- ʀᴇɢᴜʟᴜs ʙʟᴀᴄᴋ ғᴀɴғɪᴄᴛɪᴏɴ
"You. Me. Hogsmeade. Tomorrow" Romie demands, leaving no room for objection.
Regulus slowly lifts his head from his book, briefly wondering if he's managed to land himself into a similar alternate dimension,
"Come again...
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꧁✧✧✧꧂
𝕿wo minutes.
Two hours.
Romie sits, staring ahead, roots spreading into the wall where her spine is firmly planted. Two minutes, it's felt like, broken into two halves. Sixty seconds of anxiety submerging her insides until her lungs are teeming and she's forced to gasp for breath. Sixty seconds of palpable anger, coursing through her veins like the blood that means absolutely everything. Two minutes it's felt like, two hours it's really been, completing the endless cycles of each sixty seconds.
Two minutes it's felt like, two hours it's really been, watching the moon replace the sun's position high in the sky. The full moon. The first since the beginning of term.
"Heffalump"
Romie hums weakly, her eyes reluctantly conveying from one fixation to another. A short-term thing, the knots of anxiety in her stomach refusing to let her miss a thing. Over the hardback head of his textbook, Regulus peers, barely able to stand how small she looks, shrinking into the shadowed corner furthest from the window tormenting her. Like a cat on a hot tin roof.
He abandons the squishy loveseat he's been attempting to gently coax her to for the duration of the two hours, walking over to where she's sitting. Stuck. She's stuck in place, irregardless of how much her heart yearned to shrink in his arms instead. As much as he yearns for that too, scoop her up into a bundle until she feels big again, herself again, touching first will only spook her further.
Silently, against the wall decorated in tacky paper that gives Gryffindor tower a spiffing review, parallel to her, Regulus lowers himself down. Romie doesn't say anything, but when he goes to rest his palm ready on his knee, hers is already hovering there. Initiating contact. Almost afraid the trust he's not earned back yet will prompt second thoughts, Regulus is nimble threading their fingers together, squeezing encouragingly when her dry lips part to whisper,
"I've missed eight, but it feels like the first again"
The guilt eating her alive inside feels like first again.
Atleast for those first eight, he'd had the security of the Whomping Willow and Shrieking Shack, the unbroken promise of his injuries taken care of by someone who knows what they're doing the morning after. Atleast for those first eight, he'd had Hogwarts. A blessing dead and buried. The real world is what waits for him, no security, no promises, no immunity.
It's no secret the illiberal Ministry are rounding up others like animals, forcing their hand to a registry that signs away their rights, their freedom. Their life. But it's not the only source of paperwork the Ministry issues out for transformers.
"It's perfectly normal to feel that way. But remember, unlike those eight, he has control over his mind. And something tells me he won't be alone" Regulus finishes carefully, unsure.
