Chapter Text
Regulus Black had decided, somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean, that first class was a very elegant form of imprisonment.
It was quiet in the wrong way.
Not peaceful. Not soft. Not restful.
Just polished.
Everything around him gleamed with the smooth, expensive boredom of people who were used to buying comfort and calling it freedom. The seats were wide enough that he could tuck one leg beneath himself without anyone complaining. The blanket over his knees was soft, the sort of soft that had clearly cost someone far too much money. A crystal glass of untouched water sat on the little tray beside him, trembling ever so slightly with the constant hum of the aircraft. The cabin lights had been dimmed to a golden glow that made everyone look waxy and important.
Regulus hated all of it.
He sat by the window with his chin in his hand, pale face turned toward the black-blue stretch of sky outside, where clouds drifted beneath the plane like continents made of ash.
London was somewhere ahead.
His parents were somewhere behind.
Neither thought pleased him much.
Walburga and Orion Black had taken him abroad over the summer because, as far as Regulus understood it, appearances required a family, even if affection did not. There had been a business event. There had been adults in expensive clothes. There had been handshakes, champagne, polished floors, long dinners, and the constant invisible pressure of his mother’s eyes telling him when to stand straighter, when to speak, when not to speak, when to be charming, when to disappear.
Regulus was very good at disappearing.
He had spent most of the trip being presented like a young antique.
This is our youngest son.
Regulus Arcturus Black.
Yes, fourteen now.
Yes, very well behaved.
Yes, already quite accomplished.
Yes, quite like his father.
That had been the worst part.
Not the boredom. Not the heat. Not the endless dinners where men laughed too loudly and women smiled too thinly. Not even the way his mother gripped his shoulder when she wanted him to remember himself.
Quite like his father.
Regulus had looked at Orion across the room when someone said it, and Orion had not looked back.
Now his parents had sent him home early.
Because the rest of the trip did not require him.
Because the important meetings were beginning.
Because he was “tired.”
Because he was “better off at home.”
Because, though nobody had said it aloud, he had become inconvenient.
He had watched his mother adjust his collar at the airport with cool fingers and a colder expression.
“You will behave,” she had said.
“Yes, Mother.”
“You will not make a spectacle of yourself.”
“No, Mother.”
“You will be met when you land.”
“Yes, Mother.”
His father had not touched him. He had only glanced down once, his expression unreadable, and said, “Do not lose anything.”
Regulus had looked at the passport in his hand. The ticket. The small leather case beside him.
“No, Father.”
That had been goodbye.
No kiss. No embrace. No lingering wave through the glass.
Just his mother’s perfume vanishing into the crowd and his father’s back disappearing behind a pair of closing doors.
Now Regulus was flying alone.
Unaccompanied minor, they called it, as though giving loneliness a neat little label made it more respectable.
A flight attendant had been kind to him at first.
Too kind.
The sort of kind adults became when they saw a child travelling alone and decided immediately that there was a sad little story attached. She had smiled brightly, asked him if he needed anything, called him “sweetheart” exactly once before his face made it very clear she should never do so again, and then checked on him every twenty minutes like he might dissolve if left unattended.
“Are you all right there, Mr Black?”
Regulus glanced up from the magazine he had not been reading.
“Yes.”
“Can I get you anything else? Juice? Tea? Another blanket?”
“No, thank you.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
She hesitated, still smiling. “It won’t be long now.”
Regulus looked out of the window.
The sky was endless.
“That is what everyone keeps saying,” he murmured.
The flight attendant did not seem to know whether that was a joke.
Regulus did not either.
She went away.
He watched her move down the aisle, murmuring softly to a man who had fallen asleep with his mouth open, then to a woman adjusting the blanket over the baby in her lap.
The baby had been crying earlier.
Not badly. Not constantly. Just little unsettled bursts, sharp and helpless and impossible to ignore. Regulus had spent nearly an hour pretending not to notice while the baby’s mother whispered comforts in a low, exhausted voice.
“Shh, sweetheart. It’s all right. Nearly there. Nearly there.”
The baby had not believed her.
Regulus could not blame it.
He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.
The engine hummed.
Someone coughed.
Cutlery clinked faintly behind a curtain.
The baby gave a small sleepy whimper, then settled again.
Regulus breathed slowly through his nose and tried not to think about the fact that he was fourteen years old and already knew exactly what it felt like to be sent away because one’s presence had become tiresome.
He thought of London.
He thought of Grimmauld Place.
He thought of the narrow halls, the cold rooms, the portraits that hissed if one walked too loudly. He thought of Kreacher muttering to himself in the kitchen. He thought of his bedroom, neat and dark and waiting. He thought of the house without his parents in it and felt, annoyingly, something close to relief.
Then the plane dropped.
It was not much at first.
Just a sudden sickening dip, as if the whole aircraft had missed a stair.
Regulus’s eyes snapped open.
The glass of water beside him jumped. A clear bead spilled over the rim and slid across the tray.
A few people gasped.
The flight attendant paused in the aisle, one hand catching the back of a seat.
The cabin lights flickered once.
Regulus stared at the tray.
The water trembled.
The plane steadied.
A laugh came from somewhere behind him. Nervous. Too loud.
“Oh, goodness.”
“Just turbulence,” someone said.
Regulus turned toward the window.
Outside, the clouds had thickened.
They were no longer soft white fields beneath the plane. They were dark towers now, vast and bruised, rising up around the aircraft like something ancient waking. The sky beyond them flashed faintly. Not lightning, not yet. Just a pulse behind the clouds, a white vein splitting the dark and vanishing.
The seatbelt sign chimed on.
A calm voice came through the speakers.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are experiencing some unexpected turbulence. Please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts.”
Regulus’s hand moved automatically to his belt.
It was already fastened.
He tightened it anyway.
The flight attendant lifted her voice, still bright, though a thin edge had appeared beneath it.
“Everyone seated, please. Seatbelts fastened.”
The plane shuddered.
This time harder.
A bottle rolled somewhere. Someone swore. The baby woke with a startled cry.
Regulus gripped the armrest.
The aircraft gave another violent jolt, sharp enough to slam his shoulder into the side of his seat. The tray rattled. His water glass toppled, spilling cold water across his sleeve and lap.
A woman screamed.
The sound went straight through him.
Not because it was loud.
Because it gave permission.
The cabin changed all at once.
The polished hush shattered. People sat up. Hands flew to armrests, to seatbelts, to each other. A man across the aisle jerked awake and looked around with wild, offended terror as though the plane had personally insulted him. The flight attendant reached for the overhead compartment to steady herself, but another jolt threw her against a row of seats.
“Please stay calm,” she called, breathless. “Please remain seated—”
The plane lurched downward.
Not dipped.
Dropped.
For one dreadful second, Regulus’s stomach rose into his throat and every loose thing in the cabin lifted.
The magazine flew from his lap.
A handbag opened overhead and vomited papers into the aisle.
The baby’s cry became a scream.
Regulus’s fingers locked around the armrest so hard his knuckles blanched.
“What’s happening?” someone shouted.
“Are we falling?”
“No, no, no—”
“Stay seated!”
The lights flickered again.
Then went out.
Darkness swallowed the cabin for half a heartbeat before the emergency lighting snapped on, red and dim and awful, painting every face like blood.
Regulus could hear everything now.
The engines.
They had changed.
That steady hum had become a strained, uneven roar. A grinding sound grew beneath it, metal against force, force against sky. The plane bucked sideways. A terrible bang came from somewhere behind them, deep and brutal enough that several people screamed at once.
Oxygen masks dropped from above.
They fell like pale dead things.
Regulus stared at the one swinging in front of his face.
For a moment, his mind went blank.
Then a voice from the safety demonstration returned to him, detached and useless.
Pull the mask toward you. Place it over your nose and mouth. Breathe normally.
Breathe normally.
Regulus laughed once.
It came out broken and very small.
The plane tipped.
The window filled with cloud.
Then black sky.
Then cloud again.
Regulus grabbed the mask and yanked it down. His hands were clumsy. The elastic snapped against his cheek as he dragged it over his face. The plastic smelled stale and chemical.
He tried to breathe.
Nothing felt normal.
People were screaming in every direction. A man was praying aloud, stumbling over the words. Someone kept shouting for help. The flight attendant had fallen to her knees in the aisle and was trying to crawl toward a seat while the plane shook around her.
The baby screamed and screamed.
Regulus turned his head.
The mother had the baby clutched against her chest, one arm wrapped around the tiny body, the other trying to pull her own mask down. The father beside her was fumbling with his seatbelt, face white, mouth moving soundlessly.
“Hold her!” the mother cried. “Hold her tight!”
“I am!”
“Please—please—”
Another bang.
This one above them.
A section of ceiling cracked open with a shriek of torn material. Air blasted through the cabin. The temperature plunged. Papers and napkins flew like birds caught in a storm.
Regulus pressed back into his seat.
He could not move.
He could not think.
His eyes burned. His ears rang. The mask sucked against his face. His heart was beating so hard it seemed impossible that the rest of him had not shattered around it.
The aircraft tilted nose-down.
Screams rose into one sound.
A terrible, human, animal sound.
Regulus looked out of the window.
For one impossible second, the clouds broke.
He saw green.
Not fields.
Not countryside.
Not London, not coast, not lights, not roads.
Green.
Endless green.
A black ocean of jungle rushing upward beneath them.
His breath caught.
“No,” he whispered into the mask.
The plane fell.
The world became noise.
Metal screamed.
The cabin tore itself apart.
Something struck the side of Regulus’s head. White pain burst behind his eyes. His body slammed forward against the seatbelt, then sideways, then back. The window cracked. Someone’s hand flew across the aisle and vanished. Luggage exploded from overhead compartments. The floor pitched beneath him.
There was the awful ripping sound of trees tearing through wings.
The roar of engines becoming a howl.
The smell of fuel.
Smoke.
Burning.
The baby’s scream.
His own voice, maybe.
He could not tell.
The plane hit the jungle.
The impact was not one thing.
It was many.
A crash.
A split.
A crushing thunder.
A force so enormous it erased the shape of thought.
Regulus saw red light.
Green darkness.
His hands in front of him.
The seat ahead.
A flash of silver.
His mother’s fingers on his collar.
Do not make a spectacle of yourself.
Then everything disappeared.
For a long time, there was nothing.
Not sleep.
Not dreaming.
Nothing.
Then sound returned as pain.
A high ringing filled Regulus’s skull.
It was so loud it seemed to have weight. It pressed behind his eyes, through his teeth, down his spine. He tried to move and could not. Something heavy pinned him across the legs. Something else pressed against his shoulder. His mouth tasted like blood and smoke.
He opened his eyes.
At first, he saw nothing but grey.
Then shapes crawled into focus.
Twisted metal.
A torn seat.
Leaves.
A strip of dangling wire sparking weakly above him.
The red emergency light blinked somewhere nearby, slow and dying.
His first thought was absurd.
The plane is untidy.
Then pain hit fully.
Regulus made a sound through his teeth, sharp and helpless, and immediately hated himself for it.
His head hurt.
His ribs hurt.
His left arm burned.
His legs were trapped beneath a slab of broken paneling and part of a seat frame. The edge of it dug into his thigh. Something warm slid down the side of his face. When he blinked, blood fell into his eye.
He tried to breathe.
Smoke filled his lungs.
He coughed, and the cough tore through his ribs so viciously that tears sprang to his eyes.
“No,” he rasped.
The word sounded strange.
Flat.
Distant.
His ears were still ringing, the world muffled beneath the shrill whine.
He turned his head slowly.
The cabin was gone.
Not broken.
Gone.
Opened.
Split apart like a carcass.
Where the ceiling should have been, there was jungle canopy. Leaves broad as shields. Vines. Strips of sky pale with heat. The air moved wet and heavy over his face. Rainwater or fuel dripped somewhere steadily. Smoke curled from torn metal.
A body hung half across the aisle.
Regulus stared.
He did not understand what he was seeing.
Then he did.
He looked away so fast his neck flared with pain.
“Help,” he tried to call.
It came out as barely more than breath.
He swallowed blood.
“Help!”
No answer.
Only the ringing.
Only crackling metal.
Only distant birds shrieking somewhere high above the wreck.
Regulus shut his eyes, then opened them again.
He could not panic.
That was the first rule of being a Black, carved into him deeper than manners.
Do not panic.
Panic was ugly. Panic was weakness. Panic was something other people did loudly while Blacks remained composed and dreadful.
But his hands were shaking.
He pressed them against the debris trapping his legs.
“Move,” he whispered.
The panel did not move.
He sucked in another breath and pushed harder.
Pain burst white-hot through his left wrist.
He cried out, then clamped his mouth shut so hard his teeth clicked.
“Move,” he hissed again, angrier now. “Move.”
He shoved.
Nothing.
He twisted his hips, trying to drag one leg free, and the metal shifted just enough to scrape skin from his thigh. He bit back a scream. His vision spotted.
For a moment he thought he would pass out again.
“No,” he whispered. “No. No, you do not get to.”
He did not know who he was talking to.
The plane.
The jungle.
Death.
Himself.
He braced both hands against the wreckage again, ignoring the agony in his wrist, and shoved with everything he had left.
The broken frame lifted half an inch.
Regulus yanked his right leg.
It came free with a sickening scrape.
He gasped.
The debris dropped again, still pinning his left leg.
He lay there panting, shaking so violently his teeth chattered despite the heat.
“Again,” he told himself.
His voice sounded small.
He hated that too.
“Again.”
He dug his freed heel into the floor, pressed his shoulder against the broken seat beside him, and shoved.
The panel shifted.
He pulled.
His left leg dragged free.
The pain was immediate and savage. He rolled sideways, choking on a cry, curling around himself as much as the wreckage allowed. For several seconds, he could do nothing but breathe in tiny broken bursts.
Then the smell of fuel thickened.
Regulus froze.
Fuel.
Fire.
He had to get out.
He turned onto his stomach and crawled.
Every movement was a negotiation with pain. His left arm shook beneath him. His ribs screamed. His leg dragged badly at first, then steadied enough for him to move. Broken glass glittered across the floor. His palm came down in it once and he hissed, lifting his hand to find bright blood welling from the cut.
He crawled past a seat crushed sideways.
Past luggage split open.
Past a shoe with no owner visible.
Past the flight attendant.
He stopped.
She lay against the aisle, still half reaching forward, one hand outstretched as if she had been trying to get to someone.
Her eyes were open.
Regulus stared at her.
The same woman who had offered him tea.
The same woman who had called him Mr Black in that gentle voice.
He waited for her to blink.
She did not.
“Miss?” he whispered.
No answer.
His throat tightened so sharply he almost gagged.
“Miss?”
Nothing.
The ringing in his ears seemed to grow louder.
Regulus backed away from her on one elbow, shaking his head.
“No,” he whispered. “No.”
He turned and crawled faster.
A gap had been torn in the side of the aircraft. Beyond it was a slope of churned earth, shattered branches, and impossible green. The plane had carved a wound through the jungle. Trees lay split and smoking. Pieces of the aircraft were scattered through the clearing like silver bones.
Regulus dragged himself to the opening.
The metal edge was jagged. He caught his sleeve on it and tore the fabric as he pulled himself through. The drop outside was short, but he had no strength left to lower himself properly.
He fell.
Mud struck him hard.
For a moment, he could not breathe.
He lay on his side in the wet earth, face pressed against crushed leaves, smoke drifting over him, the heat of the jungle wrapping around his body like a damp hand.
Above him, the sky was hidden by canopy and smoke.
He rolled onto his back with a groan.
The world swam.
Green.
Silver wreckage.
Black smoke.
Red blood on his fingers.
He lifted one hand to his head and pulled it away wet.
“Brilliant,” he muttered.
His voice cracked halfway through the word.
He laughed once, breathless and hysterical.
Then he stopped because laughing hurt too much.
He pushed himself upright slowly, one hand braced in the mud.
The clearing around him looked unreal.
The jungle pressed in from all sides, dense and alive and enormous. Trees rose like cathedral pillars, their trunks wrapped in vines, their crowns tangled so thickly that only broken spears of sunlight cut through. Leaves shivered though there was no wind. Birds cried overhead in harsh, unfamiliar voices. Insects buzzed in a constant feverish cloud.
The aircraft lay in pieces.
The front section had crumpled against a wall of trees. One wing was torn off and lodged at an angle, blackened at the edge. Smoke bled upward from one engine. Seats had been thrown into the mud. Luggage was everywhere. Clothing. Papers. Glass. Metal.
And bodies.
Regulus stared at the wreckage.
He waited.
For someone to move.
For someone to shout.
For someone to cough.
For someone to scream.
Anything.
“Hello?” he called.
His voice was hoarse, swallowed almost immediately by the jungle.
No one answered.
He staggered to his feet and nearly collapsed. His left leg buckled under him. He caught himself against a torn piece of fuselage, palm slipping on soot and rainwater.
“Hello!”
Still nothing.
He limped forward.
One step.
Then another.
He passed a row of seats ripped clean from the floor, three passengers still strapped into them. He saw an old man slumped against a tree. A woman lying half beneath a sheet of metal. A crew member facedown near the wing.
Dead.
All dead.
The truth came slowly, because it was too large to enter him all at once.
The plane had crashed.
In the jungle.
The Amazon, his mind supplied with sudden, horrible clarity, remembering the route, the maps on the screen, the endless green beneath them before impact.
The plane had crashed in the Amazon jungle.
Everyone was dead.
Everyone except him.
Regulus stood in the middle of the wreckage with blood drying on his face and smoke burning his throat, and for several seconds he forgot how to be a person.
“No,” he said again.
He had said it so many times already that the word had become useless.
He turned in a slow circle, searching the wreck as if there might be a hidden answer behind him.
“No, someone—someone has to—”
He swallowed.
His chest hitched.
He pressed one bloody hand over his mouth.
“No.”
The jungle answered with birdsong.
A branch cracked somewhere in the distance.
Regulus flinched so violently pain shot through him.
He spun toward the sound, expecting—
What?
A person?
An animal?
A rescue team?
There was nothing.
Only green.
Only green.
Only green.
His breathing began to quicken.
He could not be here.
He could not be alone.
He was fourteen. He was not even supposed to be on this plane without some uniformed adult checking his ticket and smiling at him too much. He was supposed to land in London. He was supposed to be met. He was supposed to go back to Grimmauld Place and sulk in his room and pretend he had not cared that his parents sent him away.
He was not supposed to be standing in the Amazon jungle surrounded by corpses.
He bent forward, hands on his knees, trying to breathe.
The ringing in his ears pulsed.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
He gagged on smoke and bile.
Then he heard it.
At first, he thought it was part of the ringing.
A thin sound.
Weak.
High.
He froze.
The sound came again.
A cry.
Regulus lifted his head.
For one second he did not move.
Then the cry sharpened.
A baby.
The baby.
Regulus’s blood turned cold.
He staggered toward the sound so quickly he nearly fell over a broken suitcase.
“No, no, no—where—where are you?”
The cry came again, muffled beneath wreckage.
Regulus limped around a torn section of cabin wall, shoving branches aside, stumbling through mud and glass.
“Where are you?” he shouted, panic cracking his voice. “Cry again. Go on. Do it again.”
The baby screamed.
Regulus followed the sound to a collapsed row of seats near the edge of the clearing.
He saw the mother first.
The woman from the cabin.
She was still strapped into her seat, body bent protectively forward. Her arms were curled around the bundle against her chest.
The father beside her was dead too.
Regulus stopped so abruptly he nearly fell.
For a moment, he could not move toward them.
He knew before he checked.
He knew by the stillness.
He knew by the angle of the father’s head.
He knew by the mother’s silence.
But the bundle in her arms moved.
The baby wailed, furious and alive.
“Oh,” Regulus breathed.
The sound broke something inside him.
He stumbled forward and dropped to his knees beside them, mud splashing up around his legs.
The baby was trapped against the mother’s chest, secured by her arms, wrapped in a pale blanket now streaked with soot and blood that did not seem to be hers. Her tiny face was red and scrunched with terror. Her mouth was open wide, eyes squeezed shut, fists waving weakly.
Regulus reached out, then stopped.
His hands were filthy.
Bloody.
Shaking.
“I—” he started.
The baby screamed harder.
Regulus looked at the mother’s face.
She had been the one whispering earlier.
Nearly there.
Nearly there.
He swallowed hard.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Then he gently, clumsily, began to loosen the woman’s arms.
It felt wrong.
It felt obscene.
The mother’s body was heavy and still, but her arms had locked around the baby in death as though she had refused, at the last possible second, to let go.
Regulus had to pry her fingers apart one by one.
His breath shook.
“I’m sorry,” he kept saying. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m not—I’m not trying to—”
The baby wailed.
“I know,” Regulus said, voice pitching high with panic. “I know, I know, I know, I know. I am trying.”
The mother’s final grip loosened.
Regulus slid both hands under the baby.
She was impossibly small.
Warm.
Alive.
The moment he lifted her free, she screamed directly into his face.
Regulus flinched.
“Please don’t do that.”
She screamed again.
“All right,” he said, breathless. “Yes. Fair. Very fair.”
He shifted awkwardly, trying to support her head the way he vaguely knew one was meant to. Her neck lolled slightly and he panicked, immediately adjusting his hand.
“Oh—no—sorry—sorry—”
The baby cried harder.
Regulus sat back in the mud with her clutched against his chest, one arm beneath her, the other trembling around her tiny body.
She smelled like smoke and milk and fear.
He looked down at her face.
She was so young.
Too young to understand wreckage. Too young to understand dead parents. Too young to understand that the world had just split open and left her in the arms of a boy who did not know how to hold anything gently without being afraid he would break it.
“Stop crying,” Regulus whispered.
She did not.
“Please stop crying.”
She did not.
“Please.”
His voice cracked.
He pulled the blanket tighter around her, rocking because he had seen people do that. The movement was stiff at first, then frantic, then slower as he realised sudden movements made her shriek more.
“All right. All right. I’m—I’m doing it wrong. I know. I don’t know how. I don’t know how to do this.”
The baby’s face crumpled.
Regulus stared at her, helpless.
“What do you need?” he whispered. “What do babies need?”
Food.
Water.
Warmth.
Her mother.
His throat closed.
He glanced at the dead woman and immediately looked away.
“No,” he whispered. “No, don’t think about that.”
The baby hiccupped through her crying.
Regulus rocked her again, carefully this time.
“Shh,” he said.
The word came out awkwardly, unused.
He tried again.
“Shh. It’s all right.”
It was not.
They both knew it.
The baby screamed.
“It’s not all right,” he corrected, almost hysterical. “That was a stupid thing to say. Obviously it is not all right. We are in a jungle. The plane has crashed. Everyone is—”
He stopped.
His eyes stung.
He bent his head over the baby, shielding her from the smoke drifting across the clearing.
“Everyone is gone,” he whispered.
The baby’s cries broke into breathless little sobs.
Regulus pressed his cheek lightly to the blanket, not quite touching her face.
“But you are not,” he said. “You are not gone.”
His arms tightened.
“And I am not gone.”
The sentence did not comfort him.
It should have.
It did not.
He looked around.
The wreckage smoked. The jungle watched. Heat gathered over everything, thick and damp, turning blood sticky on his skin. Somewhere inside the broken plane, something cracked and settled. A distant metallic groan made him flinch.
He needed to move.
Maybe the wreck could burn.
Maybe there were animals.
Maybe there was something in the jungle already smelling blood.
The thought made him clutch the baby closer.
She fussed weakly against him, still crying but quieter now, as if exhaustion had begun to steal even that from her.
Regulus tried to stand.
His leg buckled.
He dropped back down with a gasp, pain flashing up his side. The baby startled and began screaming again.
“No, no, no, I’m sorry,” he rushed out. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—please, please, stop.”
He rocked her, biting down hard on his own pain.
“Please don’t cry. Please. I can’t—I can’t think when you cry.”
She cried.
Regulus’s breathing hitched.
“I know,” he whispered. “I know. You’re frightened. I know.”
His own voice thinned.
“I am too.”
The admission seemed to hang there, terrible and naked.
He had never said that aloud before.
Not in any way that mattered.
Not to his mother. Not to his father. Not to anyone.
I am frightened.
The baby wailed into his chest as if answering for both of them.
Regulus shut his eyes.
For a brief, awful moment, he wanted someone else to take her.
An adult.
A mother.
A father.
A flight attendant.
Anyone.
Anyone who knew how to hold a baby, how to stop bleeding, how to find water, how to survive a jungle, how to make sense of a world where a plane could fall from the sky and leave one child holding another among the dead.
But there was no one.
There was only him.
And her.
The thought made his stomach drop worse than the plane had.
He opened his eyes again.
“All right,” he whispered.
His voice shook.
“All right.”
The baby hiccupped.
Regulus looked down at her. Her tiny fingers had escaped the blanket and curled against the ruined front of his shirt. They were impossibly delicate, nails like pale flakes of shell. Her fist opened and closed weakly, catching nothing.
He stared at that hand.
Then, slowly, he lifted one finger and placed it against her palm.
She gripped it.
Regulus stopped breathing.
Her fingers closed around his with absurd strength, clinging by instinct, by terror, by life itself.
His face crumpled before he could stop it.
“No,” he whispered.
He tried to pull himself back together.
Failed.
A tear slid clean through the blood and dirt on his cheek.
“Don’t do that.”
The baby held on.
Regulus laughed once, but it came out like a sob.
“That is very unfair.”
She whimpered.
He looked toward the wreckage again.
There might be supplies.
Water. Cloth. Something useful. Something for her. Something for him.
But the dead were there.
All of them.
And the smoke.
And the fuel.
And he did not know where to begin.
He did not know how long it had been since the crash. He did not know if anyone knew where they were. He did not know if anyone was coming. He did not know whether planes crashed in jungles and vanished forever. He did not know whether the Amazon swallowed things whole, whether screams disappeared beneath leaves, whether two children could be erased by green silence and no one would ever find the bones.
His breathing quickened again.
“No,” he said sharply, to himself this time. “Stop.”
The baby startled.
Regulus softened instantly.
“Sorry. Not you. Not you.”
He shifted her higher against him.
“Just me.”
The absurdity of apologising to an infant in the wreckage of a plane crash nearly made him laugh again.
It nearly made him scream.
He did neither.
He pressed his lips together until they hurt.
The baby’s crying quieted into small, exhausted whines.
Regulus rocked her slowly.
“There,” he whispered. “That’s—that’s better, isn’t it? That’s better.”
She made a tiny broken sound.
“I know. I know it isn’t.”
He looked at the mother again despite himself.
“I’m sorry,” he said, barely audible.
The dead woman did not answer.
Her face was turned slightly toward them, hair fallen across one cheek, mouth parted as if she had been about to speak. Regulus wondered what her name was. He wondered what the baby’s name was. He wondered if the father had been kind. He wondered if the baby would remember their voices.
No.
She was too small.
That seemed worse.
The baby would have nothing.
No memory.
No explanation.
Only the shape of absence before she ever learned what absence meant.
Regulus swallowed hard.
“I do not know your name,” he whispered to her.
The baby breathed in a shaky little gasp.
“I don’t know anything about you.”
He looked down at her, helplessly furious, as if she had done something unreasonable by surviving.
“You could have at least come with instructions.”
She blinked.
Her eyes opened properly for the first time.
Dark.
Wet.
Unfocused.
Regulus froze beneath that tiny stare.
The baby looked at him as if he were the whole world.
It was horrifying.
“Oh,” he whispered. “No. Don’t look at me like that.”
She blinked again.
Regulus’s throat tightened painfully.
“I’m not—” he started, then stopped.
Not what?
Not your mother?
Not useful?
Not enough?
Not safe?
All true.
None helpful.
He looked around the clearing again, clutching her like she might dissolve if he loosened his grip.
“We have to get away from the smoke,” he said.
His voice sounded strange in the jungle. Too formal. Too young.
“We need—water. We need water. And something for your head. And—and food, probably. I don’t know what babies eat when—”
His mind slammed into the thought and recoiled.
The baby’s mother.
Milk.
He shook his head hard.
“No. No.”
The baby stirred.
“Sorry. Sorry.”
He dragged in a breath.
“One thing at a time.”
That was something adults said.
He had always found it irritating.
Now it was the only structure left in the world.
One thing at a time.
First, stand.
Regulus braced one hand in the mud while keeping the baby tucked against him with the other. It was nearly impossible. His body protested every movement. His ribs burned. His leg trembled. His cut palm slipped.
“Do not drop her,” he whispered to himself.
The baby whimpered.
“I’m not going to,” he said quickly. “I’m not. I promise. I’m not going to drop you.”
Promise.
The word landed heavy.
Black family promises were chains. Vows. Expectations. Punishments dressed in silk.
But this promise was made in mud, with blood on his face and a baby’s fist wrapped around his finger.
It felt different.
He tried to rise.
Failed.
Mud sucked at his shoes.
Pain tore through his leg.
He sank back with a strangled sound, clutching the baby tightly to his chest.
She cried again.
“I know,” he gasped. “I know. Give me a moment.”
He bowed his head over her, breathing hard.
He wanted his mother.
The thought came so suddenly and shamefully that he nearly choked on it.
He did not want Walburga as she was.
He wanted something else.
Something impossible.
A mother who would come through the trees calling his name. A mother who would kneel in the mud and take his face in both hands and say, Regulus, darling, there you are. A mother who would hold the baby properly and tell him what to do. A mother who would make the world make sense.
He wanted a father who would lift the wreckage. A father who would say, You did well. A father who would not look disappointed by fear.
He wanted to be little enough to be rescued.
He was not.
The baby sobbed against him.
Regulus pressed his cheek to the top of her blanket.
“All right,” he whispered, voice breaking. “All right. We will try again.”
This time he used a broken seat frame beside him for leverage.
He pushed himself up slowly, biting the inside of his cheek until he tasted fresh blood. His vision blurred. His knees shook. The baby slipped slightly and terror shot through him.
“No—”
He caught her immediately, adjusting both arms around her.
She wailed.
“I’ve got you,” he said, panicked. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
He was standing.
Barely.
But standing.
The jungle tilted around him.
He took one step away from the mother and father.
Then stopped.
He looked back.
The baby cried softly.
Regulus’s face twisted.
“I can’t,” he whispered to the dead. “I can’t take you. I’m sorry.”
The words came out mangled.
“I can’t do anything.”
His free hand curled into a fist.
“I’m sorry.”
Then he turned away.
Each step hurt.
He moved toward a section of shade near a huge fallen tree at the edge of the crash path, far enough from the worst smoke but still within sight of the wreckage. The ground there was tangled with roots and leaves, but the tree trunk formed a rough barrier between them and the open clearing. It was not safety.
It was only less exposed.
Regulus lowered himself beside it with a hiss of pain, back against the bark, baby held tightly against him.
The bark was damp and rough through his torn shirt.
The air smelled of crushed plants, fuel, blood, and rain.
The baby’s crying had faded to exhausted little noises. Her face was flushed. She kept turning her head weakly, mouth opening and closing.
Regulus stared down in alarm.
“What?” he whispered. “What does that mean?”
She rooted against the blanket.
Regulus’s stomach sank.
“Oh.”
Food.
She was hungry.
Of course she was hungry.
He looked toward the wreckage.
Her things might be there. A bottle. A bag. Something. Parents carried things for babies, didn’t they? Bottles. Powder. Cloths. He had seen the mother with a bag near her feet, maybe. Or under the seat. Maybe it had survived.
He looked back at the baby.
Then at the wreck.
“I have to put you down,” he said.
The baby whimpered.
Regulus immediately shook his head.
“No. No, that won’t work.”
He could not put her in the mud. Could not leave her by the tree. Could not carry her and search properly. Could not not search.
He let out a breath that trembled badly.
“Think.”
His head throbbed.
“Think.”
The baby fussed, mouth opening against the blanket.
“I know. I am trying.”
She cried louder.
“I said I am trying.”
She screamed.
Regulus winced.
“Please don’t shout at me. I have had a very difficult day.”
The sentence was so ridiculous that he almost cracked again.
Instead he shifted the baby into one arm, awkwardly, terrifyingly, and used his other hand to tug at the blanket around her. It was wrapped badly now, twisted from being moved. He tried to fold it under her head, tried to create some sort of hold that left one hand freer, but every adjustment made him fear he was hurting her.
“Sorry,” he murmured. “Sorry. Sorry. I am not good at this.”
The baby’s face scrunched.
“Yes, I know you’ve noticed.”
He pressed his lips together and looked toward the wreck.
“I’ll go quickly.”
He did not move.
He could not.
The wreckage seemed farther now, wider, darker. The bodies were waiting there. The smoke. The torn seats. The mother’s still hands.
The baby cried.
Regulus shut his eyes.
“Coward,” he whispered to himself.
Then his eyes snapped open, sharp with anger.
“No.”
He pushed himself up again, baby held close.
“I am many unpleasant things. I am not that.”
He limped back into the wreckage.
The baby wailed at the movement. Regulus kept murmuring nonsense under his breath, not because it helped but because silence made him think too much.
“It’s fine. It’s fine. It is not fine, but apparently one says that anyway. Everyone says it. Complete idiocy. Nothing is fine. I don’t know why adults insist on lying to children. You are a child. I am also apparently a child. We are both being lied to by absolutely no one, which is somehow worse.”
She hiccupped.
“Yes, exactly.”
He reached the row of seats where he had found her.
He forced himself not to look directly at her parents more than he had to.
There was a bag.
A large soft one, crushed partly beneath the father’s legs, patterned with small yellow animals. Regulus grabbed the strap and pulled. It did not move.
“Of course,” he muttered.
He shifted the baby higher and tugged again.
Nothing.
The baby cried.
“I know.”
He pulled harder, teeth gritted.
The bag came free suddenly.
Regulus stumbled backward and nearly fell.
The baby shrieked.
“I’m sorry!”
He dropped to one knee, gasping, the bag clutched in one hand.
It had a smear of blood across it.
He wiped it on the mud before he could think better of it.
Then he dragged it with him back to the fallen tree, because standing in front of the bodies while searching through their belongings felt unbearable.
Once seated again, he opened the bag with shaking fingers.
Inside were things he did not understand.
Clothes. Cloths. A small soft toy. A packet of wipes. A folded blanket. Two bottles, one empty, one with a little liquid still inside. A container. A tin. Nappies. A crumpled packet of something. A small cardigan.
Regulus stared at the contents like they were written in another language.
The baby cried.
“Good news,” he said hoarsely. “Your parents were organised.”
His voice broke on parents.
He cleared his throat hard.
He picked up the bottle with liquid in it.
It looked intact.
He held it up to the light filtering through the trees. The contents were cloudy, pale, maybe milk. Maybe something else. He had no idea whether it was safe. He had no idea how old it was. He had no idea if babies could drink milk after plane crashes in jungle heat.
The baby cried harder, rooting toward it.
“All right,” he whispered. “All right.”
He touched the bottle to her mouth.
At first she only cried against it.
Then instinct took over.
She latched.
Regulus went completely still.
The baby drank.
Her tiny hands curled weakly against the bottle. Regulus supported it with clumsy concentration, watching her mouth, her nose, the angle of her head, terrified every second that he was doing something wrong.
“There,” he whispered.
His whole body sagged.
“There you are.”
The baby drank greedily.
Regulus watched like it was a miracle.
The jungle screamed and hummed around them. Smoke drifted across the clearing in thin dark ribbons. Somewhere in the wreckage, a flame flickered and died. Rain began to patter lightly against leaves high above, not reaching the ground yet.
Regulus held the bottle.
The baby drank.
For a few minutes, that was the entire world.
Then the bottle emptied.
The baby fussed when it was gone, turning her head, searching.
“No,” Regulus whispered. “No, that’s all. That’s all there is for now.”
She began crying again.
Panic rose immediately.
“No, don’t—please don’t start again. You ate. You just ate. That should count for something.”
She wailed.
Regulus looked into the bag again, desperate. There was a tin. Powder, maybe. But powder needed water. Clean water. He looked around the jungle as if clean water might politely present itself.
Nothing.
Of course nothing.
He put the empty bottle aside and lifted her against his shoulder because he had seen the mother do something like that. The baby squirmed, crying into his neck.
“What now?” he whispered. “What now? What do you want now?”
She made a strained little sound.
Regulus frowned.
Then she burped.
He startled.
“Oh.”
The baby quieted slightly.
Regulus blinked.
“Oh. Right. That.”
He patted her back, too lightly at first, then a bit firmer, terrified of both underdoing and overdoing it.
“Good,” he murmured. “That was good. I think.”
She hiccupped.
“Yes. Excellent contribution.”
Her crying softened again into exhausted whimpers.
Regulus held her there, against his shoulder, one hand spread carefully over her back.
The warmth of her pressed into him.
Alive.
So alive.
He realised he was crying only when one tear fell onto the blanket near her ear.
He stared at it.
Then quickly wiped his face with his shoulder, annoyed, embarrassed, as though there was anyone alive to see.
The baby breathed unevenly.
Regulus rocked her again.
“We need water,” he whispered.
His voice had become rough.
“We need to get away from the wreck properly. But not too far, because if someone comes—”
He stopped.
If someone comes.
His chest tightened around the hope.
Would someone come?
Planes did not simply disappear, did they?
Someone would know.
Someone would see.
Someone would send help.
But the jungle was endless. The crash path was hidden beneath canopy. Smoke could be swallowed. Signals could die. People could search the wrong place for days.
Days.
The baby could not survive days on nothing.
Neither could he.
Regulus looked down at her.
“I don’t know what to do,” he whispered.
She had finally quieted, not asleep exactly, but limp with exhaustion, small mouth still trembling.
“I don’t know how to keep you alive.”
His breath shuddered.
“I don’t know how to keep me alive.”
The words slipped out too honestly.
He looked toward the wreckage again.
Bodies.
Metal.
Smoke.
Supplies.
There might be more water bottles in first class. Food. Blankets. Medical kits. Things adults stored for emergencies because adults liked pretending emergencies obeyed storage compartments and printed instructions.
He would have to go back in.
Search.
Take what he could carry.
He tightened his hold on the baby.
But not yet.
For one moment, he let himself sit.
Pain pulsed through every part of him. His head throbbed. His ears still rang beneath the jungle’s noise. His left arm trembled. His throat burned. Blood had dried stiffly along his jaw and under his collar. Mud soaked his trousers. His shoes were ruined. His hands were cut. He was dizzy with shock and smoke and terror.
The baby shifted against him.
Regulus looked down.
Her eyes were half-open again.
She was watching him.
Still unfocused. Still too small to really see him.
But watching.
He swallowed hard.
“Hello,” he whispered.
She blinked.
“I’m Regulus.”
The name sounded strange here.
Wrong.
Too polished for mud.
Too old for a boy shaking beneath a tree.
Too small for the jungle.
“Regulus Black,” he added, because manners were apparently indestructible.
The baby’s mouth trembled.
“I don’t know your name,” he said. “That is going to be a problem.”
She breathed in a tiny, shaky sigh.
He looked toward the bag.
There might be something. A tag. A passport. A document. Something with her name. But he could not bring himself to search yet. Not while she was almost calm. Not while his own hands had only just stopped shaking enough to hold her safely.
“I’ll find it,” he told her.
She did not answer.
Obviously.
“I will,” he insisted, as if she had doubted him.
The jungle rustled.
Regulus stiffened.
A sound moved somewhere beyond the fallen tree.
Leaves shifting.
A branch bending.
He froze, one arm tightening around the baby, the other reaching blindly for something, anything. His fingers closed around a broken strip of metal lying in the mud. It was jagged and light and useless, but he held it anyway.
The sound stopped.
Regulus stared into the green.
His heart hammered.
“Go away,” he whispered.
Nothing moved.
The baby whimpered.
Regulus pressed her closer, barely breathing.
“Go away.”
The jungle remained thick and unreadable.
After several long seconds, a bird burst from the canopy in a violent flash of wings.
Regulus flinched so hard his back struck the tree.
The baby cried out.
He let the piece of metal fall.
“Fine,” he gasped. “Fine. Bird. Just a bird.”
He tried to laugh and failed.
His hand shook as he rubbed the baby’s back.
“Everything here is too loud,” he whispered. “Including you. No offence.”
She fussed.
“Yes, I know. You have excellent reasons.”
Rain began to fall harder now.
At first it stayed above them, caught in the canopy, a distant hiss. Then droplets began to break through, fat and warm, striking leaves, metal, mud. One landed on Regulus’s cheek, cutting through grime. Another hit the baby’s blanket.
He looked up.
Rain.
Water.
His mouth went dry with sudden desperate thought.
He needed to catch it.
But with what?
He fumbled through the baby bag one-handed, trying not to jostle her too much. Cloth. Blanket. Packet. Bottle. Empty bottle.
The empty bottle.
He grabbed it.
The neck was narrow. Useless for rain unless he held it forever beneath a drip.
He looked around frantically.
Leaves.
Huge leaves.
He could use leaves.
Maybe.
He shifted the baby into the crook of one arm again and leaned toward a low plant near the tree, wincing as pain tore through his side. Its leaves were broad, glossy, already collecting small pools of rainwater. He did not know if they were poisonous. He did not know anything.
But rainwater touching a leaf had to be better than dying of thirst.
Didn’t it?
He stared at the leaf.
Then at the baby.
“No,” he whispered. “No, not for you. Not unless I know.”
He could try it himself first.
That was a thought.
He bent close to the leaf, awkwardly, baby held tight, and let a few drops of gathered rain slide into his mouth.
It tasted green.
Dirt.
Smoke.
Life.
He swallowed.
Waited.
Nothing happened.
Of course nothing happened immediately. Poison did not politely introduce itself.
He wiped his mouth.
“I hate this,” he whispered.
The baby made a small noise.
“Yes. Me too.”
He held the empty bottle beneath the edge of the leaf where rain dripped steadily. Drop by drop, it began to collect.
Too slowly.
Everything was too slow and too urgent.
Regulus sat there beneath the fallen tree, injured and trembling, holding a baby in one arm and a bottle under a leaf with the other, while the Amazon jungle drank the wreckage behind them.
The rain thickened.
Smoke flattened.
Ash streaked into the mud.
The dead remained silent.
The baby drifted, finally, into an uneasy sleep against his chest.
Regulus barely dared move.
He watched the bottle gather rain.
Drop.
Drop.
Drop.
His arm ached from holding it out.
His head nodded once, exhaustion dragging at him, and he jerked awake immediately.
“No,” he whispered.
The baby stirred.
“Sorry.”
He blinked hard, forcing his eyes open.
He could not sleep.
Not properly.
Not here.
Not yet.
If he slept, something might come.
If he slept, the wreck might burn.
If he slept, the baby might stop breathing and he would not know.
The thought made him look down in terror.
Her back rose and fell beneath his palm.
Small.
Steady enough.
He exhaled shakily.
“Keep doing that,” he whispered. “Please.”
Rainwater dripped into the bottle.
The jungle closed around them.
Regulus looked at the wreckage, then at the baby, then down at the finger she still held in her sleep.
His voice, when it came, was almost nothing.
“I won’t leave you.”
The words vanished into rain.
He said them again anyway.
“I won’t leave you.”
He did not know how to survive.
He did not know where they were.
He did not know her name, or what she needed, or whether anyone would come, or how long the jungle would let them remain alive inside its green, breathing dark.
He knew only this:
The plane had fallen.
The world had broken.
Everyone else was dead.
And a baby girl had wrapped her hand around his finger like a command.
Regulus Black sat beneath the rain in the Amazon jungle, fourteen years old, bleeding and terrified, and rocked her as gently as he could.
“Shh,” he whispered, though she was no longer crying.
Maybe he was saying it to himself.
“Shh. I’ve got you.”
The jungle answered with thunder.
Regulus held her tighter.
“I’ve got you.”
The baby fell asleep in fragments.
Not all at once.
Not peacefully.
Her cries thinned first, breaking into smaller, weaker sounds that trembled against Regulus’s chest. Every now and then she would drag in a breath as if remembering the terror all over again, her tiny body going stiff beneath the blanket, her face scrunching with the beginning of another wail. Each time, Regulus froze, rocking her with a desperation so careful it looked almost painful.
“Shh,” he whispered. “No, no, no. Don’t start. Please don’t start. I know. I know, but please.”
She hiccupped.
He held his breath.
Her little fist tightened in his shirt.
Then slowly, so slowly he barely trusted it, she sank against him again.
Her cheek pressed into the filthy ruin of his shirt. Her mouth softened. Her eyelashes rested against her flushed cheeks. The trembling in her body eased into tiny sleepy twitches.
Regulus did not move.
He sat beneath the dripping canopy with his back against the fallen tree, rain ticking softly through the leaves overhead, the empty bottle beside his knee collecting water one miserable drop at a time. Smoke curled low over the crash clearing. His own blood had dried stiff along his temple and jaw. Mud cooled against his legs. His ribs stabbed every time he breathed too deeply.
The baby slept.
Regulus stared down at her like he had never seen anything more terrifying.
Because crying had been awful, but at least crying proved something.
Crying meant alive.
Sleeping was quiet.
Too quiet.
He lowered his face closer to hers, heart lurching.
“Are you breathing?”
Her back rose beneath his hand.
He exhaled so hard his whole body sagged.
“Right. Good. Keep doing that.”
Her fingers flexed weakly against him.
He stayed still for another minute.
Then another.
Then another.
The jungle did not stay still with him.
It moved constantly. It breathed. It clicked and hummed and rustled. Leaves trembled. Water slid from branch to branch. Somewhere above, a bird shrieked with such sudden violence that Regulus nearly slammed his head back against the tree. Insects whined around his ears. The broken plane groaned softly behind him, settling further into the mud.
Regulus looked at the wreckage.
Then at the baby.
Then at the bag.
He could not sit there forever.
That was the first clear thought he had managed since waking under debris.
It arrived cold and practical and horrible.
He could not sit beneath a tree holding a sleeping baby and wait for the world to decide whether it was done killing them. He needed to know what they had. What she had. What could be used. What could be carried.
He looked down at her again.
“I’m going to move you slightly,” he whispered. “Don’t take it personally.”
The baby did not answer.
Obviously.
Regulus still waited as if she might object.
When she did not stir, he shifted her with painful care, lowering the bundle across his lap while keeping one hand under her head. The movement sent a bolt of pain through his wrist, and he bit down on the inside of his cheek so hard he tasted blood again.
The baby’s face puckered.
Regulus froze.
“No. No. No, don’t.”
She let out a tiny breath.
Then settled.
Regulus stayed statue-still, eyes wide.
“Thank you,” he breathed.
He reached for the baby bag.
It was damp now, streaked with mud, smoke, and smears he did not want to think about. The yellow animals printed across it looked offensively cheerful. Smiling giraffes. Little elephants. Ducks. Ridiculous, soft things that belonged in bedrooms and nurseries and airports where planes landed properly.
His hands shook as he pulled it closer.
“Right,” he whispered. “We are going to see what your parents packed for you.”
The word parents hit wrong.
He swallowed around it and opened the bag again.
This time he forced himself to look properly.
He took each thing out and set it in the driest patch of roots beside him, sorting by what he understood and what he absolutely did not.
“Nappies,” he murmured, picking up the first small stack.
He knew what those were. Technically.
He had never changed one in his life and had never intended to.
He held one up between two fingers, frowning at it.
“How difficult can this be?”
The baby slept on.
Regulus looked at the nappy, then at the baby, then back at the nappy.
“Never mind. I should not have asked that. That was arrogant.”
He placed them carefully to one side.
“Clothes.”
Tiny folded clothes. Vests. A small soft sleepsuit. Socks so small they seemed fake. A little cardigan. A hat.
He touched the hat with the tips of his fingers.
It was pale yellow.
Something about its smallness made his chest hurt more than his ribs.
He set it aside.
“Wipes,” he continued, pulling out the packet. “Good. Probably.”
He opened it and stared.
Wet cloths.
At least that made sense.
“Useful.”
He put them with the nappies.
There were two bottles. One empty from before. One empty now too. A small sealed container with compartments. A tin with powder inside. A little plastic spoon. A rolled muslin cloth. A soft toy, shaped like a rabbit, one ear bent flat.
Regulus picked up the toy.
The rabbit’s face was stitched into a sleepy smile.
He stared at it for a long moment.
Then placed it beside the baby’s hand.
Her tiny fingers brushed the ear.
Regulus watched, waiting.
She did not wake.
“Fine,” he whispered. “You can keep that.”
He found a small blanket folded at the bottom of the bag, dry in the middle despite the outer damp. He pulled it free and tucked it around the baby more securely, replacing the stained outer fold with cleaner fabric.
She stirred, mouth trembling.
Regulus immediately whispered, “Shh. Shh, it’s just a blanket. A better blanket. See? I am improving things.”
The baby breathed out through her nose and settled again.
Regulus released a slow breath.
Then his fingers touched something firmer in one of the side compartments.
Paper.
No, not just paper.
Documents.
His pulse changed.
He pulled them out carefully.
A plastic sleeve. Damp at the edges but intact. Inside were passports, tickets, folded forms, some printed pages, and a small wallet with identification cards. The sight of them made something in Regulus’s head go very quiet.
Names.
There would be names.
He had been holding a person without knowing her name.
Not a bundle. Not a baby. Not an emergency.
A person.
His fingers were suddenly clumsy.
“No,” he muttered, annoyed with himself. “Open it.”
The first passport belonged to the mother.
Her photograph stared up at him from under a glossed sheet.
A woman with dark hair, tired eyes, and a soft, closed-mouth smile.
Regulus stared at her.
He had seen her alive only hours ago.
Maybe less.
Maybe more.
Time had broken with the plane.
He read the name.
“Elena Varga,” he said softly.
The name sounded strange under the trees.
He looked toward the wreckage without meaning to.
“Elena,” he whispered again, because leaving her as only the mother felt suddenly cruel.
He set her passport down on the blanket beside him with careful respect.
The second passport belonged to the father.
“Miklós Varga.”
His face in the photograph was serious. Dark brows. Square jaw. A slight shadow of facial hair. There was a stamp half-visible on one of the pages. Regulus looked at the nationality, the issuing place, the neat official lines.
Hungary.
Not England. Not Brazil. Not America.
Hungary.
Regulus swallowed.
“You’re Hungarian,” he whispered, looking down at the baby.
She slept with her face turned toward his chest, mouth soft, one fist still caught in the fabric.
He searched the sleeve faster now, heart thudding.
There had to be something for her.
A third passport.
Small.
Almost new.
Regulus opened it.
The photograph nearly undid him.
A baby’s face, round and solemn, eyes wide, mouth slightly open as if surprised to have been captured by a camera at all.
He read the name once.
Then again.
“Lilla Varga.”
The baby slept.
Regulus’s throat tightened.
“Lilla,” he said.
The name was soft, bright, almost like the start of a song.
He looked at her tiny face.
“Your name is Lilla.”
She did not wake.
Regulus stared down at the passport until the letters blurred.
Lilla Varga.
Daughter of Elena Varga and Miklós Varga.
From Hungary.
Alive.
He pressed his palm over the open passport for a moment, not hard enough to crease it, just enough to keep it from trembling in his hand.
“I know who you are now,” he whispered.
The baby gave a tiny sigh.
“I know who you are.”
For some reason, that made it worse.
Before, she had been a helpless thing thrust into his arms by catastrophe. Now she had a name. Parents. A country. A document that insisted she belonged to the world, that she had been expected somewhere, that someone somewhere might be waiting for Elena and Miklós and Lilla Varga to come through arrivals with luggage and tired smiles.
Regulus looked at all three passports.
Elena.
Miklós.
Lilla.
He gathered them together carefully and slid them back into the plastic sleeve. Then he found the tickets and kept those too. The folded forms. The identification cards. Anything with names on it. Anything official. Anything that proved.
He shoved them into the inside pocket of his torn jacket, then hesitated.
Too exposed.
If he fell, if he got wet, if he lost the jacket—
“No.”
He pulled them back out.
The baby bag had a zipped inner pocket. He pushed the documents inside, then zipped it shut firmly. Then, after thinking too hard, he unzipped it again and moved the passports into another plastic pouch from the side compartment before sealing both.
“There,” he said. “Better.”
He looked at the sleeping baby.
“Lilla Varga,” he said again, quieter.
The baby’s face twitched.
“I’m going to remember it.”
He swallowed.
“When we get out of here, I’ll tell them. I’ll tell people who you are. They’ll find your family. Someone will know you. Someone will—”
His voice caught.
He cleared his throat roughly.
“Someone will come.”
The jungle hummed.
Regulus did not look at it.
He searched the bag again with renewed urgency, now that the baby had a name and names demanded survival.
In another compartment, tangled beneath a folded cloth and a sealed packet, he found a strange length of fabric with loops, buckles, and padded straps.
He pulled it out and frowned.
“What in Merlin’s name is this?”
It unfolded endlessly.
Black fabric. Soft on one side, sturdier on the other. Adjustable bands. A label with tiny diagrams printed on it.
A baby carrier.
No, some sort of wrap.
A sling.
Regulus stared at the pictures.
One showed an adult wearing the baby against their chest.
His heart gave one hard thud.
“Oh.”
He looked at Lilla.
Then at the sling.
Then at his arms, already aching from holding her for what felt like forever.
“Oh.”
This could fix one thing.
Not everything.
Maybe not even much.
But one thing.
He would not have to carry her with both arms. He would not risk dropping her every time his leg buckled. He could keep her against him and still use his hands. He could search. Move. Hold things. Defend them, if he had to, though with what and against what he did not know.
He picked up the sling and shook it out carefully.
The printed instructions were small, slightly damp, and offensively cheerful.
“Of course,” he muttered. “Why would anything be simple?”
He looked at the first diagram.
Then at the fabric.
Then at himself.
“No. That can’t be right.”
He turned it around.
The straps twisted.
He untwisted them.
One buckle slipped from his fingers and smacked against his injured wrist.
Regulus hissed so sharply that Lilla stirred.
He froze.
She made a soft complaining noise.
“Sorry,” he whispered instantly. “Sorry. I’m doing battle with your little contraption.”
She settled.
Regulus glared at the sling.
“Your parents trusted this thing with your life, so I assume it is not as stupid as it looks.”
He tried to put it over his shoulders.
Wrong.
He took it off.
Tried again.
One strap went under his arm and trapped his elbow.
“Absolutely not.”
He pulled it off.
Tried again.
This time one of the buckles ended up behind his neck, digging into his skin.
He closed his eyes.
Breathed.
“I can tie a dress robe sash behind my back while Mother insults my posture,” he whispered through his teeth. “I can manage a baby sling.”
The jungle clicked loudly.
Regulus pointed a finger toward the trees.
“Not now.”
He tried again.
This time the main panel sat against his chest. The shoulder straps crossed properly. The waist strap went around him and buckled with a soft click that sounded, absurdly, like victory.
He stared down.
“All right.”
He tightened it cautiously.
Too loose.
He tightened again.
His ribs protested.
He loosened it a fraction.
“Fine. That will have to do.”
Then came the terrifying part.
Lilla.
He sat frozen for a moment, one hand hovering above her.
She looked so fragile asleep, her tiny body curled in the blanket, rabbit ear near her fist, breathing soft little breaths.
He had to lift her and fit her into the sling without waking her, hurting her, dropping her, bending her wrong, trapping her arms, squashing her head, smothering her, or doing any of the hundred other terrible things his mind suddenly presented in vivid detail.
Regulus swallowed.
“You are going to cooperate,” he whispered. “We are both going to be very calm.”
He was not calm.
He slid one hand under her head and one beneath her body, lifting her slowly from his lap.
She fussed immediately.
“No, no, no. It’s still me. You are not being abandoned.”
Her face crumpled.
Regulus moved quickly but carefully, guiding her against his chest. Her head turned sideways, cheek pressing near his collarbone. He adjusted the cloth around her. Her legs tucked awkwardly, then settled. He pulled the panel up over her back, hands shaking as he checked the diagrams again.
“Head visible,” he muttered. “Airway clear. Supported. Tight but not crushed.”
He peered down at her face.
She was awake now, barely, blinking slowly against his shirt.
“Can you breathe?”
Lilla stared unfocused at nothing.
Regulus slipped a finger beneath the edge of the fabric near her cheek.
“Good. Yes. That’s space. You have space.”
She made a tiny noise.
He froze.
Then she settled against him.
The warmth of her body rested fully along his chest now, secured by the sling, her head tucked beneath his chin.
Regulus took one cautious breath.
The sling held.
He let go with one hand.
Then the other.
Lilla remained against him.
Regulus stared down, amazed and almost dizzy with relief.
“Oh,” he whispered. “That is much better.”
He lifted both hands slightly in front of himself, fingers flexing in the damp air.
Free.
Not truly free. Nothing about him was free. The baby’s weight pressed into his injured ribs. The strap pulled across bruises. His leg still throbbed, and his head still rang.
But his arms were not trapped around her.
He could carry her constantly.
He could keep her warm.
He could keep her close.
He could move.
He could survive for two instead of just sit and shake.
Regulus rested one hand over her back through the sling.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured.
This time, it felt less like a plea.
He repacked the baby bag next.
Nappies. Wipes. The tin of powder. Bottles. Cloths. One spare set of tiny clothes. The little yellow hat. The folded blanket. Documents sealed away in the zipped inner pocket. The rabbit, after one moment of hesitation, he tucked beside Lilla’s arm in the sling, where one floppy ear pressed against her cheek.
“You are carrying that,” he whispered. “I am not wasting bag space on your rabbit if you refuse to contribute.”
Lilla slept.
“Fine. Silent judgement.”
He zipped the bag and slung it over one shoulder.
Then nearly toppled sideways.
Too much.
His body was weaker than he wanted to admit.
He caught himself against the fallen tree, breathing hard, one hand flying to Lilla’s back.
She stirred.
“No. It’s fine. We are fine.”
He adjusted the bag, shifting its weight more evenly.
The baby against his chest. The bag on his shoulder. His jacket torn. His shoes slick with mud. His whole body aching.
He looked like nothing his mother would ever admit belonged to her.
“Good,” he muttered.
Then he looked toward the wreckage.
There was more.
There had to be more.
The baby bag would not be enough. One bottle of milk had already vanished. The powder needed water. He needed water. Food. First aid. Something to cover them. Something to signal with. Something to see in the dark.
Night.
The word arrived like a hand around his throat.
The jungle would become dark.
Not Hogwarts-corridor dark. Not bedroom dark. Not London-at-night dark with lamps and windows and house-elves muttering in the walls.
Real dark.
Living dark.
Amazon dark.
Regulus looked around at the endless green pressing close on every side.
“What comes out at night?” he whispered.
The jungle answered with a wet rustle.
He stiffened.
Lilla slept against his chest.
Regulus’s hand spread over her back.
“What lives here?”
He knew embarrassingly little.
He knew there were snakes. Large ones, maybe. Venomous ones, certainly. He knew there were insects, because half of them already seemed determined to whine directly into his skull. He knew there were jaguars. He knew that only because he had once seen one illustrated in a book and thought it beautiful in the distant, useless way one could think predators beautiful when they were safely on a page.
Spiders.
Monkeys.
Things in rivers.
Things with teeth.
Things with poison.
Things that did not care whether his surname was Black, whether his family had a tapestry, whether he knew Latin curses and etiquette and the proper way to address old men in drawing rooms.
The jungle did not care about pure blood.
The jungle did not care about anything.
Regulus glanced at his own hands.
No wand.
Of course no wand.
His parents had it.
His mother had taken it before the trip, eyes cool, voice final.
“You are underage. You will not embarrass us abroad.”
As if Regulus had ever been allowed the luxury of embarrassment.
He had hated her for it then.
He hated her with something much sharper now.
His wand was somewhere with Walburga Black, likely locked away because control mattered more than practicality. He was a wizard stranded in a jungle without magic. Fourteen. Underage. Unable to legally cast outside school even if he had his wand. Unable to defend himself with the one thing that made him more than a bleeding boy in ruined shoes.
And wandless magic?
He almost laughed.
Wandless magic was the sort of thing people spoke of in theory, in old books, in grand family legends told by adults who had never needed to turn theory into fire while carrying an orphaned baby through wreckage.
He did not know how.
He had never needed to know how.
Growing up rich had prepared him for exactly none of this.
He knew how to sit through a six-course dinner without reaching for water too soon. He knew how to bow. He knew how to speak three sentences in French that made old women smile and pinch his cheek until his mother looked pleased. He knew how to name ancestors from portraits. He knew which forks to use, which families to flatter, which opinions not to have in public.
He did not know how to make a fire.
He did not know how to clean a wound properly without magic.
He did not know how much water a baby needed.
He did not know what plants were safe.
He did not know how to read direction by moss or sun or whatever ridiculous thing survival books probably taught boys whose parents allowed them to get dirty.
He did not know how to survive the Amazon.
Lilla shifted against him.
Regulus closed his eyes briefly.
Then opened them.
“Right,” he said.
His voice was thin, but it existed.
“That is not helpful.”
He took one step toward the wreckage.
Then another.
The mud sucked at his fancy shoes.
His shoes.
He looked down.
Black leather. Expensive. Polished before the flight. Completely useless now, slick with mud, scuffed, one sole already peeling slightly from the impact. They were made for airport floors and hotel lobbies and stepping out of cars, not crash clearings and jungle roots.
Regulus stared at them with genuine hatred.
“I am going to die because Father likes Italian leather.”
He limped toward the wreck.
The closer he got, the more the smell worsened.
Fuel. Smoke. blood. Burnt plastic. Damp upholstery. Open earth.
He pressed one hand over Lilla’s back, shielding her face as much as possible with his chin and the edge of his torn jacket.
“Don’t breathe too much of this,” he whispered.
Then paused.
“That is stupid. You have to breathe. Just—breathe less smoke.”
He entered through the torn opening again.
Inside, the wreckage felt different now that he was choosing to go in.
Worse.
Before, he had been escaping. Crawling blindly, driven by pain and smoke. Now he saw things. Too many things. The broken angles. The still hands. The discarded oxygen masks hanging like pale fruit from shattered panels. The seats twisted sideways. The abandoned glasses. The magazine pages stuck to blood and water.
Regulus kept his eyes forward.
“Supplies,” he whispered. “Just supplies.”
His first-class seat was still partly intact, though bent forward at a sickening angle. His leather case had been thrown open nearby, contents scattered. Clothes. A book. A comb. A silver-backed brush he had not packed himself. A folded jumper. A spare shirt.
He crouched slowly, fighting a wave of dizziness.
Lilla’s weight pressed into him. The sling held.
He gathered what was useful.
One shirt.
One jumper.
No more.
He wanted to take everything because everything familiar felt like proof he existed before the crash, but the bag would get heavy. Too heavy. He had to carry Lilla, documents, baby supplies, water, food, first aid.
Not pride.
Not comfort.
He shoved the shirt and jumper into the baby bag.
Then he looked at his shoes again.
No.
He searched the wreckage near the front section and found a man in boots.
Regulus stopped dead.
The man was slumped still in his seat, head tilted forward, one arm hanging loose.
His boots were sturdy. Dark. Mud-stained even before the crash, scuffed like they had been used in real places.
Regulus stared.
“No,” he whispered.
He took a step back.
Then his shoe slipped beneath him, almost sending him sideways into a jagged seat frame. Pain flashed through his leg. Lilla jerked awake with a tiny startled cry.
Regulus caught himself, panting.
“Sorry,” he whispered to her, heart pounding. “Sorry, sorry.”
She fussed against him, then settled again when he cupped the back of her head.
Regulus looked at the boots.
“I’m sorry,” he said to the dead man.
His voice shook.
“I need them.”
He had to kneel to pull them off.
It was awful.
Every second of it was awful.
He did not look at the man’s face. He focused on laces, leather, mud, knots. His fingers fumbled so badly he almost sobbed with frustration. One lace had tightened during the crash and would not loosen. He yanked at it, then stopped because yanking moved the man’s leg.
Regulus turned away, gagging.
Lilla made a soft sound.
“I know,” he whispered. “I know.”
He found a jagged piece of metal and sawed through the lace instead.
The boot came free.
Then the other.
He carried them outside before putting them on, because he could not do it there.
Sitting in the mud near the torn fuselage, he removed his ruined shoes and pushed his feet into the boots. They were too large, but not disastrously. Thick socks from his own case helped. He tied them tight, hands trembling.
When he stood, he felt steadier.
Not strong.
Not safe.
Steadier.
“Thank you,” he whispered toward the wreckage.
He did not know the dead man’s name.
That bothered him.
There were too many names he would never know.
He went back.
Food next.
The first-class galley had been smashed open, its contents hurled across the floor and mud outside. Regulus searched through packets, tins, little wrapped portions, anything sealed. Crackers. Nuts. Biscuits. Small bread rolls sealed in plastic. Dried fruit. Chocolate. Tiny jars. He grabbed anything not split open, anything not soaked in fuel, anything that looked edible.
His stomach cramped at the sight of food, but he did not eat yet.
He needed to sort.
He needed to think.
He found bottles of water in a broken storage compartment, some cracked, some intact. He took the intact ones. Then juice. Small cans. A few bottles of something fizzy. He hesitated over those, then packed two.
“Drinks are drinks,” he muttered.
Then looked down at Lilla.
“Not for you. Obviously.”
He paused.
Was that obvious?
Could babies have juice?
No. Probably not. Maybe. No. Definitely not. He did not know.
“Water for you,” he decided. “And whatever that powder is. If I can work it out.”
Lilla slept.
“Good talk.”
He found more baby things near the wreckage around Lilla’s parents’ seats. Another small packet of nappies had spilled under a torn blanket. A spare bottle, cracked but perhaps usable if cleaned. A small sealed packet of formula sticks. He took all of it, then forced himself to stop before the bag became too heavy.
The instinct to collect everything was overwhelming.
Everything could matter.
Everything could save them.
Everything could slow them down and kill them.
Regulus knelt beside the bag outside and began removing items again.
Too many packets of biscuits.
Too much clothing.
Three water bottles, no, four, no, four would be heavy.
But water mattered.
He kept four.
One spare set of baby clothes.
One spare set for himself.
One extra blanket.
No books.
No silver brush.
No second jumper.
He looked at his own discarded things in the mud and felt a strange, distant pang.
Then he closed the bag.
First aid.
That mattered.
He went back inside.
“First aid kit,” he whispered. “Where would that be?”
The plane did not answer.
He searched the cabin walls, overhead bins, galley compartments. He found one small kit behind a cracked panel marked with a red cross. It took him several minutes to pry it loose, and he nearly tore his fingernail doing it. Inside were bandages, antiseptic wipes, gauze, tape, small scissors, painkillers, packets with labels he did not understand, gloves, and folded instructions.
Regulus almost laughed with relief.
Instructions.
Finally, an adult had left behind something useful.
He packed the kit carefully.
Then he found another smaller pouch near the crew area and took that too.
He did not know what half of it did, but he knew enough to know blood outside the body was bad and clean cloth was better than dirty cloth. That was, apparently, his new level of medical expertise.
He searched for survival equipment next, because planes had things for emergencies. Surely they did. They had demonstrated things with bright smiles and practised gestures before take-off. Life jackets beneath seats. Oxygen masks. Exits. Lights. Whistles. Rafts?
They had not mentioned jungles.
He found a torch in a crew compartment.
He flicked it on.
A weak white beam cut across the wreck.
Regulus nearly cried.
“Good.”
He flicked it off immediately to save whatever power remained.
Then he found another. Smaller. Also working.
He packed both.
A radio came next.
It was built into a cracked emergency case, along with wires and a handset. Regulus pulled it free, wiped mud from it, and pressed the buttons he could find.
Static.
His heart leapt.
Then nothing.
He tried again.
Static hissed, then died.
“No,” he whispered.
He twisted a dial.
Pressed another switch.
The radio clicked.
Static.
Dead air.
“Come on.”
Nothing.
He smacked it with his palm.
Pain shot through his cut hand.
“Work,” he hissed.
The radio remained stubbornly useless.
Lilla stirred at his raised voice.
Regulus immediately softened.
“Sorry,” he murmured. “It’s fine. The radio is just an arsehole.”
He stared at the broken device.
It did not work.
But maybe later.
Maybe he did not know how to use it.
Maybe it needed higher ground.
Maybe it needed something else.
He did not dare leave it.
He packed it despite the weight.
Then he found a flare gun.
It was locked in a bright orange emergency box beneath a collapsed panel. He had to use the jagged metal strip to pry it open. Inside was the gun and several flares sealed in waterproof casing.
Regulus stared at it.
A signal.
Not now.
The canopy was too thick. Smoke still rose from the wreck. If he fired blindly, it might vanish into leaves or start a fire or be wasted with no one nearby to see.
He packed it with almost reverent care.
“Saving you,” he whispered. “You had better be important.”
He found a whistle attached to a torn life vest and took it. Then another.
A small mirror from a cracked kit.
A compact blanket made of strange shiny material folded into a packet.
Matches.
He nearly missed them, tucked inside a sealed emergency pouch.
Regulus held the little waterproof container in his palm.
Fire.
He knew fire mattered.
He did not know how to make one properly, where to build it, how to keep it from becoming a disaster in a jungle full of wet leaves and dead plane. But matches were something. Matches were the possibility of heat, signal, safety, danger.
He packed them.
He found a small knife in the galley, its handle slick but blade intact. Not a survival knife. Just a kitchen one. He took it anyway, wrapping it in cloth before placing it in the side pocket of the bag where he could reach it.
He wished suddenly, violently, for Kreacher.
Then felt stupid for it.
“Kreacher would know,” he whispered.
The thought hurt.
Not because Kreacher was kind, exactly.
But because Kreacher knew how to do things. How to fetch, fix, carry, clean. How to produce food from seemingly nowhere. How to mutter and fuss and obey. Kreacher would know how to keep a baby warm. Kreacher would know what was dangerous. Kreacher would be insufferable about it, but he would know.
Regulus looked down at Lilla.
“You would hate Grimmauld Place,” he whispered.
She slept through the accusation.
“Everyone does, really.”
He returned to the first-class cabin one more time.
A coat.
He needed something better than his torn jacket. Something warm if night became cold. Something rain-resistant if possible. He found a dark travelling coat wedged beneath a seat, heavier than he liked but useful. He shook glass from it, checked the pockets, and put it on over the sling carefully, leaving space for Lilla’s face to remain clear.
It swallowed him slightly.
Good.
It could cover both of them if needed.
He took one more blanket, then stopped.
The baby bag was full now.
Not bursting, but heavy enough that when he lifted it, pain pulled through his shoulder. He adjusted the strap, tried walking with it, then removed two food packets and one drink. He stared at them on the ground.
Too much?
Too little?
He hated every decision.
At home, adults argued over what tea to serve guests and whether the silver had been polished correctly. Here, a packet of biscuits might be the difference between walking another hour or fainting into the mud.
He put one food packet back.
Left the drink.
Then picked the drink up again.
Then put it down.
“Enough,” he snapped.
Lilla startled awake with a thin cry.
Regulus closed his eyes.
“Sorry.”
He stood still, breathing through his nose, one hand pressed over her back.
“I’m sorry. I’m not angry with you.”
She whimpered against him.
“I’m angry because I don’t know anything.”
The words fell flat in the humid air.
He looked around the wreckage.
“I don’t know anything,” he said again, softer.
A rich pureblood boy. Heir-adjacent. Polished. Educated. Disciplined.
Useless.
He knew star names and bloodlines and curses he could not cast. He knew how to survive his mother’s silences. He knew how to kneel during family rituals and keep his face blank when adults spoke over him. He knew that when Orion Black entered a room, servants lowered their eyes. He knew that when Walburga Black was displeased, even the portraits quieted.
None of that told him how to keep ants off a sleeping baby.
None of that told him which way led to water.
None of that made his wand appear in his hand.
Regulus looked at his empty fingers.
He tried, because desperation made people foolish.
He lifted his hand slightly, palm toward a fallen scrap of paper near his foot.
“Accio,” he whispered.
Nothing.
Of course nothing.
He stared harder.
“Accio.”
The paper remained plastered in mud.
Regulus’s mouth twisted.
“Pathetic.”
Lilla gave a tiny, sleepy grunt.
He looked down.
“Not you.”
He tried again anyway, quieter, not with the word this time but with want. With force. With the frantic pulse that lived beneath magic, the thing he felt in charms class when the wand warmed and the spell caught.
Come here.
The paper did not move.
His head hurt more.
He dropped his hand.
“No wand,” he whispered. “No magic.”
The reality settled deeper.
He was a wizard in name only here.
A boy with boots too big, a baby strapped to his chest, and a bag full of things he half understood.
He moved back toward the fallen tree and crouched beside the supplies.
He needed to clean himself. At least enough not to drip blood onto Lilla. He needed to check her properly too, but the thought of unwrapping her made fear coil in his stomach. What if he found something? What if she was hurt in a way he could not see? What if she cried and would not stop? What if he changed her wrong or missed something important?
He opened the first aid kit.
Instructions.
He unfolded the paper.
The print was tiny.
His eyes blurred.
“Of course,” he muttered. “Because medical emergencies are famous for excellent reading conditions.”
He used one of the antiseptic wipes on his cut palm first.
The sting was immediate.
Regulus hissed through his teeth.
Lilla twitched.
“Do not wake up,” he whispered. “I am being heroic. Quietly.”
He wiped blood from his temple next, gasping when the cloth touched the wound. The cut on his head seemed shallow but messy. That was something. His ribs still hurt badly, but there was nothing he could do about ribs. His leg was bruised and scraped but held his weight. His wrist throbbed, though he could move his fingers.
He bandaged his palm clumsily.
Then stared down at Lilla.
“All right,” he whispered.
He sat with his back against the tree again and loosened the sling just enough to check her. The moment he shifted her, she woke properly, face folding with offended misery.
“No, no, I know. I know. I’m sorry.”
She cried.
Regulus worked faster, hands shaking, unwrapping the blanket enough to look at her arms, legs, head. There was a small red mark on one cheek. A faint bruise near her shoulder. Dried soot on her skin. But no blood that he could see. Nothing bent wrong. Nothing swollen. Nothing that made his stomach drop through the earth.
He nearly sagged with relief.
“You’re all right,” he whispered, stunned. “You’re actually all right.”
Lilla screamed at him like she disagreed.
“Yes, emotionally, obviously not.”
He checked her nappy because he knew he had to and because he dreaded it.
It was wet.
He stared.
Lilla wailed.
“Right,” he said faintly. “Fine. We knew this would happen.”
He laid the cleaner blanket across his lap and placed her on it, keeping one hand on her stomach as if she might somehow roll away into the jungle. She kicked weakly, red-faced and furious.
“I’m sorry,” Regulus said. “I have never done this before.”
Her response was an outraged shriek.
“I know you can tell.”
The nappy was a puzzle designed by a sadist.
Tabs. Fold. Wipe. Clean. New one. Which way round? Surely the wider part went—
“No, that looks wrong.”
Lilla screamed harder.
“I am aware!”
He tried again, fumbling with the tiny tabs while rain dripped from the leaves overhead and smoke drifted in the distance and his whole body shook with concentration.
“There,” he said finally.
The nappy looked crooked.
He stared at it.
Lilla sobbed.
“It is on your body. That is the main objective.”
He dressed her in the spare little sleepsuit because the old one smelled of smoke. The tiny sleeves were almost impossible. Her fist disappeared into one and refused to emerge. Regulus had to coax her fingers through with trembling patience.
“Give me your hand,” he whispered. “No, not that way. Lilla, respectfully, you are terrible at this.”
She wailed.
“Yes, I know, so am I.”
When she was finally changed and wrapped again, he put the yellow hat on her head.
It was slightly too large and slipped toward her eyebrows.
Regulus adjusted it.
“There.”
She blinked up at him through tears.
The sight nearly cracked him open.
“You look ridiculous,” he whispered.
She hiccupped.
“Very warm, though.”
He tucked her back into the sling against his chest, adjusting the straps more confidently this time. When her cheek pressed against him again, she cried for another minute, then slowly quieted.
Regulus leaned his head back against the tree and closed his eyes.
His whole body pulsed with exhaustion.
But the bag was packed.
The documents were safe.
Lilla was changed, wrapped, fed for now, and held securely.
He had water. Food. first aid. Blankets. A coat. Better boots. Torches. A broken radio. A flare gun. Matches. A knife. Whistles. A mirror. Baby supplies.
Things.
Not answers.
But things.
The rain began to thin.
Sunlight seeped through the canopy in damp, green-gold shafts. Steam rose from the mud and wreckage. The jungle seemed louder after rain, as if every living thing had taken the weather as permission to speak.
Regulus opened his eyes.
He needed to decide whether to stay near the wreckage or move.
The wreckage meant supplies.
The wreckage meant anyone searching might find them.
The wreckage also meant fuel, bodies, smoke, sharp metal, maybe fire, maybe animals drawn by death.
He looked at the tree line.
The jungle meant water somewhere, maybe shelter, maybe dangers he did not know how to name.
He did not know what to do.
He hated that phrase now.
It had become the shape of his entire mind.
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
Lilla’s breath warmed the skin below his collarbone.
Regulus placed his hand over her back and felt the tiny rise and fall.
He could not afford not knowing forever.
He stood slowly.
The bag pulled at his shoulder. The boots sank slightly into the mud but held firm. The coat hung heavy around him. Lilla slept against his chest, secured by the sling, close enough that every breath she took seemed to happen inside his own ribs.
He looked once more at the wreckage.
At the broken plane.
At the dead.
At the strip of sky barely visible through torn canopy.
Then he turned toward the trees.
Not leaving yet.
Not disappearing into green blindly.
Just looking.
Listening.
Trying to understand the edges of the world that had trapped them.
The Amazon stood dense and endless before him.
Vines twisted down like ropes. Leaves overlapped leaves until distance vanished. The ground beyond the crash path was tangled with roots and shadows. Somewhere inside that shadow, something moved.
Regulus went still.
A rustle.
Low.
Then another.
He held his breath.
His hand slid slowly to the side pocket of the baby bag where the wrapped kitchen knife waited.
Lilla slept on.
The rustling stopped.
Regulus stared until his eyes watered.
Nothing emerged.
No animal.
No person.
No answer.
Only jungle.
He backed away one step.
Then another.
His boot struck a branch and it cracked loudly.
He froze again, heart punching his ribs.
The jungle did not move.
Regulus swallowed.
“Fine,” he whispered.
His voice barely existed.
“We are not going in there yet.”
He returned to the fallen tree and lowered himself beside it with a controlled groan. He arranged the bag where he could reach it. The flare gun stayed in the inner pocket. The knife went beside his right hand, still wrapped but ready. The water bottles were counted again. The food packets counted again. The baby supplies counted again.
He counted because counting was something he could do.
Four water bottles.
Two baby bottles.
Formula tin.
Formula sticks.
Nappies.
Wipes.
One spare baby outfit now used, smoke-stained old one packed in case.
One spare shirt and jumper for him.
Two torches.
Broken radio.
Flare gun.
Flares.
Matches.
Knife.
Whistles.
Mirror.
First aid.
Documents.
Lilla.
He counted her last.
Always last.
Not because she was least important.
Because once he looked at her, everything else became noise.
Regulus rested his dirty hand against the sling.
“You’re Lilla Varga,” he whispered.
She slept.
“I’m Regulus Black.”
Rainwater dripped from leaves.
“We are in the Amazon.”
The sentence sounded insane.
His mouth trembled.
“We have no wand, no magic, no idea where we are, no idea what is around us, and no idea whether anyone is coming.”
He looked toward the shadowed green.
“But I have boots now.”
A tiny, breathless laugh escaped him.
It hurt his ribs.
He pressed his lips together.
“And a knife. And a stupid broken radio. And your rabbit.”
Lilla’s tiny hand rested near the toy’s ear.
Regulus’s expression softened despite everything.
“And your name.”
The jungle hummed and clicked, alive on every side.
He touched the pocket where the documents were hidden inside the bag.
“I know who to tell them you are,” he whispered. “When we get out.”
Not if.
He could not say if.
If was a hole.
When was a rope.
Regulus leaned back against the fallen tree, exhausted and filthy, fourteen years old beneath a canopy that did not care whether he lived, and kept one hand on the sleeping baby while the other rested near the knife.
He stared into the jungle and tried to imagine every danger inside it.
Snakes in the roots.
Spiders beneath leaves.
Jaguars in the dark.
Insects carrying fevers.
Water that might make them sick.
Plants that might poison.
Rivers with teeth below the surface.
Night falling before rescue came.
His own ignorance, worst of all, sitting beside him like another survivor.
He had been raised to know bloodlines, not footprints.
He had been raised to inherit, not endure.
He had been raised to command a world that had vanished the moment the plane hit the trees.
Now the world was mud, heat, hunger, blood, and a baby breathing against his chest.
Regulus looked down at Lilla.
Her face was peaceful now, tucked beneath the crooked yellow hat.
He adjusted it with one careful finger.
“You picked a dreadful person,” he whispered. “I hope you realise that.”
She slept.
He swallowed.
“But I’m what you’ve got.”
A distant sound rolled somewhere beyond the trees.
Thunder, perhaps.
Or something else.
Regulus did not know.
He tightened his grip around the knife and pulled the coat a little closer around Lilla.
“All right,” he whispered to the green.
It was not courage.
Not yet.
But it was something standing in the place where courage might someday grow.
“All right.”
Regulus remembered his own documents in the middle of counting someone else’s dead life.
It came to him like a slap.
His passport.
His ticket.
His papers.
His name.
He had secured Lilla’s documents so carefully, as if the entire world might collapse if he lost proof that she existed, and somehow had almost forgotten his own.
For a second, he simply sat there, one hand on the sleeping baby’s back, feeling stupid in a way that was almost impressive.
“Oh,” he whispered.
Lilla slept on, warm and heavy against his chest.
Regulus stared at the wreckage.
“Oh, you absolute idiot.”
His own leather travel case had been near his first-class seat. He had pulled clothes from it, boots from a dead man, food from the galley, baby supplies from beneath the dead father’s legs, and had somehow left behind the things that would tell anyone who he was if he was found too injured to speak.
Or if he was not found alive.
The thought came cold and clean.
He went very still.
No.
He would not think that.
He looked down at Lilla instead.
The yellow hat had slipped over one of her ears again. He adjusted it.
“I forgot my passport,” he whispered. “Don’t look at me like that.”
She did not look at him at all.
Her eyes remained closed, lashes resting against cheeks still blotched from crying.
Regulus sighed carefully, because his ribs punished anything deeper.
“Yes, fine. I know. Terrible leadership.”
He pushed himself up again, slowly, with one hand braced against the fallen tree. The boots held better in the mud now, though they still felt strange, heavy and unfamiliar, as if he had borrowed someone else’s strength and not yet earned it. The bag pulled at his shoulder. Lilla shifted in the sling but did not wake.
Regulus placed a hand over her back instinctively.
“I’m only going over there,” he murmured. “You’re coming with me. Obviously. Don’t make a fuss.”
The wreckage waited.
Every return to it felt harder.
The first time had been survival. The second had been necessity. Now each journey back into the ripped-open plane felt like trespassing among the dead. He was beginning to know where not to look. Beginning to recognise shapes. Beginning to understand that his mind could not protect him forever from what his eyes kept seeing.
He moved through the mud and shattered branches, stepping around twisted metal and broken glass. The rain had washed some of the blood into the earth, leaving dark diluted trails in the crash path. Smoke still drifted from the torn engine, but weaker now, thin and sour. The jungle pressed at the edges of the clearing, green and wet and patient.
Regulus entered through the gap in the fuselage and immediately covered Lilla’s face slightly with the edge of his coat.
“Sorry,” he whispered to her. “It smells vile in here.”
His first-class seat looked worse each time he saw it.
The elegant prison had become a mangled frame, luxury torn down to metal bones. The little table where his water glass had sat was snapped in half. The blanket was soaked and trampled. A silver tray had lodged at a sharp angle in the wall.
His leather case lay overturned beneath the tilted seat in front of his.
Regulus crouched with a pained hiss.
His documents were scattered.
Some had remained tucked in the case’s inner pocket. Some had slid out onto the wet floor. His ticket was stuck beneath a shard of plastic. His passport had somehow landed half-open in a puddle of rainwater and spilled tea.
“No, no, no—”
He snatched it up quickly, wiping the cover with his sleeve.
The pages were damp at the edges, but readable.
He stared at his own photograph.
Regulus Arcturus Black.
Fourteen.
Pale. Composed. Unsurprised by the camera. Hair neat. Chin lifted because his mother had told him not to look like a sulking child.
The boy in the photograph looked untouchable.
The boy holding the passport had mud on his hands, blood in his hair, a baby strapped to his chest, and a dead man’s boots on his feet.
Regulus almost hated him.
He folded the passport shut.
“You look ridiculous,” he muttered to the photograph.
Then, after a moment, softer, “Lucky bastard.”
He gathered everything.
Passport. Ticket. Travel papers. A folded letter in his father’s hand, brief and sharp, authorising staff to collect him at the airport in London. A small card with addresses and numbers. A paper from the airline marking him as an unaccompanied minor, which suddenly seemed so absurd that his throat twisted.
Unaccompanied minor.
Yes.
Quite.
He searched the case for anything else important. A little money in several currencies. A hotel card. A family seal stamped on a letter he had not been meant to read but had seen anyway. His name written in ink. His parents’ names.
Walburga Black.
Orion Black.
His fingers tightened around the paper.
For one terrible second he wanted to rip it in half.
Instead he folded it precisely and put it with the rest.
Important did not always mean comforting.
He pushed his documents into the same protected section of the baby bag as Lilla’s, then hesitated. No. Separate. If one pouch got damaged, not both sets together.
He found another plastic sleeve, half-crushed but usable, in his own case. He put his documents inside, wrapped the sleeve in one of his spare shirts, and tucked it deep into the bag, against the back panel.
“There,” he whispered. “I exist too.”
Lilla made a tiny sleepy noise.
Regulus looked down at her.
“Yes. Less important, apparently, but still.”
He looked around his ruined first-class seat once more.
There was nothing else worth taking.
No wand.
No magic.
No parents.
No rescue yet.
He turned to leave, then paused.
His gaze caught on the broken tray table.
White plastic.
Flat pieces.
Visible.
A thought struck.
Signs.
He looked toward the torn-open side of the plane, then up at the canopy overhead.
Searchers might come.
Planes might pass above.
Someone might see the crash scar through the trees, the smoke, the metal. Or they might not. The canopy could swallow everything. The jungle was good at hiding.
But if he left signs—
If anyone came here and he was gone, they would know.
Someone survived.
Someone took the baby.
Someone went that way.
Keep searching.
His pulse quickened.
That was something he could do.
Not magic.
Not survival.
Communication.
A message.
A mark.
Proof of movement.
He grabbed the broken tray piece and shoved it under one arm. Then another. Then a strip of pale cabin paneling. A piece of red fabric from a torn seat cover. A bright orange life vest. Anything that might stand out against green.
He carried it all outside in clumsy trips, never straying far, always keeping Lilla pressed to him with one hand.
The clearing seemed larger now that he was trying to arrange it.
Larger and not large enough.
The crash path had torn through trees, leaving a raw brown scar in the jungle. From above, maybe it would be visible. Maybe not. Smoke still rose, though thinner. Shattered metal reflected light where rain had washed it clean.
Regulus stood in the mud, staring at the space.
“SOS,” he whispered.
He had seen that somewhere.
Books. Films. Some boring practical lesson adults thought children would never use.
S O S.
Three letters enormous enough to be seen from the sky.
He looked at the materials.
Not enough white pieces.
He gathered more.
It took much longer than he expected.
Everything did.
His body was slow. The mud was deep. The bag was heavy. The baby’s weight pulled at his bruised ribs. Every time he bent, his head swam. Every time he straightened, the jungle flashed bright and dark at the edges of his vision.
But he worked.
He dragged pale pieces of fuselage into the open mud. He used tray tables, cabin wall fragments, broken luggage shells, white cloth, plastic panels, anything light enough to move and bright enough to contrast against the ground. He arranged them into letters near the widest part of the clearing, where the canopy had been ripped open by the falling plane.
S.
He made the first one too small.
Stepped back.
Swore.
“Useless.”
He dragged the pieces farther apart.
S.
It looked wrong from the ground.
He climbed awkwardly onto a tilted piece of wreckage to see it from higher up. His boots slipped. He clutched at metal, one hand flying to Lilla.
“Sorry,” he gasped.
She slept.
He stared down at the S.
Better.
Not good.
Good enough.
He made the O out of curved metal strips, broken seat frames, and pale cloth weighted with stones and mud.
The second S took less time.
By the end, sweat had soaked through his shirt beneath the sling. His hair stuck to his forehead. The cut on his temple had reopened slightly and a warm line of blood slid down toward his eyebrow.
He wiped it away with his sleeve and stared at the letters.
SOS.
Huge.
Ugly.
Human.
His knees nearly gave with relief.
“There,” he whispered.
Then, because one sign was not enough, he made another.
HELP.
This one he placed nearer the torn fuselage, using red seat fabric against a pale metal panel. He did not know whether red would show from above, but it screamed at him from the mud.
HELP.
The word looked too dramatic until he realised it was not dramatic enough.
He found a chunk of blackened metal and used it like charcoal against a cleaner interior panel. His handwriting came out uneven from his shaking hand.
SURVIVORS: REGULUS BLACK, 14. LILLA VARGA, BABY. MOVING IF NECESSARY. KEEP SEARCHING.
He stared at the words.
Survivors.
Plural.
His mouth trembled.
He pressed the metal harder and wrote beneath it:
PLANE CRASH. ALL OTHERS DEAD.
Then he stopped, breathing hard.
Too blunt.
But anyone who came would know anyway.
He added an arrow-shaped space beside the message, leaving room for direction if they had to move. Not yet. He did not know where they would go. But if they left, he could mark it.
He made smaller signs too.
Arrows out of branches and bright cloth leading from the wreckage to the fallen tree where they were sheltering.
A pile of reflective metal near the open patch.
A strip of orange life vest tied to a broken branch, fluttering weakly in the damp air.
Another tied higher, though climbing with Lilla against his chest was impossible and terrifying. He only managed to wedge it into the split trunk of a young tree at shoulder height. It was not high enough. He knew that.
He did it anyway.
He found the mirror from the emergency kit and flashed it upward through the canopy gap, testing the angle, watching sunlight scatter uselessly into leaves.
“Come on,” he muttered.
No plane answered.
No distant engine hummed.
Only insects.
Birds.
The slow wet breathing of the forest.
Regulus lowered the mirror and tucked it safely away again.
Then came the flare gun.
He took it out once, turned it over in his hands, and looked at the torn sky above.
His finger did not go near the trigger.
Not now.
No.
A flare was not a comfort object. It was a chance. Chances could be wasted.
He imagined firing it into the canopy, imagined the flare catching in wet leaves, burning bright and useless under branches where no one could see. Or worse, starting something. Smoke, fire, panic, the baby crying, him unable to run.
He put it away.
“Not yet,” he whispered.
Lilla’s little face pressed against him, her breath warm through his torn shirt.
“Only if we hear something.”
He sat again beneath the fallen tree, but only because his legs had begun trembling badly enough that standing felt like tempting fate. He opened the bag and counted again, because counting kept terror from swallowing him.
Documents.
Food.
Water.
Baby things.
First aid.
Tools.
Signals.
He looked at his signs.
SOS.
HELP.
SURVIVORS.
They made the crash site feel less like a grave and more like a message.
Not much less.
But enough.
Regulus leaned back against the tree, one hand still cupped over Lilla’s back, and forced his mind outward.
Not just the crash.
Not just the clearing.
The world beyond.
The Amazon.
He had seen maps before. Of course he had. His education had included geography, history, politics, old wizarding territories, family holdings, trade routes, places pure-blood families liked to visit and places they liked to discuss with ownership in their voices.
But school maps and drawing-room globes were useless when one was sitting in the middle of green infinity.
Still, he tried.
The Amazon was enormous.
Brazil, obviously.
But not only Brazil.
That much he knew.
It spread across countries, across borders no tree cared about. Peru. Colombia. Venezuela maybe. Ecuador. Bolivia. Guyana. Suriname. French Guiana. Names arranged around the basin like labels on a map. Which part had they crashed in? Which route had they been flying? How far had they been from any city?
He closed his eyes, trying to picture the little flight map from the screen before the turbulence.
A line across the ocean.
Then across land.
Had they been over Brazil already? They must have been. Or close. The green had been endless before impact. No lights. No roads. No coast.
Cities.
What cities were near the Amazon?
Manaus.
That name came first.
Manaus in Brazil, deep inland, on the river. He remembered it because someone at the business event had mentioned shipping and trade routes and Orion had made a bored sound into his glass.
Manaus.
Could they be near Manaus?
Near was a stupid word in a rainforest.
Near could mean days. Weeks. Impossible.
Belém? At the mouth of the Amazon. Too far east maybe. Brasília was not in the forest. Rio was far away. São Paulo farther. Lima in Peru, not jungle exactly, or at least not the part he imagined. Bogotá in Colombia, high and distant. Quito. La Paz.
Names, names, names.
None of them appeared between the trees.
He opened his eyes.
The jungle looked exactly the same.
“Manaus,” he whispered, testing the word like a spell.
Lilla slept.
“Maybe.”
No answer.
He dragged his fingers over his face, then winced when he touched the cut.
If he found a river, rivers led somewhere. That was something people said, wasn’t it? Rivers led to towns. Settlements. Boats. People.
Rivers also had things in them.
Things with teeth.
Currents.
Disease.
He looked down at Lilla.
A baby could not stumble along a riverbank forever. A baby could not drink dirty river water. A baby could not be carried through deep mud while he guessed at directions like an idiot prince in stolen boots.
Stay by the wreck, then.
But the wreck had bodies.
Bodies attracted animals.
Bodies rotted.
The smell would worsen.
The thought made his stomach turn.
Regulus pressed a fist against his mouth and breathed through it.
“Stop,” he whispered.
His mind leapt again, wild and desperate.
Magic.
Not his own.
Others.
The wizarding world existed here too.
It had to.
His head lifted.
Castelobruxo.
He had read about it.
The Brazilian school of magic, hidden somewhere in the Amazon rainforest. Older than Europeans liked admitting. Protected. Grand. Enchanted. Students in bright robes, maybe, though he was not sure if that detail was real or something he had invented from an illustration. A castle, though not like Hogwarts. Something golden, perhaps. Something hidden among trees. Guarded by creatures or charms or both.
Castelobruxo.
Regulus went completely still.
It was here.
Somewhere.
In the Amazon.
Somewhere in this endless, impossible green was a magical school.
Wizards.
Witches.
Adults.
Wands.
He almost laughed.
Then the hope immediately soured.
Somewhere was not a location.
He did not know where.
He did not know whether they would be there in summer. Did Castelobruxo follow the same school year as Hogwarts? Probably not. Brazil’s seasons were different, weren’t they? Or maybe wizarding schools followed their own calendars. Was it term-time? Holiday? Did staff remain over break? Surely some staff remained. Hogwarts had staff over summer, he thought. Did it? Filch did. Hagrid did. Teachers maybe. House-elves. Portraits.
Castelobruxo would have protections.
It would not be visible to Muggles.
Would it be visible to him?
He was magical.
But underage. Wandless. Foreign. Injured. Carrying a Muggle baby.
Would the wards recognise him? Reject him? Hide from him? Let him wander past until he collapsed ten feet from salvation without knowing it?
Regulus swallowed hard.
“If I shout for it, do you think it answers?”
Lilla did not stir.
“No. Probably not.”
But the idea would not leave.
A wizarding school hidden in the Amazon.
It was ridiculous.
It was the only thing close to a miracle he had.
He stood again, unable to sit with the thought.
“Castelobruxo,” he said louder, toward the trees.
The jungle swallowed the word.
“Castelobruxo.”
Nothing.
He felt stupid instantly.
His cheeks flushed despite there being no one alive to judge him.
Still, he took a breath and tried again, this time in a more formal voice, the one trained into him for addressing adults and ancestral portraits and dangerous people with too much power.
“My name is Regulus Arcturus Black. I am a British wizard, underage, wandless, injured, stranded after an aircraft crash in the Amazon rainforest. I have an infant survivor with me. We require assistance.”
He stood there, mud-soaked and trembling, speaking to the trees.
A drop of rain fell from a leaf and hit his nose.
Nothing else happened.
His mouth twisted.
“Brilliant.”
Lilla made a small noise against him.
Regulus looked down.
“Yes, I know. But it was worth attempting.”
He waited anyway.
One minute.
Two.
The jungle offered no golden castle, no robed rescuers, no crack of Apparition, no shimmering doorway in the trees.
Only heat.
Insects.
The wreckage.
The signs he had built with bleeding hands.
Regulus’s shoulders slumped.
He returned to the fallen tree and sat carefully, though something in him had shifted.
Castelobruxo existed.
That meant magical people existed somewhere in this forest. Hidden, perhaps unreachable, perhaps impossibly far, but real.
That mattered.
It had to matter.
He pulled out one of the papers from his own documents, a blank back page from an airline form, and the small pencil he had found in his travel case. He wrote carefully despite his shaking hand.
MAGICAL NOTE: CASTELOBRUXO MAY BE IN AMAZON. POSSIBLE WIZARDING HELP. I AM WANDLESS. UNDERAGE. CANNOT SIGNAL MAGICALLY.
He stopped.
Then added:
IF FOUND BY MUGGLES, CONTACT BRITISH WIZARDING AUTHORITIES? BLACK FAMILY. HOGWARTS. SLYTHERIN.
He stared at that.
Was that wise?
If Muggles found the note, it would look insane.
If magical people found it, it might save them.
He folded it and placed it with his documents, then wrote a simpler message on the visible panel near HELP:
TWO SURVIVORS. ONE BABY. CHECK AREA. FOLLOW MARKS.
He would only add direction if they moved.
If.
When.
Regulus rubbed at his eyes, exhaustion smearing the world.
He needed rest, but not sleep.
He needed to drink.
That thought arrived late enough that he realised how badly his throat hurt.
He took one of the water bottles from the bag and stared at it. Precious. Sealed. Clean. The kind of thing he had taken for granted so completely that he had once left half a glass untouched on a tray because he was bored.
He opened it and took only two mouthfuls.
His body wanted more.
He forced the cap back on.
“Rationing,” he muttered. “I am rationing. I hate rationing.”
He checked Lilla’s face.
Still sleeping.
He touched her cheek with the back of one finger. Warm. Not too hot, he thought. But what did he know? Babies were warm. Were they supposed to be this warm? Was she feverish? Was the jungle heat making her sweat? Was she dehydrated?
Panic rose again.
He pressed it down.
“Later,” he whispered. “We have formula. We have water. I can make it.”
Could he?
He had not read the tin properly.
He pulled it out and squinted at the instructions.
The words were not in English.
Regulus stared.
“Oh, perfect.”
He turned the tin.
More languages.
He found numbers. Measurements. Little diagrams. Scoops. Water. Powder. Shake.
That he could manage.
Maybe.
He would have to use clean water. One of the sealed bottles. Warm? Did it need to be warm? Babies drank warm milk, didn’t they? But in an emergency cold might do. Would cold make her sick? Would unboiled water? The sealed water should be clean. The bottle needed to be clean. Was it clean after the crash? He had wipes. He could clean it. Could he sterilise without boiling? He had matches but no fire built. He had no pot. He had no kettle. He had no idea.
He shut the tin carefully.
“One crisis at a time.”
Lilla snuffled.
Regulus’s hand went to her back instantly.
The jungle rustled.
He looked up sharply.
Every sound was a threat now.
Every leaf could hide teeth. Every branch could hold something watching. Every distant cry could be bird or monkey or warning or imagination.
He had made signs for the sky.
Now he needed signs for himself.
Marks.
If he had to leave the crash site, he would need to mark where he went. Branch arrows. Scratched bark. Strips of fabric tied to trees. Notes if he could spare paper. Marks visible enough for searchers, but not so much effort that he collapsed making them.
He looked at the torn red seat fabric.
Useful.
He cut strips with the kitchen knife, slowly, carefully, because the blade wanted to slip and his bandaged palm protested each pull.
The first strip came away jagged.
Then another.
Then another.
He tied one to the fallen tree beside their shelter.
One to a branch pointing toward the SOS.
One to a thin trunk at the edge of the jungle, not as a decision to go in, but as a beginning.
A line.
A warning.
A way back.
He stepped to the tree line and looked in.
The air changed there.
The clearing was already hot and humid, but beneath the intact canopy the forest seemed thicker, dimmer, wetter. The ground was crowded with roots and fallen leaves. Vines hung in curtains. Insects whirled in patches of light. Somewhere nearby, water dripped steadily though the rain had stopped.
Regulus took one step under the shade.
The temperature shifted.
The noise deepened.
Lilla stirred against his chest.
Regulus looked down at her.
“No,” he whispered. “Not yet.”
He stepped back into the crash clearing.
The sunlight felt weak but real.
He returned to the signs and inspected them with the critical eye of someone whose mother had once made him rewrite a dinner place card four times because the slant of his handwriting implied laziness.
SOS was visible.
HELP was visible.
The written panel was propped against a torn section of fuselage and weighted with metal pieces.
The orange fabric fluttered.
The reflective pile caught light.
It was not enough.
Nothing was enough.
But it was more than nothing.
He lifted the whistle to his mouth and blew once.
The sound sliced through the clearing, shrill and immediate.
Lilla jolted awake and screamed.
Regulus flinched, yanking the whistle away.
“Oh—sorry, sorry, sorry—”
Her cry rose furious and frightened against his chest.
Regulus cupped the back of her head, rocking instantly.
“I’m sorry. I had to test it. I should have warned you. Not that you would have understood, but still.”
She cried harder.
“I know. It was awful.”
He rocked, pacing despite the pain because pacing seemed to help. Around the fallen tree. Past the bag. Back again. Not too close to the wreckage. Not too close to the trees.
“I won’t do it unless I have to,” he promised. “Only if I hear someone. Or something. Well—not something. Someone. If it is something, we are being very quiet.”
Lilla wailed.
Regulus pressed his cheek briefly to the top of her hat.
“Please stop. I know. I’m sorry. Please.”
She cried until she tired herself again, and Regulus hated himself for every second of it, as if the whistle had been some grand betrayal.
When she quieted, he sat with her in the shade of the fallen tree and opened the rabbit’s ear near her hand.
“Here,” he whispered. “Be angry at him.”
Her tiny fingers brushed it.
Regulus watched.
Then he looked back at the jungle.
Castelobruxo.
Manaus.
Rivers.
Search planes.
Magical wards.
Muggle rescue.
So many possibilities, none of them close enough to touch.
He tried again to think like someone useful.
If rescue came by air, the signs mattered.
If rescue came by foot, the signs and noise mattered.
If magical help existed nearby, perhaps strong magic might be noticed. But he could not cast.
Could accidental magic happen? Children did accidental magic all the time under stress. He had, once, when he was small and frightened enough to shatter every mirror in his bedroom. Sirius had laughed until Mother arrived. Then neither of them had laughed.
Regulus looked at his hand.
Could he force accidental magic?
Was that even possible? Accidental magic was wild, defensive, emotional. Not controlled. Not reliable. Not something one scheduled politely between checking nappies and arranging fuselage panels.
But he was frightened.
He had never been more frightened.
If fear alone was enough, the entire jungle should have been glowing by now.
He held one hand toward the SOS sign, focusing on the strip of orange fabric.
Move.
Nothing.
Glow.
Nothing.
Burn.
No.
Not burn.
He dropped his hand sharply.
“Idiot.”
Lilla shifted.
Regulus looked down.
“No burning. Sorry.”
He sat very still.
Then, after a long moment, he whispered toward the trees again, quieter now, less formal, less like he expected an answer.
“If there is anyone from Castelobruxo anywhere near here, we need help.”
The words barely carried.
“I don’t know where your school is. I don’t know your wards. I don’t know if you can hear magical children when they are lost.”
His voice trembled.
“I am lost.”
He pressed one hand over Lilla’s back.
“She is not magical. I don’t think. She is just a baby.”
The jungle watched.
“She needs help.”
A bird called far overhead.
Regulus shut his eyes.
When he opened them, the forest remained unchanged.
No castle.
No rescuer.
No miracle.
Fine.
He could be angry about that later.
For now, he had work.
He took another strip of red cloth and tied it tighter around the fallen tree.
Then another orange strip higher on a broken fuselage spar.
Then he wrote one more message on a clean scrap of panel, carving the letters deeper with the knife when the charcoal-metal smudge looked too faint.
REGULUS BLACK + LILLA VARGA ALIVE AFTER CRASH.
He paused, then added:
STAYED NEAR WRECK FIRST DAY.
First day.
Was it still the first day?
He did not know how many hours had passed. The sun had moved, but under the canopy time had no edges. Morning, afternoon, evening—everything was green and wet and loud.
He wrote it anyway.
If he lived to see another day, he would change the signs.
Make more.
Leave a trail.
Think.
Survive.
His hand cramped around the knife.
Lilla breathed against him.
Regulus looked at the words.
ALIVE.
He traced the letters once with his eyes.
Then he set the panel upright near the others.
The crash clearing now looked strange. Still horrific. Still torn open. Still full of death.
But marked.
Claimed.
Answered.
Not just wreckage.
A place where someone had woken up, found a baby, learned her name, gathered proof, made signs, and refused—however shakily—to vanish without leaving a message behind.
Regulus sank back beneath the fallen tree as the heat thickened again.
The bag was beside him.
The knife near his hand.
The flare gun close.
The radio useless but present.
The documents safe.
The signs bright in the mud.
He watched the sky through the ripped canopy until his eyes hurt, waiting for a shape, a sound, a glint of wings.
Nothing came.
The jungle breathed around him.
Regulus rested his chin lightly above Lilla’s hat.
“Maybe Castelobruxo has excellent hearing,” he whispered.
Lilla slept.
“Maybe they are already coming.”
He did not believe it.
Not fully.
But belief, like water, could be rationed.
He took a small sip of hope and capped the rest for later.
Lilla fell asleep again just as the light began to change.
It did not darken all at once.
The jungle did not politely announce evening.
It thickened.
The green deepened first, the sun slipping behind leaves until the clearing’s edges blurred into shadow. The heat remained, heavy and damp, but something under it shifted colder. The birds changed their voices. The insects grew louder. The wreckage, silver and torn, lost its shine and became shapes instead of metal, teeth instead of shelter.
Regulus noticed because every part of him was waiting for something to go wrong.
Lilla’s crying had faded into little wounded hiccups, then into silence. She had exhausted herself again, tiny face turned sideways beneath the crooked yellow hat, one fist resting against the rabbit’s bent ear. Her body was tucked close inside the sling, warm against his chest, her breathing small and steady.
Regulus kept his palm over her back.
Rise.
Fall.
Rise.
Fall.
He counted it because if he stopped counting, the rest of the world rushed in.
The wreckage.
The bodies.
The jungle.
The signs.
The failing light.
The fact that no one had come.
The fact that no one had come.
The fact that no one had come.
He sat beneath the fallen tree with the knife near his knee and the flare gun tucked into the bag within reach. The torches were beside him. The radio had been tried again and had returned only a brief hiss of static before dying into silence, as useless as every adult who had ever taught him how to stand straight and none of the things that mattered.
He had checked the sky through the canopy gap until his eyes ached.
Nothing.
No aircraft.
No smoke-trailing rescue.
No distant engine.
No broom. No owl. No crack of Apparition. No golden magic school revealing itself between the trees because some ancient wards had sensed a lost child and decided to be kind.
Only the jungle.
Regulus stared at the SOS sign in the mud.
The letters looked smaller now.
In the afternoon, when he had made them, they had seemed enormous. Desperate and clever and visible. Now, beneath the deepening green shadows, they looked like scraps. Broken bits of a broken plane arranged by a broken boy pretending he had done something meaningful.
Lilla breathed against him.
Rise.
Fall.
Rise.
Fall.
Regulus swallowed.
His throat hurt.
He had been holding himself together in pieces all day.
A command here. A count there. A task. Another task. The baby is crying. Feed her. The bag is open. Sort it. Documents. Signs. Water. Cloth. Shelter. Think. Move. Don’t look too long. Don’t breathe too deeply. Don’t cry because crying will frighten her. Don’t panic because panic wastes time. Don’t stop because stopping means realising.
Now there was nothing immediate left to do.
Lilla slept.
The signs were made.
The bag was packed.
The sky was empty.
And the silence inside him, the one he had been stuffing full of work, split.
It began with his breathing.
A small catch.
Barely anything.
He pressed his lips together and looked down, forcing his hand to remain steady on Lilla’s back.
“No,” he whispered.
The word trembled.
He clenched his jaw.
“No.”
His eyes burned.
He blinked hard, once, twice.
The jungle blurred anyway.
He lifted his free hand and wiped his face roughly, smearing dirt, sweat, and dried blood across his cheek.
“Stop it.”
His voice came out thin.
Lilla stirred.
Regulus froze instantly.
Her tiny back rose beneath his palm.
She did not wake.
He waited until her breathing settled again.
Then his own broke.
It came out of him as a sound he did not recognise.
Not a sob at first.
A wounded inhale.
A child’s sound.
He clapped one hand over his mouth so fast pain shot up his bandaged palm. His shoulders hunched around Lilla, trying to make himself smaller, quieter, anything. But the next breath came worse, shaking through his chest and ribs until the pain folded him forward.
“No,” he gasped into his hand. “No, no, no.”
His eyes flooded.
Tears cut hot through the dirt on his face.
He tried to stop them.
He really did.
He bit his lip. He squeezed his eyes shut. He pressed his forehead against the rough bark behind him until splinters scratched his skin. He dug his fingers into the mud beside him, trying to anchor himself to something solid.
But it was too much.
The whole day rose up.
The plane falling.
The screaming.
The impact.
The bodies.
The baby crying under her mother’s dead arms.
Elena.
Miklós.
Lilla.
His passport wet in the wreckage.
His own photograph looking back at him like some other boy.
The jungle waiting on all sides.
The sky empty.
The radio dead.
His wand gone.
His parents gone.
His brother gone.
Regulus bent over Lilla and sobbed.
Properly.
Silently at first, because some ruined part of him was still trying not to be ugly about it, still trying to be the kind of boy who could be sent through airports alone and not make a scene. But there was no one here to punish him for shaking. No drawing room. No portraits. No mother’s stare. No father’s disgust. No older brother rolling his eyes and looking away.
There was only Lilla asleep against his chest and the Amazon swallowing the light.
So the sobs came.
Hard.
Messy.
Broken.
He pressed his hand over his mouth again, but it barely helped.
“I want my mum,” he choked.
The words were so small.
So humiliating.
So true that they tore him open.
“I want my mum.”
He cried harder the moment he said it.
He did not even know what he meant by it.
He wanted Walburga and he did not. He wanted her voice but not her sharpness. Her hands but not her grip. Her presence but not her judgement. He wanted a mother who would come because he was hurt, because he was frightened, because he was fourteen and stranded in the jungle with a baby he did not know how to save.
He wanted the impossible version of her.
The version that had maybe existed when he was too young to remember clearly. A shadow of perfume and cool fingers on his forehead. A woman who had once looked at him not like an heir or a disappointment or a reflection of family pride, but like he was simply her son.
“I want my dad,” he whispered, and hated himself for that too.
Because Orion would not know what to do with this either. Orion would stand there in the wreckage in his immaculate robes and look at the mud and the bodies and the baby and the blood on Regulus’s face, and somehow Regulus would still feel like the one who had failed.
But he wanted him anyway.
Wanted the shape of him. The authority of him. The certainty. The adultness. The idea that a father could stand between a child and the world and make the world back away.
Regulus covered his face with one hand, careful not to crush Lilla between his chest and his grief.
“I want to go home.”
The sentence destroyed him.
Because home was Grimmauld Place.
Home was cold.
Home was dark.
Home was footsteps in hallways and portraits muttering and his mother’s voice slicing through closed doors. Home was dining tables set with too much silver and not enough warmth. Home was an empty chair where Sirius had once sat slouched and defiant and beautiful, making everything louder just by existing.
Home was terrible.
But it had walls.
It had floors.
It had a bed.
It had water from taps and food on plates and no jungle breathing in the dark.
“I want to go home,” Regulus sobbed again. “Please.”
No one answered.
Lilla slept.
The jungle listened.
His hand slid to the sling, clutching the fabric near her back.
“I can’t do this,” he whispered. “I can’t. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”
The words came faster now, breaking apart.
“I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to feed you properly. I don’t know where we are. I don’t know what’s in there. I don’t know if the water is safe. I don’t know how to make a fire. I don’t know how to—how to—”
His voice collapsed.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
“I’m useless.”
It came out venomous.
He had heard versions of it his whole life.
Not always the word itself.
Sometimes worse because it came dressed politely.
Too delicate.
Too quiet.
Too soft.
Too obedient until obedience became weakness, then too proud when he tried to harden. Always almost right and never enough. Always second. Younger. Smaller. The one left after Sirius took up all the space and then left the space empty behind him.
“I’m stupid,” he whispered. “I’m so stupid.”
Lilla made a tiny sleepy sound.
Regulus immediately pressed his palm over her back and softened his voice.
“Not you. Sorry. Not you.”
She settled.
He cried silently for a moment, rocking her even though she was asleep, because rocking her gave his body something to do besides shake itself apart.
“I should know something,” he whispered. “I should know one useful thing.”
His breath hitched.
“I know which families not to offend at dinner. I know how to polish a family name until it cuts my hands open. I know how to smile when Mother wants me to. I know how to pretend I don’t care when Father forgets I’m in the room.”
He laughed once, horrible and wet.
“I know how to be left behind.”
That sentence sat in the air like a curse.
Regulus stared into the darkening clearing through tears.
He knew that better than anything.
He knew the sound of people leaving.
His parents leaving him in nurseries with house-elves and governesses. Adults leaving rooms when he entered because children were decorative, not present. Sirius leaving him in corridors at Hogwarts, walking away with James Potter, laughing too loudly, looking back less and less until he stopped looking back at all.
Then Sirius leaving the house.
Actually leaving.
A few months ago.
Gone.
Run away to Potter.
Potter and his warm house and his warm parents and his warm, golden, loud life that had apparently had room for Sirius in a way the Black family never had.
Regulus had heard about it in pieces.
Whispers. Shouting. His mother’s rage. His father’s silence. A portrait shrieking until someone covered it. The family tree scorched. The name blackened out. Sirius transformed from son to disgrace in the space of a night.
And Regulus—
Regulus had stood in the hall.
Regulus had not moved.
Regulus had not cried.
Regulus had not asked where his brother had gone, because asking questions in that house was like holding out your wrist for a blade.
He had simply understood.
Sirius had left.
And he had not taken Regulus with him.
Of course he had not.
Why would he?
They had not been brothers properly for years.
Not since Hogwarts.
Not since the Sorting Hat shouted Slytherin above Regulus’s head and the Great Hall roared in green and silver. Not since Regulus looked across to the Gryffindor table, searching instinctively for Sirius, and found his brother staring at him like something had broken.
Sirius had been angry even then.
Not surprised.
Angry.
As if Regulus had chosen it to hurt him.
As if a hat had dropped between them like a wall and Sirius, being Sirius, had decided walls were only worth breaking if James Potter stood on the other side.
After that came the glares.
The ignoring.
The way Sirius’s mouth curled when Slytherin was mentioned, even when Regulus was standing right there. The way he spoke of his house like it was a disease. The way he started calling James his brother in that careless, affectionate voice he had once used for Regulus when they were small and hiding under blankets from Walburga’s temper.
James is more my brother than anyone in that house.
Regulus had heard it once.
Sirius had not known he was there.
Or maybe he had.
Maybe that was worse.
Regulus wiped his face with the heel of his hand, but the tears kept coming.
“He doesn’t care,” he whispered.
The words were thin and childish.
He hated them.
He said them anyway.
“He won’t care.”
Lilla breathed against him.
“Why would he? He left. He left and he didn’t even—he didn’t even say goodbye.”
His chest hurt so badly he could barely breathe.
“He hates me.”
The jungle clicked and hummed.
“He’s hated me since I was eleven.”
A sob broke through him.
“I was eleven.”
That was the part he could never make sense of.
He had been eleven.
Small still. Proud because everyone had expected him to be. Terrified because Hogwarts was enormous and Sirius was already there, already bright, already beloved, already making trouble and friends and stories people repeated. Regulus had arrived with his trunk and his perfect posture and his desperate secret hope that away from home, maybe Sirius would be his again.
Then Slytherin.
Green and silver.
The table applauding.
The blood in his ears.
Sirius’s face across the hall.
Everything after that had been a door closing.
“I didn’t do anything,” Regulus whispered.
His voice cracked into a sob.
“I didn’t do anything.”
He curled forward, as much as he could without pressing too hard on Lilla.
“I was just sorted.”
The baby slept through his ruin.
That made it both easier and worse.
There was no one awake to hear him.
No one to tell him to stop.
No one to tell him he was wrong.
No one to tell him Sirius cared, actually, or that his parents would be frantic, or that someone somewhere was already searching.
Because he did not know.
He did not know if anyone even knew yet.
That thought hit fresh and sharp.
The plane crashed.
Did anyone know?
Had it vanished from some Muggle radar thing? Had someone seen it fall? Did the airline know? Would they know where? Would they have a list of passengers? Of course they would. Would they tell the families? Would they contact Walburga and Orion? Would someone knock on a hotel suite door abroad while his parents were at dinner with important people and say their son’s plane had gone down?
Would his mother make a sound?
Would his father sit down?
Would they be angry first?
Embarrassed?
Inconvenienced?
Afraid?
Did they even know what flight he was on, or had an assistant handled it?
Would anyone think to tell Sirius?
Regulus’s breath shuddered violently.
Would his parents tell him?
Sirius had run away. Sirius had been burned off the tree. Sirius was not spoken of unless screamed about. He was living with Potter now, not theirs, not Black, not son, not brother according to every furious rule Walburga had carved into the house after he left.
If Regulus was missing, if his plane crashed, if his name was on some list of dead or lost passengers, would Walburga tell Sirius?
Or would she say nothing?
Would Sirius find out days later?
Weeks?
Never?
Would he care when he did?
Regulus pressed his fist to his mouth again, shaking.
He could see Sirius’s face too clearly.
Older now. Fifteen. Handsome in that careless, infuriating way that made strangers smile and family portraits hiss. Hair falling into his eyes. Mouth twisted like nothing could touch him. Gryffindor tie loose. James Potter beside him, always beside him, shoulder to shoulder, brother brother brother.
Would Sirius hear Regulus Black and feel anything?
Or would he think, Slytherin?
Would he think, Mother’s son?
Would he think, one less Black in the world?
Regulus’s sob tore out louder than he meant it to.
Lilla startled.
Her face scrunched instantly.
Regulus froze, horror cutting through his grief.
“No, no, no, shh, I’m sorry.”
Her mouth opened.
For one terrible second he thought she would start screaming.
He pressed his trembling hand gently to her back and rocked faster, tears still streaming down his own face.
“Please don’t cry. Please, Lilla. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. I’m sorry.”
She whimpered.
Regulus held his breath.
Her face trembled.
Then, miraculously, she settled with a soft, offended little sigh, cheek rubbing against his shirt.
Regulus stared down at her through wet lashes.
“Oh, thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you.”
He laughed under his breath, wrecked and breathless.
“You are being much more reasonable than me.”
His face crumpled again.
He bent his head over her.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and now he was not sure who he meant. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Sorry to Lilla for not knowing how to save her.
Sorry to Elena and Miklós for taking their daughter from their arms because they could no longer hold her.
Sorry to his parents for being weak enough to cry and angry enough to want them anyway.
Sorry to Sirius for being sorted wrong, staying behind, becoming whatever his brother hated.
Sorry to himself, maybe, though that one felt impossible.
He cried until his chest ached too much for full sobs.
Then he cried quietly.
Then he sat shaking, tears still slipping down his face, breath uneven, one hand on Lilla and one gripping the mud beside him.
The jungle darkened another shade.
The SOS sign was almost grey now.
Regulus stared at it through the blur.
“I don’t want to die here,” he whispered.
There it was.
The fear beneath every other fear.
Plain.
Ugly.
True.
“I don’t want her to die here.”
His hand tightened over Lilla’s back.
“I don’t want anyone to find us as bones. I don’t want Mother to get a letter. I don’t want Father to identify some stupid passport and say nothing. I don’t want Sirius to hear about it from someone else and pretend he doesn’t care.”
His voice broke.
“I don’t want him to not care.”
That was worse than dying, in some strange deep place he despised.
The idea that Sirius could hear his name and feel nothing.
The idea that Regulus had already been lost to him long before the plane fell.
He had been used to being left behind.
He had trained himself around it.
When adults left rooms.
When Sirius left compartments.
When friends paired off.
When his parents travelled.
When conversations continued without him.
When Sirius ran away.
Regulus had learned to stand still and let people go, because chasing them was undignified and begging was worse.
But this—
This was too much.
This was not being left in a room or a house or a school common room while someone else walked into a better life.
This was being left in the Amazon jungle with the dead and a baby and no wand and no way to know if the world had even noticed the hole where he had been.
He bent over Lilla and whispered, “I just want to go home.”
The words came again and again.
Not loud.
Not dramatic.
Just broken.
“I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home.”
Lilla slept through it.
Regulus rocked her.
At some point, the sobbing slowed.
Not because he felt better.
Because the body could only keep breaking for so long before exhaustion took over.
His head throbbed with crying. His throat felt raw. His face was tight with drying tears. His ribs ached like something inside him had cracked further. The jungle had become shadowed and full of noise, but still he sat there, breathing unevenly, Lilla warm against him.
He wiped his face again.
His sleeve came away wet.
“Disgusting,” he muttered weakly.
His voice sounded more like himself, which nearly made him cry again.
He looked down at Lilla.
Her little mouth had fallen open slightly. The yellow hat had slipped again. The rabbit ear rested beneath her chin.
Regulus adjusted the hat with extreme care.
“You did not see that,” he whispered.
She did not respond.
“Good.”
He sniffed, then winced at how pathetic the sound was.
His mother would have hated it.
That thought came with less force now.
Far away.
Almost irrelevant.
Walburga Black could hate his tears all she liked.
She was not here.
No one was here.
That was the problem.
That was also, for one fragile moment, permission.
Regulus let out a shaking breath and looked at the darkening trees.
“I want my brother,” he admitted softly.
The jungle seemed to quiet around the words, though it did not.
“Sirius.”
He had not said the name aloud all day.
It hurt.
“Sirius, I’m scared.”
Of all the things he had said, that one felt the most impossible.
He imagined saying it to Sirius’s face.
His brother’s expression changing.
Or not changing.
That was the terror.
He pictured Sirius laughing, not cruelly maybe, but awkwardly. Deflecting. Making a joke. Calling him dramatic. Looking away because feelings were worse than curses.
He pictured Sirius glaring.
What do you want me to do about it, Reg?
He pictured Sirius turning back toward James.
That one made him close his eyes.
“No,” he whispered.
He tried again.
He pictured Sirius at ten, before everything went wrong, climbing into Regulus’s room after a fight downstairs, hair wild, eyes bright, whispering, Move over, idiot, and then crawling under the blankets beside him as if protecting him from the house by sheer arrogance.
He pictured Sirius at eleven, stealing biscuits from the kitchen and giving Regulus the bigger half while insisting it was smaller.
He pictured Sirius before Gryffindor became a kingdom and Slytherin became a betrayal.
That Sirius might have cared.
That Sirius might have come.
Regulus held onto that version because the dark was coming and he needed something.
“Sirius would hate this,” he whispered to Lilla.
His voice shook but did not collapse.
“He’d complain the whole time. Very loudly. He would probably try to fight a tree.”
A weak, wet laugh escaped him.
“He’d call the jungle dramatic. Then he’d make me carry something because he’s awful.”
Lilla slept.
Regulus swallowed.
“He’d know what to say, though.”
Maybe he would not.
Maybe Sirius would be just as terrified.
But Regulus could not imagine that properly. Sirius had always seemed fearless because Regulus had needed him to be.
He leaned his head back against the fallen tree and stared up through the canopy gap.
The sky was turning bruised blue.
Somewhere above it, beyond clouds and distance and impossible miles, there was a world where planes landed. Where people waited at gates. Where names appeared on boards. Where letters were sent. Where Walburga and Orion might already know.
Where Sirius might be laughing in James Potter’s house, unaware his little brother was sitting under a tree in the Amazon with blood on his face.
Regulus’s eyes filled again, but the tears did not spill as violently this time.
“I’m here,” he whispered upward.
His voice was hoarse.
“I’m here.”
The SOS sign lay silent in the mud.
“I’m still here.”
Lilla breathed.
Rise.
Fall.
Rise.
Fall.
Regulus pressed his hand to her back and closed his eyes for one second only.
“I’m still here,” he repeated, almost to himself.
Then, softer, to the sleeping baby:
“And so are you.”
The jungle darkened around them.
Regulus pulled the coat more securely around Lilla, keeping her face clear, and drew the bag closer with his foot. His fingers found the knife again. He did not pick it up yet. Just touched it.
He was still crying a little.
Quietly now.
No longer breaking open, only leaking at the edges.
“I want to go home,” he whispered one last time.
The words settled between him and the baby, small and tired and true.
Then he breathed in.
Out.
In.
Out.
He matched Lilla’s rhythm because hers was steadier.
The dark came slowly, green turning to black around the wreckage, and Regulus Black sat beneath the fallen tree with a sleeping baby strapped to his chest, crying silently for a mother who would not know how to comfort him, a father who would not know how to hold him, and a brother he was terrified had stopped loving him years ago.
He cried until there was nothing left but breath.
And when the night sounds rose around them, louder and stranger than anything the day had held, he opened his wet eyes, tightened his hand around the knife, and stayed awake.