[Harry Potter] He Took Eternity as His Name

Vitalis: a family blessed and cursed by magic.

Their magic is powerful enough to shake history, yet their bloodline is so fragile it could die out at any moment.

To survive, they chose to vanish from the wizarding world entirely: marrying Muggles, diluting their magic, and letting history forget them.

Eteno Vitalis is the last descendant of this ancient family.

His sealed magic surges through his veins. His legs have atrophied, and he spends his days confined to a castle on the North Yorkshire moors, surrounded by potions, a wheelchair, and servants.

Everyone thinks he will die, if not tomorrow, then the day after.

On the morning of his eleventh birthday, an owl crashed through his window.

Sunlight shone through the cracks in the glass, and dust danced in its rays like a dream too absurd to be true.

Hogwarts.

Magic.

And a stern professor who had once been a cat.

"You're going to the wizarding world," Professor McGonagall said. "There, no one will pity your weakness or tolerate your temper."

Candlelight flickered at Hogwarts, and the silver-green of the Slytherin table was cold and austere.

"Vitalis," a name considered more shameful than being half-blood, made him a target as soon as he arrived.

Yet among the countless gazes, some contemptuous and others curious, one was especially quiet.

Regulus Black, the "perfect heir" of one of the Pure-blood families, was a silent observer.

He neither approached nor withdrew. He simply watched with clear gray eyes.

Later, someone asked Regulus Black what his first impression of Eteno Vitalis had been.

He thought for a long time.

"A flame on the verge of going out," he said. "Nearly extinguished, and still burning painfully bright."

For a long time, Eteno will not be a likable character. He's sharp-tongued, irritable, ungrateful, and hurtful. He has reasons for acting this way, but reasons aren't excuses. His growth is slow, painful, and full of setbacks, like a new shoot forcing its way through a thicket of thorns, bleeding and bristling with spines, with every reason not to bloom, yet blooming all the same.

Regulus is distant, composed, and so polite that he seems impossible to approach. He won't go out of his way to save anyone, and he doesn't think of himself as anyone's Chosen One. He's simply an observer. But after watching for long enough, he realizes he has put down roots beside the thorns and can no longer walk away.

"I won't comfort you," Regulus said, his gray eyes as calm as a winter lake. "And I won't tell you everything will get better. You won't believe that, and I don't want to lie."

Eteno sneered. "Then what can you do?"

Regulus turned a page in his book. The firelight fell across his profile.

"Sit with you in the dark," he said, "if you don't want to be alone."

Will the thorns bloom?

Perhaps not.

But they have existed on the moors for a thousand years.

Theme: Live on in the face of death