A Transient and Embarrassed Phantom ★ Regulus Black

Chapter One

The passage of time concerns the living far more than it does the dead.

After all, what is a mere hour, or even a month, in comparison to the whole of eternity stretching before you like a vast, unfathomable ocean? Or like a dark lake in a dark cave, its edges blending into a darkness so deep it makes your eyes ache to look at it, your head ache to try to calculate its vastness.

And during the long, stretching summers time passes even more peculiarly for the dead. Without the familiar beats of daily school life - classes, mealtimes, Quidditch matches and training sessions - the days all begin to blend together. Yesterday could be in three weeks' time. Tomorrow could have happened months ago. Tuesdays and Saturdays and Mondays and Fridays all jumbled up, mixing together like potion ingredients.

What is time, anyway, but a construct of the living? An attempt to partition their brief lives into briefer segments, in the hopes of deriving some sort of meaning from their daily grind?

That is to say, as Regulus drifted down the empty corridor, lost in his thoughts as he was wont to do, he had no idea that today was the first of September, let alone that the year was 1991. He had no idea that the castle was about to be inhabited by a child with Black blood for the first time since his own graduation or, more disturbingly, that the Potter child was also due to make his debut in the magical world.

"Regulus, my friend!"

Regulus paused his thinking and his drifting and looked up, blinking his still-grey eyes in surprise at the sight of the ghostly horde streaming down the corridor towards him.

"Do you care to share your thoughts on how we might proceed with this Peeves situation, Regulus?" asked the Friar as he glided closer.

"Peeves situation?"

Sir Nicholas approached Regulus's other side, his ridiculous plumed hat poking through Regulus's head in a manner that would have been decidedly uncomfortable if he weren't as translucent and unfeeling as the next ghost.

"I have said it before and I shall say it again," said Sir Nicholas, "the welcome feast is no place for a poltergeist."

"I say we ought to live and let live," said the Friar, chuckling at his own joke.

"I suppose Peeves was somewhat disruptive last year," Regulus said carefully.

Peeves had spent most of the last first of September lying in wait underneath the staff table in the Great Hall. He only emerged once the welcome feast had been served, soaring up through the tabletop, skewering a whole roast chicken on his head before he began dancing quite inappropriately on top of Severus Snape's dinner plate.

Regulus hadn't been the only one in the Great Hall that evening who had tried to hold back his laughter, but he did think that he had been the most successful. The headmaster really ought to have shown more dignity.

"I am sure that our mischievous friend has learnt his lesson," said the Friar.

"Poppycock!" said Sir Nicholas, thrusting his chest out. "Peeves is a terror. A menace!"

Regulus listened to the two senior ghosts' argument as they all drifted through the castle, nodding and making appropriate thoughtful noises whenever called to. He didn't particularly mind whether the poltergeist attended the feast or not - although he supposed that Peeves would liven things up a little, if he did attend. This year's sorting ceremony would be Regulus's... eighteenth? Nineteenth? It was difficult to keep track of those sorts of things, when one was a ghost.

Sir Nicholas would be able to tell him, of course. Sir Nicholas had a particular fascination for dates and calendars - Regulus suspected it was because he had lingered through the introduction of the Gregorian calendar - and kept an enormous one in an abandoned classroom which he used to count down to all the Hogwarts' ghosts' Deathdays.