Autumn of 1962. Regulus was a year and a half old; Sirius was three.
The half of the nursery that Sirius dominated had turned into an ungovernable chaos. The floor was strewn with splinters of toy brooms, biting spinning tops and the scattered pieces of a forgotten puzzle.
On the contrary, Regulus's corner maintained an immaculate order.
Several illustrated books and a plush doll shaped like a Kneazle rested on the carpet. The toy lay immobile, it once had a life of its own, but Sirius had taken charge of breaking it.
That afternoon, while Kreacher cleaned the large windows, he kept his ears pricked up, tracking every movement of the children. His bulging eyes did not miss a detail and watched out of the corner of his eye from the glass.
Sirius had managed to take a miniature broom out of Orion's study. It was not a simple toy, but an exact replica to scale, a pedagogical instrument designed to illustrate the principles of magical aerodynamics.
"Pay attention, Regulus!" exclaimed Sirius, demanding his brother's attention by shouting. "It is a broom! A real wizard's broom! I am going to make it fly!"
He left the object on the carpet and took a couple of steps back. Taking a deep breath, he concentrated so much that his face began to turn red.
"Up!" he shouted, accompanied by an upward gesture of both hands.
The broom vibrated slightly. The handle rose barely a few inches from the floor before collapsing again.
"Up! Up!" insisted Sirius.
But the broom merely rolled clumsily over itself, refusing to take off.
"..."
Kreacher held his breath.
He knew the secret. The broom carried a restriction enchantment and responded only to whoever understood the essence of levitation: the annulment of weight through will.
Orion had left it there deliberately to measure his sons' potential. Sirius believed he had stolen it, but he had fallen right into his father's test.
And by his frustrated attempts, the firstborn failed to grasp the concept.
"Why isn't it working!" Sirius kicked the carpet with rage. "Dad makes it fly!"
In that instant, Regulus abandoned his stillness. He stood up and advanced with unusual speed toward the broom, sitting down in front of it.
?
Sirius curled his lip with disinterest. "You want to try too? If you don't even know how to speak."
Ignoring the mockery, Regulus raised his right hand and left his index finger suspended over the wooden handle.
With an imperceptible movement, his finger twitched. The broom obeyed, rising in a perfect vertical line until it was level with Regulus's eyes.
There it stopped, floating in absolute stillness, defying gravity.
"..."
Sirius's jaw dropped. Next to the window, the rag Kreacher was controlling lost its magic and fell to the floor.
Regulus exerted gentle downward pressure with his finger and the broom descended with control and landed exactly in its place of origin, aligned with mathematical precision on the carpet.
Sirius blinked, unable to believe his eyes: "You... you how..."
He didn't understand, why could his brother do things that he couldn't do?
Regulus turned his face toward him and pronounced the first complete sentence of his life: "Think, then do."
"Think what?" asked Sirius, stunned.
"Think that it is light." Regulus pointed to the broom. "Do not think that it is heavy."
"But it is heavy!"
"Imagine that it isn't."
"And how do you do that?"
Tilting his head, Regulus searched for the words to explain the concept.
Patting the carpet beside him, he told him, "Sit."
Sirius sat obediently, fascinated and without questioning why his brother, until then mute, was now speaking with such fluency.
Regulus took a dry leaf that the wind had slipped through the window and held it in his palm. "It is light."
"Yes."
"Think that it is heavy."
Staring at the leaf, Sirius struggled to imagine that it was as heavy as a stone.
But nothing happened.
"Wrong," Regulus corrected him. "It is not thinking 'it is as heavy as something'. It is forgetting that it is light. Only then, it becomes heavy."
Sirius frowned.
This was too abstract for him, a path that his imagination had never traveled.
Standing up on his unsteady legs, Regulus returned to his corner, leaving Sirius immersed in his own mental battle.
He had learned the lesson. Only that perhaps this logic was premature for the mind of a three and a half year old child.
But his case was different. For him, understanding and perception transcended the barriers of age.
...
Dinner concluded, Orion summoned Kreacher to his study.
"The instruction broom..." Seated behind his desk, Orion frowned. "Did Regulus manage to make it levitate?"
"Yes... yes, master." Kreacher twisted the cloth between his fingers nervously. "Young Master Regulus raised it. A foot high. It remained perfectly stable."
"Did he speak?"
"He pronounced several sentences." Immediately after, Kreacher recounted word for word the conversation that Regulus had held with Sirius.
"..."
After hearing the report, Orion kept silent.
From the walls, the portraits averted their gaze simulating disinterest, although they pricked up their ears so as not to miss a detail.
"From now on," Orion finally sentenced, "allow Regulus to do his will, as long as he is not in danger. But watch him. Record every action and inform me daily before dinner."
"Yes, master!"
...
December 1963. Number 12 Grimmauld Place was finalizing preparations for Christmas.
Sirius had celebrated his fourth birthday the previous month and was going through that phase of infantile omnipotence in which he considered himself the biggest badass in the universe.
Planted in the center of the living room, with his hands on his hips, he threw a challenge to the imposing Christmas tree: "I will make the bells ring by themselves!"
Walburga leaned over the second floor balustrade: "Sirius, behave! Kreacher, raise that silver ball higher. Last year it was too low and Andromeda was about to hit herself."
"Yes, mistress." With a gesture of his knobbly fingers, Kreacher forced the sphere to ascend a few inches more.
Sitting on the carpet, next to the crackling of the fireplace, Regulus maintained his imperturbable serenity.
That intruder soul was already completing three years of residence in its new vessel.
It had been a while since he had assimilated his reality: he inhabited the magical world of Harry Potter and was Regulus Black, the heir condemned by the original story to a premature and tragic end.
However, he had already charted a different course.
His ambitions transcended terrestrial magic: they pointed toward the firmament, toward the cosmos, virgin territories that wizards never dared to explore.
And Sirius?
Let his brother do what he wants. Anyway, in the end he will become an envoy of justice, a hero who fights against Voldemort.
Meanwhile, he had higher priorities.
The immense fortune of the Blacks would serve as the foundation of his ascent. Competing for attention with a four-year-old boy was, clearly, irrelevant.
"Regulus! Watch!" Sirius's shout tore him from his thoughts.
Fixing his gaze on a golden bell that crowned the fir tree, Sirius took a deep breath and held it until his face turned a deep red, while his hands clenched in the air imitating a grasping gesture.
Magic began to surge.
"Move!" he shouted.
Regulus's perception possessed a supernatural sharpness. Through that invisible sense, he sensed how Sirius's magical power was surging and was also about to lose control.
Bang!
A violent jolt shook the Christmas tree from the base to the tip.
The star at the top collapsed, hitting Kreacher on the head. The candy canes clashed and the glass spheres clattered in a cacophony of glass.
The garlands of lights went mad, blinking with a stroboscopic frenzy that hurt the eyes.
"Stop! Stop!" Walburga rushed downstairs.
But she arrived late.
Terror had seized Sirius. His own magic was escaping him and in his panic, he waved his arms seeking to stop it, but this only fueled the instability of the magical flow.
Boom!
The three large windows of the east wing exploded in unison.
A rain of shards shot outwards, impacting against the protection barriers and remaining suspended in the air.
Above their heads, the enormous chandelier swayed violently, and its crystal tears clashed producing a maddening din.
"Ah!"
A chorus of wails erupted from the portraits and Phineas Nigellus's voice rose above the rest with a roar: "Barbarians! The nobility of the Blacks has degraded!"
Walburga raised her wand and cast a calming charm that impacted full on against Sirius.
The boy stumbled back and fell sitting onto the carpet, contemplating his own hands with a quiet mind.
Walburga's face offered a fascinating transformation. The initial anger dissolved quickly, giving way to a fierce pride.
"An abundant magical power," she murmured with a strange tone. "But poorly directed. Next time, aim at useless things. Like those horrendous vases from your father's collection."
"..."
Sirius blinked, stunned, waiting for a punishment that never came.
Regulus closed his book.
'The eternal problem of magical babies' He sighed. Their power fluctuates with emotions, just like a pressure cooker without an escape valve.
The outburst turns out inevitable.
While Kreacher toiled to repair the disaster, Walburga dedicated one last indecipherable look to her firstborn before turning on her heels and disappearing upstairs.
Still on the floor, Sirius's gaze traveled from his open palms to the shattered windows, to end up settling on his brother.
"I did it..." he whispered.
Regulus nodded: "Impressive."
________
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