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Disclaimer: If you know it, I do not own it.
Regulus was a total goner before the night Atlanta confessed her parentage to him. After being told Muggle, Muggleborns and half-breeds were less than human his whole life, he was presented with a human being who had two half-breeds for parents. He could hear his mother’s shrieks of outrage in the back of his mind, but found he could not care.
He loved her. He could not simply stop because of who her parents happened to be.
Atlanta was brave, kind, lively, and talented. She was loyal, righteous and mischievous.
He simply loved her.
It had happened so quietly, he almost missed it.
It had hit him that the feeling he had been feeling recently was love while staring at the stall door in the boy’s toilet on the third floor. Someone had stuck some sort of decal on the door stating something about five and a funny looking “L” with a swiggle line through the center. While trying to figure out what the symbol stood for, Regulus was hit with it: he loved Atlanta Dorothy Black.
A small part of him expected to panic. Atlanta wasn’t someone his mother approved of, she wasn’t a pureblood.
A larger part of him did not care. He loved Atlanta. End of story.
He had never told her he loved her, figuring he’d keep it to himself. He didn’t want to scare her. They did not have exactly a romantic relationship. She was his closest friend, his only actual friend.
He did not want to loose her.
Now, school was almost over. She had an apprenticeship in Edinburgh for the summer with at the Spellsmith Headquarters. It was mostly thanks to Tom, but she was interested in it as well. They were working together. She was the creativity, he was the brains.
Regulus and Atlanta’s days together were numbered. Exams had ended and it was nearing time to head off in different directions. Regulus was on the verge of panic till Atlanta told him she’d be back for her seventh year.
He felt a knot ease within him.
“You will?” Regulus had asked.
“Sure. Uh, there’s something else I want to tell you.”
And she told him about her parents. Her werewolf parents. Regulus felt pained by her expression as she admitted this to him. He knew she was afraid he would take it badly and reject her.
He was far past the point he would be able to reject the girl sitting across from him, surrounded by the junk in their special room. The couch she was seated on had seen better days. The coffee table between them was broken and Regulus was sure the chair he was seated in might give out at any moment, but he still loved the room.
Regulus itched to be sitting next to her and to take her into his arms, but remained seated across from her, gripping the worn cushion underneath him. He watched her itch her bare right arm. She’d left Tom behind in her room. Regulus honestly preferred Tom in her room and not in the odd snake tattoo Tom used to travel around in on her arm.
“So…you don’t care?” she asked.
“No. Why would I care? You’re still you, are you not?” Regulus asked.
“But…you’re a Black, dear,” she reminded him. She appeared to be in a state of shock. “I’m pretty sure if your mother were to know what I was, she’d scream I was a filthy half breed. Along with a few other rather…odious things.”
“I’m not my mother,” Regulus pointed out. “I think for myself, thank you very much.”
They stared at one another for a long drawn out moment.
“No. No, you’re not her, are you?” she asked quietly.
“No. I’m not. Have you told Tom what you are?” Regulus asked, a bit of jealousy welling up . He hated that he was jealous of Tom, who was not even corporeal, but Tom shared a deep connection with Atlanta through their magics and it unnerved Regulus.
“No.”
“Honestly? How can he live in your head and not know?”
“He doesn’t live in my head. He can see out my eyes, but he just feels my emotions. Half the time he doesn’t understand what he’s feeling anyways,” Atlanta grumbled, rolling her eyes. “He seems to lack all proper emotions. But, no, I haven’t told him. I don’t need to. He’s just Tom the Riddler— the odd magical ghost thing that sometimes hangs out in my arm.”
Regulus snorted. Atlanta shifted around for a moment before folding her arms across her chest.
“Regulus, when the time comes, will you stand up to her? Your mother?”
Neither voiced the answer. They both knew.
Regulus was a pleaser, the term Atlanta favored. He wanted everyone happy, he wanted everyone to get along, he wanted to be liked and he wanted to make peace in his turbulent family.
Regulus would give in to evade an argument and to avoid a fight. He would fold to save the family honor.
Once again, he was reminded he was not Sirius.
He wasn’t brave, he was a coward.
This was why he allowed his fellow housemates to pick on him, allowed his brother’s friends to mock and bully him. He wanted to be invisible, but he would never be due to the fact he was a Black.
He stood proud and straight.
In recent months, he tried to be brave, trying to stand up for himself and speak instead of being silent, act instead of giving in. But, his mother was another story. At the end of the day, he would do as his mother asked. Even if it meant shattering himself into a million tiny pieces.
“Sometimes I wish I wasn’t a Black,” Regulus admitted. “If I wasn’t…even if I wasn’t the heir, things would be a bit easier. That’s why I’m so mad at Sirius. While I understand why he left, he acted rashly and without thinking about anyone except himself. He left me alone in that house. He thinks he knows me, but he doesn’t.”
“I’m not Sirius. I do know you.”
“You look serious.”
She threw a broken Fanged Frisbee at him.
“But, in all seriousness, I know you’re not Sirius. That’s not the point. You don’t know what it’s like in that house. What it is really like…the pressure my mother puts on me. You don’t know what it was like growing up in that atmosphere either. Even if you had two werewolves for parents, you grew up in a loving, caring environment.”
“I didn’t grow up with the werewolves. I grew up…I was the third daughter of Altair Black.”
Regulus gasped. “What? I’ve met him. He only has two children.”
“I haven’t been born yet, Reggie.”
Regulus nodded, chiding himself for forgetting she was from the future. “But…Circe Hilderbatch isn’t a— you’re adopted?”
Atlanta shook her head. “No. Altair has or had a sister. Siria Black. She’s my mother. She’s a werewolf. She’s been disinherited. And I never met her. Um…Siria came to Circe when she found out she was pregnant and they hatched a plan for Circe to pass me off as her own kid with Altair. I found out about this plan when Circe was killed a few months after I turned seventeen. I had figured it out before then, but she left a note for me in her will that stated it out in black and white. Your so called disinherited dead aunt is your mother, while the guy who used to tutor you when you were a child is your father.”
“I always felt this odd connection to him even before I knew he was my father. So, when he was, er, fired I kept in contact with him. We were rather…close. Before I even found out.”
“How…how did you figure it out? You said you knew before your mother told you after she died.”
“Your brother figured it out,” Atlanta admitted, laughing uncomfortably. “Long story short, your brother kept staring at me and finally burst, shouting I was Remus’ kid and why didn’t he see it. Remus claimed Sirius was batty.”
“Sirius is batty.”
“Yeah, after thirteen years in Azkaban, he would be.”
“So, Remus Lupin is your father?”
Atlanta nodded. “Yeah. How weird is that?”
“I think that is the strangest thing you’ve admitted to me since you told me Lily Evans will marry James Potter,” Regulus admitted. “Wait, how can Remus be your father. I thought he was gay.”
“Er, he likes your brother best of all, but he’s not gay. I guess he’s a bisexual. Likes both,” Atlanta said somewhat sheepishly. “Can we not talk about that?”
Regulus nodded. “All right. So…”
“Daddy was a lot like your mother,” Atlanta said, going back to the original topic of conversation. “He was really into the whole pureblood thing and the Dark Arts. I’ve been exposed to things much darker than even you. Altair Black takes his pureblood pride seriously. More so than most pureblood American families.”
“Yes, I can see that. You have a lot of the…breeding of most purebloods I know. But you had Remus,” Regulus pointed out, suddenly realizing where the oddities in her behavior steamed from. “I see how you two are right now, even though he’s not known you for long. And while I get the feeling it is natural for him to be a mother hen, it’s clear that you two have a great relationship and he cares.”
Atlanta nodded. “You don’t think it’s a bit creepy I’m hanging around my birth father when he’s my own age?”
Regulus shrugged. “Not really. Any stranger than being forced to marry your cousin?”
“You don’t have a direct cousin to marry,” Atlanta pointed out.
Regulus nodded. “True. There’s no close cousin anywhere near my own age to marry. Thank god.”
“She’s going to marry you off soon, huh?”
He didn’t want to think about that right now.
Regulus sunk down a bit further till he was very improperly seated in the chair. His mother would never allow him to sit as slouched as he currently was sitting. It actually felt rather unnatural. A small part of him wanted to sit up properly. He could see the ugly face his mother would be making if she saw him right now.
“She’s working to arrange a marriage,” Regulus muttered.
Atlanta snorted. “How archaic. This whole British pureblood society is so backwards. It’s like looking at Russia in the Muggle world. They are so backwards they’re seriously in danger of time travel.”
“I don’t know much about Russia. Wizarding or Muggle,” Regulus admitted.
“I know! None of you know anything about the world outside your tiny little bubble. You’re Bubble People!”
Atlanta broke out into peals of laughter. She began to make a circle around her head, which only made her laugh harder.
“Bubble People?” Regulus asked, sitting up properly suddenly. “You think we live in a Bubble?”
Atlanta nodded, sobering up quickly as she banished the image of Bubble People from her head. “Totally. Think about it. I know that this whole war that is going to break out at any moment will be contained to Britain alone. It won’t spread like the last one, as it doesn’t have a Muggle World War behind it. But mostly, because it’s in this wizarding society, it’ll remain here. And won’t spread. Voldemort is driven to be as pureblood as he can, and British purebloods never bother to look at the wider world in the least. They don’t even pay any attention to the British Muggle world.”
“How did we get on this topic again? I thought we were talking about how weak I am and how you’re some sort of…unique being.”
“I just have better smell and hearing than the average human. Oh, and I’m kind of stronger than the normal female. Oh, and I’m an Animagus and turn into a little black lab. I say little because I look like the runt of the litter.”
“WHAT?”
“Yeah. Sirius actually taught me. The summer he was locked away prisoner at Grimmauld Place. I caught on quickly, even though I was only fifteen. Sirius and Remus both thought it was due to my…werewolf blood it was easy to morph into a dog.”
Regulus stared at her. “Amazing.”
“I’m kind of illegal.”
“I don’t care. Wait, my brother is an Animagus?”
“Oops.”
“Addy! How long has he been one?”
“Since, er, fifth year? Maybe?”
“Any thing else you’d like to share?”
“I’m heavily glamoured to hide my Lupin features. I think that is the last bombshell I’ve go up my sleeve.”
She looked at him a bit sheepishly.
“What do you look like?”
“Me? I’m so used to looking at myself this way, I don’t know what I look like under the glamour.”
She looked a bit unsure suddenly. She patted her hair a few times, staring at the ends.
“I have natural wavy, black hair. My eyes are amber, like Remus’. My nose is different and my face is shaped a bit differently…I don’t remember.”
She seemed shocked she failed to remember what she really looked like. Regulus did not honestly care what she looked like under the glamours. He stood up and jumped over the coffee table, landing on the couch next to her. He swiftly grabbed her, catching her face in both his hands.
“Ooof, Reggie, what are you doing?”
His long, pale fingers stood out on her slightly darker skin. She stopped moving and met his eyes. He looked into the grey-green depths and felt himself smiling.
“You’re amazing because you’re simply you and you’re not afraid to admit it. You march to your own drum and I hope one day, someday…I will be able to do the same thing.”
“You can start now,” she said softly.
Cocking an eyebrow in a move he’d seen his brother do a million times, Regulus said, “Maybe I will.”
Their faces were close together. He could feel her body heat and her smell surrounded him. He loved how she smelled. She smelled like a garden. All the light fragrance flowers mixed together to create her unique scent. Her lips parted a bit and her eyes went a bit wider.
“You smell like Christmas,” she said faintly.
“Is that good?”
She leaned in closer and sniffed him.
“And kind of like…dust after the rain,” she went on.
She looked utterly dizzy. Regulus felt her hand, still somewhat cold, grip his back. The other one came up and pushed a lock of hair off his forehead.
“Christmas and dust?”
“It makes sense to me,” she mumbled.
“You always smell like lightly fragranced garden. Orchids, violets, calla lilies, orange blossoms,” Regulus informed her. “And something else I’ve never been able to place.”
Atlanta made a humming noise in the throat.
“Would you mind terribly if I kissed you right now?” Regulus heard himself ask.
“No.”
Closing the small bit of space between their lips, Regulus felt like he’d never be able to top what he felt in that moment, pressing his lips to hers.
After a somewhat chaste kiss he pulled apart from her, moving his hands from her face and into her hair. They locked eyes again.
The words caught in his mouth. Somehow, he understood they did not need words. Actions spoke louder than words.
He lowered his mouth again to hers and kissed her again. This time the kiss was anything but chaste.