FALLEN FROM GRACE ⍋ Regulus & Sirius Black

- Chapter 70 -

FATE VS FANTASY.
Regulus' POV.

Seconds before Grace stumbles down the stairs, Regulus is anxiously deep in thought. Staring out of the windows into the lake, in the dark, into nothing. Burning his hands on the mug that held boiling hot water.
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I couldn't sleep. I hadn't. Every time I slept or tried to close my eyes I heard Bella's cackle and saw a flash of green that traced the inside of my eyelids like scars. It was stained in my vision, as if I had stared at the sun for longer than I should have.

Avada Kedavra and just like that, she was dead.

No one knew her name. Maybe Bella did but she never even muttered it once. To name her was to respect her in some way, I would have guessed. Perhaps she wasn't important enough to name. Just a lesson for the newcomer, me. No slow initiation. Though I suppose my whole life had been, in some way and so I was thrown straight into the deep end. Expected to swim.

I didn't know her name either but I'll never forget her face or how for a second she looked at me, almost with sorrow? Almost as if she knew I was looking back at her with a similar amount of fear. I was twice as young in comparison and for a moment I wondered if she had a son and was seeing him in my eyes.

Hers were tear stained, face snot streaked and she begged for her life, until she begged to die...and I watched and then clapped when Bella looked for applause...as if I wasn't swallowing my own sick and sitting on the same shaking hands that rose to applaud beneath the table seconds before. So afraid if they'd see my terrified grip that I'd be next.

Cause of death: Blood Traitor.

And just like that woman, I love a muggle born too. I'm just as guilty from the opposite side of the table. I'm just as sinful. Traitorous.

I had to make her hate me. Grace. Make her want to stay as far away as possible and by choice.

But in that carriage all I wanted her to do was to get closer to me. I wanted someone to tell me I was okay. The same way I had held her when she lashed out in detention. I tried to contain something in her that felt uncontrollable and at the moment everything feels out of control.

Part of me was begging her to touch me. Reach out with more than just words. That part tried to scream at her to do something about it, a simple hand on mine but in some way I was still sitting on my own. Stuck in that room where I couldn't show how I felt.

That part of me craved something with care, not control. Not the same grasp around the back of my neck that cloaked wizards had held me with all Christmas. Not be met with a string of questions I felt unable to answer truthfully. Not to be met with the confrontation of what had happened, 'Why can you suddenly see thestrals?' ...

I felt angry that she didn't. Didn't use the care that forced her into the carriage to show me something gentle instead of interrogative. I know I would have shrugged her off, anyway. I know it wouldn't have mattered if she had even tried to reach out and put a hand on mine. But I wanted to feel the warmth of something other than panic and her questions made my skin boil.

She cared to notice that something was different about me, that something wasn't quite right and she did something about it. Forced herself into a carriage with me and ensured we were alone. I wanted to be grateful but I had never felt more vulnerable and foolish. Foolish to genuinely believe my Mother could have forgotten about me at Christmas and that it wasn't personal; but Grace recognised something had changed about me in the chaos and bustle of crowds and luggage...and we weren't even friends...that we could never be. That I didn't want to be just friends. That in some way I loved her, embarrassingly and without cause. I just did.

I wanted to tell her how scared I was by them, the thestrals, because of what they represented and not only how they looked.

That I knew she could see them too and I wanted to ask her when she stopped being scared? Of death, of seeing it?

When could she stop staring at them without feeling a pit of despair in her stomach, locked in to their glassy eyes as if they were mirrors into the memory of death? They reflected the woman's face as she was struck with a fatal curse worse than a cancerous end.

When did the sounds that they make start to blend into every other background noise?

How come I had never seen her freeze as pathetically as I had?

What did it mean if they liked you?

But I couldn't answer her questions and I couldn't ask her mine. I had to make her hate me, despite how I felt everything in me pull towards her. Stretch in her direction for some kind of contact. I craved to feel something believably kind. Something I couldn't confuse as coercion. Something that could remind me I'm alive without pain.

And yet it's safer if she didn't. A less selfish part of me wishes she didn't care. That she'd go back to occasionally saying hello and passing me by in class. Distracted by her own life and her own friends and conveniently being in all the same spaces as I am, but with little awareness.

I once prayed she'd come talk to me more than polite small talk, more than a relaxed smile.

I now wish she'd stay away. She's in danger around me and I'm in danger around her.

She's braver than I am and I envy her for it, just as much as I think she's incredibly stupid for being so brave.

I had to be brave, like her. Brave enough to speak less than softly. Brave enough to be seen and not in a passive way. Brave enough to fulfill my fate and not live in fear of my fantasy. A life that Sirius is living for me, as I live his.