Chapter Text
The birthday cake was taller than Regulus Black.
That was the first insult.
Not taller by much, perhaps—not if he stood very straight and lifted his chin the way Mother always instructed him to do when elderly witches stared too long at his face and decided they were allowed to have opinions about bone structure—but taller enough that it felt personal.
It sat in the centre of the long ballroom table like a monument. Five tiers of black sugar lace and silver frosting. Candied violets. Edible pearls. A little constellation of charmed candles hovering around it in slow, graceful circles, their flames blue-white and cold-looking, as if even the fire in this house knew better than to act alive.
There was nothing thirteen-year-old about it.
There was nothing Regulus about it.
No ridiculous colour. No chocolate frogs. No treacle tart. No jam. No crooked little handmade banner. No cake that looked like someone had made it because they knew him, because they liked him, because they had thought, even once, what would make him smile?
It was a cake for newspapers.
It was a cake for Narcissa to admire politely, for Aunt Druella to mention to some other woman with a sharp nose and sharper diamonds, for Orion Black to gesture toward while accepting compliments about tradition. It was a cake designed to sit untouched while adults discussed bloodlines beside it.
Regulus stood at the edge of the ballroom and stared at it until the candles blurred.
Around him, Grimmauld Place gleamed.
The whole house had been polished into something cruel. The chandeliers burned with too much light. The black marble floor reflected robes and jewels and pale faces. The ancestral portraits had been cleaned, their varnish shining, their painted eyes bright and hungry as they watched the gathering unfold. Garlands of dark roses looped along the walls. Silver ribbons twisted down banisters and around doorframes, not because Regulus liked silver ribbons, but because Mother said they were dignified.
A string quartet played in the corner.
Regulus hated the quartet.
He hated the polished floor.
He hated the roses.
He hated the way everyone kept saying happy birthday with their mouths and not one other part of their faces.
He hated that he had turned thirteen and somehow everyone else had received a party.
Walburga Black stood near the fireplace in midnight velvet, one hand resting elegantly over the other, her mouth curved in something that could almost pass for warmth if no one had ever seen warmth before.
“My youngest has always been quite reserved,” she told a tall wizard in peacock-green robes. “He prefers quiet refinement.”
Regulus did not prefer quiet refinement.
Regulus preferred being asked.
Orion laughed softly beside her, holding a glass of firewhisky. “A serious boy. Sensible. Not like his brother.”
A few people chuckled.
Regulus’s fingers tightened around the sleeve of his formal robes.
Not like his brother.
No.
Sirius was not there.
Sirius, who should have been standing beside him in some awful dress robes, making faces behind Mother’s back, stealing sugared fruits, complaining loudly enough to cause a scene but softly enough to avoid immediate execution.
Sirius, who should have come.
Sirius, who had not even pretended.
He had run off to the Potters’ house for the weekend.
James Potter’s house.
Regulus had heard the argument through the walls. Sirius laughing, Mother shouting, Orion’s voice low and dangerous, the front door slamming so violently that one of the hall portraits had shrieked.
And then Sirius was gone.
Not missing. Not stolen. Not kept away.
Gone because he had chosen to be.
Regulus had spent the morning telling himself he did not care.
Then the afternoon.
Then the evening.
Now, under the chandelier light, with half of sacred pure-blood society filling his house and no one looking at him unless they wanted to measure him against his brother’s absence, Regulus decided he had been right the first time.
He did not miss Sirius.
He hated him.
He hated him so cleanly it felt almost peaceful.
Across the room, Bellatrix laughed too loudly at something Rodolphus Lestrange said. Narcissa stood near her, composed and lovely and cool as porcelain. Andromeda was not there, her name floating unspoken in the house like smoke trapped under glass. Uncle Alphard had come, lounging near a pillar with a wine glass and an expression like he found the whole thing terribly amusing, which made Regulus hate him too, though not as much as the others.
His grandparents had arrived early and inspected him like furniture.
His cousins had arrived in clusters, dressed beautifully and speaking to him briefly, because one had to acknowledge the birthday boy before returning to the more important business of alliances, rumours, marriages, money.
The Rosiers were there.
The Lestranges.
The Malfoys.
The Crouches.
The Notts, the Averys, the Carrows, the Yaxleys, the Selwyns, the Greengrasses, the Princes, the Mulcibers, and every other polished old name that had been carved into pure-blood society like rot into wood.
Servants moved through the crowd carrying trays.
They wore black and silver uniforms.
They did not look at Regulus unless summoned.
No one looked at Regulus unless summoned.
It was his birthday.
His house.
His name.
His cake.
His candles.
His party.
And yet he stood there like a guest who had wandered into the wrong funeral.
A squat old witch in emerald silk caught his eye and smiled at him with all her teeth.
“Regulus, darling,” she said, gliding over. “Thirteen! My goodness. Practically a young man now.”
Regulus said nothing.
She did not seem to notice.
“You must be so grateful to your parents. Such a splendid occasion.”
His mouth twitched.
Splendid.
Behind her, Walburga watched.
Regulus lowered his eyes just enough to be considered respectful and gave the smallest nod.
The witch beamed as if she had achieved something. “So well-mannered. Such promise. Your brother could learn from you.”
Regulus’s throat locked.
His brother.
His brother who was not here.
His brother who had chosen James Potter.
James Potter with his stupid round glasses and his loud laugh and his open house and his parents who apparently let people breathe indoors.
James Potter, who took Sirius away every chance he got.
James Potter, who got Sirius without even trying.
Regulus’s nails dug into his palm.
The old witch drifted away, satisfied.
A group of portraits began whispering behind him.
“There he is.”
“Thin thing.”
“Quieter than the other one.”
“Better.”
“Too sullen.”
“Black boys have always had tempers.”
“Not tonight, surely.”
Regulus turned and stared at them.
The painted faces stared back.
Great-grandfathers, great-aunts, dead cousins, ancient Blacks with severe mouths and jewelled throats. They lined the walls in gilded frames, smug in death, still expecting obedience from everyone who walked beneath them.
One portrait, a narrow-faced wizard with silver hair, sniffed.
“Stand straight, boy.”
Regulus did.
Then he turned and walked out of the ballroom.
No one stopped him.
That was the second insult.
The corridor outside was dimmer, cooler, and quieter, though not quiet enough. Music leaked through the doors behind him, bright and elegant and hateful. Voices swelled and dipped. Glasses chimed. Laughter rose like sparks.
Regulus walked.
His shoes tapped against the floor.
Past the cloakroom, where guests had left expensive travelling cloaks in careless piles.
Past the downstairs parlour, where two elderly wizards argued softly about Ministry appointments.
Past a hall mirror that reflected him too clearly.
Small.
Pale.
Black hair combed neatly back because Mother had insisted.
Dress robes cut beautifully and sitting on him like a cage.
Thirteen.
He looked like a boy dressed as someone’s heir.
He stopped in front of the mirror.
For a long moment, he stared at himself.
Then he whispered, “Did my invitations disappear?”
His reflection said nothing.
Regulus laughed once, very softly, though there was no humour in it. The sound broke oddly in the corridor.
There had been invitations. Of course there had. Thick cream cards in black envelopes. Walburga had shown them to him while explaining who would attend, which families mattered, which greetings to use, whose compliments to accept, whose children were worth befriending, whose children were beneath notice.
But his friends had not come.
They had sent polite excuses through parents.
It was too formal.
Too boring.
Too much of a family affair.
Not really a party, then, is it?
Regulus had heard that last one in Barty’s voice even though Barty had not said it to his face. Barty would have wrinkled his nose and said it like a verdict. Evan would have shrugged and looked away. Pandora would have looked apologetic. Dorcas would have called the whole thing depressing.
And they had all stayed away.
They had all known what this would be.
And they had left him in it.
Regulus pressed his fingertips to the mirror.
“Why’d I put my heart on every cursive letter?”
The question sounded too large for the hallway.
His face in the glass looked younger for half a second. Not heir. Not Black. Just a boy in expensive robes asking a mirror why no one had wanted him enough to suffer through one boring evening.
Then the ballroom doors opened behind him.
A burst of music and voices spilled out.
“Regulus?”
Walburga’s voice cracked like a whip disguised as silk.
He turned.
She stood framed in the doorway, beautiful and furious beneath the diamonds at her throat.
“There you are,” she said, and smiled because guests could see. “You are expected inside.”
Regulus looked past her.
Inside, people turned.
Orion’s gaze found him.
Bellatrix smirked.
Narcissa’s eyes softened slightly, then shuttered.
Uncle Alphard lifted his glass.
The portraits craned in their frames.
Everyone looking now.
Finally.
Regulus tilted his head.
His mother’s smile sharpened.
“Come, darling. Do not sulk in corridors.”
He almost laughed again.
Darling.
Sulk.
Corridors.
He stepped back.
Walburga’s eyes narrowed.
“Regulus.”
He said nothing.
A servant carrying champagne froze between them, unsure whether to move.
Behind Mother, someone murmured, “Poor boy must be overwhelmed.”
Someone else said, “Orion’s younger one has always been strange.”
Walburga heard. Of course she heard. Her smile did not move, but her eyes went black.
Regulus turned away from her and continued walking.
The silence behind him was instant, shocked, delicious.
Then whispers.
“What was that?”
“Did he just—?”
“On his birthday?”
“Walburga will flay him.”
“Thirteen is a difficult age.”
“He needs firmer handling.”
“Like Sirius.”
“Sirius would have made a scene.”
“He already did, didn’t he? Running off to those blood traitors.”
Regulus stopped.
Not because of the insult to Sirius.
Because they still got to speak about him.
Even absent, Sirius filled rooms. Sirius drew breath from people who had not seen him in hours. Sirius existed loudly enough to ruin Regulus’s birthday from another house.
Regulus turned his head just slightly.
The servants watched with wide eyes.
The guests watched with hungry ones.
His mother stood rigid at the doorway.
Regulus said nothing.
Then he walked on.
He heard Walburga inhale.
He heard Orion murmur something too low to catch.
He heard Bellatrix laugh under her breath.
He heard the ballroom doors close.
The music resumed.
That was the third insult.
They went back to the party.
His party.
Without him.
Regulus moved through the house like a ghost learning the shape of its own haunting.
Up the main staircase, beneath portraits who whispered and tutted and told him to stop dragging misery through good marble. Along the upper gallery, where the sounds below rose in muffled waves. Past rooms opened for guests to admire, rooms no one actually lived in, rooms that held chairs too delicate to sit on and books no one read.
He passed Sirius’s bedroom.
The door was shut.
Regulus stared at it.
He imagined Sirius inside, sprawled across the bed, boots on the covers, laughing at something stupid. Sirius calling him Reggie just to annoy him. Sirius tugging his hair. Sirius stealing the best biscuits from the kitchen and acting like handing Regulus one was a grand act of generosity.
Then he imagined Sirius at James Potter’s house.
Laughing there.
Wanted there.
Safe there.
Choosing there.
Regulus’s face went cold.
He stepped closer to the door.
For a moment, he almost raised his hand to touch it.
Instead, he whispered, “Tell me why the hell no one is here.”
The words slipped out rawer than he wanted.
His jaw tightened.
No one answered.
Good.
No one ever did.
He looked toward the far end of the corridor, where the wallpaper curled slightly at one seam despite the house-elves’ obsessive care. Somewhere below, applause broke out. Probably Mother had made a toast. Probably Father had lifted his glass and said something about legacy. Probably everyone had turned toward the cake.
The cake taller than Regulus.
The cake that had nothing to do with him.
His hands shook.
He stuffed them into his robe pockets.
“Tell me what to do to make it all feel better.”
Still no answer.
Only the house creaking softly around him.
The old wood.
The old stone.
The old blood.
The old names.
The old portraits murmuring.
The old rules pressing against his ribs until he could barely breathe.
Regulus laughed again, but this time it sounded wet.
He hated that.
He hated the sound so much he swallowed it down until it hurt.
“Maybe it’s a cruel joke on me,” he whispered.
Then, quieter, nastier, because something inside him had started curling up with teeth, “Whatever, whatever.”
Below, the party brightened.
Music shifted into something livelier. A woman laughed. Someone called for more wine. A child—one of the younger cousins, probably—shrieked with delight and was immediately hushed.
Regulus walked away from Sirius’s door.
His own room was down the hall, pristine and untouched, with birthday gifts arranged on the desk by category. Books. Gloves. A silver signet chain. A miniature enchanted orrery. Things selected by adults who knew what a Black heir should want.
None of them had been wrapped in ugly paper.
None of them had been accompanied by stupid cards.
None had come from Sirius.
He looked at the gifts from the doorway and did not go inside.
“Just means there’s way more cake for me,” he said.
His voice trembled at the end.
He hated that too.
“Forever, forever.”
The phrase sounded absurd in the empty corridor.
Forever.
This house loved forever. Forever names. Forever portraits. Forever duties. Forever blood.
Forever alone at the edge of rooms built for him.
The first tear fell before he could stop it.
Regulus wiped it away quickly, furious.
No.
No.
Absolutely not.
He would not cry because Sirius was at James Potter’s.
He would not cry because his friends had abandoned him.
He would not cry because Mother had built herself a gala and called it his birthday.
He would not cry because every adult downstairs knew he was miserable and found it either amusing or inconvenient.
He would not cry.
He stood very still, breathing through his nose.
Then another tear slipped down.
Regulus smiled.
It was not a nice smile.
“It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to,” he whispered.
The house listened.
Somewhere nearby, a portrait gasped.
Regulus turned.
An old painted witch in a tall lace collar stared down at him from her frame, her face pinched with disapproval.
“What did you say, boy?”
Regulus looked at her.
He had never liked that portrait. She had once told Walburga that Sirius needed breaking and Regulus needed sharpening. Regulus had been nine. Sirius had thrown an inkpot at the frame and been locked in his room for a day.
The portrait’s painted eyes narrowed.
“Well?”
Regulus stepped closer.
“Cry if I want to.”
Her mouth opened.
“How dare—”
Regulus kept walking.
The portrait shouted after him, shrill and offended. Others woke in their frames as he passed, calling questions, insults, orders.
“Where are you going?”
“Return to the party!”
“Your mother will hear of this!”
“Ungrateful child!”
“Spoiled boy!”
“Black children do not snivel!”
Regulus descended the back staircase.
Not the main one.
The servants’ one.
It smelled faintly of polish, old dust, and kitchen heat. He could hear house-elves below, frantic and whispering, preparing another course no one needed. He could hear human servants moving between rooms, shoes quick on stone, voices hushed.
Everyone working.
Everyone trapped in the machinery of the evening.
He reached the lower floor and paused in a narrow hallway near the kitchens.
A young maid carrying a stack of linen nearly collided with him.
She stopped so abruptly the top cloth slid sideways.
“Oh—Master Regulus,” she said, pale. “Beg pardon.”
He looked at her.
She looked terrified of him.
Not because he had done anything.
Because of his name.
Because in this house even a thirteen-year-old boy could ruin her life if he complained.
Regulus said nothing.
Her hands tightened around the linen. “Happy birthday, sir.”
Sir.
He was thirteen.
Sir.
Regulus stared at her until she looked down.
Then he walked past.
Behind him, she released a shaky breath and hurried away.
In the kitchen corridor, the house-elves were whispering.
“Mistress wants the wine sent up now—”
“Master says the candles must be brighter—”
“Young Master is not in the ballroom—”
“Young Master must not be upset—”
“Young Master is always upset.”
Regulus stopped.
The elves froze.
One squeaked and dropped a spoon.
Regulus did not turn around.
A terrible, empty calm spread through him, soft as ash.
Always upset.
Yes.
Perhaps he was.
Perhaps that was all he was.
A boy-shaped inconvenience full of wanting.
Wanting Sirius to stay.
Wanting friends who would come.
Wanting parents who knew the difference between a birthday and a performance.
Wanting one room in the whole rotten house where his name did not feel like a hand around his throat.
His eyes drifted to the candles burning in iron sconces along the corridor.
Small flames.
Pretty flames.
Obedient flames.
Waiting.
The house hummed around him. Music above. Voices below. Portraits muttering. Doors opening and closing. Servants moving. Guests laughing.
All of it alive.
All of it carrying on without him.
Regulus lifted one hand toward the nearest candle.
He did not speak.
He barely breathed.
Magic stirred under his skin.
Not bright. Not childish. Not accidental.
Something dark and hot and quiet.
The flame bent toward him.
Regulus watched it shiver.
Then stretch.
Then catch.
The old velvet runner along the wall went up at once, a ribbon of orange biting through black fabric.
For one second, it was beautiful.
The fire flowered silently, almost delicately.
Then the air changed.
Heat punched through the corridor.
The wallpaper curled.
The sconce cracked.
Smoke began to climb.
Regulus lowered his hand.
The house seemed to inhale.
Then he turned and walked away.
Behind him, the fire found the next drape.
Then the next.
Then the old wood panelling.
Then the dry garlands looped for the gala.
It moved faster than anything in Grimmauld Place had moved all evening.
Regulus walked through the servants’ corridor, past the pantry, past the back hall, past another row of portraits who began shouting as smoke reached them.
“Fire!”
“Fire in the lower hall!”
“Someone fetch Mistress Black!”
“Water, you fools!”
The alarm rose in layers.
First confusion.
Then irritation.
Then fear.
A servant screamed.
The kitchen door burst open and house-elves spilled out, snapping fingers, trying to summon water, trying to vanish smoke, trying to do six impossible things at once while the magic of the old house buckled and spat around them.
Regulus did not run.
He walked.
Upstairs, the ballroom doors opened again.
This time the sound that spilled out was not music.
It was complaint.
“What is that smell?”
“Is something burning?”
“Walburga?”
“Orion, what’s happened?”
“Stay calm.”
“Do not shove!”
Regulus slipped through a side passage behind a tapestry.
The house knew him.
Or he knew the house.
Either way, it gave him darkness.
Behind the wall, he moved along the narrow hidden corridor Sirius had shown him years ago, when Sirius had still found secret passages thrilling and Regulus had still believed being shown meant being loved.
Smoke seeped through cracks in the old plaster.
The air warmed.
He could hear everything now.
The ballroom erupting.
Chairs scraping.
Glass breaking.
His mother’s voice, high and furious. “Who has done this?”
His father, controlled but strained. “The exits. Go to the exits.”
Someone shouted, “The main hall is blocked!”
Another voice cried, “The floo won’t take!”
“The floo won’t—what do you mean the floo won’t take?”
“Open the doors!”
“They won’t open!”
“Blast them!”
A spell cracked.
Then another.
Wood groaned.
Flames roared in answer.
Regulus stopped behind the wall.
Through a narrow split in the panelling, he could see a slice of the main hall.
Smoke rolled across the ceiling in thick black waves. Flames had climbed the staircase garlands and were eating their way along the banister, turning silver ribbon into falling sparks. Guests crowded near the front doors, robes dragging, jewels flashing, faces stripped of all their polish.
The sacred twenty-eight did not look sacred in a fire.
They looked like people.
Panicked people.
Angry people.
Trapped people.
Avery shoved past a servant.
A Lestrange cursed at the door until the wood splintered but did not open.
Bellatrix stood laughing for one wild second, wand out, eyes bright, before smoke made her cough and Rodolphus grabbed her arm.
Narcissa’s composure cracked at the edges as she looked toward the stairs, toward family, toward exits that no longer behaved like exits.
Lucius Malfoy shouted for space and got none.
An elderly witch fainted.
Someone stepped on her hem and nearly went down with her.
Children cried.
Portraits screamed.
House-elves popped in and out uselessly, their magic rebounding, their ears smoking, their eyes huge with terror.
A servant beat at flames with a tablecloth until the cloth caught.
Regulus watched.
Not smiling.
Not crying now.
Just watching.
In the hidden passage, smoke curled around his ankles.
His own voice came out barely louder than the crackle in the walls.
“I’ll cry until the candles burn down this place.”
Below, the chandelier in the ballroom shuddered.
Someone screamed, “Get away from the ceiling!”
The string quartet had abandoned their instruments. One violin lay crushed beneath a chair. The cake had not yet burned; it stood in the middle of the chaos, absurdly perfect, its charmed candles still circling.
Walburga appeared in the main hall, wand raised, face monstrous with fury and fear.
“Regulus!” she shouted.
His name cut through everything.
Regulus did not move.
Orion turned sharply. “Where is he?”
Walburga looked around, eyes scanning faces, corners, smoke. “Regulus!”
There it was.
Finally.
His name like it mattered.
His name like something had gone wrong.
His name like they had noticed the birthday boy had left the room.
A laugh crawled up Regulus’s throat.
It came out quiet and broken.
“I’ll cry until my pity party’s in flames.”
A portrait near the front stairs had caught at the corner. The painted wizard inside hammered against the edge of his frame as if he could break free.
“Help me! Help me, you idiots!”
Another portrait screamed curses as fire licked up the canvas.
“Save the family line!”
“The records!”
“The tapestry!”
The tapestry.
Regulus wondered if the family tree was burning yet.
All those names.
All those careful branches.
All that blood.
The thought should have horrified him.
It didn’t.
The hidden passage led toward the rear of the house. Regulus moved again, one hand against the wall as the floorboards grew hot beneath his shoes.
His breathing shallowed.
Smoke scratched his throat.
The house shook with spellfire, with impact, with people trying to force their way out and finding only flame.
“Maybe if I knew all of them well,” Regulus whispered, “I wouldn’t have been trapped inside this hell that holds me.”
The words felt too honest.
He hated honest things.
Honest things were ugly. They had teeth. They sat inside you until they rotted.
He kept walking.
Behind him, someone screamed his brother’s name.
“Sirius isn’t here!”
“Where is Sirius?”
“At the Potters’!”
“Of course he is!”
“Forget Sirius, find Regulus!”
Regulus’s hand clenched against the wall.
Find Regulus.
Too late.
So late it was almost funny.
The passage opened near the garden corridor, where tall glass doors looked out onto the back lawn. The fire had not fully reached this part of the house yet, but smoke pressed against the ceiling, and the wallpaper glowed in places from heat behind the walls.
Regulus stepped into the corridor.
A footman saw him from the far end.
“Master Regulus!”
Regulus turned his head.
The young man stumbled toward him, coughing, face streaked with soot. “Thank Merlin—come this way, sir, quickly—”
Regulus stared at him.
The footman reached out.
Regulus stepped back.
The man stopped, confused. “Sir?”
Regulus said nothing.
A crash thundered somewhere deep in the house. The footman flinched violently.
“Please,” he said. “The back doors—if they’ll open—”
Regulus looked at the doors.
The garden beyond was black and silver under the night sky.
Freedom.
Not leaving.
Not running away.
Just outside.
Just out of the house.
The footman moved again. “Sir, your parents are looking—”
Regulus lifted his wand.
Not at the man.
At the door.
The lock burst open.
Cold night air rushed in.
The footman sagged with relief. “Oh, thank—”
A wave of fire rolled across the ceiling behind him, blooming from the far archway with a sound like a great animal waking.
The footman turned.
His relief vanished.
Regulus walked through the doors.
Behind him, the man shouted.
Maybe for him.
Maybe for anyone.
Maybe for God.
Regulus did not look back.
The garden was wet.
The sprinkler charms had gone off, triggered by smoke pushing out through broken windows. Water spun silver under the stars, hissing where sparks landed on the grass. The hedges glittered. The roses bowed under the sudden artificial rain.
Regulus walked until he reached the centre of the back lawn.
Then his knees folded.
He lay down in the grass.
Water struck his face, his robes, his hair. It soaked him in seconds, plastering black strands to his forehead. Cold slid down his neck and under his collar. His dress robes clung to him, heavy and ruined.
Above him, the stars looked sharp enough to cut.
Behind him, Grimmauld Place burned.
Windows burst one by one, bright mouths opening in the dark.
The house screamed in wood, glass, paint, and people.
Regulus stared up at the sky.
His lips parted.
“Maybe if I casted out a spell,” he whispered, “or told them decorations were in pastel ribbons.”
A laugh shook him.
Small at first.
Then harder.
Not happy.
Not sane.
Not anything with a name.
“Maybe it’s a cruel joke on me.”
Water ran into his eyes.
He blinked it away.
“Whatever, whatever.”
The ballroom windows glowed orange now.
The cake would be burning.
The silver frosting melting.
The candles falling.
The guests choking on their own screams and expensive perfumes.
His parents calling for him.
His mother furious that even dying had not gone according to plan.
His father trying every spell he knew against a house that had finally decided to keep its own.
His aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents.
All the sacred names.
All the portraits.
All the servants.
All the house-elves.
All of them inside.
Regulus listened.
Every sound came softened by rain.
“Just means there’s way more cake for me.”
The sentence cracked halfway through.
He pressed the back of his wrist over his mouth.
“Forever, forever.”
The roof above the east wing collapsed.
A tower of sparks rose into the night like a new constellation being born wrong.
Regulus’s eyes widened at it.
Beautiful.
Terrible.
Both.
His chest hurt.
His throat hurt.
His whole body hurt with a feeling too enormous to fit inside a thirteen-year-old ribcage.
“It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.”
The house groaned.
“Cry if I want to.”
The garden sprinklers ticked and spun.
Water fell.
Fire climbed.
Regulus lay still.
“I’ll cry until the candles burn down this place.”
Somewhere inside, the front hall gave way with a thunderous crack.
The sound rolled through the garden and into his bones.
“I’ll cry until my pity party’s in flames.”
Then he did cry.
Not prettily.
Not softly.
Not in the elegant, acceptable way Mother might have allowed if the tears served a purpose.
He cried with his teeth clenched and his fists twisted in wet grass. He cried silently at first, then with harsh little breaths that tore up through him. He cried because the house was burning. He cried because he had wanted it to. He cried because Sirius was not inside. He cried because Sirius was not there. He cried because he hated Sirius and because hatred did not fill the space where a brother should have been.
He cried because nobody had come.
He cried because everybody had.
The firelight flickered over the garden wall.
The stars stayed indifferent.
Regulus laughed through the tears, the sound splintering.
“I’m laughing, I’m crying.”
His voice was small under the roar.
“It feels like I’m dying.”
He turned his face slightly, cheek pressed into soaked grass.
Smoke rose thick and black, blotting part of the sky.
Inside the house, the screams were fewer now.
That made the remaining ones worse.
Regulus shut his eyes.
“I’m dying, I’m dying.”
A portrait voice shrieked from somewhere near the rear windows, warped by heat.
“Black blood! Black blood must endure!”
The frame burned through before it could say anything else.
Regulus opened his eyes.
His tears mixed with sprinkler water until there was no difference.
“It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.”
The manor’s bones cracked.
“Cry if I want to.”
A final window exploded outward, scattering glass across the lawn several yards away. Some pieces glittered in the wet grass like diamonds Mother would have worn.
Regulus did not flinch.
“I’ll cry until the candles burn down this place.”
He watched the flames reflected in the fragments.
“I’ll cry until my pity party’s in flames.”
The west side of the house began to fold inward.
Slowly at first.
Then all at once.
A roar swallowed the garden.
Heat washed over him despite the water, a vast breath rolling across the lawn. Sparks flew high. Smoke churned. The ancient house, the noble house, the most noble and ancient house, tore open under its own burning weight.
Regulus lay beneath the sprinklers and laughed again, breathless and wrecked.
“It’s my party,” he whispered. “It’s—it’s my party.”
The words dissolved into another sob.
No one answered.
No mother.
No father.
No brother.
No friends.
No portraits.
No servants.
No sacred twenty-eight.
Only the fire.
Only the rain.
Only thirteen-year-old Regulus Black in the back garden, soaked through and staring upward while his birthday burned itself into the sky.
He lifted one hand toward the stars, palm open, as if waiting for something to fall into it.
Nothing did.
The flames roared lower.
The screams stopped.
The sprinklers kept turning.
Regulus breathed in smoke and wet grass and ruin.
His voice, when it came again, was almost calm.
“It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.”
He swallowed.
“Cry if I want to.”
Then he fell quiet.
The manor burned behind him until there was no ballroom, no cake, no portraits, no polished floor, no silver ribbons, no great family watching from gold frames, no mother calling him back, no father measuring his posture, no guests pretending the night had ever belonged to him.
There was only the garden.
The stars.
The water.
The boy.
And the flames, licking the last of his birthday from the bones of the house.