![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: Crossroads
Author: Evandar
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: PG
Genre: Angst
Pairing: Regulus/Barty preslash
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I am making no profit from this story.
Summary: Regulus reads Barty's future, but doesn't want to tell him. He's looking for a way out of it.
AN: Written for the prompt 'Fork in the Road' for my Trope Bingo table. It can also be connected (loosely) to this in that it uses the idea that Regulus is a Seer and runs with it.
His fingers drift over the tarot cards. In front of him, they display a confusing pattern of potential futures, laid out in an array that’s most certainly not in the textbook but as their teacher isn’t actually a Seer herself, he doesn’t think she’s in a position to criticise. He can feel his partner watching him. Barty Crouch, Hufflepuff; named for his father, but trying to separate himself as much as possible. He reminds Regulus a little of Sirius in that way, just opposite, and that may be why he likes him.
The futures on the table scream of tragedy. The Tower features prominently, dark and looming – painted, so the back of the box his cards came in says, in the image of Azkaban. There’s a tiny figure tumbling from its lightning-struck battlement; destruction the card says. There’s the Devil with his shackled servants, grinning wickedly; his tongue lolling and drooling. Shallow – not looking beneath the surface, Regulus thinks, then corrects himself: servitude, but he can’t shake the original meaning.
Swords, lots of them, stabbed through the array. Two here and six there. A tough choice; a forced journey. Five - defeat; ten - more destruction; The King - a dangerous man with dangerous secrets. The Knight of Swords is there as well, in a different future, connected to the two of Cups. True love, with a man of action – heroic, but rash and determined. There’s a crossroads hidden somewhere in the cards; a fork in the road that will lead Barty away from his doom and give him a future worth knowing about.
One with a lucky guy, if that future comes true. Barty was cute. Freckled and blond and handsome in an unassuming, boyish sort of way. He has wonderful hands: smooth and strong-fingered, and if it hadn’t been for the future he read in them, Regulus would have enjoyed studying Palmistry a little too much. As it is, he hated the future he saw – a less elaborate version of the catastrophe arrayed before him now. The cards add details where the lines would have sufficed.
He doesn’t want to tell Barty that he’s going to die. He doesn’t want to see those big, blue eyes widen with horror; he wants Barty to be able to talk to him again after this with a shy smile on his face – that one that makes Regulus thinks Barty might actually like him back.
“It’s a very inaccurate science,” he says, trying to put off the inevitable.
“But you’re a Seer, Black,” Barty replies, and Regulus winces.
“Even Seers aren’t right all the time,” he says, trying desperately to make Barty believe it’s true. None of Regulus’ predictions have been false so far, though, and that’s why he’s so afraid. Afraid like when he has the dreams of cold hands dragging him down into water.
He keeps his predictions in a little black book, like the one Aunt Cassiopeia stores her blackmail material in. He keeps it locked and coded and hidden under his mattress. Sometimes, when he wants to scare himself, he reads the things he writes in it.
“Tell me,” Barty says. “Come on, Reg.”
It’s the nickname that does it. “You have a chance,” Regulus tells him. “Of true love and happiness, but only if you don’t enter servitude to anyone. Uh, it says…it says if you do, then you’ll be imprisoned and you’ll die. Horribly.”
It occurs to him then, as he sees the colour drain from Barty’s face, that this was the crossroads he was looking for.
Author: Evandar
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: PG
Genre: Angst
Pairing: Regulus/Barty preslash
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I am making no profit from this story.
Summary: Regulus reads Barty's future, but doesn't want to tell him. He's looking for a way out of it.
AN: Written for the prompt 'Fork in the Road' for my Trope Bingo table. It can also be connected (loosely) to this in that it uses the idea that Regulus is a Seer and runs with it.
His fingers drift over the tarot cards. In front of him, they display a confusing pattern of potential futures, laid out in an array that’s most certainly not in the textbook but as their teacher isn’t actually a Seer herself, he doesn’t think she’s in a position to criticise. He can feel his partner watching him. Barty Crouch, Hufflepuff; named for his father, but trying to separate himself as much as possible. He reminds Regulus a little of Sirius in that way, just opposite, and that may be why he likes him.
The futures on the table scream of tragedy. The Tower features prominently, dark and looming – painted, so the back of the box his cards came in says, in the image of Azkaban. There’s a tiny figure tumbling from its lightning-struck battlement; destruction the card says. There’s the Devil with his shackled servants, grinning wickedly; his tongue lolling and drooling. Shallow – not looking beneath the surface, Regulus thinks, then corrects himself: servitude, but he can’t shake the original meaning.
Swords, lots of them, stabbed through the array. Two here and six there. A tough choice; a forced journey. Five - defeat; ten - more destruction; The King - a dangerous man with dangerous secrets. The Knight of Swords is there as well, in a different future, connected to the two of Cups. True love, with a man of action – heroic, but rash and determined. There’s a crossroads hidden somewhere in the cards; a fork in the road that will lead Barty away from his doom and give him a future worth knowing about.
One with a lucky guy, if that future comes true. Barty was cute. Freckled and blond and handsome in an unassuming, boyish sort of way. He has wonderful hands: smooth and strong-fingered, and if it hadn’t been for the future he read in them, Regulus would have enjoyed studying Palmistry a little too much. As it is, he hated the future he saw – a less elaborate version of the catastrophe arrayed before him now. The cards add details where the lines would have sufficed.
He doesn’t want to tell Barty that he’s going to die. He doesn’t want to see those big, blue eyes widen with horror; he wants Barty to be able to talk to him again after this with a shy smile on his face – that one that makes Regulus thinks Barty might actually like him back.
“It’s a very inaccurate science,” he says, trying to put off the inevitable.
“But you’re a Seer, Black,” Barty replies, and Regulus winces.
“Even Seers aren’t right all the time,” he says, trying desperately to make Barty believe it’s true. None of Regulus’ predictions have been false so far, though, and that’s why he’s so afraid. Afraid like when he has the dreams of cold hands dragging him down into water.
He keeps his predictions in a little black book, like the one Aunt Cassiopeia stores her blackmail material in. He keeps it locked and coded and hidden under his mattress. Sometimes, when he wants to scare himself, he reads the things he writes in it.
“Tell me,” Barty says. “Come on, Reg.”
It’s the nickname that does it. “You have a chance,” Regulus tells him. “Of true love and happiness, but only if you don’t enter servitude to anyone. Uh, it says…it says if you do, then you’ll be imprisoned and you’ll die. Horribly.”
It occurs to him then, as he sees the colour drain from Barty’s face, that this was the crossroads he was looking for.
