The Truth Behind the Veil ✔️

Ramblings of Truth

    Regulus Black was determined to help Fawn but she was never around. Realistically it was because he was in Slytherin and she was a Gryffindor so their paths not often crossing was self-explanatory and yet he still felt worried.

   The friendship he had developed with Fawn was the most important relationship he had formed in his entire life. She was the one who convinced him to follow in his brother's footsteps and also restore their sibling bond, as well as helping him gain seven new friends. However this came with the consequence of Fawn being stuck in a timeline she wasn't meant to be in. So, Regulus, despite the pain it caused him to have to lose her, was determined to get Fawn back to the nineties where she belonged soon. He didn't care about whatever journey the Veil had sent her on, she needed to go back.

   It was New Year's Eve. The group of seventh year Gryffindors, Dorcas Meadowes and Frank Longbottom were lounging on couches or dancing with champagne glasses in hand in the middle of the Potter's living room.

   James had an arm wrapped around Lily's waist, his attention constantly split between her and Sirius who happened to be standing on the coffee table to 'assert his dominance.'

   What Remus Lupin saw in his brother, Regulus could not tell.

   Peter had too climbed up on the table but still fell a few inches short of the older boy, though he didn't seem to mind if the large toothy smile of his face was any indication. Remus was laying down, his lanky body having taken up the entirety of one of the couches, lazily chatting with Frank and Alice who were sitting in the chairs beside him. Fawn, Dorcas and Marlene were deep in a debate—probably about Quidditch—and Regulus felt slightly bad about having to interrupt it.

   It was odd; being a spectator. Sure, he had been welcomed into the Potter's home with open arms and all the Gryffindors were friendly with him, but he didn't feel as though he truly belonged. He knew the background he had and how, up until last year, they had all viewed him. It could only be imagined what Sirius had told them.

  These thoughts were what nearly pushed Regulus back to Grimmauld Place on many occasions. However, when Fawn's laugh bubbled up over the crowd or her warm brown eyes locked with cold grey ones from across the room, the doubts subsided. He couldn't disappoint her, not after everything she'd been through, everything she was doing to save him and surely many others.

   He weaved himself through James and Peter's terribly dancing, barely bumping into Frank as he went. The smell of champagne and Firewhiskey mixing together turned his stomach. There had been too many drunken nights of his parents' and they never once had ended without injury, especially once Sirius was gone.

   Suddenly things just felt too loud, too much, bringing him back to that last awful ball. The corsets and suits, women nearly spilling out of their tops, men ogling, mentally begging for someone to trip. The Dark Lord charming Bellatrix, her shrill laughter piercing the air as he smiled at her like she was a gazelle and he, a lion, searching for his next meal.

  Regulus nearly chuckled to himself for comparing the Slytherin tyrant to a lion, the mascot of his rival house.

   His mother's voice still rang in his ears when she'd called him over for a formal conversation with the man he'd only met once before. It was that day that the date of his initiation into the Death-Eaters was officially set though he'd known of it before.

  "You'll make us so proud, Regulus," his mother's silky voice had cooed sweetly—so very uncharacteristically from what he'd grown to know.

   It was that day, with the pungent fumes of perfume and expensive alcohol, the feeling of hot breath against his ear and frigid hands shaking his own, the sights of shallow socialites trying to climb the Pureblood ladder and the children standing straight-backed their faces devoid of any joy that made Regulus truly realize just how brainwashed he had become.