Diptych

Chapter 35

It was a dream, or else it was a memory. Regulus couldn't be sure which, only that he had an awareness that it wasn't quite real.

Not that it stopped it feeling that way.

Tom was somewhere up ahead of him, walking quickly. Regulus tried to keep up, but never seemed to manage it.

Tom leapt onto a staircase as it began to turn away from them both, and Regulus had to run to make it on. He crouched, regained his balance before following. They were on the second floor when they reached the top. Tom slowed then, and stopped entirely when he reached one of the tall archways, a door to the girls' bathroom. He faced Regulus, offered him a smile, but didn't wait for him to catch up before he slipped inside.

"You can't go in there, that's the girls'—" Regulus hissed, still following, but stopped in the doorway. Green light cracked in through the high windows, flooding Tom's face with a watery haze. Though he'd planned, somewhere in the back of his subconscious, to lure Tom back out, to get him out of there before any of the girls came along and caused a scene, he instead found himself walking towards Tom, towards the sink he'd stopped at. The tiles should've been cold beneath his bare feet, but he couldn't feel it if they were.

"Do you know what this is, Regulus?" Tom asked, running one finger slowly along the white porcelain. Regulus shook his head 'no'. "I didn't think so, you never seem to remember."

"Remember what?" Regulus asked. Tom didn't answer. He licked his lips and began... hissing. It almost occurred to Regulus that he might be dreaming once more, just from the sheer absurdity of it all. Tom was hissing at the sink, jaw slack and pink tongue poking out now and again. It took far longer to dawn on Regulus than it ought to have, that he wasn't just hissing, he was saying something. He was speaking parseltongue.

The sink came to pieces before his very eyes, shifting and grinding and moving to reveal a deep pit. Tom smiled, eyes flitting in his direction for just a moment before he leapt into it. Then Regulus knew he was dreaming. But still he followed, chasing him down through a tunnel that seemed so familiar though he swore he'd never seen it in waking hours. The bricks overhead were tiled together so carefully that they looked rounded; or perhaps they'd been carved that way. They slowed a little, water ankle-deep as they waded and the cold still not reaching Regulus.

That hissing was there again, but Tom's lips weren't moving. He'd stopped walking too, crouching to one side of the tunnel and motioning for Regulus to do the same. It got louder and louder, and Regulus wanted to reach out to him. He wanted to wrap his fingers around Tom's wrist, to feel the warmth of him or the pulse beneath his skin to distract himself from whatever was coming towards them. He wanted those eyes to bore into his again, wanted Tom to tell him what was happening and shift the fear that had settled in the pit of his stomach. But he couldn't seem to bring himself to reach out. He watched from beside Tom as the tunnel ahead grew darker and darker, something blocking out all of the light. The hissing was louder, and the presence of the monster coming towards them weighed so heavily that it almost suffocated him.

"Tom, please!" He choked out, but not managing any more.

Please can we go?

Please tell me what's happening.

Please don't be there when I wake up.

"Alright," Tom said, the corner of his mouth lifting in amusement.

They didn't go anywhere; not that Regulus could recall. But all at once, he was enveloped by a sense of safety. No longer did they stand in the tunnel beneath the sink, but rather the corridor that led to the Slytherin common room, one he'd walked the length of a thousand times. Behind them was a worn tapestry, and around the corner was the door to Slughorn's office. Even without remembering how he'd got there, Regulus felt the tension drain from his body.