Written For:

QLFC / Round 5: Captain - Write about a character in love during their time at school.

Romance Awareness Challenge Day 1: Write about someone casting a spell (or getting a spell cast) to find their soulmate.

Word Count: 1,078

We were both created in chaos

Regulus knew that there was a reason he hadn't wanted to go home for Christmas.

He was fifteen, and he'd been so wrapped up in his studies and his out-of-control emotions that he had completely forgotten what his mother had planned to do when he returned home for the holidays.

When he returned to Grimmauld Place, he was unsurprised by the lack of festivity around the old house. There was no tinsel decorating the bannisters, no fairy lights twinkling, no mistletoe hanging from the ceiling. It was as drab and dismal as any other day.

Though, he did notice the determined glint in his mother's eye as she sped down the corridor, her long-fingered hands outstretched towards him.

"It's time." The announcement was severe and final, and Regulus rightfully began to fear for his life.

When she pulled out the family grimoires and pushed Regulus down into a chair, the realisation swept over him like a heavy thundercloud. Walburga was going to perform that spell—the one to find his soulmate, so that she could start planning his eloquent future.

"It's a tradition," she spoke icily as she trailed her finger down the yellowed pages of her spellbook. "Everyone in our family has had the spell cast upon them."

Everyone except Sirius, Regulus thought bitterly. His older brother had managed to escape the tradition before the ritual could take place.

His father offered no support. As usual, Orion Black sat in the shadows, his face obscured by his newspaper and a cloud of cigarette smoke. "Of course, it makes no difference if the name we get is inappropriate for marriage," Walburga went on. "There are… ways… to alter one's soulmate."

"Ways?" Regulus repeated warily.

"Dark ways," Walburga replied. "Dark ways that wouldn't be approved by our peers, but with which our ancestors have been manipulating the soulmate spell for centuries."

"Then, what's the point?" He questioned, exasperated. If his mother was going to change the name that the spell gave him anyway, why bother doing it at all?

Walburga didn't answer. She snapped her grimoire shut and began to swish and swirl her wand around Regulus's head, speaking in a tongue he didn't understand. Orion peered over the pages of his newspaper, inhaling deeply on the cigarette that lolled lazily out of his mouth. Even he was curious.

Regulus's gaze went dark, and a name lit up in golden letters behind his eyelids. Before his mother could make any attempt to use her dark magic to alter the name, Regulus had jumped up from his seat, and flown down the hall, out of the door.

We were both born to destroy

It was second nature for Barty to remain at Hogwarts for the holidays.

He preferred it that way. The last thing he wanted to do was to mooch around at home, avoiding his father and worrying for his mother. Not to mention, while Hogwarts was near empty for Christmas, he essentially had the whole library to himself.

Not today, though. Regulus Black had returned to Hogwarts early for reasons that Barty didn't care to ask, and the other seemed intent on pestering him with his presence.

"I'm trying to study," Barty groaned eventually, after Regulus had asked him yet another stupid, irrelevant question. "Can't you go and bother someone else?"

Regulus swallowed, and Barty felt fleetingly bad for his outburst. "Sorry," he replied. "I've had a weird few days at home."

Barty watched as the light in Regulus's ebony eyes faded as he went somewhere else, thinking about something else. "It's okay," he muttered. "I'm just…I hate Christmas."

"Me, too."

You were like death

Regulus ignored the angry letters and Howlers that his mother sent him well into January and February. He wished he had never gone home for Christmas, that she had never cast that stupid spell on him.

The gold letters burned into the backs of his eyelids every time he closed them, and when he opened them again, he found himself searching for the face to match the name. Barty slept in the same dormitory as he did, but many times, Regulus woke up to see an empty bed where Barty should have been.

It wouldn't have bothered him before, but all of a sudden, he became anxious as to where the other boy had went. He would find him cowering in bathrooms, pacing hallways, and once, sitting outside, by the Black Lake.

Sometimes, Regulus expected to find Barty upset or crying, but he was the same every time—wearing the same melancholic, hollow expression.

"Each day, we get a bit closer to graduating from here," he told Regulus one night, his wobbly voice cutting the air around them, "and I have to decide whether I'm going to lead by my father's example, or the opposite."

"Why does it have to be so black and white?" Regulus asked. "Why can't you just follow your heart?"

Barty stared ahead with a blank expression. "Because I don't know where that would lead me, and the prospect of that is terrifying."

And I was like war

Falling in love with Regulus felt like it was meant to happen, but was so forbidden at the same time.

Barty hated his heart for getting in the way. He preferred logic and method, for things to be organised, but when his feelings for Regulus began to creep in, all those things seemed to have lost their value. He became emotional and irrational—traits he never wanted to have.

Emotional and irrational people didn't get good grades, nor did they escape their fathers. Logical and methodical people did.

But when Regulus took his face with those smooth, uncalloused hands, his brain melted away. When their lips pressed together softly, he forgot all about his father. When their tongues met in a swift, awkward dance, nothing else mattered anymore.

And where we collided, darling, I loved you.

Regulus often wondered if he would have seen Barty in the same light, had he never had the spell cast upon him.

They would sneak into each other's beds in the Slytherin dormitory at night, and grasp at each other with a clumsy fever that only inexperienced teenage boys could. Barty's skin burned Regulus's fingertips; his breath was like molten lava on his lips; his seductive words were flames licking his ears.

It was in those moments that he realised:it didn't matter. Barty was his soulmate, with or without the spell.