Glass. So deceptively solid, catching the light and bending it into brilliance. Yet one whisper of pressure, one hairline fracture across its surface, and the whole thing shatters. That is what you had always been—glass. They had a name for children like you, though you hadn’t known it until years later, when a contraband Muggle book made its way into your hands. Glass children. The overlooked. The misunderstood. The ones mistaken for resilience when in truth they had been fragile all along.

You wore the curse like a second skin. The weight of a family name pressed into your shoulders long before your birth. You were not born a boy—you were born an heir, a vessel, a continuation of the ancient and noble House of Black. They had written your future before you ever took your first breath. Restore the family to glory. Uphold the line. Bend, if necessary. Break, if commanded.

And yet, the Sorting Hat had seen through it all. The leather brim whispering against your temple, rifling through every thought, every hope, every fear you had never spoken aloud. And then the words, clear and final, ringing across the Great Hall—Hufflepuff.

It had not surprised you. You had always known you were different. Too tender for their world, too quick to care, too open with your heart. In that moment, when whispers twisted into sneers at the Slytherin table, you had felt it keenly: the shattering. The glass child, splintering.

And yet, if you were fragile, you had learned to make fragility into anchor. To be something steady for Sirius, when his rage boiled over and threatened to consume him. To be something gentle for Regulus, when shadows grew too heavy for his small frame to bear. You had been the quiet, steady flame in a house that never knew warmth.

It was Regulus who came to you that night. The hour was thin, when Grimmauld Place groaned like a ship beneath the weight of its secrets. You had not been sleeping. Sleep rarely came easily anymore. The door creaked open with the faintest of sounds, and there he was—your youngest brother. His face pale, thinner than it should have been at his age. His hands trembled against the doorframe.

“Can I—” His voice cracked. He didn’t finish.

You reached out without thinking, guiding him inside, closing the door to keep the house’s eyes and ears away. The tremor in him was not the kind that left. It lived in him now.

When he finally pulled back the sleeve of his robe, you could not help the sound that left your throat. The serpent and skull, raw against pale skin, still ink-dark and angry from its carving. It looked less like a mark and more like a wound.

“They made me,” he whispered. His breath was shallow, jagged, like glass splintering in his chest. “Mother said—I had no choice.”

He was shaking harder now, and you caught his hands in yours. Too cold. Too fragile. His chest hitched as though air refused him. A panic attack, though neither of you had the language for it. Only the knowledge that your brother was breaking right before you.

“Reg, breathe,” you whispered, as though softness could hold him together. “It’s me. I’ve got you. Just breathe with me.”

His eyes were wide, glassy, terror-struck. “I don’t want it,” he choked. “I don’t—I don’t want him. I don’t want to belong to him.” His words fell apart into sobs.

You pulled him into you, pressed his shaking frame against your chest, anchored him the way you always had. He was trembling so violently you feared he might vanish entirely. You whispered every scrap of comfort you could summon, though none of it could erase the truth carved into his skin.

For a long time, the only sound was his breath, too fast, too shallow, and your voice, steady as you could make it, urging him back from the edge.

At last, when the tremors dulled to a quiet shiver, you pressed your lips to his damp hair. And you hated yourself—because for all the love you poured into him, for all the comfort you gave, you knew you could not save him. The house would not allow it. The world would not allow it. The mark had been written too deep.