𝙘𝙤𝙡𝙙 𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙨-𝙧.𝙖.𝙗

𝟮𝟬-𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗮𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘂𝗺

JO PLANS ON CONFRONTING REGULUS, AT FIRST. She examines her scowl and rehearses a stern, commanding voice in her head; she stares at herself until her own features become unrecognizable, until the voice in her head sounds like a stranger's. This leaves her questioning all the qualities that usually seemed to come naturally to her; her glare, her curtness, her ability to intimidate. She doesn't know how to apply that to Regulus, how to look him in the eye and demand something from him. So she leaves it, and tells herself, alright, fine, if Regulus has something to say, he'll say it. Because she trusts him-that's a realization she has from all of this. She trusts him and she's not going to let some slimy blood purist put ideas in her head, not going to let him rattle her. She won't. She won't.

But she does, that's the thing. Jo cannot stop thinking about Crouch, about the words he spoke and the way they fell from him so easily. He so obviously knew what he was doing, and Jo wants so badly to be unpredictable, to not fall for the trap he's set. But she can't. She's too obvious, another realization Jo has that makes her want to slam her head into the wall.

Ultimately, she decides to approach it causally. To bring it up, lightly, maybe teasing, maybe curious. Not angry and not demanding and she decides she would watch Regulus for his reaction, watch how he shifts and how he looks at her and she'd decide what to do from there. She figures that's best, that that'll go over smoothly. And even though there is a knot of anxiety and nerves burrowed deep inside of her, she reminds herself of what Regulus told her in the Hospital Wing: I think you're my best friend. She reminds herself of his hand on her back while she was drunkenly flinging herself in his arms. She reminds herself of the kiss to the top of her forehead that she can still feel, like it's burned into her skin. Whatever it is, it can't really be that bad.

But it turns out, all of her worrying was for nothing, really, because Regulus never shows up.

Just a few hours after Crouch's words had driven her insane, she stands by the Greenhouse where he always is, and stares at the empty space he normally occupies. And she doesn't know what to do, doesn't know what to make of it. Because for as long as Jo has been sneaking out of the Gryffindor tower, Regulus has been there waiting for her, just past midnight. She waits for what feels like an hour but is actually a little under ten minutes. She walks by the kitchens, by the Astronomy tower. She lingers near the dungeons, near the courtyards and the Room of Requirement, near every space they have taken up together, but he is not there.

Jo is swallowed up in her anxieties. She can feel it manifest more and more with every step she takes, in the frazzled state of her hair and her perpetually wide eyes, in the sweat that builds in her palms and the lump growing in her throat. Her thoughts are spiraling-just a few words from Crouch and she is left running around in her circles, frantically searching for answers, trying to come up with some sort of explanation.

Because as much as she's telling herself that Crouch was just trying to get a rise out of her, that there's nothing to be so worked up over, she can't talk herself down, can't wash away the feeling that something is wrong.

It's heavy on her, the anxiety that creeps up, almost suffocating. Jo hardly gets any sleep that night.

There's rumors, the next morning, ones that started in the depths of the Slytherin common room that have worked their way through breakfast and classrooms and study halls to find their way to Jo. Hestia tells her, as they struggle to restrain their Bouncing Bulbs in Herbology, that there was a bit of a row, and by a bit of a row, Hestia means an absolute, all-out screaming match between Regulus Black and Barty Crouch.

Jo doesn't know how to take that, either. She sits there, one of the young bulbs struggling to attack her, with her jaw hanging agape and deaf to the way Hestia says her name, trying to imagine Regulus yelling. She tries to imagine him as anything other than what she sees him as now. Jo can't imagine him bellowing until he's red in the face, not like her brother does and not like his brother does. She can't imagine what he'd say. But she can't imagine that it wasn't about her. That it wasn't about his obligations.