The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix - Part Two

The Resurrection Stone, Part Two

(2)

How long had he been here on his very own private beach?

Regulus couldn't remember.

Years and days blended together into nothing here. He had tried at marking the sunsets with divets in the sand, but as quickly as he made the marks, the tide came and washed them away.

The only way he knew time had passed for sure was through the changes in Albus Dumbledore's office and in the things that Dumbledore asked him about.

Once, he tried walking off the beach but it just kept going in every direction and he thought of the rats running on a wheel that he'd once seen the Magical Menagerie off Diagon Alley. Everything was the same in every direction. The only direction he refused to try was out - out to sea.

Now more than ever, he didn't dare to go in the water.

(3)

Sometimes, Dumbledore had a good question and Regulus would be engaged in the quest to defeat Voldemort, eager, helping to figure out the answer. He would find himself sitting on his beach alone after Dumbledore had sent him back and for who knew how long between summons he would be thinking and thinking... He would reappear at Dumbledore's Office next time he was summoned by the stone with an excited air to continue the discussion they'd started or to give some new insight he's thought up. Sometimes Dumbledore had already figured out whatever it was, or else he had long forgotten it and had no patience for Regulus's excitement.

Rarely, Regulus would have an answer and Dumbledore would praise him...

As much as he hated himself for it, those few words of praise filled him with purpose and he longed for the times he would get it right and he would find himself working all the harder on the next question, hoping to gain that praise again.

(4)

"I feel like I get smaller every time I come here," Regulus said once, "Or more transparent, perhaps is the better way to say it."

He was in Dumbledore's office for the third time in a week. Dumbledore had been hunting for clues about what Tom Riddle might have done after 1945. This, Dumbledore said, was the most ambiguous time because it was after Grindelwald lost touch with the young Riddle but before Voldemort had really come into power. A time of false peace in the Wizarding World, a time between dark lords.

"More transparent?" Dumbledore looked up from a book he was flipping through.

"What happens if you call me so many times that I become invisible?" Regulus asked.

Dumbledore never answered that question. Instead, he would suggest that Regulus consider becoming a house ghost.

Dumbledore didn't even look up from his book.

Regulus hovered, sliding downward into the chair opposite the Headmaster. He looked around the portraits in the room, already feeling rather invisible, even though he was at least 75% corporeal.

These sorts of visits (ones where Dumbledore mostly had him there for no reason while he read or mused over some bit of parchment or something) were the most frustrating for Regulus because he could almost feel time passing while at the Headmaster's office, at least more than he could at his beach. Regulus felt anxious when he could feel time passing because he didn't move with it. His heart didn't beat, his blood didn't flow, so the passing seconds could not be counted by anything except the second hand moving around the clock. It was irritating because the ghostly face of his watch did not ever change, and he would stare at it and beg it to move, but the number always stayed the same no matter how many times he pressed the button to make it glow.