Why are you so bloody perfect?! | jegulus

Regulus

First night back at Hogwarts, and I was already starting to miss life back at the Potters.

I never thought I would miss life anywhere else, so far Hogwarts had been the nicest place I'd been, and even still it sucked pretty often. But after living with James at his house, I now understood why he missed it so much sometimes.
It was just.. it felt so welcoming. Like anyone would feel like they belonged there, no matter who they were or where they came from.
His parents were so nice, so kind and gentle, yet confident and mischievous. It was no wonder where James got all his traits.

I clutched at my blankets that draped over me, as I lay in my fourposter, in the silence that currently overtook the Slytherin dorm.

I was disgusted in myself. It hadn't even been twenty four hours, and already I was missing James' presence at night.
My clingy ass self wanted someone to cuddle with as I fell asleep, someone to hold me, to kiss me Goodnight, for James to simply be beside me, and for his presence to comfort me.
And I hated it. I hated being so dependent upon someone else. For someone to have such control over my emotions.
I'm so pathetic...

So I held the blankets closer, burying my nose into them, snuggling up under their warmth, like they could ease my discomfort, and I tried to fall asleep.
But, I just- I felt so alone...

I had slept by myself countless nights before, why was I suddenly so clingy?
Just ignore it... I decided.
I'll eventually get used to sleeping by myself in the Slytherin dorm again, it just might take some time.
But I'm afraid this feeling might not go away..

I forced myself to think of other things,
of snowball fights, building snowmen, mugs of hot chocolate, of library books, of coffee, of ink and quills, of candle light, of my current surroundings, and how empty they felt...

And I slowly drifted off into a restless sleep.

* * *

The next day, I now sat in the library, late in the afternoon after having completed my lessons, and was currently studying a bunch of notes and scribbles on becoming an animagus.
But to be honest, Sirius, James, and Peter had decently neat handwriting. And I know Sirius could write beautifully if he put his mind to it.
Y'know, something our parents taught us.

But that's not what I cared about. The other Marauders, not including Remus, were telling me all the steps it took to become an animagus, and to be completely honest, it sounded very specific and dangerous, and risky.
There were so many steps that were so particular that if you messed up ever so slightly, you would have to restart the long process again.

Of course, one had to be good at potions and transfiguration, which thankfully I was.
But that's not at all the tricky part.

First, one had to hold a single mandrake leaf in your mouth for a whole month, from one full moon to the next to be specific, (which we are.)
You couldn't swallow it or take it out, which seemed quite difficult when it came to the necessities of brushing your teeth or eating, but Sirius told me a sticking charm worked perfectly fine, and it didn't mess up the process.

Then, after one month, you had to take out the leaf and put it in a glass vial, one that can receive pure rays of moonlight, along with one of your hairs.
And then of course, you had to collect a silver teaspoon of dew, from a place that hasn't seen sunlight or been touched for seven days.
One then adds the dew, along with the chrysalis of a Death's-head Hawk Moth into the vial.

Then hide the vial in a dark, quiet place until the next thunderstorm. You can't touch the vial, or look at it, and it does best not to think of it much either.

Whilst you wait, at sunrise and sunset you have to touch your wand point to your heart and say the incantation; 'Amato Animo Animato Animagus.'
The Marauders said that after saying this incantation, they started to feel a second heartbeat after a few weeks, but that you had to keep going until there was a thunderstorm.

And then when thunder does appear, you have to go to the vial, which it's contents will now be blood red, and drink it, saying the incantation once more.
Then, if all goes well, one should turn into an animagus. Hopefully...

All very specific and risky, but the Marauders told me it definitely wasn't impossible.

"And we'll be able to help you this time, so that tones down the level of risk." Sirius told me, scanning over the parchment with all their notes and instructions.

"But the riskiest part is the transformation." James said. "And we can't necessarily help you with that.."

"What do you have to do for that part?" I questioned. Was there some other step? Why wouldn't there be?

"Well, first of all, you've got to focus, and not panic, because you will want to." Sirius told me.

"I will?" I countered.

Sirius nodded. "When you drink the potion, it sort of starts to burn, and your heart rate accelerates, and naturally your going to want to panic, but doing so might risk permanent miss-transformation."

"Miss-transformation?" I replied, unsure of where this was going.

"Half-human, half animal dis-formation, with no known cure." Peter told me.

Okay. Permanently becoming a half human hybrid as a slight side affect. No problem.
Was it really worth it? All of this just to become an animagus? Why did I want to become one anyway?

They seemed to have sensed my uneasiness, because they glanced at me nervously, then back at each other.

"You don't have to do this if you don't want to, Reg." James assured me.
"We're simply explaining the process to you before hand, so you know what your signing up for. You can say no."

But.. I didn't want to back out. I genuinely wanted to do this, to join them. Sure it was risky, but they had been able to pull it off, why couldn't I?
Though, I still needed to give it a bit of thought.

I looked over the pages again, scanning my eyes over all the notes they had made, the doodles of what some materials looked like, their location, the details, and some more notes and facts about animagus in particular.
It was all a bit repelling, but the idea of backing out of this didn't sit well with me. I wanted to do this. I really did.

I nodded to them, looking back up to meet their eyes. They seemed excited, curious to what I would reply with, but they weren't pushing me to do this in any way. And I was glad of it.

"When can we start?" I asked.

Sirius smiled.
"After you've memorized all the steps, we can start as soon as we can steal a mandrake leaf."

And thus did the Marauder's second, and my first animagus journey began, if you can put it that way..

1210 words

Btw I didn't make any of the steps up. I googled them.
Yes, their specific, but that will be fun to write, won't it?
But Regulus will finally start to become an animagus. Im excited to start writing it, idk about yall :)

Ty for reading my amazing peepers <33 xx