair, offended. “It moved.”

“It did,” Sirius said instantly.

James looked at him.

Sirius glared.

James nodded. “Treacherous chair.”

Regulus pointed sternly at it. “No.”

The chair remained repentant.

Regulus marched back to the chessboard with the blanket trailing behind him like a royal cloak and the little dragon perched on his shoulder. Fabian and Gideon cleared space for him while the chess pieces preened under the attention.

The room fell into little pockets of conversation around him.

Not because anyone had forgotten.

Because everyone needed somewhere to put their hands, their eyes, their anger.

Lily pulled James aside near the window.

“What spell, exactly?”

James rubbed his face. “It was meant to bind the string. It hit the armour, ricocheted, and changed. I don’t know how.”

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t know, Lily.”

She looked back at Regulus, who was currently listening to Gideon explain pawns with the grave attention of a boy being taught ancient war strategy.

“He can’t go back to Slytherin like this,” she said.

“I know.”

“He can’t go to his family.”

James’s face hardened. “I know.”

“And Sirius—”

“I know.”

Lily looked at him sharply. “Do you?”

James followed her gaze.

Sirius was still in the chair, watching Regulus with a look so nakedly devastated it felt indecent to see. Remus had moved to sit near him, not speaking. Just there.

James lowered his voice. “He hates him.”

“No,” Lily said.

James blinked. “What?”

“Sirius doesn’t hate him.” Lily looked back at James. “He hates what Regulus reminds him of.”

James’s mouth pressed into a line.

By the chessboard, Regulus gasped as a pawn moved.

“He is brave,” Regulus declared.

Fabian smiled faintly. “Very brave.”

“He is little and still goes first.”

Gideon looked down at the pawn.

Then up at his brother.

Then at the child in front of them.

“Yeah,” Gideon said quietly. “He does.”

Regulus picked up the pawn carefully, with both hands, as if it were precious.

The pawn kicked its tiny legs in protest.

Regulus held it close. “He needs a rest.”

“The pawn?” Fabian asked.

“He did fighting.”

Fabian, who had watched friends jinx each other unconscious for entertainment and laughed through most of it, looked like he had been stabbed by a butter knife.

“Right,” he said weakly. “Rest for the pawn.”

Regulus tucked the pawn into the fold of his blanket.

The other chess pieces began protesting.

Regulus frowned at them. “Shh. He is tired.”

A queen put both hands on her hips.

Regulus leaned in and whispered, “You can have rest too after.”

The queen seemed mollified.

Alice, watching this from the sofa, whispered, “He’s nurturing them.”

Marlene said nothing.

Mary hugged a cushion to her chest. “He treats chess pieces better than anyone treated him.”

Marlene got up and walked to the fireplace.

Mary followed.

At the window, James looked ill.

Lily touched his arm. “You didn’t mean to hit him.”

James swallowed. “Accident is not naughty.”

He said it like the words had teeth.

Lily’s expression softened despite herself. “No. But it is still yours to fix.”

James nodded. “I know.”

Behind them, Regulus suddenly popped upright.

“Biscuits?”

Peter nearly fell off his chair. “What?”

Regulus looked at him with absolute trust. “You know where biscuits are.”

Everyone turned to Peter.

Peter blinked, then sat up straighter, visibly honoured by his sacred calling. “I do, actually.”

Regulus’s face glowed.

Peter went to a cupboard near the corner and pulled out a tin. “We’ve got shortbread, I think.”

Regulus whispered, “Shortbread.”

The reverence in his voice could have blessed a church.

Peter brought him one.

Regulus accepted it with both hands. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Regulus held the biscuit but did not eat.

Peter crouched. “You can have it.”

Regulus nodded.

Still did not eat.

Sirius leaned forward. His voice was careful. “Reggie?”

Regulus looked at him.

“You can eat it.”

Regulus looked down. “Now?”

“Yes.”

“But it is not breakfast.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

Regulus looked scandalised and delighted. “Biscuits can be not breakfast?”

“Usually biscuits are not breakfast,” Remus said.

Regulus turned to him, horrified. “Why?”

James muttered, “He’s got a point.”

Regulus nibbled one tiny corner.

Then stopped.

His eyes went wide.

“Good?” Peter asked.

Regulus nodded fast, curls bouncing.

He took another bite, then another, then paused as if remembering something and held the biscuit out toward Sirius.

“You want some?”

Sirius stared at the half-eaten biscuit.

“No, it’s yours.”

Regulus frowned. “Sharing is good.”

Sirius’s chest hurt.

“All right,” he said.

Regulus toddled over and held up the biscuit. Sirius took the tiniest possible bite.

Regulus beamed.

Then he looked around the room, distressed.

“Everybody needs some.”

James coughed. “That’s only one biscuit, love.”

The word slipped out.

James froze.

Regulus did too.

Sirius’s eyes snapped to James.

James looked ready to fling himself into the fire.

Regulus looked up at him. “Love?”

James opened his mouth.

No sound came out.

Mary rescued him, voice soft. “It’s like sweetheart. A kind word.”

Regulus’s expression went distant with thought. “For people who are loved.”

“Yes,” Mary said.

Regulus looked at James. “You love me?”

James Potter, loudest boy in Gryffindor, went utterly silent.

The older Regulus would have sneered. Would have turned that question into a blade and slid it neatly between James’s ribs.

This Regulus just asked.

Genuine. Curious. A little hopeful.

James crouched in front of him. His eyes were suspiciously bright.

“I think,” James said carefully, “right now, it would be very hard not to.”

Regulus stared at him.

Then his face went pink.

“Oh.”

He looked down at his biscuit.

Then shoved the rest of it into James’s hand and ran back to the chessboard, apparently overwhelmed beyond function.

James stared after him, holding the biscuit like a sacred relic.

Marlene whispered, “Potter, are you crying?”

“No.”

“You are.”

“I have biscuit dust in my eye.”

“In both eyes?”

“It was a powerful biscuit.”

Regulus sat down beside the chessboard again, cheeks still flushed, and began explaining to the pawn in his blanket that love was “maybe when people share biscuits and do not shout.”

Remus bowed his head.

Sirius stood.

This time, when he walked toward the fireplace, he did not hit anything. He gripped the mantel until his knuckles went white.

Mary glanced at Lily.

Lily shook her head slightly.

Let him breathe.

The common room settled again, but under everything was the knowledge of what had been revealed and what had not yet.

Because a child like Regulus could not keep secrets the way the older one did.

The older Regulus was a locked cabinet.

This one was a drawer left open because he had not learned yet that people steal what they can see.

It came out in pieces.

Small things.

Awful things.

He did not like loud footsteps behind him.

When Fabian approached too quickly, Regulus ducked so fast his forehead nearly hit the table. Fabian froze, horror spreading over his face. Regulus popped back up a second later and said, “Sorry,” as if he had done something embarrassing.

He asked whether Gryffindor children were allowed to sit on rugs, because in the “good room” at home he was not allowed unless told.

He knew how to hold his breath for a very long time. He demonstrated proudly until Lily panicked and told him to stop.

He could recite three constellations, two French nursery rhymes, the proper way to greet a ministry official, and the difference between a Diplodocus and an Apatosaurus, but he could not tie his laces properly because “Kreacher does it when Maman forgets I have feet.”

He laughed when the dragon sneezed smoke.

He went silent when someone upstairs slammed a trunk.

He knew eleven ways to be quiet.

He knew what Crucio meant.

Not the theory.

Not the illegal curse as described in Defence books.

He knew the word the way a child knew the name of a bad dog next door.

When Remus asked too gently, “Where did you hear that?” Regulus shrugged and said, “Home,” and went back to making Monsieur Dragon fight a knight.

Sirius left the room for exactly seven minutes.

James followed him after one.

They stood in the stairwell outside the portrait hole where the castle was cold again and the Fat Lady pretended very hard not to listen.

Sirius had both hands in his hair.

James stood three steps below him, quieter than he had been all night.

“I didn’t know,” James said.

Sirius laughed.

It was ugly.

“You knew enough.”

James took the blow without flinching. “Yeah.”

Sirius turned on him, eyes bright and furious. “Did you? Did you know enough? Because I didn’t. I was there and I didn’t know enough.”

“You were a kid.”

“So was he.”

James’s face twisted.

Sirius jabbed a finger toward the portrait. “He was five. Five, James. And he already— he already—” His voice failed. He swallowed and tried again. “He doesn’t remember me.”

James climbed one step. “Pads.”

“He doesn’t remember me,” Sirius said again, like if he repeated it enough it would start making sense. “He looked at me like I was a stranger.”

“He’s five right now.”

“He knew me at five.”

James said nothing.

Sirius pressed his palms into his eyes. “He knew me. He used to follow me everywhere. He used to cry if I left the room too long. He called me Siri when he couldn’t say Sirius. He used to—” His breath broke. “He used to smile.”

James looked down.

“I hated him,” Sirius whispered.

James’s head snapped up. “No.”

“Yes.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I did.”

“No.” James’s voice sharpened. “You hated your family. You hated the way he talked because they taught him the words. You hated that he stayed because you couldn’t make him leave. You hated yourself and pointed it at him because he was there.”

Sirius stared at him.

James held his gaze.

“That’s not the same,” James said.

“It feels the same to him.”

James had no answer.

Behind the portrait, faintly, Regulus laughed again.

Sirius flinched.

James looked toward the sound. “He’s still in there.”

Sirius swallowed.

“Pads,” James said quietly. “He’s still in there.”

Sirius looked at him like the words were too dangerous to touch.

James stepped closer. “Not just because of the spell.”

Sirius’s face crumpled again, but he forced it back into place with a violence James hated watching.

“I don’t know how to fix it.”

“Then don’t fix it all at once.”

“That’s your advice?”

James gave a tiny helpless shrug. “It’s all I’ve got.”

Sirius laughed, softer this time. “You’re terrible at this.”

“Yeah.” James’s mouth twitched. “But I have a dragon.”

Sirius looked at him.

Then, despite everything, he snorted.

The Fat Lady sniffed from the frame. “Are you boys finished having emotional revelations in my corridor?”

Sirius glared at her. “No one asked you.”

“I am surrounded by drama and given no courtesy.”

James patted the frame. “You’re doing great.”

She sniffed again but swung open.

When they returned, Regulus was standing on the sofa.

Not sitting.

Standing.

The red blanket was tied around his shoulders. Monsieur Dragon perched on his head. Gideon stood nearby with both hands hovering in case he fell. Fabian looked like he was encouraging this bad decision and regretting it simultaneously.

Regulus had one fist raised.

“I am a Brachiosaurus,” he announced.

Remus, seated on the rug, looked up solemnly. “Very convincing.”

Regulus stretched his neck as long as it could go. “I am eating leaves.”

Mary held up a cushion.

Regulus leaned down and pretended to chomp it.

Alice clutched her chest. “Terrifying.”

Frank said, “I’ve never seen anything so majestic.”

Marlene, from the armchair, said, “Needs more roaring.”

Regulus frowned down at her. “Brachiosaurus maybe does not roar.”

“What does he do then?”

Regulus thought about this very hard.

Then he made a deep, warbling sound that resembled a broken trumpet falling down stairs.

The entire room burst into laughter.

Regulus laughed too, lost his balance, and tipped sideways.

Gideon caught him.

Regulus squealed, then giggled so hard he went limp.

Gideon held him away from his chest, panicked. “Why is he floppy?”

“He does that when he laughs,” Sirius said.

Everyone looked at him.

Sirius had said it without thinking.

Regulus, still dangling in Gideon’s hands, looked at him upside down.

“I do?”

Sirius stepped closer. “You did.”

Regulus grinned upside down, dimples deep. “I am floppy.”

Gideon looked emotionally compromised. “He is floppy.”

“Put the floppy dinosaur down,” Remus advised.

Gideon set Regulus carefully back on the sofa.

Regulus bounced once, then scrambled down, energy already moving elsewhere. He ran three steps toward Sirius, got distracted by Peter’s biscuit tin, veered sharply, then stopped because Lily said, “Walking feet, please.”

He froze.

Everyone froze with him.

Regulus slowly looked at her.

Lily’s face went pale. “I didn’t mean—”

But Regulus only nodded seriously. “Walking feet.”

Then he walked with exaggerated care across the room, lifting his knees high like a tiny soldier.

Mary melted into the sofa.

Marlene whispered, “I would die for him.”

Frank said, very quietly, “I think we all might.”

Regulus reached Sirius and held up both arms.

Sirius stared.

Regulus waited.

Sirius crouched.

“What?”

“Up,” Regulus said.

The word was simple. Trusting. Dangerous.

Sirius lifted him.

Regulus settled against him more easily now, one arm around Sirius’s neck, the dragon clutched in his other hand. His cheek pressed to Sirius’s shoulder.

Sirius closed his eyes.

Regulus patted the back of his neck. “You are still sad.”

“A little.”

“I can tell you dinosaur facts.”

Sirius’s laugh shook. “That might help.”

Regulus nodded. “Okay. Did you know T. rex has very big bite but little arms, but little arms are still arms, and maybe he is sad when people laugh at them, so we should not.”

Sirius held him tighter.

Regulus continued, voice warm against his neck. “And maybe he is good at hugs but only little ones.”

James turned away again.

Lily leaned into Mary, crying silently.

Remus looked into the fire, eyes shining.

Sirius whispered, “Maybe.”

Regulus pulled back suddenly. “Do you know stars?”

Sirius looked at him. “Some.”

“I am a star.”

“I know.”

Regulus beamed. “Regulus is the little king.”

“Yes.”

“Maman says I must be a good king.”

Sirius’s face hardened. “Does she?”

Regulus nodded, then leaned in confidentially. “But I think kings should have dragons.”

James said, “Strong political platform.”

Frank nodded. “I’d vote for that.”

Lily wiped her eyes. “Kings should be kind too.”

Regulus looked at her over Sirius’s shoulder. “Yes.”

Marlene asked, “And scary?”

Regulus nodded gravely. “If monsters come.”

“What monsters?” Peter asked before he could think better of it.

Regulus went quiet.

The warmth thinned.

He looked down at Monsieur Dragon, rubbing his thumb over the painted eye.

“House monsters,” he said.

No one moved.

Regulus’s voice became very small. “They look like people.”

Sirius stopped breathing.

Regulus frowned, as if trying to solve a puzzle he did not yet have all the pieces for. “Sometimes they are nice in front of guests.”

James’s hands curled into fists.

Remus said, gently, “And when there aren’t guests?”

Regulus did not answer.

He pushed Monsieur Dragon’s wing up and down.

After a moment, he whispered, “Then you be quiet.”

Sirius pressed his face into Regulus’s curls.

Regulus patted him again, distracted and comforting.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I am very good at quiet.”

That was the line that undid Sirius completely.

He did not sob, not really, but his breath broke and broke again. He held Regulus carefully, so carefully, like gentleness could rewrite history if he got it exactly right.

Regulus pulled back, alarmed. “You are crying?”

“No.”

Regulus touched Sirius’s cheek.

His fingers came away wet.

“You are.”

Sirius did not deny it again.

Regulus stared at the tear on his finger.

Then, with the solemn certainty of a child offering medicine, he pressed a kiss to Sirius’s cheek.

The room went utterly silent.

Sirius froze.

Regulus sat back, shy now, worried he had misstepped. “Kisses help sometimes,” he whispered. “Only if not bad.”

Sirius stared at him.

Then he pulled Regulus against his chest and hid his face in the small shoulder.

“It’s not bad,” Sirius said, voice wrecked. “It’s not bad.”

Regulus relaxed, pleased.

Over Sirius’s shoulder, his eyes found James.

“Messy hair,” he said.

James laughed wetly. “That’s my name now, is it?”

Regulus nodded. “Messy Hair.”

“I have been called worse.”

Regulus looked around and pointed, assigning titles with sudden authority.

“Fire Hair,” he said to Lily.

Lily smiled. “Honoured.”

“Biscuit Finder,” he said to Peter.

Peter sat up proudly.

“Book Boy,” to Remus.

“Fair.”

“Knight Lady,” to Marlene.

Marlene pressed a fist over her heart.

“Soft Voice,” to Mary.

Mary smiled through tears.

“Bell Laugh,” to Alice.

Alice sniffed.

“Tree Man,” to Frank.

Frank gave a little bow from his chair.

“Egg Brother One,” to Fabian.

Fabian nodded solemnly.

“Egg Brother Two,” to Gideon.

Gideon saluted.

Regulus turned back to Sirius.

He hesitated.

Sirius waited, heart in his throat.

Regulus touched his collar.

“Warm One,” he said softly.

Sirius shut his eyes.

Nobody made a sound.

Warm One.

Not brother.

Not Sirius.

Not family.

Not yet.

But something.

A start.

Remus, practical because someone had to be or they would all drown in feeling, cleared his throat softly. “We still need to decide what to do.”

Regulus looked at him. “About what?”

“About you staying here.”

Regulus’s little face pinched. “I cannot stay?”

“You can,” James said quickly. “You can.”

“In Gryffindor?”

“Yes.”

“But I am not lion.”

Marlene leaned forward. “You can be an honorary lion.”

Regulus looked suspicious. “Do I need mane?”

Fabian said, “We can make one.”

“No,” Lily, Remus, and Mary said at once.

Regulus giggled.

Remus continued, “The spell hasn’t worn off. It may not tonight. We need to keep you safe.”

Regulus looked around. “From monsters?”

Sirius answered before anyone else could.

“Yes.”

Regulus studied his face. Then he nodded.

“Okay.”

It was too much trust.

Not complete trust. Not easy trust. But enough that the room understood the weight of it.

Lily fetched more blankets. Mary found a softer cushion. Peter discovered two more biscuits and looked like a hero in his own mind. Frank moved the low table so Regulus could not run into it again. Alice coaxed the chess pieces into behaving. Fabian and Gideon began constructing what they called “a royal dinosaur nest” in the corner near the fire until Lily told them it looked like a laundry accident and took over.

Regulus helped by carrying one cushion at a time with great seriousness.

He dropped one on his own foot.

“Ow,” he said, then looked surprised. “I said ow.”

James crouched. “You all right?”

Regulus nodded. “The cushion attacked.”

“Common problem.”

Regulus narrowed his eyes at the cushion. “You say sorry.”

James looked at the cushion.

Then at Regulus.

Then at Sirius, who raised one eyebrow in silent command.

James sighed. “Sorry, Regulus’s foot.”

Regulus nodded. “Good.”

Marlene whispered to Mary, “I am never recovering from this.”

Mary whispered back, “None of us are.”

The nest became a pile of blankets and cushions close enough to the fire to be warm but not dangerous. Regulus inspected it like a tiny royal architect, then placed Monsieur Dragon in the middle.

“For guarding,” he explained.

“Excellent,” Remus said.

Regulus climbed in, then immediately climbed out again.

Everyone looked at him.

“I am not tired.”

Sirius gave a faint, exhausted laugh. “No one said you were.”

“I do not need sleep.”

“We know.”

“I am awake.”

“Very awake.”

Regulus nodded, pleased that this was understood, then spun in a tiny circle and nearly fell over.

The room moved as one.

Six people reached out.

Regulus steadied himself and blinked at the forest of hands.

Then he burst into giggles.

“You all scared.”

“Yes,” James said. “You are terrifying.”

Regulus grinned and showed the little gap of his teeth. “I am dragon.”

“You are,” Sirius said softly.

Regulus ran—walked fast, after Lily’s look—back to Sirius and grabbed his hand.

“Come see nest.”

Sirius let himself be dragged three steps.

Regulus pointed proudly. “It is good.”

“It is.”

“You can sit.”

Sirius hesitated.

The nest was very small.

Regulus tugged his hand harder. “Sit.”

Sirius sat on the floor beside it, long legs folded awkwardly.

Regulus immediately climbed into his lap instead of the nest.

James opened his mouth.

Lily shook her head sharply.

James closed his mouth.

Regulus leaned against Sirius, holding the dragon. “Tell me star.”

Sirius looked down. “Which one?”

“Me.”

The room went quiet again, but softer this time.

Sirius looked toward the window, where the night pressed black and deep beyond the glass.

“Regulus is in Leo,” he said. “The lion.”

Regulus frowned. “But I am snake.”

“You said you weren’t.”

“I am boy.”

“That too.”

Regulus nodded, accepting the correction.

Sirius continued, voice low. “It’s one of the brightest stars in the constellation. It means little king.”

“I know that.”

“I know you know.”

Regulus smiled.

Sirius swallowed. “It’s also called the heart of the lion.”

Regulus went very still.

James looked at Remus.

Remus looked down.

Regulus tilted his face up toward Sirius. “Heart?”

Sirius nodded.

“But I am Slytherin.”

Sirius’s mouth trembled.

“Stars don’t care about houses,” Remus said quietly.

Regulus looked at him. “They don’t?”

“No.”

Regulus thought about this.

Then he settled back against Sirius.

“I like that.”

Sirius rested his chin lightly on Regulus’s head.

“So do I.”

The fire cracked softly.

Outside, the castle shifted and breathed.

Inside, Gryffindors sat in a room they had thought they understood, around a child they had thought they hated. They watched him fiddle with the dragon’s wing, whispering little French words to it under his breath. They watched him lean against Sirius as if some part of his body remembered safety even when his mind did not remember the boy who had once provided it. They watched the scars catch firelight and fade again beneath cloth.

The spell did not end.

No glow. No sudden rush of height and memory. No teenage Regulus snapping back into place with a sneer and a wand in hand. No convenient return to normal.

The night kept going.

Regulus stayed small.

He stayed awake, too bright and curious and restless, asking whether lions could be friends with dragons, whether chess pawns had birthdays, whether biscuits counted as dinner if there were enough of them, whether Hogwarts had dinosaur books, whether the moon was following him because it liked him, whether Sirius could fly upside down tomorrow, whether the dragon could sleep in the nest even if Regulus did not, because dragons needed rest after guarding.

And every answer became a vow none of them knew how to say aloud.

Yes, lions could be friends with dragons.

Yes, pawns could have birthdays.

No, biscuits were not dinner, but maybe one more.

Yes, Hogwarts had dinosaur books.

Yes, perhaps the moon liked him.

Yes, Sirius could show him flying one day.

Yes, the dragon could rest.

Yes, Regulus could stay.

Yes, no one would write home.

Yes, no one would let the monsters in.

Much later, though still not morning, Regulus sat in the blanket nest with Sirius beside him, James across from him, Remus reading softly from a book that had absolutely nothing to do with dinosaurs but was being edited aloud to include them. Peter guarded the biscuit tin like a sacred post. Lily and Mary sat shoulder to shoulder on the sofa. Marlene sharpened a quill with unnecessary violence. Alice leaned against Frank, both quiet. Fabian and Gideon had fallen into a whispered debate about whether they could charm a cushion into the shape of a Stegosaurus without Lily noticing.

Regulus looked around at them all.

His eyes were heavy with no sleep, only feeling, but he fought it with the offended dignity of a boy determined not to miss anything.

“I am not mean now,” he said suddenly.

No one moved.

Sirius turned to him.

Regulus was rubbing the blanket edge again.

“I can stay not mean,” he said. “I can try.”

Sirius’s face broke open.

James leaned forward. “You don’t have to earn staying here.”

Regulus frowned. “Everybody earns.”

“Not this,” Lily said.

Regulus looked at her.

Mary’s voice trembled. “Not kindness.”

Regulus stared around the circle of faces.

For a moment, he looked lost.

Then he crawled out of the nest, blanket dragging behind him, and went person to person.

To Peter, he handed the chess pawn because “brave little ones need biscuit guards.”

To Mary, he gave the dragon for exactly three seconds so she could “feel brave too.”

To Marlene, he offered a very serious high-five because knights needed “battle hands.”

To Lily, he touched one red curl and whispered, “Still not burn.”

To Alice, he smiled just to make her laugh like bells again.

To Frank, he asked if trees got lonely being tall.

To Fabian and Gideon, he made them promise not to hatch from any eggs without telling him.

To Remus, he asked for “one more book word.”

Remus gave him “constellation.”

Regulus repeated it carefully, French accent curling around each syllable. “Con-stel-la-tion.”

Then he went to James.

He looked at the hair.

James braced himself.

Regulus reached up and patted the wild mess gently. “It is okay.”

James blinked. “My hair?”

Regulus nodded. “Maybe it is cool.”

James put a hand over his heart. “That is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

Lily rolled her eyes through tears.

Finally, Regulus returned to Sirius.

He stood between Sirius’s knees and looked up at him.

“Warm One?”

Sirius’s voice was barely there. “Yeah?”

Regulus lifted both arms.

Sirius picked him up immediately.

Regulus curled against him, not asleep, not even close, just tucked there with his eyes open and his small hand gripping Sirius’s jumper.

“I don’t remember you,” he whispered.

Sirius closed his eyes. “I know.”

Regulus pressed his ear to Sirius’s chest.

“But I think maybe my bones do.”

Sirius could not answer.

There were no words left in the room. Not ones big enough.

So Sirius held him.

The fire burned low. The castle watched. The night stretched on, unresolved and trembling, with the spell still wrapped around Regulus like a question no one knew how to undo.

And in the Gryffindor common room, surrounded by lions who had finally seen the child beneath the serpent’s skin, the smallest Black star stayed awake, bright-eyed and scarred and impossibly sweet, asking for one more story about dragons.

The biscuit tin became a conspiracy.

It happened slowly, which was always how the most dangerous things happened in Gryffindor Tower. Nobody meant to build a criminal organisation around feeding a magically de-aged five-year-old Slytherin biscuits after midnight, and yet, somehow, by the time the fire had burned down to a red-gold glow and the portrait hole had stopped muttering about improper hours, Peter Pettigrew had become the keeper of contraband shortbread, Fabian Prewett had located a suspicious packet of sugar quills from inside one of his socks, and Gideon Prewett had produced three chocolate frogs from a place nobody wanted to question.

Regulus, who had started the evening confused, frightened, and trying very hard to be small enough not to bother anyone, was now vibrating.

There was really no other word for it.

He sat in the blanket nest near the fire with Monsieur Dragon in his lap, one sugar quill clutched in his tiny hand, his curls a wild dark cloud around his head, his cheeks flushed pink from warmth and excitement. He had eaten half a shortbread biscuit, one corner of a chocolate frog, three bites of another biscuit because Peter had said it was “lonely,” and a sugar quill that he kept forgetting was food and using to point at people while he explained things.

His little legs bounced under the blanket.

His fingers tapped the dragon’s back.

His eyes darted everywhere.

He was bright as a spark and twice as likely to set something on fire.

“And then,” he said, very fast, French accent curling thicker around the words as his excitement outran his English, “if ze dragon is coming from ze left, not straight, because straight is stupid if ze chaser can see, you do not go down, non, you go up first because everybody looks down when zey are scared, because falling is ze thing, yes? But up is better because if you go up zen you can turn and drop and you are behind zem and zey go, oh no, where is little dragon? But little dragon is already gone.”

James Potter, who had been leaning forward with his elbows on his knees for the past ten minutes, stared at him like he was watching Merlin himself crawl out of a biscuit tin.

“That,” James said slowly, “is actually a brilliant feint.”

Regulus nodded so hard his curls bounced into his eyes. “Oui. Because everyone watches ze obvious way.”

Frank, who had moved from the table to the rug because apparently no one in the room was strong enough to remain distant from tiny Regulus Black talking about dragons and Quidditch, frowned thoughtfully. “That’s like when a Seeker climbs to bait the other one into thinking they’ve seen the Snitch above them.”

Regulus snapped his attention to Frank, thrilled. “Yes! But not only bait. Is also because sun. If ze sun is there—” He flung one small hand up toward the ceiling, sugar quill leaving a glittering line through the air. “—zen eyes go ow, and you have maybe one second where zey blink. One second is lots. One second is forever if you are fast.”

Marlene McKinnon, who had been pretending not to listen while actually listening with every inch of her body, sat up straighter. “That’s why you always fly into the glare.”

Regulus blinked at her. “What glare?”

“The sun glare,” Marlene said. “In matches. You— well. Older you. He does it all the time. I thought he was just being dramatic.”

Regulus looked offended. “Sun is useful.”

James whispered, “He uses the sun.”

Remus, sitting beside Lily on the sofa with a book forgotten in his lap, murmured, “You all play a sport in the air at high speed and forgot the sun existed?”

James pointed at him without looking away from Regulus. “Not now, Moony. I’m having an athletic crisis.”

Regulus giggled, immediately lost his grip on the sugar quill, tried to catch it, missed, knocked Monsieur Dragon onto his side, gasped, picked him up, patted his snout, and whispered, “Pardon, monsieur, you are very brave.”

Peter made a wounded noise from beside the biscuit tin.

Mary looked at him. “Peter.”

“I know,” Peter whispered. “I know, but he apologised to the dragon.”

“He did.”

“He tucked in the pawn earlier.”

“He did that too.”

Peter looked down at the biscuit tin as if seeking guidance from the gods of shortbread. “I’m not built for this.”

“You fed him half the sugar in the tower.”

Peter straightened. “That is slander.”

Fabian, on the other side of the rug, slid another chocolate frog under the low table with the smoothness of a trained thief.

Lily saw him.

Her eyes narrowed.

Fabian froze with his hand still under the table.

Lily said, very softly, “Fabian Prewett.”

Fabian looked up with the innocent expression of a man already condemned. “Lily Evans.”

“What is in your hand?”

“My hand?”

“The one you are hiding.”

Gideon leaned over to inspect it as if he had not been part of the crime. “Looks like a hand to me.”

Lily held out her palm. “Give it here.”

Fabian sighed and placed the chocolate frog in her hand.

Regulus gasped like she had confiscated a rare magical relic. “Frog.”

“No more frogs,” Lily said.

Regulus’s whole face fell.

The entire room suffered.

Lily visibly struggled.

“No,” she repeated, mostly to herself. “No, don’t look at me like that.”

Regulus tried very hard to stop looking at her like that, which only made it worse. He pressed his lips together. His dimples vanished. His eyes went huge and solemn and damp-looking.

“I am not looking,” he whispered, while looking.

James turned to the ceiling. “Evans, he’s killing us.”

“He is five and full of sugar.”

“I am not full,” Regulus said instantly. “There is more room.”

Peter nodded. “Scientifically true.”

Lily pointed at him. “Do not help.”

Regulus’s gaze snapped to Peter. “Science?”

Peter blinked. “Er.”

Regulus leaned forward with such sudden intensity that the blanket slid off one shoulder. “You know science?”

Peter looked terrified by the honour being offered to him. “A bit?”

“What bit?”

“Er. Plants?”

Regulus considered this. “Plants is science.”

“Yeah.”

“And potions maybe science. But magic science. Muggle science has no magic, so zey have to find other reasons. I like other reasons.”

Lily, who had been about to tuck the confiscated frog away on the mantelpiece, paused.

Remus noticed at once. “Regulus?”

The little boy had already moved on physically. He wriggled out of the nest, stood up, immediately forgot why he had stood, spun once, spotted James’s toy dragon, picked it up, put it on his own shoulder, and continued talking as though none of these actions interrupted the same thought.

“I heard ze little children talk about it,” he said. “In ze square. Muggle children. Zey had little bags and shoes with straps and one boy said, ‘Miss says if you take five from twelve is seven,’ but I did not know why twelve could lose five because numbers do not have pockets, but zen I thought maybe is like apples, yes? Twelve apples and five go away and zen seven are sad because zey are left. So I asked Maman and she said—”

He stopped.

Just stopped.

Like a door in his head had shut.

The fire cracked.

Lily’s fingers tightened around the chocolate frog.

Sirius, who had been sitting on the floor with his back against the armchair, lifted his head.

Regulus stood in the middle of the rug, sugar-bright and tiny, the dragon’s tail brushing his cheek. His mouth pressed into a little line.

James’s voice was careful. “What did she say?”

Regulus looked at the floor.

“That I should not talk like a dirty little squib.”

The words dropped into the room without drama.

That made them worse.

Peter’s face went slack.

Mary closed her eyes.

Marlene’s hand tightened so hard around the arm of the chair that the wood creaked.

Lily said nothing.

Regulus peeked up, reading all their faces, and immediately began to explain, as if he had done something wrong by making them upset.

“But I am not squib,” he said quickly. “I did magic when I was littler, I did, I made the ink go all over Papa’s desk but I did not mean to, and he was very cross because papers are important. So I am not squib. Maman was just angry. She says words when angry. It is only words.”

Sirius’s eyes turned black.

“Only words,” he repeated, almost silently.

Regulus nodded, relieved that someone understood. “Oui. Only words. Words do not leave marks.”

No one breathed.

Because they all knew now that words did.

Lily crouched slowly in front of him.

Not too close. Never too close without permission.

Regulus watched her carefully.

“Regulus,” she said, voice calm in a way that made James look at her with open awe, “what did you do after that?”

Regulus brightened again at once, because this part was safe. This part was his.

“I learned it.”

Lily blinked. “Subtraction?”

“Yes. And adding. And timesing.”

“Multiplication,” Remus supplied softly.

Regulus pointed at him with delight. “Yes! Multiplication. Is like lazy adding but clever. Because two and two and two and two is eight, but four twos is also eight, and zat is faster. I like faster.”

James leaned faintly toward Sirius and whispered, “That might be the most Regulus sentence I’ve ever heard.”

Sirius did not answer.

His eyes were fixed on his brother.

Lily’s expression had changed.

Only slightly.

She was still gentle, still crouched there in firelight with the chocolate frog forgotten in one hand, but there was something alert in her now. Something almost clinical, not cold but focused. Lily Evans had a way of looking at problems as if she could love them and solve them at the same time. It was what made Slughorn adore her and James Potter lose his mind twice a day.

“What else did you learn?” Lily asked.

Regulus rocked up onto his toes, then back onto his heels, then onto his toes again. “Lots.”

“Like what?”

“Numbers and letters and spelling because English is stupid.”

Remus made a quiet choking sound.

Regulus turned to him, passionate now. “It is! Why is knife with a k if you do not say k? Why? Is ze k shy? Why is enough not e-noo-guh? Why is through and rough not same? Who did zis?”

Mary whispered, “He’s right.”

“He is,” Remus said.

Regulus paced three steps, very fast, turned, paced back, nearly walked into Frank’s knee, patted it in apology, and kept going.

“French is better but also silly sometimes, but English is like someone dropped all ze letters and said, ah yes, perfect. So I got books. Not mine. In ze library, when Papa forgets to lock it, and I write words and say zem quiet and if I do not know I look in dictionary but dictionary is also stupid because you need know ze word to find ze word, which is rude.”

Alice, who had been silent for a while, made a small sound that was half laugh and half sob. “That is so true.”

Regulus nodded, pleased to be appreciated. “Oui. Rude book.”

Lily’s eyes flicked to Remus.

Remus was watching Regulus’s pacing.

So was she.

He could not stand still. That was the first thing.

Not in a naughty way. Not in a defiant way. He simply moved because something in him seemed to hum too loudly for stillness. His feet bounced. His fingers tapped. His thoughts came in bright leaps. He forgot the question halfway through answering it, then circled back five thoughts later with startling precision. He noticed everything, every spark from the fire, every whisper, every shift of tone, every crumb near Peter’s sleeve, but he could not hold his attention where anyone expected unless the subject caught fire inside him.

Dinosaurs.

Dragons.

Quidditch.

Numbers.

Words.

Then he could speak like a tiny professor with biscuit crumbs on his sleeve.

Lily watched him turn toward the chessboard because a knight had shifted, lose his sentence completely, crouch to tell the knight “no kicking,” then pop upright and continue exactly where he had left off.

“I know fractions too,” Regulus said. “Because cake. Cake is good for fractions because if Sirius has half and I have half zen is fair but if Sirius has big half and I have little half zen he is a liar.”

James looked at Sirius.

For the first time in ages, Sirius’s mouth twitched.

“Was I?”

Regulus looked at him with grave disappointment. “Maybe.”

James gasped. “Sirius Black, stealing cake from children?”

“I was also a child,” Sirius said.

“Still.”

Regulus nodded. “Still.”

Sirius’s tiny smile disappeared almost as soon as it came, but Regulus saw it and beamed like he had won something.

Lily sat back on her heels, studying him.

Mary noticed. “What?”

Lily glanced at her, then at Regulus, then lowered her voice.

“I think…” She hesitated, careful with the words. “I think this is more than sugar.”

Peter slowly shut the biscuit tin.

Fabian hid the second sugar quill behind his back.

Lily shot both of them a look. “Though the sugar is not helping.”

Gideon coughed.

“What do you mean?” Frank asked.

Lily kept her voice quiet, but the room bent toward her anyway.

“At my primary school, before Hogwarts, there was a boy in my class. He was clever. Really clever. But he never sat still. He’d tap, fidget, talk too fast, jump between ideas. Teachers kept saying he was naughty or not listening, but he was listening. He heard everything. Just not the way they wanted him to.” Her gaze returned to Regulus, who was now whispering to the chess pawn and tapping the same rhythm against his thigh over and over. “His mum said a doctor called it attention deficit, but that never sounded right to me, because it wasn’t that he had no attention. It was that his attention went everywhere, all at once, unless something mattered to him. Then it locked on like a spell.”

Remus’s brows drew together. “You think Regulus…”

“I think he might be like that.”

James looked at little Regulus, who had abandoned the chess pawn and begun explaining to Monsieur Dragon that if he wanted to defeat a knight he needed “not brute force, non, strategy.”

“But older Regulus doesn’t act like this,” James said.

Sirius’s voice was low. “Doesn’t he?”

Everyone looked at him.

Sirius did not look away from Regulus.

“He’s always doing something with his hands under the table,” he said. “Sleeve cuff. Ring. Quill. Edge of parchment. He notices every exit in a room. He can sit still, but it looks like it hurts.” His mouth twisted. “I thought it was because he was a Black.”

Remus spoke slowly. “He never looks like he’s not paying attention.”

“No,” Lily said. “Because he learned not to.”

That settled over them.

Heavy.

Obvious, once said.

Regulus Black at sixteen did not bounce. He did not ramble. He did not ask questions until his words tripped over themselves. He did not flap his hands when excited or run in circles around a rug or forget the biscuit in his hand because a thought had caught him by the throat. He did not show them any of it.

Because somewhere between five and sixteen, he had learned to crush the movement down.

To turn the tapping into a thumb pressed hard against a ring.

To turn the rambling into silence.

To turn curiosity into icy grades.

To turn excitement into a cold look.

To turn himself into something still enough to survive.

Mary said, very softly, “He must be exhausted.”

Nobody answered.

Because yes.

Yes, he must have been.

Regulus suddenly spun toward them. “Are you talking secrets?”

Lily smiled gently. “A little.”

“About me?”

“Yes.”

His smile dimmed.

He folded his hands behind his back.

That single movement hurt more than it should have.

“Sorry,” he said.

Lily’s face hardened against tears. “You don’t have to be sorry.”

“I was loud.”

“You’re allowed to be loud here.”

Regulus stared at her.

His face did something awful.

It did not believe her, but it wanted to.

“I am not allowed loud,” he said.

Sirius closed his eyes.

James leaned forward, elbows on knees, fists pressed together.

Lily stayed crouched. “Who says that?”

Regulus looked confused again, as if she had asked who said the sky was up.

“Maman. Papa. Grandmère in portrait. Auntie sometimes. Everybody if I am too much.”

Marlene’s voice came out sharp. “Too much?”

Regulus flinched.

Marlene immediately dragged a hand over her face. “Sorry. Sorry, not at you.”

Regulus watched her cautiously. “I talk lots. And I move lots. And I ask too many. Papa says questions are for people who know their place, not for little boys showing off.”

Frank’s expression darkened.

Regulus hurried on, words speeding up again, accent thickening until the consonants softened. “But I am not showing off, I just want to know because if nobody says zen how do you know? You cannot know by not knowing. Zat is stupid. But stupid is bad word. Sorry. Coin.”

He patted his pockets as if searching for one.

Peter, without thinking, reached into his own pocket and offered a knut.

Regulus looked delighted. “For jar?”

“For the jar,” Peter confirmed solemnly.

Regulus took it, marched to the mantelpiece, and placed it beside Lily’s confiscated chocolate frog.

“There,” he said. “Because I said stupid.”

James looked like he was in actual pain. “Regulus, mate, you’re allowed to say stupid.”

Regulus gasped. “No.”

“You are.”

“No.”

“Sometimes things are stupid.”

Regulus looked at Lily for confirmation.

Lily hesitated, then said, “Sometimes they are.”

Regulus’s eyes went wide. “Fire Hair.”

“It’s true.”

He looked around the room, scandalised and thrilled by the moral collapse of Gryffindor Tower. Then he whispered, “English spelling is stupid.”

Remus nodded solemnly. “Deeply.”

Regulus clapped both hands over his mouth and giggled.

The giggle turned into motion. He ran from the mantelpiece back to the nest, changed direction halfway because he spotted the sugar quill under the table, dropped to hands and knees to retrieve it, popped up, bumped into James, spun away, and launched into another thought with no warning.

“I know planets too.”

Lily blinked. “Do you?”

“Yes. Muggle planets. Not astrology planets. But same planets. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto maybe but maybe not, I don’t know because ze book was old and ze other book said different and I got angry.”

Remus stared at him. “You taught yourself astronomy?”

Regulus frowned. “No, stars are normal. Planets are science.”

“They are also astronomy.”

“Oh.” He absorbed that instantly. “Then yes.”

James slowly leaned toward Remus. “I didn’t know all the planets when I was five.”

Remus did not take his eyes off Regulus. “I’m trying not to take that as proof of anything.”

Regulus began counting on his fingers. “And gravity. Gravity is like sticking but invisible. It says no, you come down. But brooms say no thank you.”

Fabian choked.

Gideon pointed at him. “That is exactly how brooms work.”

Regulus brightened. “Yes! Because magic is arguments with science and sometimes magic wins.”

Lily made a small sound.

James looked over. “Evans?”

She was staring at Regulus with something like wonder now, grief and admiration braided too tightly to separate.

“He’s five,” she whispered.

Regulus heard her anyway. “I am almost six.”

“I know,” Lily said softly.

“I am very big.”

“You are.”

He nodded, satisfied, then crouched by the fire and held both hands toward it, not close enough to burn. His fingers fluttered in the warmth.

“Fire is hungry,” he said. “It eats wood and air.”

Remus blinked. “Combustion.”

Regulus whipped around. “What?”

“Combustion. That’s what fire does.”

Regulus’s entire body went still.

Then he scrambled across the rug so fast Sirius had to lunge to stop him smacking his knee on the table.

“Say again,” Regulus demanded, practically climbing into Remus’s lap.

Remus looked down at him, startled.

Regulus stared up, eyes shining. “Book Boy, say again.”

“Combustion,” Remus repeated.

Regulus’s mouth formed around it silently. “Com-bus-tion.”

“That’s when something burns. It reacts with oxygen and releases heat and light.”

Regulus’s eyes got bigger.

“Oxygen?”

Lily smiled faintly. “It’s part of air.”

Regulus turned on her, thrilled. “Air has parts?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” he whispered, as if she had just revealed buried treasure. “Oh, zat is clever.”

James looked at Sirius again.

Sirius was staring at his little brother like every new fact had become a blade.

“He asked,” Sirius said quietly.

James barely heard him. “What?”

“When we were little,” Sirius said. “He asked why fire needed air. I told him it didn’t. I was eight. I didn’t know.” His throat worked. “He kept asking. Mother told him curiosity was vulgar.”

Lily’s jaw tightened.

Regulus, oblivious, was now bouncing in place in front of her. “What other parts?”

“In air?”

“Yes.”

Lily settled properly onto the rug, folding her legs beneath her skirt. “Nitrogen, mostly. Oxygen. A little carbon dioxide. Other things too, in tiny amounts.”

Regulus listened like she was singing him a lullaby.

“Carbon,” he repeated carefully. “Di-ox-ide.”

“Very good.”

“What does it do?”

“Lots of things. Plants use it.”

Regulus twisted toward Peter with explosive excitement. “Plants!”

Peter startled. “Me?”

“You know plants!”

“A bit!”

“Plants eat air?”

Peter looked at Lily in panic. “Do they?”

Lily laughed softly. “In a way. They take in carbon dioxide and use light to make food.”

Regulus stared.

Then he stood up.

Then he sat down.

Then he stood again.

Then he spun.

Then he whispered, “Light food.”

Mary pressed both hands over her heart.

Regulus pointed at the fire. “Fire eats wood and air. Plants eat light and air. People eat biscuits.”

“An elegant scientific summary,” Remus said.

Regulus beamed. “I like science.”

James’s voice was rough. “Why didn’t you ever say?”

Regulus turned to him. “Say what?”

“When you’re older. You never talk about any of this.”

Regulus’s smile faded a little. He rubbed the sugar quill between his fingers until it bent.

“Maybe I forget.”

“No,” Lily said.

Everyone looked at her.

She did not look away from Regulus.

“I don’t think you forget.”

Regulus tilted his head.

Lily’s voice stayed gentle. “I think maybe you learn to hide it.”

Regulus stared at her for a long moment.

Then he looked down.

“I hide good,” he whispered.

Sirius’s hands curled into fists where they rested on his knees.

James looked away.

Marlene stood abruptly again, crossed the room, turned around, and came back because there was nowhere for her anger to go.

Regulus watched her pace. “Knight Lady?”

Marlene stopped instantly. “Yeah?”

“You are stomping.”

“I know.”

“Is floor bad?”

Her face crumpled and hardened at the same time. “No.”

“Then why stomp?”

“Because I can’t stomp the people I want to stomp.”

Regulus considered this.

Then nodded. “You can stomp cushion.”

Fabian immediately grabbed a cushion and placed it on the floor in front of Marlene like an offering.

Marlene stared at it.

Gideon whispered, “Stomp the cushion, Marls.”

“I am not stomping a cushion.”

Regulus looked disappointed.

Marlene lasted three seconds.

Then she lifted one boot and stomped the cushion.

Regulus shrieked with laughter.

The room cracked open again.

Marlene stomped it once more, dramatic, and Regulus laughed harder, bouncing on the spot, clapping his hands. Monsieur Dragon fell off his shoulder, and Peter dove to catch it with the reflexes of a man saving a Quaffle from hell.

“Got him!” Peter announced.

Regulus spun toward him. “Biscuit Finder saves dragon!”

Peter held the dragon aloft. “All in a night’s work.”

Fabian whispered to Gideon, “He’s going to be insufferable after this.”

Gideon whispered back, “He’s earned it.”

Regulus raced to Peter, took Monsieur Dragon, hugged him, then immediately whispered, “Thank you,” to Peter’s sleeve instead of Peter’s face because he was moving too quickly and had misjudged where Peter was. This made him laugh all over again.

He was not just hyper now.

He was fizzing.

The sugar had taken whatever restless little engine already lived in his bones and thrown Floo powder into it. He darted from person to person, asking questions, answering his own questions, forgetting halfway through one thought because another had shoved it aside, then circling back with eerie accuracy.

He asked Mary if braids were “hair plaits” and if plaits were like ropes and if ropes were like snakes and if Slytherin was therefore secretly a hair house.

He asked Alice if bells laughed or if people only said that because bells had no mouths.

He asked Frank whether trees could play Quidditch if they had broomsticks or whether they were too attached to the ground “emotionally and with roots.”

He asked Fabian and Gideon which of them hatched first.

“Birth,” Fabian corrected faintly.

Regulus waved this away. “Egg birthday.”

Gideon pointed at Fabian. “He did.”

Regulus looked at Fabian with solemn respect. “You escaped first.”

Fabian stared.

Then he looked at Gideon. “I escaped first.”

Gideon shoved him.

Regulus laughed, then abruptly stopped because a thought had hit him.

“If you are twins, did your maman know there was two?”

Fabian nodded. “Yes.”

Regulus frowned. “Before?”

“Before we were born? Yes.”

“How?”

“Mediwitches.”

Regulus’s frown deepened. “Could she pick?”

Fabian blinked. “Pick?”

“Which one to keep.”

The room died.

Just like that.

The laughter vanished.

Fabian’s face went blank with shock.

Gideon sat very slowly beside his brother.

Regulus looked between them, instantly anxious. “Was that wrong?”

“No,” Gideon said, voice low. “No, little star. Not wrong.”

Regulus twisted the dragon’s tail in his hands. “Maman says if there was two of me, she would send back the louder one.”

Sirius stood.

His movement was so sudden that Regulus flinched.

Sirius saw it and stopped dead.

“I’m not angry at you,” he said immediately.

Regulus watched him.

Sirius repeated, softer, “Not at you.”

Regulus swallowed. “It was funny.”

“No,” Marlene said, shaking. “No, it wasn’t.”

Regulus looked lost. “She laughed.”

Lily closed her eyes.

Mary’s voice barely came out. “Oh, baby.”

Regulus stiffened at the pet name, not from dislike but confusion, always confusion first, like affection was a puzzle with missing instructions.

“I am not baby,” he said, very quietly.

Mary wiped under one eye. “No. Sorry.”

“I am almost six.”

“I know.”

He nodded, but his hands were trembling.

Lily reached toward him, then stopped before touching. “Regulus, did she say things like that often?”

Regulus shrugged.

It was a tiny shrug.

Too casual.

“Maman says lots.”

“What does your father say?” Frank asked, voice carefully even.

Regulus looked toward the fire.

“Papa is quiet.”

Sirius made a bitter sound.

Regulus heard and looked back. “Quiet is better than shouting.”

“Not always,” Remus said softly.

Regulus frowned. “Yes.”

“Sometimes quiet people still let bad things happen.”

Regulus’s brows drew together as if that thought was too large to fit.

“But if they do not do it, it is not them.”

Lily’s voice was painfully gentle. “If they watch and don’t stop it, that still matters.”

Regulus stared at her.

A little wrinkle appeared between his eyebrows.

He looked, suddenly, like a child standing at the edge of a room he had never been allowed to enter.

“But Papa says Maman knows best.”

Sirius’s voice cut in, dark and flat. “He says that because he’s a coward.”

Regulus flinched.

Sirius regretted the tone instantly, but not the words.

Regulus blinked fast. “Papa is not coward.”

Sirius knelt, bringing himself lower. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it like that.”

Regulus hugged Monsieur Dragon. “He is big.”

“Big people can be cowards.”

Regulus frowned harder.

James, quietly, said, “Brave isn’t being big.”

Regulus turned to him.

James tapped the chess pawn still resting near Peter. “Remember? Little ones go first.”

Regulus stared at the pawn.

Then down at himself.

“I am little.”

Sirius’s mouth trembled. “Yes.”

Regulus thought about this for a while. Well. For six seconds, which for him, in his current sugar-lit state, seemed to be a while.

Then he said, “I can be brave.”

The room hurt with it.

Lily’s face softened. “You already are.”

Regulus looked at her quickly, startled.

“I am?”

“Yes.”

He looked as though he wanted to tuck the words into his pocket and keep them.

Then, because he was still Regulus and still five, he whispered, “Can brave have frog?”

Lily looked at the confiscated chocolate frog on the mantelpiece.

Peter looked at it too, visibly praying.

Fabian folded his hands beneath his chin.

Gideon mouthed, “For bravery.”

James whispered, “Evans, for bravery.”

Marlene said, “Give the kid the frog.”

“He is already vibrating,” Lily said.

Regulus looked down at himself, alarmed. “I am?”

Remus’s mouth twitched. “Not literally.”

Regulus patted his chest. “I feel buzzy.”

“That,” Lily said, narrowing her eyes at Peter and the twins, “is because certain people have been giving you sweets all night.”

Peter gasped. “Certain people?”

Fabian leaned back. “A vague accusation.”

Gideon nodded. “Legally meaningless.”

Lily ignored them. Her attention returned to Regulus.

He was still moving. Even when standing still, he moved. Rocking, tapping, blinking too hard, eyes flicking from Lily’s face to the frog to the fire to Sirius’s hands to the frog again.

She knew that look.

She remembered a boy in primary school made to sit on his hands until he cried because the teacher said fidgeting meant disrespect. She remembered how he could explain the life cycle of frogs in one breath and forget his own jumper in the cloakroom ten minutes later. She remembered adults calling him lazy when he worked twice as hard as everyone else just to appear half as still.

And now here was Regulus Black, little and brilliant and hurt, buzzing with thoughts he had been punished for having.

“Regulus,” she said softly.

His eyes snapped to her.

“Do you feel like this a lot? Like there’s buzzing?”

He nodded immediately. “Oui.”

Sirius leaned forward.

Regulus rubbed both hands against the sides of his robes. “In my hands and feet and teeth.”

“Your teeth?” James asked before he could stop himself.

Regulus nodded seriously. “When I need bite.”

Marlene choked.

Lily shot James a look that clearly said do not derail this.

James mimed locking his mouth.

Lily continued. “And do you have lots of thoughts at once?”

Regulus’s face lit in recognition. “All ze thoughts.”

“All at the same time?”

“Yes. Like birds. Or fireworks. Or frogs. But not normal frogs because frogs jump everywhere but thoughts jump inside. And sometimes I cannot catch zem and zen people are cross because I forgot ze first thing but I did not forget, it ran away.”

Lily’s throat tightened.

Remus looked at her.

James had gone very still.

Sirius’s face was unreadable, which was worse than if it had shattered.

Lily said, “That sounds difficult.”

Regulus shrugged. “It is normal.”

“For you?”

“For me.”

“Do your parents know?”

Regulus gave her a look that was almost older. Almost dry. “I am not s’posed to be buzzy.”

“What happens when you are?”

His fingers went to his sleeve.

Rubbed.

Rubbed.

Rubbed.

“I stand in ze corner.”

Peter’s expression folded.

“For how long?” Remus asked, voice too quiet.

Regulus squinted, thinking. “Until quiet.”

“And if you can’t be quiet?”

“Then longer.”

Sirius whispered, “Fuck.”

Regulus gasped.

The entire room turned to Sirius.

Sirius looked at Regulus, then toward the mantelpiece where the lone knut sat.

“I’ll put a coin in the jar.”

Regulus nodded, still scandalised. “Big coin.”

Sirius gave a wet laugh. “Yeah. Big coin.”

Regulus looked satisfied, then continued as if he had not just casually described being punished for existing in his own body.

“Sometimes I count patterns on wallpaper,” he said. “To be quiet. But ze wallpaper in ze drawing room has snakes and sometimes I think zey move, but they don’t, but maybe they do, but if I look too much I get dizzy. So I do numbers instead. Or dinosaur lists in my head. Or I spell words backward.”

“You spell words backward,” Mary repeated faintly.

Regulus nodded. “Because forward is too easy.”

James mouthed silently at Remus, Forward is too easy.

Remus looked like he wanted to laugh and cry and perhaps set a house on fire.

Lily asked, “What words?”

“Long ones.” Regulus brightened. “Constellation. Noitalletsnoc. Tyrannosaurus. Suruasonnaryt. Combustion. Noitsubmoc.”

Remus stared.

James said, “He did that instantly.”

Regulus looked at him. “Did what?”

“Spelled them backward.”

“Yes.”

“Just like that?”

Regulus blinked. “How else?”

Frank sat back heavily. “Bloody hell.”

Regulus pointed at him. “Coin.”

Frank, without hesitation, dug into his pocket and placed a coin beside the first on the mantel.

Regulus watched, satisfied.

Alice leaned forward, chin in her hand, eyes soft. “Do you like writing too?”

Regulus nodded so hard his curls bounced. “Yes. But my letters were ugly first. I practise. I copy books. I like how words look. Some words look like what zey are. Like sharp. Sharp is sharp. Soft is soft. Snake is snake.”

“Snake is snake,” Fabian agreed.

Regulus smiled at him. “Oui.”

“Do you write stories?” Mary asked.

Regulus’s smile vanished.

Just a little.

“Sometimes.”

“What about?”

He tucked his chin down. “Secret.”

Mary’s voice stayed gentle. “You don’t have to tell us.”

He looked up in surprise.

Again that surprise.

Every time someone gave him a choice, he looked as if the floor had moved.

“I can keep secret?”

“Yes.”

His shoulders loosened.

“I write dragons,” he whispered after a moment, because the choice had made the telling possible. “And a boy who lives in a cave but it is nice cave, not cold cave, and nobody shouts because dragons eat shouting.”

Marlene stared into the fire.

James shut his eyes.

Regulus’s face brightened again, sudden as a struck match. “And sometimes ze dragon takes ze boy to space.”

“Space?” Lily asked.

“Yes! Because if gravity says come down, dragon says no.”

Sirius covered his mouth.

Remus’s eyes burned.

Regulus looked around. “Is space real?”

Lily nodded. “Yes.”

“I knew it.” His little chest puffed up. “I knew.”

“How?” Frank asked.

“Stars are too many to be painted.” Regulus said it simply, like obvious truth. “If ze sky was ceiling, someone would get bored.”

For a second, nobody could speak.

Then Gideon whispered, “Tiny philosopher.”

Fabian whispered back, “Egg Brother Three.”

Regulus heard enough to turn. “I am not egg brother.”

“You could be honorary.”

Regulus looked interested. “Do I hatch?”

“Metaphorically.”

Remus said, “Do not teach him that word right now.”

“Met-a-for-ic-ally,” Regulus repeated instantly.

Remus sighed. “Too late.”

Regulus giggled and ran a small circle around the rug, blanket fluttering behind him.

Lily watched him.

The movement. The joy. The way everyone laughed because it was charming now, because he was tiny and sweet and his energy had somewhere to go. Then she imagined the same boy at eleven, thirteen, sixteen, in Slytherin robes too neat, face too blank, surrounded by people who mistook stillness for arrogance and silence for cruelty.

She thought of every time she had seen him alone in the library.

Every time he had moved through the corridor and people had stepped aside not because he threatened them, but because he had trained himself into something untouchable.

She thought of how easy it was to hate someone who never asked to be understood.

Or someone who had learned asking did not work.

“We’ve been awful,” Mary said quietly.

Lily looked at her.

Mary was watching Regulus show Monsieur Dragon how to “ambush” Fabian’s sock.

“We all talk about him like he’s…” Mary shook her head. “Like he’s Lucius Malfoy in miniature.”

“He acts like it sometimes,” Marlene said, but there was no bite in it.

“No,” Remus said.

Marlene looked at him.

Remus’s voice was quiet. “He acts like he doesn’t need anyone.”

That silenced them.

James rubbed both hands down his face. “We made that mean the same thing as cruel.”

Sirius stared at the fire.

“He’s said cruel things,” Alice murmured, careful and honest.

Sirius flinched.

Lily nodded slowly. “He has. But not like some of them. Not for sport.” She looked at Regulus again. “I’ve seen him cut people down when they corner him. I’ve never seen him chase anyone to hurt them.”

Marlene’s jaw worked.

Frank said, “He keeps to himself.”

“Cold,” Mary said.

“Guarded,” Remus corrected.

James looked at the little boy currently trying to teach a toy dragon to tackle Gideon’s shoelace.

“Lonely,” he said.

Sirius stood, unable to bear the word sitting near him.

Regulus looked over at once. “Warm One?”

Sirius forced himself to soften. “I’m here.”

“Where going?”

“Nowhere.”

Regulus stared at him until he believed it.

Then he nodded and went back to the shoelace ambush.

Lily rose and crossed to Sirius, standing beside him near the fireplace. She kept her voice low.

“He probably doesn’t know,” she said.

Sirius’s eyes remained on Regulus. “Know what?”

“That there’s a name for any of it. The buzzing. The thoughts. The way he moves. The way he focuses. He probably thinks it’s a flaw.”

Sirius’s mouth twisted. “Our parents would have made sure of that.”

“He’s not flawed.”

“I know.”

“Does older him know?”

Sirius said nothing.

That was answer enough.

Across the room, Regulus suddenly shouted, “Seeker!”

Everyone turned.

He had climbed onto the sofa again.

Gideon was hovering with both hands out, because he had apparently been assigned tiny-child-fall-prevention duty by the universe and accepted it gravely.

Regulus had the sugar quill in one hand and was pointing at the air above the coffee table.

“Snitch is not a ball,” he declared.

James, helplessly enchanted, sat up. “It’s definitely a ball.”

“No.” Regulus shook his head so fiercely the dragon on his shoulder wobbled. “Is not ball. Is idea.”

Remus blinked. “What?”

Regulus jumped down from the sofa before Gideon could stop him, landed with a thump, nearly lost balance, recovered, and started dragging cushions into positions across the rug.

“This is players,” he said. “You is chaser.” He pointed at James. “You is also chaser because your hair is too loud to be sneaky.”

James looked offended and flattered.

Regulus pointed at Marlene. “You are beater.”

Marlene grinned. “Damn right.”

“Coin,” said Regulus.

Marlene sighed and tossed one toward the mantel. It missed. Frank picked it up and placed it properly.

Regulus pointed at Sirius. “You are… you are trouble.”

Sirius laughed softly. “That’s fair.”

Regulus pointed at Remus. “You are weather.”

Remus looked delighted. “I’ve been promoted.”

“And Biscuit Finder is audience because he has snacks.”

Peter nodded solemnly. “Vital role.”

Regulus crouched among the cushions and began moving them with astonishing speed.

“Everybody thinks Seeker chase Snitch. No. Bad Seeker chase Snitch. Good Seeker chase other Seeker and Snitch and wind and sun and beaters and stupid—” He gasped, looked at the mantel. “I already coin.”

“We’ll allow it,” Lily said.

Regulus nodded gratefully and continued. “You must know where everybody is because Snitch is small but people are big and stupid people make patterns. Chasers make lines. Beaters make danger circles. Keeper makes panic. Other Seeker makes lies.”

James’s eyes widened. “Other Seeker makes lies?”

“Yes!” Regulus crawled over a cushion, too excited to go around. “Because zey look where zey want you to look. But eyes lie different from body. If zey see Snitch for true, shoulder goes first, not face. Face can pretend. Shoulder forgets.”

Marlene slowly sat forward.

James looked at Sirius. “That is why he always moves before the other Seeker dives.”

Sirius nodded faintly.

“He’s watching shoulders,” Frank said, awed.

Regulus slapped one cushion. “Shoulders are terrible liars.”

Remus whispered, “I’m writing that down.”

Regulus moved another cushion. “And you do not fly fastest all ze time because fastest makes tired and tired makes stupid. You save fast. Like dragon fire. If dragon fire all ze time, no fire when knight comes.”

Fabian stared at the cushions. “This is advanced strategy.”

“He’s five,” Alice whispered.

“I am almost six,” Regulus said without looking up.

“My mistake.”

He continued arranging the cushions into formations, explaining angles, air currents, feints, and how to force a Seeker toward a Beater without making it obvious. The older Quidditch players in the room gradually stopped treating it like something adorable and began treating it like a war council led by a tiny sugar-dusted general.

James was fully on the floor now, chin propped on his hand.

Marlene had abandoned all pretence of not caring and was listening with narrowed, calculating eyes.

Sirius’s face had gone distant again, but this time not only with grief.

Recognition.

Regulus had always been good. Everyone knew that. Even Gryffindors knew that, though they complained about it bitterly. He flew like something quiet and lethal. He won matches by appearing exactly where he needed to be, as if the Snitch came to him out of respect.

They had called it Black luck.

Slytherin cunning.

Natural talent.

But little Regulus explained it like maths.

Like science.

Like survival.

Angles. Patterns. Shoulders. Light. Breath. Fear. Lies.

He had taught himself to read the sky the way he had taught himself to read books in locked libraries.

Not because anyone gave him lessons.

Because wanting to know was the one part of him nobody had managed to kill.

“Regulus,” James said slowly, “who taught you all that?”

Regulus looked up, confused.

“Nobody.”

James’s expression shifted.

“Your coach?”

Regulus shook his head. “No.”

“Your team?”

“No.”

“Your brother?” James glanced at Sirius.

Regulus looked at Sirius, then back at James. “I don’t know him.”

Sirius flinched, though the words were not meant to hurt.

James swallowed. “Right.”

Regulus patted the cushion nearest him. “Brooms teach if you listen.”

Marlene’s voice was quiet. “Brooms teach?”

“Oui.” Regulus looked at her like she should know this. “And wind. And falling. Falling teaches lots.”

There it was again.

That simple, terrible little wisdom.

Falling teaches lots.

Frank rubbed his jaw. “Does falling scare you?”

Regulus shrugged. “Only ground.”

James let out a startled laugh and covered it immediately.

Regulus smiled, pleased.

Then, without warning, his face shifted again, thoughts skipping tracks.

“When I fall at home, Maman says floor is where dramatic boys belong.”

Sirius went still.

Regulus kept rearranging cushions. “But floor is not bad. Floor is safe if nobody steps.”

Marlene’s eyes flashed.

Mary whispered, “Regulus.”

He looked up. “Yes?”

“That’s not a normal thing for a mum to say.”

Regulus frowned. “Maybe French mums say.”

“No,” Sirius said.

Regulus turned to him.

Sirius’s voice was low and rough. “Not French mums. Not any mums.”

Regulus’s fingers curled into the cushion.

“But she is Maman.”

“I know.”

“She has to be right.”

Sirius shook his head.

Regulus looked frightened by that.

Not by Sirius.

By the possibility.

“If Maman is wrong,” he whispered, “then I don’t know rules.”

Lily crossed back to the rug and knelt. “Then you make safer ones.”

Regulus looked at her.

“Like what?”

Lily thought carefully.

“No hurting children,” she said.

Regulus stared.

“No calling them bad because they ask questions. No making them stand still until they feel wrong in their own skin. No telling them they are too much. No punishing them for being excited. No making them earn food or kindness or being held.”

Regulus had gone very quiet.

The whole room had.

He looked down at the cushion in his hands.

“But if child is bad?”

“Still no.”

“If child breaks ink?”

“Still no.”

“If child talks too many?”

“Still no.”

“If child cries?”

Lily’s voice softened further. “Especially then.”

Regulus swallowed.

His eyes shone, but he did not cry.

He looked at Sirius. “Is that true?”

Sirius knelt too. “Yes.”

Regulus’s face crumpled for half a second before he forced it back into place.

That was the worst part.

The forcing.

At five, he already knew how to do it.

“I don’t know those rules,” he whispered.

James’s voice broke. “We’ll teach you.”

Regulus looked at him. “Messy Hair teaches rules?”

James nodded. “The good ones.”

Regulus seemed doubtful. “Your hair has no rules.”

A laugh went through the room, soft and wet and grateful.

James nodded gravely. “That’s why I know freedom.”

Regulus considered this.

Then he smiled.

“Okay.”

Lily handed him the chocolate frog.

Every head turned.

Peter gasped like a man witnessing a miracle.

Regulus looked at the frog in Lily’s palm. Then at Lily. Then at the frog.

“For brave?” he whispered.

“For brave,” Lily said. “And for learning new rules.”

Regulus accepted it with both hands, reverent.

“You said no more.”

“I changed my mind.”

His eyes widened. “You can?”

“Yes.”

He looked around slowly, as though this too was revolutionary.

“Grown-ups can change mind and not shout?”

Remus closed his eyes.

Alice leaned into Frank.

Mary turned her face into Marlene’s shoulder.

Lily’s smile trembled. “Yes.”

Regulus nodded solemnly.

Then the chocolate frog leapt.

It shot from his hands with a sharp little croak, bounced off James’s knee, sprang onto the low table, and launched itself toward the fireplace.

Regulus screamed.

Not fear.

Delight.

“FROG!”

Chaos erupted.

Peter lunged first because he had apparently become emotionally invested in Regulus eating things. James dove after him. Fabian shouted, “Left flank!” for no reason except that he was Fabian. Gideon leapt onto the sofa to cut off the frog’s escape. Marlene grabbed a cushion like a shield. Frank stood too fast and nearly knocked over the table. Alice caught the sugar quill before it hit the fire. Mary burst into laughter. Remus said, “It’s a chocolate frog, not a war criminal,” and then immediately had to duck as the frog flew past his head.

Regulus shrieked with laughter, bouncing in place, hands flapping with pure overwhelmed joy.

“Catch! Catch! He is escaping! He is doing freedom!”

“Not toward the fire!” Lily shouted, laughing despite herself.

The frog sprang from the hearth rug.

Sirius caught it one-handed.

The room froze.

Regulus gasped.

Sirius looked down at the chocolate frog wriggling in his fist.

Then at Regulus.

Then he bowed.

Regulus exploded into applause.

“Warm One catches frog!”

James, still sprawled on the floor, lifted his head. “Show-off.”

Sirius smirked faintly. “Shoulders are terrible liars, Potter.”

Regulus lit up. “You listen!”

Sirius’s face softened.

“Yeah,” he said. “I listen.”

Regulus ran to him, took the frog carefully, and, after a brief serious negotiation with it in French, ate one of its legs.

Peter looked relieved beyond words.

“Finally,” he whispered.

Regulus chewed, eyes huge, clearly experiencing chocolate as a religious event.

Then he held it out to Sirius.

“Share.”

Sirius took a tiny bite.

Regulus went to James next.

Then Lily.

Then Peter.

By the time the frog had made it around the entire room, there was barely anything left but one chocolate foot and a lot of feelings nobody knew what to do with.

Regulus put the last foot solemnly beside the brave chess pawn.

“For him.”

“The pawn gets the foot?” James asked.

“He is brave.”

“Fair.”

The pawn seemed pleased.