Ink and Parchment ~ blood and bone

67

"Stop getting gross lake water on my kitchen tiles"

"In case you've forgotten I'm dead, Ellie. The lake water isn't real"

And he was right in both respects. The puddle of water that formed around his sodden shoes was intangible and Regulus himself was in fact quite dead.

"Stop calling me Ellie" she protested reflexively.

"Oh yeah? And what are you going to do Ellie? Kill me? Your lover boy already saw to that"

And he was just as much of a prick as Sirius.

"I could just stop summoning you" Eliza threatened, not for the first time, as she bustled about the kitchen making tea for herself.

"And then who would be your emotional support ghost?" Regulus commented drily, sitting down at her kitchen table and propping his chin up on his hand.

She had obviously never seen Regulus in life, but she had seen enough pictures to know that he didn't look that much different in death. His grey eyes were still as sharp as ever, black hair falling down in waves just past his ears but his skin at times seemed translucent and his shoes had a bad habit of leaking lake water, the lake that he had died in.

"I'm sure Dumbledore would love to see what I've been up too" she returned, reaching up to her cupboards to grab a bowl "He might even be better company than you are"

Regulus sniffed haughtily "I'm the best company the likes of you could hope for, Potter Spawn"

"Okay Baby Black" she said dismissively, sliding into the chair across from him and stifled a smile as he let out an indignant huff.

"I'm your god-uncle - stop calling me that"

"You are quite literally the same age as me" Eliza dead-panned and Regulus let out a forlorn sigh.

"Only the good die young"

All in all Regulus was quite good natured about his death. She was sure if she had summoned him a decade ago he would have been frothing at the mouth, but now after so long he seemed almost content. He said nothing of 'the other side' that she pulled him from but she assumed in death at least he found a peace that life had never been able to offer him.

"You were a war criminal Regulus" Eliza pointed out and he rolled his eyes in return.

"Aren't we all?"

Of course Eliza didn't have a rebuttal for that. Regulus knew far too much for her to be able to lie her way out of that one convincingly. Eliza had initially thought that the ghost would be furious to find out that his death had practically been in vain. He had died to destroy the dark lord, and Eliza had in a way pieced him back together but Regulus had no qualms about it. Voldemort was gone, even if it was not in the way that he had originally intended.

"It doesn't matter if I'd never gone for that horcrux" he'd said one night, eyes more misty than usual "I wouldn't have made it out of that war alive anyway"

Regulus let out a dramatic sigh and practically floated out of his chair and over to the window of her small apartment, staring down at the street below them.

"Are we leaving soon?"

Regulus had been with her since October, Mexico, and when she had asked the spirit had decided he wanted to join her in her travels, see the world he had never gotten to experience and in his words 'keep my god-niece - whatever, out of trouble'

Eliza had initially begun her travels in France, two weeks in a hotel in Paris although she'd left early after the small incident in the catacombs. From there she hadn't bothered with fancy hotels and had instead booked a hostel for a fortnight in the Pyrenees mountains, famed for their alchemy research. There was a coffee shop on the corner that made the best muffins and she fell in love with the libraries, rich in magical theory that improved her alchemy leaps and bounds.