Chapter Text
She lay on her bed, one leg dangling off the rounded edge, head propped up on an uncommonly stiff bolster, an uncomfortable crick in her neck from the less than ideal position she found herself in, yet far too lazy to move and offer her poor neck the support it deserved. Holding the once crisp envelope between her forefinger and thumb, she gazed listlessly at the letter, contemplating drawing the sheet of careless, spidery sprawl out of its sleeve but ultimately deciding against it. She'd read it enough times to have learnt it by heart, anyway. Closing her eyes, she envisioned the worn page, creased and wrinkled from its many excursions into the light of day and back again, crumpled and folded and soft to the touch.
Dear Miss Rosier,
I am pleased to inform you that I glanced through your application for the position and found it most satisfactory (and rather overqualified) for the same, though not very many apply for the post in the first place. Admittedly, it was your personal statement which moved me the most, for I feel you have a gift rarely witnessed in any of your kind, and certainly in none of ours - squibs have never been too famous for their magical gifts, as I'm sure you're aware, with my questionable talent being the long standing exception - but if you wish to apprentice under a poor madman like me, my lovely family will welcome you with open arms. As you may know, I accept children from all over the world with less than respectable quirks onto my little ship, and we travel around the world in an effort to better understand their respective gifts; gifts which may be possessed only by one other person on this earth or, in all likelihood, by none at all. It will be rough - many a day we have to subsist on crusty bread and stale water, not to mention the very real threat posed by those shameless pirates - but if you are interested, and indeed, if you have time to spare, this journey might just take you exactly where you wish to be. Should your interest be piqued, send reply to this address latest by the twelfth of June. Twelfth of June, sweetheart, and no later - gypsies like us know not where we'll end up two whole weeks later - but I am extending my stay in your country in anticipation of your letter. Do not let this pressure you, dear girl, for this life is (understandably) not for everyone. If you do decide to throw your life and reputation away, know that I hold you in utmost admiration for the same. Waiting eagerly for your reply,
Le Maître des Rêves
Exhaling harshly through her nose, she opened her eyes, rolling her head to look at the shimmering calendar on the far wall, noting the date which shone just a bit brighter than the others.
Twelfth June.
Two weeks since she'd received the letter, detaching it from the owl's leg with fumbling, heart soaring excitement. Two weeks since she'd sat on that horribly rigid chair in the Fawleys' expansive garden, squinting against the sun at the family she was about to be married into, unaware of or simply unable to understand the true consequences of such a decision, engaged at her mother's whims and wishes to a boy she'd never spoken a word to her entire life, a boy she was willing to lead on merely to spite someone she truly loved, someone who might've been the one seated across that table, in another life and another world, if only -
A week since the party; that party with its beaming mother-to-be and bubbly golden champagne, with Evan's misappropriated whiskey and those ridiculous drinking games, with drunken dances in the corridors to Lorcan d'Eath's sultry crooning echoing out of the portraits to everyone's shock and delight, with that balcony and -
Six days since that article came out, salacious and damning. Six days since she'd been banished in disgrace to the French Estate, away from the beady eyes of reporters and Julianna Fawley's death glare, forced to serve out her sentence in solitary confinement (save Nora and the arrayed wildlife). The goal behind such punishment was unclear, save her mother's mutterings of 'smoothing things over' and 'salvaging this train wreck'. Perhaps she was supposed to reflect on her actions and contemplate what a horrible, horrible daughter she was; but the only thing she had been contemplating in this heat was skinny dipping in the pond out of sheer boredom.
It wasn't that she didn't feel guilty, per se - part of her knew just how important it was for her mother that this engagement took place without a hitch, that her only daughter was married into a good, respectable family, that the Rosiers gained yet another strategic alliance to back their questionable political endeavours. Most of her didn't care.
She hadn't wanted to marry that man in the first place.
Ungrateful, ungrateful, ungrateful. A voice chanted from the back of her mind. You're so ungrateful, you brat -
Felix, ever sanguine and thoroughly ungrasping of the gravity of the unseemly events which had just taken place, had cheerily and shamelessly begged her to relinquish her room to his care whilst she was gone; Dora, suffering from an acute bout of depression and having newly subscribed to the wondrous concept of nihilism, had (against her better judgement) agreed. Now, away from her mother's disappointed gaze and the stifling, oppressive atmosphere of the Manor and under the warm French sun, she couldn't imagine what foolishness had possessed her to do so, and upon regaining better sense, had sent a vaguely threatening letter to her idiotic brother forbidding him from setting a single foot in the door. Her brother, in true ten-year-old fashion, had promptly replied with a no and a polite fuck you rendered appropriate for his age by three darkly slashed, censoring dashes. She dreaded to think what that gremlin would turn her poor room into. An extra large terrarium, perhaps. And with the way things were, she doubted very much any objections were raised by her parents. Probably slipped him an extra salamander or two while he's at it, too.
One good thing about being forced to live alone - oh, who was she kidding? What wasn't good about living a peaceful, stress free, family free life in the almost unbelievably gorgeous countryside? She might just write to Felix and tell him to requisition her room permanently after all - was that she could listen to whatever crap she wanted on the wireless, blaring it at full volume for the pleasure of herself, Nora, and the birds. The Wizarding Wireless Network was considered, by and large, to be cheap, common trash by her father, a view unfortunately shared by the majority of her family members, but Dora had always rather liked the scratchy pop, so different from the stately classical pieces her parents so preferred - and if there was another reason she was listening to the Top 50 channel like her life depended on it, well, that was between herself and Merlin.
Gazing at the ceiling, she let the woman's crooning voice slip through one ear and out the other, tracing the flowers cast in plaster on the domed fresco above with her eyes, roses and daffodils and sunflowers, ridiculously oversized butterflies hovering above their petals, boldly striped bees poised over them in anticipation of the sugary sweet nectar that was their beverage of choice. She remembered lying in this very spot, years and years and what seemed like millennia ago, gazing at the exact same fresco with the fulfilling satisfaction of a little girl who'd just gotten her way for the umpteenth time, paint fresh and drying on the butterflies she'd so deeply loved then. Now, all she felt when she regarded the fading insects was a vague sense of detachment, of separation; the fresco nothing more than another relic of her past, like the ballet pumps or those Winnie the Witch picture books she'd absolutely adored. Perhaps it was a tad bit pretentious to feel so grown up, so wise at the grand old age of sixteen, but Dora couldn't help but feel she'd surpassed it all somehow, like her childhood home was too small for her now, like there was nothing, absolutely nothing, within its confines that bound her to itself anymore, like all she wanted was to break down the walls and run screaming out into the world, away from her parents and fucking Albert Fawley and stupid, irritating, traitorous boys with murky charcoal eyes -
A knock on the door.
Two knocks, sharp yet simultaneously gentle, like whosoever it happened to be was using the very tips of their knuckles to define the sound.
Frowning, she sat up, her legs tangling in the duvet. Nora wouldn't bother to knock.
Who could it be? Father? Mother?
No, they wouldn't. Felix?
She snorted wryly at the last suggestion. Like that brat has knocked once in his life.
Padding over to the door on bare feet, she made to open it, but stopped at the last second for reasons best known to her base instincts. "Yes?" She called warily. "Who is it?"
A pause.
"Me." The person said finally, and -
Oh.
Oh.
She swallowed.
"What are you doing here?" She snapped, incredulous. "I'm not allowed to meet anyone, you know. Especially not you."
"I heard about your repose in the lovely rural countryside, yes." He agreed. "Completely voluntary, I presume?"
"Obviously." She said sardonically. "That doesn't answer my question, you twit."
She could just imagine him shrugging in that matter of fact way when he responded, quiet and self assured and utterly exasperating. "Asked Nora to let me in."
Her eyes widened a fraction. "That's it?"
"Er, yes?"
She laughed in disbelief. "She's not supposed to let anyone in, actually."
"Really?" She could hear him shifting his weight from foot to foot in the corridor beyond. "Is that why you aren't opening the door? Are you locked in?" He asked, mild concern colouring his voice, and she rolled her eyes hard. "No, you dolt."
"Could you please open the door, then?"
"No."
"Figures." He grumbled.
"I'll have a word with Nora not to be taken in by house elf whisperers." She said, mostly to herself, normally she'd be thrilled at her elf's uncharacteristic disobedience, but not when it involved him -
"House elf whisperers?" He asked, seemingly delighted, but like everything else in her dratted life, it rubbed her the wrong way. "Would you prefer halfbreed murderer?" She spoke frostily. "Or mudblood torturer, perhaps?"
What was she doing? She wondered distantly. Fighting with her brother, with her parents, with Fawley and his horrible family, and now with him, too?
Sometimes, she thought all she'd been put on this earth to do was to fight.
Not like he doesn't deserve it, though; whispered the same insidious voice from the depths of her consciousness. What with all he's doing. All he's going to do.
When he spoke again, his voice was markedly cooler than before. "I'm leaving, Pandora."
She rested her forehead against the cold wood of the door, one hand still wrapped around the brass handle, and shut her eyes. "Did you really take all this trouble to come talk to me just to run at the first insult?" She clucked her tongue. "Not very brave of you, Regulus. What would your little Lord say?"
"Don't insult him." He spat. "You have no idea what he can do, Pandora. What he will do. None."
She placed a palm flat against the door. "Go on, then. Run back to him like a good little dog."
"Why do you hate him so much?" He asked, disbelieving. "All he's doing is for the good of our kind, Dora -"
"Because it's wrong!" She burst out, chest heaving, what was wrong with him? Unbelievable, absolutely unbelievable - "In what world is harming innocent people excusable, Reg?"
"I'm not doing this." He muttered, and she laughed, because laughing was all she had left in this world, wasn't it? Laughing in the face of the insanity that had so taken over the minds of each and every person she loved. "That's right. You can't do this, for you know that you're wrong!"
"Right and wrong are such relative terms, don't you think?" He mused, and she inhaled sharply, suddenly exhausted. "Whatever, Reg." She murmured thickly. "Do what you want to do. It's your fucking life to damn."
He said nothing.
She turned to go back to the little nest of cushions and her duvet, but was stopped by a simple, terrible, horrific statement. "I'm not coming back to Hogwarts."
She turned her neck so fast she almost sprained it. "What?"
"I'm leaving. For good."
"But - what - where will you go?" She asked numbly, blood pounding in her temples.
"The Dark Lord has given me a task." He said simply. "I go to fulfil it."
"Where?" She asked, dread forming a pit in her belly.
"Oh, I don't know." He said vaguely. "Here and there. Abroad, I suppose."
She stood, dumbstruck at the thought of a long, cold Regulus-free Hogwarts year ahead, an year she'd have no Dorcas, no Benjy -
"So I came to say goodbye." He said softly. "I won't see you for quite a bit, I think."
Still she said nothing.
He sighed. "Goodbye, Dora."
Silence.
She seemed to have lost the faculty of her voice, though her brain was whirring hard as ever, flicking through those horrid dreams which seemed to be increasing in intensity and number with every passing night, all of them starring the boy outside her door, all of them filled to the brim with corpses and inferi and Merlin knew what twisted, malignant, wicked creatures of the night -
Footsteps started up outside her door, receding with every passing second.
She had to tell him. She had to warn him.
Wrenching her feet from their immobile positions on the wooden floor, she raced to the door, throwing it open and rushing out into the hall just as he turned the corner. "Regulus! Wait!" She cried, starting towards him and stopping abruptly as he rounded the corner again, expectant and more than a little surprised, and her heart twinged at the sight of that pale face and those eyes -
Yet when she opened her mouth, a warning wasn't what came out at all. "Come back tomorrow."
His eyes widened, head tilting ever so slightly in shock. "What?"
"Tomorrow." She said, nodding faintly. "Come back tomorrow. Nora will let you in."
He stared at her, dubious, doubtless remembering the venom she'd spewed only minutes ago.
"Please." She added, when it seemed he wouldn't agree.
He looked at her a moment longer, and she wondered what he saw. "Fine." He said distantly, turning on his heel and walking away with brisk, purposeful strides. "Tomorrow."
She stared at his back till he was gone, till the house was silent again, till even the echo of his footsteps had faded away to nothing. And she made her decision.
Running back into her room, she hunted around for parchment and a quill, sweeping a bunch of clutter off her writing desk and onto the floor, and sat down with a thump.
To
Le Maître des Rêves, she began,
I'd be honoured to accompany you and yours on the trip as your apprentice.
Best,
Pandora Rosier