One Last Try [HP Jamione fanfic]

34. Better Than Revenge

A/N: Woop next chapter! You may notice I've changed all the chapter titles to Taylor Swift song titles :P

15th November 1976

Regulus dropped gracelessly into the chair beside Hermione at her library table, remarkably dishevelled. Hermione looked up from the book she was reading and her eyebrows shot up her forehead. She'd never seen the usually well put together Black in such a state; his hair - normally pulled back into a cue as it had got longer, waves orderly and neat - was a mess, and his grey eyes were wide and a little wild.

"Regulus." She glanced around briefly, and threw up some deterrent spells, including Muffliato, so no one would be able to hear them when Regulus sent her an uneasy look, "What happened?"

Regulus scowled and thumped his books on the table irritably, "My brother and his delinquent friends thought it would be hilarious to hex me."

"What?!" Hermione snapped, slamming her quill down on the table and starting to rise from her seat. She was going to castigate them.

"Prewett. Sit down. I can hold my own against those idiots easily."

She frowned but followed his order, relaxing back into her seat, and picking her quill back up. The two fell into the comfortable silence that usually accompanied their studying. Hermione had started off studying potions as soon as she'd finished with classes for the day, but now she'd finished with it, she was focusing on researching the process of making some kind of container - or as she'd discovered during her research, 'curse box' some cultures called it - for the Horcruxes.

She'd not found anything to help her except for allusions to the type of vessel needed when she'd searched the Potter family library, but she had managed to find some obscure books in her family library that had helped immensely. She'd hidden them in her trunk and brought them back to school with her, and this was the first time she'd had a chance to read them through. She opened the first book, using an obscure spell she'd found her first time through Hogwarts to search through the book for key words to try and find the information she needed.

She saw Regulus looking at her out of the corner of her eye and sighed when the youngest Black raised an eyebrow, "What are you looking for?" He asked when she looked up and made eye contact with him.

She sighed and glanced back down at the book, open to a page about storing Dark Magic and cursed items in such a way that they were rendered inert. She'd found what she was looking for. She marked the page with her quill and turned her attention back to Regulus.

She wasn't ready to tell him about the Horcruxes yet, so she took a moment before answering, working out what to say.

"I'm doing a project for Defence." She finally said, "Looking into how to store Dark objects so that they're inert once you've closed the vessel. They're called curse boxes in some cultures." She'd done extensive research on the uses of the boxes, but it had taken her until now to actually find a way to make one that should hopefully be effective against the Horcruxes, considering they were probably the Darkest magic in their world.

"That sounds like a pretty complex project." Regulus said sceptically, grey eyes narrowed and an eyebrow raised as he glanced down at the stack of books Hermione had built up.

"It's something I wanted to take on."

"Extra to the curriculum?" Regulus raised an eyebrow, looking like he felt like he shouldn't be surprised about that.

Hermione shrugged, and bobbed her head in a nod. "Anyway, that's not important." Regulus looked like he disagreed with her, but he didn't say anything to push her into answering. She knew, like her mother, that he was biding his time and would just observe and learn as much as he could before he questioned her any more.