Chapter Text
Hogwarts 6th May 1978
“Yeah, I wouldn’t advise you to do that again.”
Regulus hums in response. “Pity, really. It was the only thing that I could see working in the long run.”
“Yes, but after last time…I mean, this is getting even worse, Reg. What’s next? You lose all feeling entirely? That’s incredibly dangerous when you think about it.”
“Well unless you have any immediate solution as to how to fix it, we’re kind of at a loss.”
Gellert sighs and Regulus rests his chin on the heel of his palm, watching Pandora and Evan duel. “It’s weird being down here again.” He glances around the chamber of secrets, the walls still as damp and grimy, the wet floors thickening the dust into a gloopy, almost cement mixture.
“I can imagine.”
“Time out.” Pandora orders, her lips twisted into an expression of disapprovement, as she pops her hands on her hips. Evan catches himself with his cane at the abrupt stop to the duel, most of his body weight being thrown behind his wand movement. “And that is the exact problem.” She nods at him, indicating to how he had stumbled. “You’re exactly like Sirius in the way you fight. It’s ridiculous, especially when you don’t have the best physical stamina. You’re running yourself into the ground too quickly and that weakens your movements and spell power after a matter of minutes because of how tired you end up getting.”
“Well what’s the alternative?”
She thinks for a minute, considering the question and Regulus can practically hear the cogs turning in her brain. “Use your cane as your other leg, essentially. Don’t put all your weight on it because that imbalances you when you’re throwing around spells. Of course, since your cane isn’t another leg, don’t move around as much. Instead of putting your entire body into your wand movements, focus on your upper body. Use your shoulders to put in emphasis and your wrists to direct the spells in the direction you want. Try it now, staying in the same spot, comfortable with how your cane is positioned, and fire a few offensive spells at me.”
“That’s what I was doing before!” Evan protests but cuts him off with an irritated huff and a roll of her eyes.
“No, it wasn’t, and you know it. Try it my way.”
“It’s all your way. All about you and you and you again.”
“In case you need the reminder, Evan, I’m only doing this for you. I can leave right now and watch you die in battle in a few years time. Is that what you want? To abandon Barty by dying on him because you were too good to listen to me for once?”
Even Regulus flinches at her words and Evan stills. “No.” He mutters.
“Then cop on and take my advise. Now. From the top.” She raises her wand in the starting position and Evan mirrors her movements, a little mollified. Regulus watches, intrigued, as the twins start their duel again. It was obvious that they both had potential to be better, given time and training, but for now Pandora pulled ahead with ease, pushing Evan back forcefully despite her orders for him to stay in the same spot. She had the benefit of the fight, with her ability to twist and turn and spin around to her heart’s delight, as well as watching the Order train the odd time- as she had previously confessed earlier that day.
Evan on the other hand, had powerful spells, but not as much movement and that put him at a disadvantage, because you can’t cast two spells at the same time, everyone knows. In an actual duel, it’s a combination of firing and dodging that gets you on the higher end of the wands. But Evan can only fire and deflect, so either he spends his entire time blocking and gets no advantage over his opponent, or he blocks and attacks, but splits the two throughout the duel and tires himself out earlier. Added to the fact that there is the risk of getting hit when he is sending an offensive spell and is unable to defend himself.
Pandora lowers her wand again, stopping the duel for the second time. “Evan-” She starts.
“I know, I know, I’m a complete and utter failure and I can’t do anything right and I never listen to you, blah, blah, blah, I’m pathetic and you’re better than me and I have to be you if I want to succeed in life and anything beneath that is humiliating and I’m going to die if I don’t get my act together. I know, okay? You’ve told me a million times by now.”
“Well, I was actually going to say that your lace is untied but sure. That too.”
Evan looks like he wants to scream in frustration and Regulus hides his snort behind his hand.
“Shouldn’t you intervene?” Gellert suggests, looking amused by the entire situation at hand.
“I don’t want to put myself on the firing line.”
“Yes, but Evan obviously needs a break from this for the time being and it isn’t fair for Pandora to keep pushing him so much.”
“Fine.” Regulus sighs and he stands up. “I think that’s enough of you too for today. Evan, just mull over Pandora’s advise and practise a bit on your own to get the hang of the stance and then you can really weigh it out as to whether it will work for you or not. Pandora, I’m bored, so can you show me those spells you were creating.”
“Alright, but Evan, you better be better at this the next time.”
“Fuck off.” He mutters and Pandora’s lips twitch into something almost like a fond smile. She really was the most confusing person Regulus had ever met.
“So. Those spells.”
“Well first, blood magic. We don’t want to be getting ahead of ourselves here, now do we?”
“One, in no way is this a ‘we’ situation. Two, you’re literally a seer. Getting ahead of yourself is literally all that you do.”
“This is entirely a ‘we’ situation because it involves you and by proxy, thus involves me too. Don’t question me like that, just let me be.”
“Letting you ‘be’ is the equivalent of just watching the world burn down around us and not doing anything about it.”
“And is that such a bad thing?”
Regulus blinks at her. “Yes.”
“Agree to disagree. Whatever. Now onto what matters. I’m assuming that you know a small bit of blood magic already, so you should know what a medium is, correct?”
“It’s something you you sacrifice your wand for in a ritual in order to fully harness the power of blood magic.” Regulus answers even though Pandora hadn’t asked for the definition, only if he knew it.
“More or less.” She balances her hand in the air, tipping it side to side in time with her head. “But yeah, that’s the bit that’s important right now. The rest is pretty much irrelevant to us until a later stage.”
“Good to know.”
“Well do you have a medium?”
“No.”
“Do you have an idea on what you want your medium to be?”
“A Black family heirloom.” Regulus answers confidently. “Blood magic was a sacred ritual, centuries before us, which established the Sacred 28. It was never about the purity of blood, but only about the founders of those who could utilise it for greater areas of magical use. Each family of the Sacred 28 pulls their blood from another source, which is the source of the magic their blood contains. It’s not a coincidence how everyone in my family is named after stars because we get our magic from the cosmos, themselves. Of course, not many relatives of my generation know of the origins of this tradition. If anyone is to know of it, it would be those who missed out on it. Those who were not named after stars or galaxies or comets or asteroids. Those who are tied to the Earth.”
“Narcissa.” Pandora answers.
“And my mother.” He adds. “I’m almost positive that those two have some sort of clue about blood magic. The amount of hours they spent in the library during meetings and dinners when the dark lord was first coming to power…I mean, I barely remember it myself, but there have been books that were removed over the years. My guess is that those books are in the attic, because that’s where no one goes. It’s locked and warded. It would take hours to dismantle those wards, but I know there’s something there now from connecting the dots through my research.”
“Could your brother know about Blood Magic in that case?” Evan cuts in. “He’s named after a star.”
“As far as I am aware, Sirius is not one bit knowledgable about this deeper layer of magic- excuse the unintended pun of that statement. But it hasn’t been touched on in years. Nobody has bothered.”
“So what makes you think that your mother has bothered?”
“She was reading a book.” Regulus confesses. “Written by Fleamont Potter on how to remove a wizard’s magic. Ages ago. Winter break, before I took the mark. When I confronted her about-” Regulus cuts himself off before he let it slip. Before I confronted her about wiping my memories. That was sure to arise questions from the twins and he hadn’t told anyone but Lily and James about that incident of his childhood.
Evan was always hesitant to use his powers around Regulus. When he thought he was alone, he was thriving, but the minute Regulus comes into his view, he falters. He may not have noticed he was doing it but Regulus did. He was sure that Evan still carried the guilt of setting Regulus back so much with him, even after months had passed since.
He did not need to bring up what Evan’s powers had plagued him with. That was sure to make it worse.
Pandora’s eyebrows twitch and she ever so slightly tilts her head to the side, as if to hear something better, with a frown.
“Before you confronted her about…” Evan prompts.
“Sirius. And his stuff. And why she hasn’t gotten rid of it.” Regulus answers hastily, realising his trailing off had dragged on for too long. Pandora hums and by her tone, he can tell that she’s unconvinced by the lie but Evan just shrugs as if it was reasonable. “Anyways, not important. The book she was reading was.”
“You think that has something to do with blood magic?”
“What other magic would be powerful enough to do such a thing?”
“Fleamont Potter is a potioneer. Why would he be working with magical theory?” Pandora quizzes and Regulus shrugs in response.
“Beats me but James did say that he loved to expirement with brand new ideas and all that shit.”
“What about the death eater attacks? How they’re targeting muggle associated wizards?”
“What about it?” Regulus frowns at Evan.
“In the Prophet. It’s always the same method. Yellow Oleander to weaken the magical core and then something else to poison those without a magical core, effectively getting rid of both ‘blood traitors’ and muggles at the same time. Two birds, one stone.”
“Yeah, but Yellow Oleander is only found in like North America.”
“Potter spent time in North America?”
“How would you know that?” Regulus pulls a face.
“You seem to forget that he founded sleakeazy’s.” Evan raises and eyebrow. “He talked about his journey in developing it Witches Weekly.”
“How do you even remember that?”
“I was looking for other ways to style my hair and sleakeazy’s seems to be pretty promising.”
“Why?” Pandora pulls a face, touching her own dreads lightly.
“It was just a whim. I was bored.”
“Yeah but why?”
“Why what?”
“Why would you style your hair different to mine?”
“Because we don’t have to have the same hair? There’s more than one hairstyles out there. Besides, it’s not like people rely on our hair to know that we’re twins. Nor do they need it to tell us apart, either.”
“You can’t style your hair differently.”
“Why?”
“Because I like my hair like this.”
“I’m not actually going to do it and I’m not going to change your hair. You can keep it as it is.”
“Well don’t. Don’t style it differently.”
“Okay.” Evan raises his hands in defeat. “But in my defense, cornrows seem pretty badass.”
“I’m not getting cornrows! They’re too tight!”
“No you’re not getting cornrows.” Evan pinches the bridge of his nose in exasperation. “And neither am I.”
“Can we please get back to the important issue at hand.” Regulus interrupts before the argument can go any further. What was that he said earlier about Pandora being the most confusing person he had ever in his life met? And he knew some pretty confusing people. His mother, for instance. And Sirius. Maybe it was a genetic thing through whatever DNA strand connected the Black and Rosier gene pool. Evan could also be pretty confusing at times, when he wanted to, but Evan was also just a bastard in general.
“Yes, yes, calm down.” Pandora waves him off. “You go back to gossiping with your favourite inmate, there Ev, I need to talk to Regulus.”
“We’re already talking?”
“What did Evan do?” She lowers her voice as Evan turns away, already bitching to Gellert about everyone and everything that moved.
“What do you mean?”
“In…November was it? What did he do? You were going to bring it up there but apparently he still carries that guilt with him even months later.”
“What the fuck?” Regulus physically stumbles back. Why was she quoting his exact internal monologue from just a few minutes ago? “Can you fucking read my mind?”
“Not entirely. But bits and pieces. And I’m curious now. What memories did your mother erase that Evan revealed by doing something?”
“None of your business.” He sniffs, not appreciating the invasion of his privacy. “And get out of my head.”
“I’m not in your head. Your head is in my head. Get out of my head, Regulus.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“Keep your secrets then. I don’t have to find out but I can if I want to and yet I’m not going to do that because I’m sensing it’s a sore point.”
“You can say that again.” He can’t resist the eye roll that accompanies those words.
“But what did Evan do that triggered that?”
Pandora didn’t know that Evan was a necromancer and it was to be kept that way. Shit, Regulus really needs to stop talking to himself in his head if Pandora’s going to be poking around in there to her pleasure.
“Just…an experiment gone wrong. I was practicing my Occulumency and it didn’t exactly go to plan. But it’s over and done with now, I’ve gotten stronger with blocking off my mind.”
“Not strong enough.” Pandora sings, waving her fingers in front of his face. “Everything in there, I can just-” she pinches her fingers together and pulls her hand from his face, like reeling a piece of thread from his face. “When I want to! Isn’t it great?”
“Yes, brilliant.”
‘And I can also talk in here.’ She grins but her lips don’t move beyond that. Yet Regulus hears her, loud and clear and he takes an involuntary step back.
“No. Don’t do that. Please.”
He couldn’t…he couldn’t have a voice in his head, so close to his personal mind, so close to everything that lay protected beneath the layers of apathy that he was slathered in against his will and yet was somewhat grateful for the sanctuary the underneath of them provided for his private mind.
“Of course.” Pandora grins again, but this time, saying the words out loud. “Your wish is my command. Now, back to the book. I need you to get it for me. That exact book that your mother was reading about magic removal. I want to see what it’s about.”
“Magic removal. Obviously.” Regulus shakes his head and she stifles a chuckle.
Sweet, naïve, boy. So innocent. So…Regulus. He had no idea of what could really be in that book, which was why it was crucial for Pandora to get her hands on it because she had her own theories and knew how to apply them into real life if further information was given in the text.
“Still. And you need to give more thought about your medium. Family heirloom isn’t going to cut it. Your family are billionaires, you each have twice as many heirlooms as you do have a value of a net worth.”
“That’s a gross exaggeration.”
“Who’s the seer here?” She reminds him and Reeguus just sighs.
“I’ll consider it. I’m going to the family mausoleum with my parents over the summer to prepare a casket for father. Apparently, he doesn’t have more than a year left-”
“Six months.” Pandora and Evan answer simulatneously before glaring at each other.
“Right. If you say so. Still, there’s bound to be some interesting stuff in the basements there because it’s a storing building for everything we haven’t used in centuries. I am going to look for other things to do with blood magic and my family history there as well while my parents are busy scrutinising marble slabs, gold intensity and engraving depth.”
“Oh my Merlin, why does so many effort go into designing the fucking gravestone? I would be more concerned about the fact that they’re going to die.”
“Well, it’s my father, so I’m not too concerned about the matter.” Regulus shrugs.
“Yeah, but it’s not like he’ll be able to care either. He’s going to be fucking dead in six months!”
“And how do you know that?” Pandora inquires in that sickly sweet tone of voice of hers that suggests she already knows the answer. Regulus shivers when he hears it, the words dripping slowly down his spine like sticky syrup and replacing his nerves with wispy strands of sugared cotton.
“Because you said it?”
“And you said it with me.”
“Well you mentioned it before. I don’t know. I guess I just used logic?”
Pandora hums. “If you say so.”
“Right, anyways, Gellert, as I was saying-”
“Yes, back to our shit.” Pandora steals Regulus’ attention again, swaying slightly on the balls of her heels as she thinks. “I think we should really start looking up how to do the medium ceremony. I mean, it’s all well and good trying to decide a medium but if there’s a specific ritual to go with it, we may not have what we require for it to happen, you know?”
Regulus nods along, but he has that cynical twist to his mouth that makes Pandora want to scream. He looks bored, she notices. She was boring him. How rude. He should be grateful that she is taking time out of her busy mind to help him and all he gives in return is disinterested looks. “Am I boring you, Regulus?”
“What?”
“Am I boring you?” She repeats, ennunciating each word clearly. “If I am, you can go off and do this on your own, by all means. You seem to think you don’t need my help.”
“Sorry, no you’re not boring me. I’m just very distracted lately. I find it tricky to invest myself in things because I no longer feel interested by them.” He admits, tugging on a strand of his hair. Pandora watches as the curl springs back up as soon as he lets go of it, though now a slightly looser coil than it once was. Hm.
“Of course.” Silly her. Why didn’t she think of that. “Well, in that case, we ought to get you feeling as soon as possible so that you can actually care about yourself enough to listen to me when I am trying to help you. Alright?”
Regulus frowns and Evan stills across the room, his eyes darting over to the two of them. “No…I’m not sure I’m ready to start feeling again.”
“Right.”
“Because, you know, a lot has happened to me and this not feeling has been a bit of a break to the emotional impact of that. And i know, it’s not the most ideal aspect in other situations, but I’ll take it as it comes and for now I don’t want to give it up. I don’t want to hurt anymore.”
“Mhm.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll try to listen more, I really will. And I appreciate all you are doing for me and for Evan in this. Really. It helps a lot to know that you care so much.”
That was the fucking problem. Pandora cared so much and yet that care was never matched. Stupid boys. Always too invested in their own shit and the things that benefit them to see the drawback of that greed and that selfishness. They thanked her for caring and yet never offered to help her out in any way- of course they didn’t know what exactly she was doing, but that was hardly her fault! She barely knew what she was doing either!
None of them saw the sleepless nights that she spent, reading up hours about necromancy for Evan’s sake, none of them saw how she tossed and turned for hours in the dark because every time she closed her eyes she saw Regulus drowning or Barty surrounded by dementors in a drab cell or Evan being hit by a violent curse, melting off half his face. She was so unnoticed sometimes she wished she was invisible so that then people would have an excuse to not pay attention to her.
There has only been one person who had paid close enough attention to her to see something was not the norm and that person, believe it or not, was James Potter.
“Why do you do that?”
Pandora frowns. It was just him and her in the common room. James was writing his charms essay and Pandora couldn’t sleep. Neither had said a word, they only sat in silence with the scratching of James’ quill and the distant click of the clock hands. “Do what…exactly?”
“With the clock. You blink in time with the ticking of the hands. Every second, without fail, you blink.”
Pandora clicks her tongue. “I didn’t think anyone noticed.”
“I like noticing things.”
“I bet you do. To answer your question, I do it to remind myself that the clock is there. If I start tuning out every background noise, then my head subsitutes it with echoes of prophecies and cries from nightmares. If I focus on the noises then it differentiates the real noises from the head noises and I’m able to move on with my life without a nervous breakdown. And what better way to constantly remind myself of real noises by blinking in time with them? I do it without even thinking now.”
Prophecies. Prophecies, prophecies, prophecies. Right. The prophecy. April’s turn to give one to her and it did without fail.
Xylophones chime, childish rain drops. Every ting of the colourful scale, a second closer to impending doom. Not one person can do it alone, so she stumbles across another. Only to see the echo of her dreams standing in front of her, wand to her throat. Perfect details of a nameless face and a faceless figure, now up close. Help served on a platinum platter, neither perfect nor shining, but something no less beautiful. Inches closer to a different world, tides are backwards. Lovers are friends and friends are lovers. Instead they find purpose in another, neither romantic nor platonic in the universe given. Under rainy grey skies they balance the creep, the whimsy, the ugly, the beauty. Something so precious and built on, difference ignored, change embraced and murder adored.
Well that does absolute wonders of nothing for figuring out who the fuck the person in her near future would turn out to be, other than being someone she trusts. Thanks a lot, seer powers, really helpful, really handy. Go fuck yourselves for that cruel trick. And here Pandora was hoping that they would give her some clue about the person’s identity, but no, that was too much of a stretch. Saving the entire world from a genocidal manical hypocrite was much more realistic to hope for.
“Reg, we should probably get going back to the dorm.” Evan clears his throat, drawing Pandora back to the present. “Barty will be getting worried if we don’t return soon.”
Barty can go fuck himself, this is important, Pandora’s trying to do something here.
“Yeah, okay.” Regulus nods. “Sorry, Pandora, maybe another day we can get back to this, but hey, at least this gives us time in between to research the ritual.”
“There is no ‘us’ in the research, Reg, you want this, you earn it yourself. I’m not going to be doing your dirty work without any effort from you whatsoever. I agreed to help, not slave away. I have enough on my plate already.”
“Bit harsh, but okay. Yeah, I’ll look into it.”
Regulus and Evan both leave the chamber and Pandora sighs, falling to the damp and dusty floor. Her skirt is painted white from the sticky clay that had formed and coated with the slime as well from the dripping mildew on the ceiling. She curls her knees up to her chest. “I don’t know why they just won’t fucking listen to me Lawrence.”
Lawrence hops out of their hiding place, behind one of the snake statues. Maybe you should try be a little more…forgiving with them?
“I have been nothing but forgiving all these years and look where that got me? They don’t take me seriously, Evan was so mean to me for almost two years, they ignore me. All that same shit. I have to be this cruel, bitchy version of myself so they will finally cop on and pay attention to what I want. I’m only ever heard when I’m bossing people around, and even at that, I’m only heard so that they can find a flaw with my authority.”
Pandora, you’re putting too much pressure on yourself and then you’re taking it out on others. You have to remember that with this power, comes great responsibility and others don’t have this power. They don’t understand the responsibility that comes with it. There’s no real direction for you to go from here now. You just have to wait for August to arrive-
“But I won’t be prepared!”
Nothing will prepare you for what’s about to happen. You just have to take it as it comes. Let Regulus and Evan do their own training. They will get there in time for them to be needed with it. Forcing to do this prematurely is just going to cause unnecessary rifts between you and them and in a situation like a war, it is crucial to not have bad tension between members of the same side.
“I feel like I should be doing more.” Pandora confesses, wiping her eyes before the tears can fall. War leaders and world savers don’t cry. There’s no room- no time.
You’re already doing too much. You’re wearing yourself thin. You are nothing like the Pandora I first met and maybe that’s a good thing, but there are certain aspects that aren’t as good.
“But I’m not ready for all of this. I need to make others ready too because they aren’t either.”
Regulus will get his training from Gellert and Aberforth. Evan will do the same. All you need to worry about is training him in duelling because that’s not something Gellert can do.
“You’ve been keeping up with them, yeah?”
That’s certainly a nicer way of putting it, I would have called it spying, but yeah. I’ve been doing what you told me. I’ve been following them.
“No…suspicious shit yet?”
Nothing to do with the Death Eaters anyways. And nothing discussed that you don’t already know. But the Dumbledore girl…Ariana. She’s a portrait, which was news to me. Well, her existence was news to me considering I didn’t even know who the Dumbledores were, but apparently, it’s a big deal. Aberforth did it after her death and he used this special wand that Gellert was fighting with Albus over before giving it back to Gellert before Gellert ran away. Gellert had no idea it was even gone in the first place.
“Special wand?”
Yeah it had a name. The younger wand or the ancient wand or something…the older wand, no that wasn’t it. Ah! The Elder Wand.
Pandora snaps her head up, so fast that something cracks. Her mouth splits into a delighted grin and a hysterical giggle bubbles up in her throat. “The Elder Wand.” She whispers in awe. “It’s fucking real?!”