tw: death

"I THINK MALKA THINKS WE'RE BEING GROSS,"

"Malka, do you think we're being gross?" Cass turned to Malka, her pink lipstick smudged all over her face.

"Hm? Oh, I wasn't paying attention," Malka said, looking away from her letter from Bitsy.

"Right, then," Clorfan said, his face pink, as he planted a kiss on Cass's nose as she sat on his lap.

Bitsy was writing of new updates back in Como, and how Itsy's tomato plants were beginning to bud again. One of their closest neighbors in the Muggle section of the town had a new baby, and the water in Lake Como was slowly warming.

Cass giggled, and Malka turned her head towards the couple again. The past few weeks had been very kind to Cassana Fortescue. Her cheeks were beginning to be filled in with the love she'd recieved, and she no longer had to cover up dark circles from stress in the mornings. They were now well into February, and things were going well.

A small brown Prophet owl dropped a newspaper in front of Malka, and she took a brief glance at the headlines, before her eyes widened and she rapidly snatched it up, setting her fork down.

ALPHARD BLACK, SON OF POLLUX BLACK, DEAD AT 51

Fifty-one? That was an extraordinarily young age for a wizard to due of natural causes. Was this becoming a trend? Malka's heart seized in fright. She hoped Regulus didn't have to hear the news first from a reporting paper, but she had a feeling no one bothered to communicate with him.

There was a scraping sound and a loud thud as over by the Gryffindor table as Sirius Black knocked over a few ceramic plates, which smashed as he ran out of the Great Hall, long dark hair flowing behind him. Malka looked behind him, concerned as a sandy-haired boy hesitated before deciding to pursue him, along with James Potter and another boy.

Worried, she looked to Reg. But before she could find him, the sounds found her first, as he, too, knocked his chair back as he stumbled before hurrying out of the Great Hall. The people around them buzzed with gossip, wondering what could've gotten both Black brothers in a twist.

Malka hesitated, too, implicitly deciding to go after him, but timing when it was right so she would not get anyone's attention. People were beginning to file out the Great Hall, anyway, for their whatever they had to do on a weekend.

In his panic, Reg had let down his Occlumency for the briefest moment. It wasn't even voluntary, it was as if she was sitting in a room with people and a tiger sprung out, there was no way to not notice. His thoughts were frantic, he hadn't even registered his brother sprinting from the room, and Malka could tell he was devastated.

And for the half-second she could see what was at the front of his mind, she saw a dark grey, glittering expanse of water. And that was enough.

It was a chilly Sunday, and the sky was bright. Malka hadn't walked this path in weeks, indeed, but she followed the shoreline until she saw a small cloaked figure standing by the shores of the water. Grey ripples scattered around the lake as the giant squid caused the occaisonal splash, almost making the large round pebbles by the shore seem like sands near seawater. A few gulls sang by the hills nearby, as the leaves of the mountains began to bud green, letting a few speckles of foliage peer through the miles worth of bare grey branches. The Brambleberry bushes where they had first met were bare. And Regulus stood so still over there.

Malka slowed her steps, breathing heavily as she adjusted her red cardigan's collar, a leaf-like periwinkle scarf made of cotton draped thrice around her neck. She fidgeted with its tasseled ends as she made her way to him, pebbles shifting underneath her boots.

"How did you find me?" Reg asked, still facing the water and not looking back at her. "Nevermind, do not answer that,"

Malka said nothing as she gingerly stepped next to him. The Giant Squid raised a pinkish tentacle in the distance, as if waving, before lowering it. 

Reg sighed, and then he fixed her with such a broken look she felt like she could crumble under its weight. "He wrote he was getting better,"

"I'm sorry,"

"My Aunt Dorea died last month just over Christmas. She hadn't turned sixty, either," Reg whispered. And this time there was no breeze to whisk his words away from her ears.

"Who else is in your family?" Malka asked, feebly trying to get him distracted on something else.

"My Aunt Lucretia is quite the woman. She lives in Wales with her husband, so she isn't a frequent visitor. My Aunt Cassiopeia mostly resides in France, which is even further away," he said slowly and thoughtfully.

"I suppose I don't have that many people either," Malka tried to offer. "You can always come to me, you know,"

Reg gave her a weak smile. "-I know,"

Malka smiled back, and with the little bit of courage she had in her, reached out and entwined both their arms. And, as each ripple across the lake hit the shoreline every six or so secoonds, Regulus began putting his weight on her, inch by inch, leaning on her just as she did him. 

"They say we're cursed, you know?" he said, and Malka looked at him in surprise. "The Most Noble and Ancient House of Black; reduced to a handful,"

"Mine own family has fewer members than yours," Malka murmured. "It's good that you're accepting help; it's the first step to becoming what you learn to be,"

"What I learn to be," Reg laughed bitterly, and his body jolted with a chill. "I am learning, to be a son, a student, an heir. And I have never been taught to be any of the three,"

"I'm sorry, that must be a lot of pressure," Malka said, offering him the genuine sympathy she could. "Even though I might not be able to be a daughter anymore, I am learning to be a woman. I'm learning to be a friend,"

She looked up at him and squeezed his arm in support, his eyes crinkled ever so slightly at the ends.

"I think we're a bit more than friends, Miss Arslan,"

Malka flinched, as the words she'd refused to acknowledge the past weeks came to fruit. "I- Mister Black, I-," was her only response as she looked anywhere besides his face. 

"I know," Reg sighed, but he nodded his head nonetheless.

And Malka looked at the skinny boy standing ever so close to her, seeing how his white cheeks almost seemed gray in the February cold, and to make up for her previous statement, she unwound their arms before flipping her pale blue scarf over one shoulder as she lifted it off her frame and settled it on Regulus's body in turn. 

He murmured something in confusion, touching the material, significantly cheaper than the scarf he gifted her, but was accompanied with a warming charm.

"You seemed cold," Malka whispered. "Keep it, as payment for yours,"

And he must have seen something in her eyes, as well, for he merely nodded and stated his thanks, as the two of them watched the lake move and the seasons change, not wanting to head back up to the castle just yet, but standing in the moment for a little longer.