brother.

brother: chapter 08

Friday, December 1st 1975, 7:26pm

Regulus still hadn't apologised to Maud or Davina, much to Barty and Everett's annoyance. Every time he arrived, the girls would leave. So he had taken to avoiding them all again, spending most of his time with Roman.

Which had been sufficiently confusing.

"Do you wanna try Hogsmeade again?" Roman said without looking up from his charms work. Regulus paused,

"Like, like for real this time?" Regulus said, Roman looked up and met his eyes.

"Yeah you know, like we get to hang out without you bashing up your best friend," Roman laughed, Regulus was thankful Roman didn't refer to whatever was going on as a 'date'.

"Yeah," Regulus laughed as well. He kept looking in to Roman's eyes. He could never seem to look away, they were too unique, Roman was always the first to break eye contact.

It was odd, how Regulus felt about Roman. He truly knew nothing about the guy, but he felt so strongly about the fact that he liked him quite a lot.

As a friend, of course.

"So tomorrow?" Roman turned back to Regulus, initiating their never ending eye contact again,

"Tomorrow what?"

"Hogsmeade, we can go tomorrow," Roman laughed,

"Oh yeah! That'll be great actually, give Barty some time away from me to get in the last minute party planning," Regulus spoke,

"Oh, when he invited me he said it was a surprise party," Roman raised an eyebrow,

"Ev let's it slip every year, I've heard Barty is going all out. It's in the room of requirement isn't it?"

"Yeah it is, almost the whole school is going," Regulus rolled his eyes at this, "What?"

"I highly doubt that many people want to celebrate my birthday," Regulus laughed,

"You're an interesting person, spose others recognise that too," They stared at each other in comfortable silence, before returning to their work.

Saturday, December 2nd, 1976

He couldn't decide what to wear, he felt like a girl. He had emptied his entire closet trying to find something he found to be worthy of Roman, nothing had jumped out at him.

They agreed to meet at quarter to ten, after breakfast. Regulus had skipped breakfast in order to try to find an outfit, it was now 9:30.

After 10 more minutes of anguish he settled on black pants, a white button up, a green sweater and his black trench coat, nothing too out of the ordinary. Regulus found Roman waiting for him in the courtyard just as he had been weeks ago.

"Good morning, you look flustered," Roman laughed,

"Every piece of clothing I own decided to look dreadful today," Regulus laughed a ran his hand through his hair nervously,

"I think you look nice,"

They walked down to Hogsmeade, chatting about random things, walked through Honeydukes and Zonkos still talking about practically nothing. Eventually they found themselves in a cafe, not often frequented by Hogwarts students, both had a silent agreement that the Three Broomsticks would not be their spot today.

The cafe was dark, but warm. A fire lit in the corner and bookshelves scattered around the room, a lot like the library.

"What's your family like? You and your brother don't seem to like each other very much," Roman asked taking a sip of his coffee. Regulus paused, "You tell me about about yours I'll tell you about mine," Roman sensed his uneasiness,