Flaws of Perfection

1. The letter

12th December 1971

Her legs hurt, she lacked breath and tears from the cold wind clouded her vision but she kept running, the letter squeezed in her right fist.
The streets of London swarmed with men and women covered in their long dark coats; the children tightened around their mothers in search of warmth while the snowflakes lay on their clothes. The only exception on that winter's day in the Islington neighborhood was a little girl running in the streets, the coat open despite the cold, the long black scarf resting on the neck and the red cheeks.
"Excuse me!" She said as she divided a couple by passing between the two, they did not have time to scold her that she had already turned the corner.
Isabella arrived at the entrance of the park and leaned on her knees to catch her breath and dry her eyes, she was so agitated that she could not feel the winter cold passing from her silk blouse and resting on her skin.
Her heart was pounding on her head but despite this she got up and entered the park looking around. It was not yet noon so they could not already be at home, although the clouds threatened to cover the shy sun that arose that morning.
Isabella looked around as she proceeded along the snow-covered tree-lined avenue; there were families with children rolling in the snow, business men and women passing by distracted, with large black hats covering their faces, an old man smoked on the bench while reading the newspaper while under his feet a dog looked carefully at the swans in the lake just ahead of him.
Almost at the end of the avenue the tiredness made her lose her pace. Perhaps they did not go out today, she thought, perhaps the housekeeper refused to accompany them because of the too much cold.
She was about to turn back when she heard a voice coming from the high ground to his right. "C'mon Reggie give yourself a push and get in, it's not that hard."  It was him. Isabella would recognize him everywhere.
The smile returned to her lips and ran again, climbing the stone steps covered with snow too quickly; she could almost hear her mother's voice scolding her.
Once at the top she raised her right hand and waved it in the air shouting "Sirius !"
Regulus, the housekeeper and Sirius turned but it was only the face of the last one to light with joy at the sight of his friend.
"Bella !" He responded by shouting as Sybil, the tall woman who was in charge of taking care of the boys, tried in vain to silence him and convince him to come down. The scene seemed rather funny to Isabella and she could easily guess how it had turned out; Sirius must have taken advantage of a moment of distraction of the woman to climb the snowy tree on which he was now sitting comfortably while urging his brother to follow him. Regulus's arm was held in Sybil's bony, callous hand, from which, despite his efforts and hopeful gaze upon his brother, he could not separate.
Sirius jumped down and ran to his friend. He had dark clothes covered in snow and his black hair created a particular contrast with his light skin. His smile, however, remained the same as always.
Isabella did not waste time and handed him the wrinkled letter "Read !" Sirius' eyes seemed to get bigger "I don't believe it, it's arrived ?!" She waved her hand "Just read."
He took the letter quickly, his hands wrapped in the gloves that held it tightly, his eyes fast reading the first lines. Something exploded in his chest and the corners of his mouth folded into a big smile, making his cheeks hurt.
"You get in!" She nodded vividly and threw herself on him, braiding her arms around his neck. Sirius squeezed her, spinning her while she chuckled and hid her face in the hollow of his neck.
When he laid her down on the ground and they split up, Isabella couldn't stand still, hopping while she spoke to him, "It arrived this morning as soon as I woke up. My dad and I read it together, and he promised to take me shopping. We still have time but if you want you can come with us. Ah! Do you know that in third year we could choose which subjects to do?! There's also Muggle Studies, although I don't think my mother would let me participate it."
"What did she say?" Sirius asked, interrupting the flow of words of his friend. She seemed to darken for a moment and he regretted asking; he knew that his friend's mother had put a lot of pressure on her late letter, talking all the way to the principal of Hogwarts. Even Isabella, seeing the state of agitation with which her mother controlled the mail every day, was starting to worry. All the children she knew had received their letter right after their eleventh birthday while she had been sitting on the window that day for hours, waiting for an owl that had never arrived.
What if I didn't get in? She asked herself when she was pretending not to notice her mother's expressions of anxiety. And if accidentally flying dishes and turning off the lights of a room are all the magic I'm capable of?
But now the letter was there, in her hands and nothing else mattered.
"She sighed a sigh of relief and said 'Finally' before going to work." Sirius smiled
"Woman of many words."
"My mother ?" Isabella raised her eyebrows in a dramatic gesture "Always." And they both laughed.
Regulus watched the scene and a twinge of jealousy at those laughs hardened his eyes, with his fists closed he turned to the housekeeper "Let me go!" He pulled his arm and for a moment she was surprised by the strength of that frail child, she was restored and tightened her grip "Only if you tell your brother that we must go."
Regulus repeated the movement "Let me go!" he said with his voice on the brink of tears and she left him rolling her eyes.
His face changed immediately and he ran smiling at his friend and brother. Isabella saw him arrive and extended her hand with an equally warm smile. "Reg !" She said and took the smallest hand inside her and girding him in a quick hug.
Regulus held her for a while, her scent comforted him despite the girl's skin was almost as cold as the snow at their feet.
When they separated the child looked up at her and Isabella gave him a pat on the nose. "You managed to escape to Sybil, wow you're really brave."
He blushed and lowered his head.
"Yes after I yelled at him for two hours to climb with me, but someone was too scared to get hurt." Sirius said to his brother.
"That's not true!" Regulus forcefully replied, "I wasn't scared!"
Sirius held his arms to his chest and nodded, not caring for Regulus's irritated look.
"At least he has common sense and didn't climb on a tree full of snow from which he could have fallen and broken his neck." Isabella defended him, with a smile on her face and her hand around Regulus's. Regulus nodded forcefully.
Sirius snorted indifferently, "As you say."
She didn't care about that answer but leaned towards him and grabbed the letter that still held in her hands. Turning to Regulus, she knelt so that she was at the same height. Isabella was the tallest of the three and always held it against Sirius laughing at his reaction.
"Look." She said to the younger brother. "I got into Hogwarts."
Regulus took the letter without looking at it, his blue eyes turned toward her. His heart stopped and his mouth opened with a frightened expression.
She too couldn't leave. He had recently accepted the departure of his brother after thousand assurances that the older boy had given him. "It's only eight months Reggie, don't cry come here. We still have a lot of time together, we can play any way you want."
Regulus, however, seemed inconsolable and had hidden his tearful face in his brother's chest. "You will forget me! You'll make new friends and forget about me!"
Sirius had grabbed him from his shoulders and looked him straight in the eyes that were so similar to his own. "I'll never forget you. You're my little brother, and I can be friends with Merlin for all I care, but he'd be nothing compared to you. I promise you, as soon as I turn 17, you and I will leave this house and go around the world, like we always said we wanted to. And she'll never find us. I promise."
The child had pulled up with his nose and whispered "Promise me?"
Sirius, with shining eyes but a confident voice, had nodded "Promise." And he had held him in his arms, believing every word.
Now that conversation of months earlier repeated in Regulus' mind. The eyes that looked at him were not similar to his own but they were of a warmer and more gentle color.
"I'm not leaving now. You have to stand me and your brother for a while longer." But this time her smile couldn't calm him so she became more serious.
"Reg." She said to him as she held his scarf around his neck, "It's gonna be okay, I'll write to you almost every day and I'll tell you every moment of it. You'll feel like you're there with us!"
After cleaning the shoulders of his coat from the snow, she pushed his hat on his forehead joking, "And when you come, the three of us will do the best pranks Hogwarts has ever seen. No one can stop us."
"Actually, Regulus and I are going to get grounded, I don't know how you never get caught." Sirius added.
"That's because I'm better than you." Isabella answered, moving her hair to one side in a snooty move.
Regulus laughed and she was glad to see him happy again.
"I will also make Sirius write to you every day." She pretended to whisper in his ear knowing that the friend in front of him would hear it.
"Hey! Let's not exaggerate."
This time they all laughed and the atmosphere seemed to have lightened. Isabella had a child of cold and she realized that she had lost her scarf in the street and that she had not closed any buttons on her coat. She squeezed it around her body and Sirius, noticing that gesture, took off his scarf and wrapped it around her neck. "If you get a fever, you can't come and celebrate Christmas with us. Our father cares too much."
"Just your dad, huh?" Isabella covered the red cheeks behind the scarf and Sirius shrugged his shoulders, turning to hide the smile on his lips.
They continued to chat for a while about how to escape on Christmas night and come to the park. Regulus nodded radiantly following the precious exchange of ideas and giving some suggestions. After a few minutes the housekeeper, visibly bored and cold, forced them to go home and told Isabella to proceed to her own house, otherwise she would have warned Mrs Black and she would surely call her mother.
Isabella raised her arms forward, making fun of her "Oh no better not to upset Walburga and Elyza, who knows what might come out of it." The two children laughed as Sybil rolled her eyes again.
Isabella greeted her friends, ruffled Sirius' hair and run before he could do the same with hers.
She walked the busy streets of London hopping, oblivious to what people might think at the sight of a twelve-year-old girl with a smile so big as to illuminate that grey day. All of her old worries had abandoned her at the moment she held that envelope that she now jealously guarded in her pocket and nothing would have ruined her mood that day, not even her mother.
Eight months, she repeated at every step, only eight months.