Chapter Text
The first beam of sunlight peeks through the thick curtains of my bedroom, the light dancing across the crackling ceiling and the spot I must have been staring at for the last few hours. I let out a sigh, knowing it’s officially the thirty-first of October. Officially the Selection day.
I’ve heard old classmates almost looking forward to this day, babbling about getting a lie in. We get the day off for the ceremony, which doesn’t actually start until noon, the morning’s free. Of course, most of them are native to the district, common blood, they work long hours now that we’ve graduated from school. In fact, many of them quit school years ago for work in the mines. A lie in may sound nice to them.
I, however, don’t tend to sleep well, today least of all. I tossed around most of the night, and the moments of sleep I did find were fickle and light, slipping away like water in my hands before I could even enjoy them.
I kick off the scratchy duvet and pad across the room, the cold floorboards turn my bare feet somehow more numb than before. As I creep out the room and past my brother’s door, I spare a glance through the cracked doorway hoping to see him sound asleep and curled around-
“Fuck,” I curse under my breath, tripping over that bloody cat. I kick it aside lightly with my toe, urging him back into Reggie’s room and away from me. The cat’s about as ugly as they come, long pointy ears and patches of fur missing here and there, a weird crick in his tail, eyes that always look narrow and disappointed.
When I found him in our cellar, tucked away in a cupboard curled up in an odd misshapen ball, I figured he was a rat, some creature not meant for a life of comfort and human dependency. Unfortunately, Regulus caught me carrying him outside by the scruff and stopped me, begging to keep him. He didn't even listen to my scoffing and probably slightly high-pitched reasoning for disposal, named him Kreacher to rub it in.
Kreacher bites my toe as I nudge him away again, hissing and sulking back into Reggie’s room. He hops onto the bed and Regulus tugs him into his arms, rolling over in sleep. I hate that cat, but I can’t help but smile.
A sound down the hall, a creaking of a floorboard, catches my attention and I continue down the stairs on my tip-toes passing portrait upon portrait of distant family members I’ve been trained to name, people I can’t quite believe my mother and father ever knew. I hop past the squeaking stair, successfully managing to not trip on the lumpy carpet runner.
At the bottom of the stairs, I duck into the small cupboard no one ever uses, moving aside the loose floorboard and grabbing my worn leather jacket and the boots my mother tried to toss out months ago.
Throwing open the back door and making sure it shuts quietly, I run for the garden’s edge. The sun is just starting to rise over the hill, the light turning the dewy grass a golden color. The village is just becoming visible past the morning fog, stone walls and weathered roofs, a light drizzle coating the place in a sheen that almost makes it sparkle. It's beautiful, our district, I know I’m not supposed to think that, that I should be ashamed of it, but I can’t help it on days like this. Not when it gave me two of the few people I truly love.
Just as I hop over the garden wall, casting a final glance on the dark estate behind me, I manage to collapse onto the first of those two, James. James, who had been waiting on the other side of the wall unsuspectingly, lands on the pillowy grass underneath him with a soft oof.
“Thanks for breaking my fall,” I say, brushing off the dew from my jacket and sitting upright from where I’d end up sprawled on top of him. “My hero.”
I do that swoony thing all the girls in our year do around James, clasping my hands together and batting my lashes at him.
“Get off me, Humpty Dumpty,” James laughs, shoving me off him.
I climb to my feet, pulling James up with me. “Who’s Humpy Dumpy?” I ask.
“Humpty Dumpty,” James replies, clearly correcting me, though not sounding any different. He tells me Humpty whoever was an egg who fell off a wall, a story his mother had told him. He does this a lot, references hundreds of years old fables and stories like I’m supposed to know about them.
Before, when we’d first met and everything was new, it made me upset how little I seemed to know about the world. It took me a few months to realize how willing James was to share all of his knowledge, his stories and songs, tales of the world we’d lost. To realize I didn’t have to feel ashamed for knowing so little, that James loved an opportunity to share it.
Now, it almost stings, makes my heart do that aching, clenching thing. Because that James, the James so full of wonder and light, he’s gone. Well, maybe not gone, maybe just away for a bit. He’ll come back, I know he will. Even now I see him slipping back through the cracks, moments like this where he laughs and jokes and brings up fairy tale eggs, and he seems to be himself again.
We walk in silence down the dirt path that separates our side of town from the other, walking in the direction of a dense thicket of trees just beginning to illuminate in the early morning light. Our shoulders bump as we walk, a grounding touch for the both of us. This day isn’t an easy one. It’s why we have this tradition in the first place.
As we walk, I watch that easy, natural smile disappear from his lips, watch that vacant and unreadable expression take over. It’s like a wave when it happens, a thick, heavy blanket that just falls over him, erasing all joy and light from his very being just like that. His spine goes rigid, eyebrows knit closer, and his restless fingers find each other, picking and prodding until his cuticles are bloody.
I try to make a joke about the way Mrs. Figg, one of our neighbors, has arranged her hair for today, but James hardly even curls his lips. I try another one as we walk past the village square, the older men in their decades old trousers and poorly kept shoes, but James just scoffs. Not even a laugh, hardly even an exhale of amusement, a scoff.
“Hey ladies,” a voice calls from behind the first tree as we approach the patch of woods. Marlene. She’s standing with her arms crossed over her chest, leaning against the tree casually. She’s got a grin on her face that doesn’t quite meet her eyes.
“Hey yourself,” I say back, throwing my arm over her shoulder and pressing a kiss against her blonde hair. It’s tied back like it always is, knotted behind her head in a mess of waves she probably hasn’t brushed out in days.
“Alright, Jamie?” she asks, her voice going softer as she studies him through her lashes, her hand reaching out to grab his. James just shrugs in response, pulling his hand away and shoving it in his pocket. Marlene meets my eye and we have a silent conversation.
Has he been like this all morning?
He’s been like this all year.
Right, but it’s worse today.
Of course it’s worse today.
She shakes her head, effectively ending our wordless chat, and reaches down to grab my hand, giving it a quick squeeze. We follow James the rest of the way to the pond in relative silence, our boots scuffing a bit heavier than usual on the stones, our exhales louder, my nervous whistling a tad too much.
We spend much of the morning distracting each other from what lies ahead. Marlene talks idly about her younger brothers, how Eli, her youngest’s, chickens had escaped again, and they’d been out all night trying to collect them all, how the other, Gareth, had been up until midnight trimming his hair to look nice for the ceremony, nearly completely shearing himself in anxiety.
James throws stone after stone into our pond, the body of water we had claimed as our own the morning of our very first Selection Day. It was six years ago today. The three of us have returned every October 31st since. This place, this pond, it’s a piece of calm, a piece of home and togetherness. None of us have explicitly mentioned it, but coming here is almost our way of preserving our district for good. It gives us a morning to remember and hold with us just in case it’s our last in District 6.
I kick off my boots and lay back upon the pebbles and the damp soil of the shore, Marlene taking her place beside me, figuring I may as well take it all in. My fingers graze the smooth stones, my feet the cool water just hardly lapping up to touch my toes. I gaze up into the sky, the orange of the sunrise fading into a dull blue, the clouds rolling quickly along. It's a beautiful day, seems unfortunate to have to ruin it.
If I close my eyes I can almost pretend we’re elsewhere, that maybe we’d run off into the fields that surround our district, that we’d cross over the hills and just run until we couldn’t run any further. I can imagine there is no tournament, no Ministry, no Selection Day. That we’re free from all of this.
I can almost imagine my name means nothing, my lineage and my blood. That this district isn’t a prison. That I can be whatever and whoever I want.
“That one up there looks like Reggie’s ugly cat,” Marlene laughs, nudging my arm with her elbow and pointing up at a cloud directly above us. “You know, if you tilt your head like that.”
I tilt my head and she’s right, down to the bat like ears and wonky tail. I let out a laugh and scan the sky myself. “Oh!” I point down and to the right a bit. “That one there, looks like a- ehm, what’s it called? The little cart things they lug the coal out in?”
Marlene slugs me for that, hard too. “Tell me you’ve never worked a day in your life without telling me, eh, Black?” Then she mocks my voice, putting on a grossly exaggerated accent and repeating what I’d said. “You heard that, right, Potter?”
“I heard,” James murmurs, coming down to sit between Marlene and I, his voice far too small for my liking. “To be fair, I’ve never been in a mine either,” he shrugs.
“Well, sure,” Marlene scoffs. “But if the average district rockhead heard you say what Black just did, I think you’d have a better shot not getting spat on.”
“What, just because he’s all big and strong?” I protest, sitting up to eye Marlene who’s easy chuckling had suddenly ceased.
“Pretty sure it’s not because of how I look, Sirius,” James sighs, and god I could be such an idiot sometimes. Somehow, I’d forgotten again. I’d forgotten this last year. Erased over it with this, the warmth of James’s arm against mine, the soft rippling of the water and the smell of the trees. It was easier to just pretend it was all a dream, a nightmare more accurately.
“Right,” I mutter, and just like that the day comes back into view, what lies ahead.
“Oh,” James says after a moment, reaching into his coat pockets. “Almost forgot I brought you two something.”
He pulls out two oranges, small ones but perfectly round, and hands them to each of us. I can’t help but gasp, Marlene can’t either, throwing her arms around him in astonishment. Our district hardly ever gets fruit, Marlene’s side of town least of all. They tend to only eat what little crops they’re able to grow in their small gardens and what they can forage in the woods, wild berries, plums, cherries. My family aren’t of the working class and therefore have higher priority when it comes to exported goods, though even still, apples tend to be all we’re allocated. An orange is not just a luxury, it’s practically impossible.
Marlene digs her fingers into the peel with fervor, ripping the skin off, juice bursting all over her fingers. She swallows down every wedge and licks each drop from her fingertips. I take my time, not quite sure when I’ll see another one. And, because I’m not sure when I’ll have James here like this again, I tear the fruit in half and savor it with him.
The three of us sit there, enjoying the water on our toes, the breeze of the autumn morning, and ignore the sun climbing higher and higher into the sky. I can’t help but grab for each of their hands, a part of me desperate to just keep them both here, to keep them safe, to keep them away from there, but I know my efforts were in vain last year, what good is it now?
James lets out a small breath through his nose beside me, a blink and you’ll miss it kind of laugh, one you wouldn’t even register as one if you hadn’t studied him as closely as I had these last few months. I look over at the same moment as Marlene, our eyes finding each other before his, James’s eyes tracking a cloud beyond the treeline.
“That one looks like Mary, her hair I mean,” he says, the tiniest of smiles on his lips. “Remember her hair last Selection Day? With those huge pearls?”
“And that outrageous blue dress with all the little ruffles and ribbons?” Marlene gasps with glee. “How could I forget?”
“I’m almost excited to see what she pulls out this year,” I say after a moment, it could be the only shred of joy I get out of these days. Mary and her loony outfits. It’ll be her fourth year coming to our district. The years before, my first few Selection Days, were announced by a woman in sickly green, every year the same shade. She had red, talon like nails, and too-tight skin, her hair so blonde it was almost white. Mary was a welcome change.
Marlene mocks her accent as she’d done mine, reciting Mary’s heavily scripted dialogue, the lines we used say to each other on this morning as a joking parting gift, the words that don’t sound so funny anymore.
The Ministry thanks you for your sacrifice.
I certainly hadn’t felt thanked, our district hadn’t felt rewarded, nor James and his family honored.
“She’s really not so bad,” James says in that same small voice. “Not when you really talk to her. She’s actually quite genuine. She means well, at least.”
“Just brainwashed like the rest of them,” Marlene sighs.
James hums in agreement, looking back up at the sky, the sun nearly above us now. “Speaking of, I should get back. I need to meet Molly in a bit.”
“I hate that she has to go and leave the boys,” Marlene says, frowning. Then she whispers to me, “You know she’s pregnant again?”
James ignores our gossip, hopping to his feet and hesitating for a moment. Then, he crouches back down to look at us both one last time. For a while he just breathes, heavy, shaking breaths, and blinks like he’s trying to find words.
“Promise me you won’t get drawn,” he whispers, his voice cracking.
It’s like I can feel my heart cracking just hearing the fear in his voice, the voice I’d been so desperate to hear emotion in now overflowing with it. I want to put it back, to get that numb voice again instead. I can’t handle this James, the James staring at me now with unbridled terror in his eyes, fear he’d been desperately trying to conceal all morning.
It’s worse, because I feel practically responsible.
Because he isn't scared for himself, not this time, not this year.
James, unlike every other twelve to twenty two year old in this district, doesn't have to meet in the town center at exactly noon. James doesn’t have to stand in that crowd, to wait as the Ministry escort sifts through the names in that cup.
No, for the first year ever, James knows he’s safe.
Instead, he’s expected at our district’s Ministry Office just before, along with one other Tournament Victor from our district, Molly this year, to await their fresh mentees.
James knows he’s safe from the selection today, because last year it was his name that was called. It was James who was shipped off to the Ministry to be paraded around for a week, then dropped off in some arena who knows where, where he fought tooth and nail, a hatchet in hand, to live, to get back to his home, to his parents, to Marlene, to me.
I had watched every moment with bated breath, my stomach sick with every passing second. Somehow I knew he’d do it, call it faith or optimism or pure naivety, but I believed he’d come home. What I hadn’t realized was not all of him would leave that arena, not all of him would come back.
See, the Ministry takes something from each of its champions, each of the souls it reaps with each yearly selection. It takes and it takes and it takes, punishing us for crimes our forefathers committed, crimes that have been atoned for decades ago.
Today is no different. Today it will take two more from our district, and from the eleven that surround ours. It will send twenty three to death leaving one to live as a walking corpse, as a victor, a champion, forced to relive their terror every year.
They treat it like a badge of honor, a symbol of Ministry recognition, but it’s meaningless. There’s no pride in winning, no honor. When I look at James, it’s not glory I see, it’s guilt.
Marlene and I nod our heads to make James feel better, though all three of us know there’s nothing to be done, no security when it comes to the selection. No one is safe.
We let ourselves be pulled into one last hug, we do our best to squeeze James back, but noon is upon us and my stomach has filled with bile. Marlene’s hands are shaking and neither of us can hold onto our empty smiles for longer than a split second. James heads back and we follow soon after, Marlene to get her brothers ready, and me to check on my own.
When I get home, my mother is in the sitting room tightening the tie around Regulus’s neck, too tight, judging by the poorly concealed scowl on his face. She’s in a gown that must have been in fashion nearly two decades ago when she actually was a citizen of the Ministry, before our family’s district exile. It’s a drab and dreary thing, all black and grey silk, but it’s the most ornate dress she owns, one she only wears on holidays. Her hair is pinned back, half of it flowing loosely down her back in shiny black waves. She could have been beautiful, I think strangely, staring at her tug on Reggie’s collar, smoothing it into place. Had she not worn such a pinched expression for the latter part of her life, held herself so rigidly, perhaps she might be.
“Sirius,” she snaps, turning toward me as I enter the room. “Where have you been all morning?”
It’s not quite a question, but a threat. She’s smarter than that. She knows where I go, who I see, she’s just waiting for the time to use it. I ignore her and turn for the stairs, ready to throw on the first pair of clean trousers I can find.
“You’ll wear this,” she says firmly, holding out a suit for me to put on. It’s not mine, not one I’ve ever seen, though it isn’t new either. It’s in the same old style of fashion her dress is, the suits she has my father wear on occasion. With a sinking feeling in my gut, I realize it’s his. “I’ve had it tailored to fit you. You’re almost nineteen, Sirius. It’s due time you act like a man. Time you start looking like one too.”
If it were any other day, I’d protest. I’d roll my eyes and say something just as cutting in return. But in a twisted way, this day brings us together, makes us see eye to eye for once. Because today, both of us do what we need to get through it, we do what needs to be done to protect him.
I pull on the suit, the moth eaten fabric itchy against my legs, the starchy shirt stiff when I bend my arms. It feels wrong on my body, out of place.
I let her comb my hair into place, lifting my chin an inch higher as she studies me. We have the same grey eyes, the same pale skin and perhaps at one point the same nose, had she not spent so much time wrinkling hers. I can tell my hair looks fine, that it has for the past minute or so, but I let her smooth it down with her hands anyway. It could just be the only time she allows herself to act motherly, or at least the way one would expect a mother to act in the Ministry. And realizing that she can allow herself to do it, I allow myself to close my eyes and pretend it's real.
A moment later, she steps away with a satisfied hum, and I’m left in the room with Regulus, who’s taken up pulling anxiously at his shirt sleeves.
“Here,” I say, stepping forward and unfastening the ancient cufflinks. I roll the sleeves once more, tugging the jacket sleeve back into place. “Better?”
“Thanks,” Regulus murmurs, his voice is quiet, more reserved than usual. He’s scared.
His jaw is set and he’s staring intently at a spot on the floor, a stain on the rug. I want to hug him, to reassure him his name won’t be called, that he’ll be safe for another year, that I will be too. I want to take care of him, yet I can’t understand how to.
It’s part of the reason I tolerate Kreacher, he always knows how to comfort Regulus when I can never quite figure it out.
Even my mother’s poking and prodding seemed to settle him. And now, staring at that spot, with me standing in front of him, he seems scared again.
“It’ll be ok,” I say after another moment, my voice cracking slightly.
“You don’t know that,” he replies.
And he’s right. Of course I don’t know who will be selected, of course I worry about our family’s crimes and what that could mean for the selection. Of course I think about James, not just his selection a year ago today, but how he’ll hold up this year as a mentor.
But Regulus shouldn’t worry about all of that, I should. I’m the older brother, not him.
I reach out a hesitant hand and put it on his shoulder, hoping the weight of it could be some semblance of comfort, wishing I could just pull him in with it the way I’d do with James.
But, this is Regulus, the heir my parents have begun to train to follow in their meaningless footsteps, the one who’d take over after my father’s sickness finally took him. The boy in front of me is closer to manhood than childhood, no longer the kid with no front teeth who’d follow me into town, the kid who’d beg for piggyback rides, who’d sneak into my room late at night after waking from a nightmare.
I can’t treat him like James, nor like the child he’s outgrown, so I treat him like nothing at all, a shadow of a brother, a ghost of the child I once knew. I don’t know how to be his brother, not the right way at least, so I let my hand drop down to my side, and I give him one last nod as I turn for the door.
The whole walk into town my mother yammers in our ears about upholding our legacy, our nobility, that if we are selected we will treat it as a gift, an honor. She tells Regulus to lift his chin, tells me to stop scuffing my feet. She even reaches under my jacket to tuck in my shirt when I ignore her request the first few times.
I pull away from her the way I’ve learned to in public, not quite as dramatically as I’d like to, a miniscule sidestep only she notices. She pinches the inside of my wrist for it, neither one of our expressions faltering. She’s learned my own impulses and tendencies just as well as I’ve learned hers. We’ve learned how to get back at each other in crowded spaces where no one else would bat an eye. I’d almost call it a secret language between the two of us, if that didn’t sound so familial and sweet.
I’d certainly use a different word to describe the ways I’ve learned to keep my scars hidden and trained myself not to flinch from her. How I’ve learned when to avoid drawing a scene, when to keep it all hidden. When to pull down my sleeves past my wrists, when to hold my tongue, to stay in line. I’m not a complete loose cannon, not as much as my mother would say at least.
My mother’s still talking, mostly to Regulus now, but I’ve completely tuned it out the last few minutes. We’ve walked into the town center now, the crowd of people has begun to fill in, the buzz of anxious murmurs drowning out my mother’s shrill blathering. The kids have started to form lines, the youngest still with their families along the edges of the crowd, the twelve year olds in the front, the thirteens behind them, and so on.
I scan the stage but see only empty chairs and one ornate vessel, a goblet encrusted with jewels and engravings I can’t decipher from this distance. It’s the same one we used last year and the years before that. I wonder if the one they use in District 5 is similar, or District 7, if they’re all the same or if each is unique.
My goblet wonderings are cut short when a hand squeezes mine. I look down to catch the retreating fingers of my brother, a look on his face I don’t think I’ve ever seen. I reach out to squeeze his hand in return and to my surprise he lets me.
I open my mouth to speak, but before I can he surges forward, his arms encircling me before I can even register what’s going on. He holds me there for only a moment, a hug so rushed I’m surprised I wasn’t just knocked over.
Someone bumps into my back behind me and I turn to see who it is, just a girl around Regulus’s age, I think her family owns the small garden shop only a street away. She mutters an apology and keeps walking toward the stage, presumably toward the other kids her age.
I turn back to Regulus to try my hand at more words of reassurement, to hug him back perhaps, what I intend to do doesn’t end up mattering, though, because when I do turn around, he’s already walking away, a hunch to his shoulders.
I start to follow after him, but the crowd’s getting tighter, the center filling with people of all ages, and my path is blocked. I try to worm my way through a group of sniffling fifteen year olds I vaguely recognize, but there’s a tapping on the microphone and I realize it’s time.
When I look up at the stage, James is just sitting down, Molly settling into the chair beside him, her red hair curling around her plump face. Mary has just taken the stage as well, still tapping on the microphone, and our district’s appointed councillor rushes up the stage’s stairs to take his own place.
I know I should find the eighteens and get into line, but my body suddenly feels cemented to the floor. If James would just look at me, meet my eye, I’d be able to move again, but he’s just fiddling with a button on his sleeve, his eyes focused intently on the floor underneath him.
Another girl bumps me, trying to squeeze up toward the younger kids, then a boy hugging his mother steps on my foot. Distantly, I register the fact I’m in the way, in the wrong spot, out of place, but I still can’t quite move.
It’s noon now, it’s time.
I’m out of time.
I let Regulus go.
“Sirius,” a voice says beside me, a gentle hand grabbing mine. “What are you doing? Come on, come stand with me.”
It’s Marlene, and I let out a breath I must have been holding. I let her lead me through the still compacting crowd toward my classmates and some boys I recognize only from classes years ago, boys who must have left school to work instead.
“She’s about to start,” Marlene whispers. “She’s just finished monologuing about Grindelwald and his legacy.”
I’m almost happy I’d missed it in my daze, that speech can be incredibly dry. Basically, the escort, Mary in this case, gives a abridged version of our country’s history. She talks about how hundreds of years ago overpopulation and crumbling government nearly destroyed our world, how our people survived, splitting what remained of the land that used to be called the British Isles into twelve factions we call districts.
The nobility of the old world preserved their lineages and flocked to the old capital city, now most commonly known as the Ministry. There they took to managing the districts and building our country into a civilization again, a society. But the people in the districts grew untrusting of the Ministry, and they revolted.
What followed was a war that lasted several years, one side was led by Albus Dumbledore, a revolutionary and an advocate for the people of the districts, the other led by Gellert Grindelwald, an extremist who valued order, and above else the importance of purity of blood.
Grindelwald’s people won, and the Ministry was reinstated with firmer regulations, registries were put into place tracing back families and bloodlines, entire families were exiled to neighboring districts, and the country was renamed in his honor. Grindelwalden, or Walden for short.
To remind the districts of the Ministry’s power over them, Grindelwald established the annual Tournament. Each of Walden’s twelve districts has to send two of its youth, their ages between twelve and twenty two, to fight in an arena to the death, the winner is named the tournament’s champion.
It’s said to be an honor, said to be a way to lift the districts up, to show them the Ministry sees us and our strength, but that’s all a load of horse shit. Really, it’s just a way to keep us in line, to keep us from rebelling or starting another uprising. It’s the Ministry’s way of proving their power, proving we, the districts, can’t ever win, not in Walden.
What’s even worse, is that the Tournament itself is broadcasted for all of Walden to see, even us in the districts, those without televisions can watch in Ministry owned buildings, it’s a public event, celebrated even. Looking around the town center now, it’s impossible to miss the excessive waving flags, to hear the anthem playing through the warbled speakers, to realize everyone is dressed in their very best clothes. It’s all a statement.
Look how nice we look, how patriotic we all are, we’re not common-blooded mutts, see? You won’t kill us, right?
It’s pathetic, really. And yet, here I stand in my Ministry-approved suit, my chin high, in line, waiting and subservient. Just last year, I’d still be making snide remarks around now, whispering stupid jokes about the girls next to us, or Mary up on stage, wondering aloud how drunk our councilor was, James and I’d be wearing matching grins.
Now, it’s different. Now, I’ve seen what the Tournament can do, what the Tournament can take. I’ve had James ripped from my arms, seen him nearly bleed out on a screen hundreds of miles away. It’s not a joke to me now, it can’t be.
I focus on Marlene’s fingers around mine, her palm warm and steady against my own. I listen to Mary read through the list of District 6’s Victors, my stomach sinking when she finally reads out James’s name. For a moment I’m transported back to last year’s ceremony, hearing his name on that slip of paper. Marlene squeezes my hand harder.
And then, it’s time. Mary approaches the goblet off to her left, taking a big breath as she dramatically rifles through the names inside. It won’t be me, I think, it won’t be Marlene and it won’t be me. I chant the words to myself over and over, catching James’s eye for a mere moment, I imagine he’s mentally reciting the same thing.
Mary stills and pulls out a jewelry clad hand, and only then do I notice her ensemble. She’s wearing red from top to bottom, a skirt made of ruffled chiffon floats around her in layers down to her feet, which are precariously balancing on heels nearly a foot high. The sleeves are short but puffy, and the collar of the top climbs as high as her jaw giving the illusion of bloody hands throttling her. Though, that may just be my nerves projecting.
Her sharp, red nails pry open the slip of paper, and time seems to still completely. I shut my eyes tight, squeeze Marlene’s hand tighter still, and send one last silent plea to anyone who may be listening. Let it not be me, let it not be Marlene, let us make it to twenty two and be free of this for good. Let James mentor a stranger, someone he can’t get attached to, maybe that one bully kid, the one that stole his glasses when we were thirteen, Brecon Davis. Yeah, let it be him. Someone who doesn’t matter.
I hardly let myself feel guilty for that thought, because Mary is reading out the name, and my eyes spring open immediately, my hand going cold in Marlene’s.
It’s not her. It’s not me. It’s not even Brecon Davis.
The name Mary reads is Regulus Black.