Desired Constellation: Summer of 1974

Desired Constellation (Summer of 1974)

i.

Regulus knows that what comes undone can't help but slip away indefinitely. He is reminded constantly by the swish, flick, swish, flick of his Mother's wand poised at the family tapestry. The spell is hanging from the tip of her tongue, never uttered, but waiting.

"One last chance," she mutters, and it permeates the floors and walls, making the rooms colder, the portraits stiller in their grim anticipation.

Regulus sees the hurt in his mother's eyes.

He watches, hearing some things he shouldn't and some things that are spoken directly to him, as the family ties unravel, unfurling and shaking themselves out with a lazy ease that recalls the way his brother shakes out his hair.

ii.

The sunlight that's framed in the window flickers under the expanse of large, pulsing wings before Mother languidly takes three letters from the owl, her spindly fingers twining around a bone-white envelope like a spider draining a moth.

For just a moment, her eyes come alive with what she's absorbed, only to be snuffed back into twisting grey when the owl beats his wings to depart.

Mother bows her head, speaking low with Father about whether there's a way to revoke Sirius' permission to Hogsmead, though the letter is pressed to her chest, and Sirius is still her son.

She seems not displeased to hear from him.

Regulus' name leaves her lips with a sudden, unexpected formality, and she holds out to him a sloppily-addressed envelope. Just the look of it makes revulsion claw up his throat, curling his mouth like soft dough.

"Won't you at least read what your brother has to say?" Mother asks, and Regulus drops the still-sealed envelope near his toast, scowling darkly at the bright pools of yellow on his plate as he asks to be excused.

He knows, undoubtedly, how the letter will read.

Though worse yet, he knows that Sirius hasn't thought anything pleasant about the family all summer.

Regulus touches the banister on his way up the stairs, soft grazes letting the memories etched into the wood soak through his fingertips: Sirius clutching the railing, and him clutching Sirius to keep from falling as Sirius laughed close to his face, and it was more like barking when Sirius told him he wouldn't let him fall, not ever, right before they both tumbled down the stairs.

Regulus climbs.

iii.

His room is cold, and the dark wood of his desk is colder when he leans forward in his chair and presses his forehead against the surface, though it doesn't chill him the way looking into Sirius' eyes did during the return to King's Cross on the Hogwarts Express.

When Regulus edged into the empty compartment, Sirius had said that he was only talking to him because they were brothers, though Regulus was afraid that soon he wouldn't talk to him for just that reason.

They were still, and the train moved fast.

Regulus had seen leafy distances flitter by - greens the shades of curses woven into the silver of Sirius' eyes where Regulus' face was reflected, framed by the colours that now shadowed his brother's abhorrence.

"I hate the lot of them," Sirius'd said, getting too close, so for a moment Regulus saw nothing but coal-black hair and sharp edges the color of parchment that could have belonged to Mother. "And if you keep going down that way, Reg, I'll hate you too. You can tell them I'm not writing."

Regulus wrenches a drawer open, feeling uneasy, though smoothing the arc of his back like it's nothing more than ironing out cotton.

The sunlight meanders in like spun gold, twisting and hanging from the windows, and Regulus wants to grab on, but he knows he needs to grab something solid.

One last chance.

He can't let Sirius fall either.

He takes out ink and parchment, reminding himself to fold out the words like the lines stamped onto a face by careless laughter and not to let the ink-lined tip of his quill linger.

It's temporary, he tells himself. Only until he can bring the family back together again.

Regulus lets the quill run over the parchment, tracing turns that are becoming more familiar, tracing lies that make him sick, as he writes another letter:

Dearest Mother; With Love, Sirius.