Chapter 66: Lily of the Valley
Isabella graduated not long after. She did not return to the Shacklebolt family. She rented a small attic near Diagon Alley, too proud to go home defeated and too wounded to remain near Hogwarts. She told herself the relationship had ended. People tell themselves many things when truth is too expensive.
Regulus did not let her go. Not properly. He attended Death Eater gatherings and returned with his face older each time. He saw things that left his hands shaking when no one watched. Then, in the deep hours of the night, he escaped the Black house under Disillusionment Charms and went to her door. He left Acid Pops, old books on elemental magic, and small bouquets of lily of the valley. No signature. Only a tiny flower drawn in ink on the wrapping.
The return of happiness, Isabella thought when she saw them. Their old private joke. Their promise.
For half a year, this cowardly tenderness continued. Regulus left gifts and hid in the alley shadows, watching the yellow light in her attic window until dawn. He never knocked. Isabella never caught him. Both of them suffered in ways that would have been solved by one honest conversation, proving that intelligence did not protect anyone from being young and stupid.
One rainy night, Regulus came with another bouquet and found her sitting at the door with her knees drawn to her chest. Her hair was soaked. She was crying too hard to notice the cold.
He stood frozen for a moment. Then whatever remained of his restraint broke. He crossed the alley, took off his black cloak, and draped it around her shoulders.
Isabella looked up. Regulus looked as if he expected her to curse him. Instead, she caught his sleeve and did not let go.
"I was wrong," he whispered. The words came out hoarse. "I was afraid. I thought if you stayed away from me, you would be safe."
"I was never safe without you," she said.
That was not entirely true, but grief is rarely precise.
They reconciled. Not publicly. Nothing about them could be public. For more than two years, they stole pieces of life from a war that wanted all of it. They met in Isabella's attic, in the rose garden of the Black house when Regulus could smuggle her through the wards, and once or twice near the edge of the Forbidden Forest where their younger selves had spoken about stars. Regulus conjured lily of the valley and tucked them into her hair. Isabella knitted him a dark blue scarf because the Black house was cold and because love liked practical objects.
Edward watched these memories with an ache that deepened instead of dulling. His parents had not been names in a tragic record. They had been awkward, stubborn, tender, and frightened. They had argued over books. They had kissed under borrowed shadows. They had laughed quietly so no one would hear. Their love had existed in hidden rooms because the world outside was full of people who thought bloodlines mattered more than breathing.
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Isabella sensed Regulus was planning something dangerous before he told her. He carried silence like a second cloak. Some nights he sat by the window and stared at nothing until dawn. When she asked, he only shook his head.
"Wait for me," he said. "It will be over soon."
She did not press. She knew the kindness in him, buried though it was beneath Black pride and Death Eater masks. If Regulus was planning something, it was because his conscience had finally become heavier than his fear.
Then came the letter.
It arrived by exhausted owl on a wet morning. The handwriting was rushed, almost torn into the parchment.
Isabella,
I am going to do something important. It may cost me my life. I must do it anyway. If you receive no word from me after a month, forget me. Live well.
There was no signature. None was needed.
Isabella held the letter through the whole night while rain beat against the attic window. She cried until she could not cry anymore. She understood enough to know he had chosen a path that likely had no return. She hated him for it. She loved him for it. Both truths sat together and neither cancelled the other.
A month passed. No owl came. No sweets, no books, no lily of the valley. The small rituals by which Regulus had kept himself alive in her world ended all at once.
At the end of that month, Isabella discovered she was pregnant.
She sat on the narrow bed, one hand over her still-flat stomach, and for a long time she did not move. Grief had hollowed her. Then, beneath it, something small and impossible burned. Regulus was gone, but not entirely. Their child lived.
She did not go to the Shacklebolts. She did not go to the Blacks. The first might pity her, the second would claim the child, and pure-blood families had a gift for turning children into banners, contracts, and weapons. Isabella had loved Regulus too much to let their son become another boy crushed under a family name.
So she sold what jewelry she had, packed her books and clothes, and vanished into the Muggle world.
The attic she found was small, damp, and ugly. The roof leaked in winter. The walls trapped heat in summer. She had been raised a pure-blood witch and knew embarrassingly little about surviving among Muggles. She mended clothes, wrote letters for people who could not write well, and used tiny bits of magic where no one would notice. Bread, milk, blankets, ink. Every coin mattered. Pride became less important when hunger learned your address.
Pregnancy made everything harder. Morning sickness left her weak. Fear made sleep thin. Loneliness pressed on her at night when the city quieted. But when the child moved inside her, Isabella would put both hands over her stomach and whisper stories. About stars. About libraries. About a proud boy who once got lost and pretended he had not.
On a stormy night, Edward was born.
Isabella gave birth alone because war and poverty had narrowed her world to one room and stubbornness. When she held the wrinkled, furious baby against her chest, she laughed and cried at the same time. "Edward," she whispered. "A peaceful name. You hear that? You are going to have peace, whether the world likes it or not."
For a while, she almost managed it.