Smile When You Dive In

Chapter 20

It was a quarter past seven by the time Regulus finally made it up to the owlery. Selwyn had shown the girls a new spell over breakfast, and Willa wasn't going to let him leave the common room until he'd perfected it. If he was being honest, he didn't know how much use he would have for a charm that conjured butterflies, but he humoured Willa because it meant that he would have something new to show James. James was only a year older than he was, but at times it seemed he was leagues ahead of Regulus when it came to their magic. In the beginning, it had irritated Regulus because it was just one more thing James had over him, but now he only hoped to impress the subject of his affections. He hurried up the winding steps to the owlery, slightly out of breath when he finally made it.

It was lucky for Regulus that he didn't call out as soon as he saw the shadowed figure sitting in one of the large windows. He had been ready to apologise, or to comment on what a poor place to smoke the owlery was, once again questioning James' concern for his own bird. As it turned out, the figure across the circular room wasn't James at all. Instead, the face that turned at his entrance resembled his own much more closely. Sirius had one arm propped up on his knee, cigarette in hand. He didn't exactly look surprised to see his brother, not as surprised as Regulus felt, in any case. Almost forgetting that the two of them hadn't spoken in nearly a year, he blurted out the first thing that came to him.

"What are you doing up here?"

Those weren't exactly the first words he had imagined saying to Sirius when he had imagined conversations with his absent brother late at night or daydreaming in lessons. In his head, there were far more accusations, insults, expressions of hurt feelings. He had anguished over their reuniting from the moment that Sirius had left home, and felt a little queasy at being faced with the reality of it.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" He lifted the cigarette in answer, orange glow lighting up his face. His voice seemed deeper than Regulus remembered it, though that could have been his imagination or the cigarette he was smoking. "What are you doing up here?" He asked in return. It occurred to Regulus that he hadn't brought a letter or parcel up with him, so he couldn't pretend that he'd come with the intention of sending Germana off with something. Instead, he retrieved the cigarette he'd stolen that morning from James, fishing it from his pocket and mustering up the confidence it required to join his brother in the opening of the window.

"Same thing you are." Regulus said. This didn't seem to convince Sirius, who looked at the cigarette quizzically. He looked at it in Regulus' hand for so long that Regulus started to worry he'd know where it came from if he looked any longer. That was irrational, he knew. It was a perfectly unremarkable cigarette, the kind lots of wizards smoked from a box. James was too well-bred to roll his own cigarettes. Next to Regulus, he could see that Sirius had rolled his own, which he thought made a lot of sense. He probably thought that was making some kind of statement. Uncomfortable under Sirius' scrutiny, Regulus nodded to the lighter discarded next to Sirius. "Can I borrow that?"

"No. Since when do you smoke?" Sirius frowned, and quickly pocketed the lighter, as well as the pouch of tobacco that sat next to it. Regulus wanted to point out how long it had been since they last spoke, that he could have started smoking at any point since then. He couldn't bring himself to, though. He thought back to the conversations he'd had with James about making things up with Sirius, and while he wasn't sure he was ready for that, he didn't want to fight with his brother either.

"I don't." Regulus conceded, opting for the truth. "I just came up here to see Germana." He added, opting for a near-truth. He couldn't very well say that he'd been meeting up with James. It was actually starting to occur to him that he might have been set up. James' failure to show, paired with Sirius being there at the time they had agreed to meet was certainly suspicious. If he wasn't so taken with James, he'd have been angry with the boy for interfering.