You’d stopped keeping track of the hours somewhere past midnight.

The holiday had stretched long — too long — filled with slow mornings and quieter nights, the house echoing with its own stillness. Your parents were off somewhere warm, trusting that you were fine alone, and really, you were. You just missed him.

Regulus hadn’t written in days.

And you knew better than to expect letters. He was careful with things like that. Cautious. Threaded through with secrets and shadows, always. Still, the silence had started to ache.

Then, just as the fire in the hearth began to sigh into embers, there it was:

Scratch. Scratch.

Your head jerked up.

It came again — soft, deliberate. Not wind. Not branches.

You stood slowly, heart nudging your ribs, and crossed to the window, fingertips brushing aside the edge of the curtain. At first, all you saw was black. Then two pale eyes blinked back at you from the sill — green, maybe. Moon-silver. Unmistakable.

“Oh, for—”

You hurried to unlatch the window. The cold air rushed in and with it came the cat: all inky fur and sinew, graceful as a whisper. He landed with barely a sound and padded in without ceremony, his tail flicking once before he leapt onto the arm of the chair you’d just been curled in.

You didn’t have to ask. You knew.

The transformation happened in a quiet breath — the black fur folding inward, limbs stretching long, the soft thud of boots on carpet. And there he was, still tousled from the shift, curls falling into his eyes, the shadows beneath them darker than usual.

“You shouldn’t come like this,” you whispered, not unkindly.

Regulus just looked at you. Pale, a little damp from the snow, but still smug enough to shrug out of his coat and drop it on the back of the chair like he lived here.

“You left the window unwarded,” he said, like that explained everything. “What did you expect me to do?”

“Wait for school. Owl me. Anything normal.”

He sank into the chair, exhaling slowly. “I couldn’t sleep,” he admitted. “And I thought—if I came like this, you wouldn’t ask questions.”

You raised a brow, curling your legs beneath you on the armrest opposite him. “Doesn’t it invite questions? The whole turning-into-a-cat-in-the-middle-of-the-night thing?”

His smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, crooked and soft. “Not if you already knew.”

And you did. You always had.

The fire crackled. Your hand found his beneath the blanket you’d dragged over both of your knees.

Outside, the wind moved through the trees like a lullaby.

“Will you stay till morning?” you asked.

Regulus leaned his head back against the cushion, eyes fluttering shut.

“Only if I don’t shift again,” he murmured. “You snore. And I bite.”