From Eden - Regulus Black (Complete)

One Hundred and Eight -

This chapter was supposed to be posted yesterday, but I got busy. Welcome to angst October!

Today is election day, I fulfilled my civic duty of voting. I hope my candidate wins, honestly, for the good of women and LGBTQA+ like me. I fear for our safety once more. The last few years have been very difficult and I felt unsafe most of the time. Let's wait and see now. I did what I could.

EDIT: I forgot to say. iheartregulus made such an amazing edit on tiktok ya'll, I'm so proud someone so famous did an edit of the fic lmao - thank you, darling!

MASKS AND COSTUMES

And there was the most hateful moment of the year to Anne, right in front of her, and she had not a moment to prepare herself.

Halloween. The moment where people would look at her and Harry with a lot more pity than usual, the time where her stomach would feel heavier and food seemed tasteless, the time of the year where she would look in the mirror and wonder if Lily and James suffered before their bodies hit the floor – now that she knew them, now that she loved them as well, she felt the loss that had yet to come a lot stronger than she had even felt before.

The dread was deep inside her stomach, creating a deep pit settling there as she allowed Coco to help her dress, trying to focus mostly on how good the costume looked and how Lily would certainly like it a lot once she saw it. Anne Shirley-Cuthbert; Anne of Green Gables. How cliché, she thought to herself, to dress herself as the character she was named after, but still, she couldn't help herself but to like the idea so much. She fixed her hat in silence.

"Thank you, Coco," she dismissed.

"Miss," she answered, making a little bow. "Coco will help Future-Mistress Lily, alright? Call Coco if yous need."

"Will do, will do," she said smiling at the house-elf through the mirror.

She put on a mask – not a physical one, she had to admit to herself, though it did feel like one. Her face felt heavy, her eyes felt like they weren't seeing very well as if she had a net over them, her smile felt shaky and... there was no other way or word to describe it; her smiles looked fake, even to herself all alone in her bedroom.

Anne tried to think of something that would make her happy.

Regulus smiling at her after a small peck, holding her face between his hands as if it was the most precious thing he had ever held. James laughing of a terrible joke she made, arm around Lily, who laughed with him simply because she liked his laugh and had not heard the joke at all. Sirius quietly admiring the ring Remus gave him when he was alone, and the day she had caught him also admiring the ring his father had sent him before dying. Remus preparing a plate for Sirius for breakfast before he was even awake, and the way he knew all the things he ate and the things he didn't. Severus reading a passage of a book to her, voice bland and bored, though she knew that he was doing that only because she had complained she couldn't sleep and Regulus was already sleeping beside her in the Requirement Room. Fleatmont would always make tea before Mia woke because she liked to drink tea first thing in the morning and he didn't want her to have the work to do that, and he had started making waffles as often as possible for Anne. Mia would always buy the littlest thing for her children, just because she saw it and it reminded her of it in a normal day.

Anne thought of the feeling of having a bedroom all to herself for the first time in forever and the way her heart seemed to be in her throat when she saw the beautiful view of the gardens through her window. She thought of the feeling of having Regulus' arms around her in that bed right behind her after he had asked her to marry him, and she had accepted – the happiness and realisation of probable life after survival.