Chapter Text
Regulus had never been the target market for the romanticisation of the school holidays - least of all the long, languid stretch of a six-week summer.
He had been forced to sit through one too many American movies insisting he ought to be having the time of his life in that sticky stretch between July and September, but those long weeks had lost their golden appeal somewhere around his tenth birthday - and he had long since abandoned his attempts to enjoy them.
Mercifully, this year would be his last - and it had even started on a high note, as if the universe meant to yank the rug out from beneath his feet with one final flourish.
Year Twelve had come to an anticlimactic end on a Friday afternoon, sealed inside an envelope of just-good-enough exam results. Impressive enough for Dad to offer a rare pat on the shoulder, and disappointing enough that Mummy pursed her lips before conceding - a touch begrudgingly - that Sirius hadn't bothered with sixth form at all. So, on a mere technicality, Regulus was miles ahead.
And it was all downhill from there.
On Saturday, Rabastan had insisted he come to his last ever 'end of the year' party - but with Bas leaving for university, it hadn't felt like much of a celebration. It was, thankfully, the closest Regulus would ever come to the red solo cup stereotype that British teenagers so desperately tried (and spectacularly failed) to emulate. He never knew what to do with himself in rooms full of half-familiar faces, surrounded by drunk acquaintances who had an uncanny talent for pretending useless small talk was something half meaningful.
Still - as far as awkward parties went, it had been fine. No major disasters. Nothing so humiliating it replayed on a loop and kept him up at night - but nothing that made lingering on the periphery all evening feel particularly worthwhile either.
By Monday, they were in France.
There had been a time when Regulus would have spent the whole summer in the sun collecting freckles - and loneliness wouldn't have crossed his mind once. By seventeen, most of his cousins had outgrown family holidays, and Dad was far too busy to waste a whole month abroad. This year they had managed a single week - just his parents and Cissa.
It had been fine.
The break moved in uneven, blurry chunks after that.
By the following Monday they were back in London, and any hopes of a groundbreaking summer were thoroughly quashed. July was dying, and August was already shaping up to be another predictable letdown.
The few friends Regulus had to speak of were missing in action: Rabastan had moved up to Edinburgh to settle in early, Dorcas was summering in Greece, and Cissa - who barely qualified as a friend, given her obligation-by-blood to entertain him - was tangled up with her boring new boyfriend.
It was difficult not to take it all incredibly personally.
While the rest of the world soaked up the stifling heat surrounded by friends, Regulus was left to languish about the house like an afterthought, quietly lamenting his lot. Not so quietly that his father hadn't noticed, of course - and promptly declared it high time Regulus got some work experience under his belt.
Regulus certainly wouldn't be the one to voice it - but he wasn't sure he was getting much out of sitting behind the desk usually occupied by his father's secretary. He would have much preferred to be sulking in a window seat at home, but at least Dad's office came equipped with air conditioning, which was more than could be said for Grimmauld Place.
Most days passed in a slow, fluorescent-lit blur, punctuated by shitty phone signal that cut in and out whenever he switched between apps, and the long trek down to the vending machine where he might get lucky and catch a bar.
For the most part, Regulus sat at the oversized desk, half reading emails that weren't meant for him and doodling in the margins of someone else's stationery. The office was musk-free and sterile in a way Grimmauld Place never quite managed - all polished surfaces and humming machinery, and while Regulus could appreciate the lack of familial ghosts lurking in every corner, he felt no less haunted.
He put that down to the artificial chill.
Someone had left a post-it note on the edge of the desk, instructions scrawled in looping blue ink. They amounted to little more than: Answer the phone if it rings, and check for emails every so often - should be quiet!
And it was.
So quiet that when the phone finally did ring, Regulus jolted, nearly knocking over the desk lamp in his haste to answer. The highlighter he'd been toying with slipped from his fingers and rolled across the desk, and in his scramble for the receiver he smudged the neat row of vivid pink dots he'd been absentmindedly inking along the inside of his wrist.
There was no time to assemble himself - only to tuck the receiver between his ear and shoulder as he leaned down, fingers blindly patting the carpet in search of the lost highlighter.
"Hi," he started, wincing as soon as the word left his mouth. There was a certain lack of polish to the greeting, and he kicked himself for not preparing something better - some confirmation of professional competence. "God... sorry, I meant - hello."
Someone on the other end snickered.
"Can I..." Regulus grit his teeth. "Can I help you?"
"You're not Rachel."
The voice was smooth and amused - accented, though Regulus couldn't place it. Not unpleasant, exactly - it lilted in all the right places, but by virtue of being laughed at, Regulus was inclined to bristle anyway.
"No, I'm not," he answered coolly, fingers closing around the tube at last. "If you're looking for the secretary, she's on holiday."
"Anywhere nice?"
"I don't know," Regulus hesitated, sitting up straight. "Somewhere in Portugal, I think."
"Lovely."
The stranger seemed in no hurry to get to the point.
Regulus drew in a steadying breath, adjusting the receiver into the shallow nook between his ear and shoulder as he reached for a notepad. "Did - did you want to leave a message?"
"Oh, no," the stranger replied, still smiling through the line - as if he found the charade of small talk privately entertaining. "I'd like to speak to the Minister directly, please."
Regulus blinked. "The... what?"
The silence that followed hummed with unspoken derision. Regulus had the unfortunate habit of sounding incredibly dense under pressure - his thoughts scattering just as his mouth began to move - but the stranger deigned to offer a small measure of mercy.
"Mr. Black," he clarified - still light, but the audible restraint of a smirk was now unmistakable. "Orion Black. Is this the right department?"
Regulus almost smiled - Mr. Black.
It was easy to forget, sometimes, that his father was important in any grander sense of the word. Beyond the vague notion of politics, Regulus had never been entirely sure what he really did all day - and after his brief stint in the office, he was still none the wiser.
"This is the Department of Social Affairs," he confirmed. "But - the Minister is in a meeting at the moment. I can take a message."
The stranger snorted. "That's exactly what Rachel always says."
"Yeah?" Regulus allowed himself a small smirk, twirling the pen between his fingers. "Then I must be getting the hang of this."
"You're not a bad substitute," the stranger admitted, lowering his voice as if to let Regulus behind the curtain. "But here's the problem - if you don't put me through, I'll just keep calling. Rachel knows that. She's getting good at deflecting, but you don't strike me as the type to hold down the fort for very long. I think you might cave."
"I won't cave," Regulus insisted, a little too quickly, his gaze flicking toward the office door. He lowered his voice - just in case. "I'm not paid nearly enough to interrupt a meeting."
"No? How much would it take?"
"Oh," Regulus scoffed. "Probably thousands."
A low whistle slipped down the line.
"You're expensive."
"Mm."
Silence stretched - long enough for the line to crackle faintly with static.
Regulus was beginning to get the sense the stranger was weighing something.
It was the same uneasy feeling one got in the middle of the night, padding back from the bathroom: the sense that something unseen was lurking in the dark. The sense that one ought not look too closely into the gloom for fear of catching the glint of eyes.
"For thousands," the stranger's voice returned - softer now, closer, as if he'd angled the receiver to lean in. "I'd expect so much more from you."
Regulus felt his stomach lurch.
"Yeah?" he laughed uneasily. "Well, for thousands I'd consider putting him on the line. That was the deal."
"Look at you, holding down the fort," the stranger snickered; they were suddenly on the same team. "Don't you have a price list for extras, sweetheart?"
A sultry note had crept into his voice that made Regulus falter. He had only just begun to enjoy his first real conversation of the day - half charmed by someone capable of batting back sharp wit - but that kind of loaded banter always made his skin crawl.
It left him feeling like the punchline to a joke in a language he had never been taught.
"No." The smile wavered on his face. "I don't do that sort of thing."
"Pity."
People could never just be normal, could they?
"Look," Regulus sighed, squaring his shoulders. "If you don't have a message, I should probably clear the line."
"But I do have a message."
"Yeah?" he asked, pen hovering above the untouched notepad. "Go on, then."
Silence lingered - so long and complete that Regulus thought the line had gone dead - until a slow exhale crackled softly through the receiver.
"I'm still working on my delivery."
"Well," Regulus sighed, "when you've had enough time to rehearse, why don't you call me back?"
Flippancy was the wrong choice.
The stranger clicked his tongue; he came back cool and clipped.
"Rachel is never rude."
"I'm not Rachel."
"No. You're not," the man agreed, sounding faintly affronted. "She always gives her name: Department of Social Affairs, this is Rachel. She's very good."
"She didn't leave a note about that," Regulus rolled his eyes, leaning back in his creaking desk chair. "Perhaps I'll get it right next time."
"Perhaps you will," the stranger agreed. "Why don't we practice?"
"Practice?"
"Sure," he seemed to be smiling again. "Let's start over."
The voice on the line sounded young - young enough that Regulus doubted he was anyone important. Important people introduced themselves; they came with titles and efficient agendas. This one came with nothing but an impish lilt to his voice that made playing along seem completely harmless.
Anything to whittle down another agonising afternoon.
"Alright," Regulus agreed, sitting up straight. He took a breath and adopted his best phone voice, stolen wholesale from his mother. "Department of Social Affairs, this is not Rachel."
The stranger's laugh was rich - warming Regulus from the inside out despite the steady hum of the air conditioning.
For the first time that summer, Regulus felt a fraction more human.
"Better," the stranger mused. "But I wanted your name, sweetheart."
"Oh..." Regulus smirked. "Then you really should have specified."
"I should have," he agreed easily. "That's on me. Go again."
"Alright," Regulus glanced up at the clock on the wall. Less than an hour to go. "Department of Social Affairs, this is Regulus."
There was a beat of quiet on the line.
"Regulus?"
"Yeah."
"Like the star?"
"Mm."
A short, incredulous laugh crackled through the speaker. "So you're telling me Orion Black has a Regulus answering his phones now?"
"Well..." Regulus winced. "Yeah. We all have star - yeah."
The moment hung heavy, the static thrum of the silent line filling the space where Regulus longed for something clever to say. He was beginning to get the distinct feeling he had made a mistake - no one had told him not to give out his name, and Rachel apparently gave hers out willingly enough, but his gut was already screaming that something had shifted.
The stranger's slow breath rasped against the receiver, as though he had just drawn some quiet, unsettling conclusion.
Regulus narrowed his eyes. "What?"
"Nothing," he sounded faintly breathless. "Just... thinking."
"Don’t strain yourself."
That earned a soft huff - not quite a laugh, but certainly close.
"You're funny, Regulus."
"Am I?" Regulus allowed himself a faint, indulgent smile. "Funnier than Rachel?"
"By a mile."
There was something almost contemplative in the way he said it - a softness that hadn't been there before. But Regulus could swear he sensed something familiar too: the slightest drop in energy, a subtle pull away.
He tightened his grip on the receiver and glanced at the wall clock.
Still half an hour to kill.
"If I'm that funny," he started carefully, "do I get to know your name?"
"Do names matter?" the stranger asked lightly. "We were just voices in the void a minute ago."
"We still are," Regulus allowed, sitting forward to rest his elbows on the edge of the desk. "But I bet you gave Rachel your name. It wouldn't be fair to leave me out."
"Rachel's very assertive."
"I'm sure she is," Regulus agreed dryly. "But I'm the one answering the phone today. And if she's assertive, I'd better practice. So... I'd like to know your name."
The line hummed.
Impossible though it was, Regulus could swear he heard a slow smirk forming on the other end; a gleaming grin took shape in his mind's eye.
"Barty."
Regulus raised a cool brow, noting the way he said it - loaded, expectant, as if waiting for recognition to spark. He tapped the pen against his notepad.
"Barty...?"
A scoff.
"Just Barty."
"You say that like I'm supposed to know who you are."
"Maybe you are," Barty shot back, suddenly sharp - like someone had yanked a string and let him loose. "I know plenty about you, Regulus. I know who your father is. I know where you work. And I'm beginning to learn that you're a little prude who doesn't know what to do when someone flirts with you."
It felt like the sun slipping behind a cloud on a golden afternoon - one minute warm and easy, the next overcast and exposed. Every trace of playfulness had vanished, leaving only the hum of the air conditioner breathing down his neck.
Regulus's grip tightened on the phone until the plastic creaked. "Pretty - pretty bold assumptions..."
"They weren't assumptions."
Regulus swallowed against the sudden thickness in his throat and chose his words carefully. "Well, I never told you who my father was."
Barty laughed, as if he had been caught out - a low, pleased sound that curled into Regulus like a hook.
"Is that the part you took umbrage with, sweetheart?"
Regulus shoved away from the desk, as if its proximity had somehow betrayed him, dropping back into his chair with a huff.
"If you've got nothing productive to say, I'm hanging up."
"I wouldn't."
Still breezy. Still light.
But something in it made Regulus pause.
It was rare for Regulus to feel much beyond the crushing weight of apathy, and while he couldn't say the way his stomach dropped was pleasant, it was certainly an interesting change. He sat still for a moment, listening to the thrumming silence.
Then he set the receiver back into its cradle with a decisive click.
The air conditioning whirred on, steady and indifferent, but it did nothing to cool the heat crawling up the back of his neck.
I know plenty about you...
Nonsense.
No one knew much about Regulus - not by design, but he supposed he should be grateful for that. He sincerely doubted Barty was anything more than a bored nuisance, the latest in a long line of people with too much time on his hands and too many numbers at their disposal.
It wasn't the first time his father had attracted the ire of some persistent prankster. Dad wasn't always popular with the public - one summer, the phone at Grimmauld Place had rang so often Mummy had yanked it straight from the wall.
That was the same year Dad hired a new driver, taller and broader than the last, always parked at the curb at all hours of the day. Sirius had loathed him. He was tasked with shepherding them to school, which made it almost impossible to sneak off and bunk.
But that had been years ago.
There was no real indication that Barty was any more dangerous than your average telesales agent - and yet, Regulus's heart still jumped into his throat when the phone rang again, shrill and insistent.
It was irritation, not fear - at least, that was what Regulus told himself as he reached for the receiver and lifted it cautiously to his ear.
Silence.
Then -
"We literally just practiced, Regulus. You should know what to say."
Regulus let out a sharp scoff. "What do you want?"
"That," Barty sighed, "is very fucking rude."
Regulus pinched the bridge of his nose. "Yeah, well, you're very..." he glanced nervously over his shoulder at the closed door, lowering his voice to a hiss. "...fucking annoying."
"And here I thought we were bonding."
"We weren't."
"You wound me."
Regulus rolled his eyes and shifted in his seat, the sun warmed leather pressing damp heat into the backs of his thighs.
He really was enjoying himself - in a perverse sort of way, wholly against his better judgement. Barty wasn't exactly being kind to him, but at least he was acknowledging his existence, which was more than anyone else had bothered to do that afternoon.
He could grant him the favour of small talk, couldn't he?
Twenty minutes left. Just passing the time.
"How's that message coming along?"
"I'm getting there," Barty answered smoothly, like he'd been waiting for the cue. This time, he didn't let the silence linger. "Tell me something, Regulus. What do you know about the Department of Social Affairs?"
That was a loaded question - one Regulus knew to tread carefully around.
"I know the phone rings sometimes," he answered slowly. "And I'm supposed to refresh the emails every half hour."
"Yeah?" Barty asked. The faint rustle of movement carried down the line. "What was the last email about?"
Regulus glanced at the screen. Nothing confidential - just the usual inbox clutter.
"Reminder about the Bank Holiday."
"Gripping."
Regulus snorted and scrolled further.
"Rachel's got a voucher for a free glass of Chardonnay at some tacky bistro in Stratford. Someone updated the recycling policy. Oh - and good news..." he paused, head cocked, leaving Barty in suspense. "I was finally sent the nuclear launch codes."
"Oh yeah?" Barty scoffed. "So the fate of the world is in your hands?"
"Looks that way," Regulus sighed, spinning his chair toward the window. The world was still out there, carrying on without him. "Luckily, I'm a very benevolent wielder of power."
The sun blazed across the skyline - too bright to look at directly - but he tilted his head anyway, letting it burn red through his closed eyelids.
Not for the first time that afternoon, Regulus felt himself sinking back into that familiar mire of self-pity.
"Do you have much of that, Regulus?"
"Mm?"
"Power."
Regulus snorted.
For all his insistence that he knew Regulus - that by virtue of knowing his father, he must know Regulus too - Barty sounded rather clueless. Regulus was an afterthought; he'd go up in the blast before his father remembered him down in the bunker.
"Not really," he muttered, turning his back on the sun and blinking away the glare burned into his retinas. "None, beyond the power to hang up when I get bored of you."
The silence lingered - long enough to teeter on the brink of something heavier.
"That so?"
"Yeah," Regulus sighed, glancing down at his notepad, etching a B in the top margin. "But I'll give you a second chance at delivering your message on Monday if you want."
"You really are benevolent."
Barty was smiling again - Regulus could hear it in his voice, and something about that buoyancy made him want to smile in return. He fought the urge off, biting the inside of his cheek lest he indulge himself and wind up disappointed.
"Mm..."
"Mm," Barty echoed, sounding rather pleased with himself. He sucked in a breath - gathering himself, the verbal equivalent of slapping one's knees before standing to leave. "Well - you have a nice afternoon, sweetheart. I'd better go work on my message."
Regulus opened his mouth - not ready to relinquish that tenuous grasp on power, that first human connection of the day -
The dial tone shrieked in his ear before he could fire back.