꧁ʙᴏʀɴ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘᴜʀᴘʟᴇ꧂

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 82

꧁✧✧✧꧂

𝕽omie tucks her knees up to her chest, feet perching on the edge of the chair.

The legendary Slug Club was precisely what she pegged it to be. Tedious hours spent sitting tight until the spotlight time comes to dangle connections, records and vocations to the greedy professor to take his pick. No amount of sweet treats or praise singing could convince her to resign herself to this again. She wasn't even a fan of the pudding up for grabs, consumed more by the game plan to sneak it out for Pandora — a desert girl through and through.

She glances left to the boy blameworthy for this complete time waster, barely holding back a scoff at discovering him away with the fairies. Not the real fairies, a brilliant speck of light fluttering in the ornate golden lamp dangling down the centre of the round table, pale line of vision too level. Something else has captured his attention, his curiosity, cause for the hardened guise she knows to be rumination. Brooding. He's brooding.

Intrigue piqued, Romie pursues his gaze, landing on a free-standing cabinet evident in the small gap between the chairs of merry Slughorn and highly favoured muggle-born, Dirk Cresswell. As wonderful and polished as the cabinet is, it's no deep brood worthy. The same couldn't be said for the cynosure artefact placed carefully on top.

Adorning the glass case, green serpentine features, twisting around the two ballooning vessels connected with a tapered narrow passage — a shape Romie couldn't adopt in her dizziest daydreams. An hourglass. But not just any hourglass measuring seconds, minutes, hours passing, the pace amending green fluid mixed into the trickling sand too peculiar. In this world revolving around magic, as Pandora often reminds, things aren't always what they seem.

A phrase that couldn't fit him more. On the surface, reserved and austere, overlooked spare turned to pressurised heir, hidden deep within, charming and witty, a lost soul starved and craving touch and care. Freedom. He longs to be free, a liberty no amount of gold can buy. Private but not secret, under the table, Romie reaches out, fingers running down the length of his jacket sleeve all the way to his hand.

The second their skin comes into contact, on his knee, Regulus flips over his forearm, deft fingers unfurling and palm opening for hers. His gaze tears from the hourglass, the stiff tension in his shoulders easing upon finding her already looking at him, a gleam of affection in her eyes. Virtually dragging her here hasn't put her off him too much.

"Now you, Regulus. Tell me, how is your Uncle Alphard? He was quite the cheeky chappie from what I remember, much like your brother of course"

Any instant elation of Sirius being referred to as his brother is cancelled out, a grimace desperate to break through to the surface. Delusion would have him believing, hoping his seat was selected, chosen due to vocations, ambitions. Him. Reality plumps for his picture-perfect dynasty. Specifically two kin who managed to break free from the sealed manacles confining him to the twisted web of dark. Black.