𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐞 || 𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐮𝐥𝐮𝐬 𝐁𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐱 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

Chapter 68

Monday 26th July, 1977

It had nearly been a month since the holidays started, and I'd done plenty of things in that time. I'd gone to the muggle town with the marauders, hung out with Barty, hung out with Dorcas, hung out with the whole group minus Regulus.

I missed Regulus. I wrote letters to him of course, though the letters he sent were always short, brief, and written hastily. I worried, but Regulus assured me that everything was fine and he'd tell me if things weren't, and I chose to believe him.

I was currently waiting for a letter from him that was supposed to come yesterday but didn't. I was worried but decided to believe that Regulus had just forgotten to send it and would send it today. To get my mind off of it, I invited Lily over for a sleepover, knowing she'd help distract me from Regulus and my concern.

There was a knock on the door and I ran down the stairs to find Lily there, grinning at me.

"Lily!" I exclaimed, wrapping her into a hug as soon as I spotted her. She returned the hug before pulling back and gesturing to her bag.

"Anywhere I can put this?"

I directed her to my room where she put her stuff down, and then we spent a while just talking and catching up. That was, until, the boys interrupted us, all four of them coming into my room like they owned it.

"What are you doing?" I asked them.

Sirius looked offended I even had to ask. "We're hanging out with you."

Lily and I shared a look, rolling our eyes. "We're about to paint each others nails and give each other make overs," I said, in the hopes they'd back out.

Unfortunately we got the opposite result.

"Great!" Sirius said, clapping his hands and rubbing them together. "I've been needing some work done on my hair."

I groaned, but let them join in as Lily and I painted each others nails. I gave her a green coating while she gave me a f/c one. After that I painted Sirius's nails hot pink, James's blue, Peter's orange, and Remus's black. I could see Sirius drooling over Remus and his new nails and smirked to myself.

While we waited for the nail paint to dry, we all played would you rather. Remus, the evil genius, ended the game by giving us a question that stumped us all.

"Would you rather..." he started, "find a thousand cockroaches in your attic, or a person."

We all went quiet, lost in thought. On one hand, cockroaches were vile disgusting things that I hated with my entire being and were extremely hard to kill. On the other hand a literal human in your attic could be much more dangerous, and could be creepy and watch you sleep and shower and stuff.

"What if the person in my attic is David Bowie?" Sirius asked, "because if it was David Bowie I honestly wouldn't mind-"

"No, its not David Bowie," Remus sighed. "Like, someone creepy. Like David."

I grimaced, remembering the movie Remus made us watch called Within, and the scary man called David who lived in the walls of an unsuspecting family's home. I would not like to have a David in my attic.

"But cockroaches are so disgusting," James whined.

"Almost as disgusting as you," I quipped, earning a glare from my brother.

Lily cleared her throat. "That's the end of that discussion. Our nails should be dry. Now onto the make up."

The boys, who had decided to escape that moment, were stopped by Lily and I, who claimed that deciding to stay meant staying for all of it, and so the boys begrudgingly stayed as Lily and I practised our make up on them.

Remus ended up looking the best, with killer eyeliner that even I was jealous of. Sirius was second best though, because eyeliner was practically a part of him by this point, and make up on Sirius was just meant to be. James looked the worst, partially because I sabotaged him and partially because he wouldn't sit still when I was applying it.

After that we started styling hair, which Sirius was most excited about. He also got the best result, mainly because his hair was beautiful and very entertaining to play with. Peter was looking great with his slicked back hair though, something not many could pull off. James was exactly the same because his hair just didn't change, and Remus refused to let us do anything to his hair, much to Lily and my disappointment.

"I'm hungry," Peter said after we finished cleaning up all the makeup and nail polish. "Can we bake something?"

Everyone knew Peter was a spectacular baker. Often, he and Effie would spend their time in the kitchen, combining their forces to make the best cookies ever known to man. Right now, Effie was gardening, and Monty was in his study, so that left the five of us to be his assistants.

We travelled downstairs to the kitchen and got to work, getting out the flour, eggs, and everything else we needed to make chocolate chip cookies. As I cracked one of the eggs, James had the audacity to throw some flour into my face. I coughed and spluttered, dropping the empty egg shell onto the table as I hurried to the tap to clean my hands before getting the flour out of my eyes.

I glared at James who looked away innocently and grabbed a handful of flour to through at him, only for him to move out the way and Sirius to get the brunt of my throw. He stared at me, agape, and before I could defend myself he was throwing flour my way. I ducked, which made the flour hit Remus who stared at Sirius with rage in his eyes, and then the battle began.

By the end of it the kitchen was a mess, as were we, and Effie walked into the room to find it with flour covering every possible surface. She gave all of us a stern look as she took out her wand and cleaned the kitchen with a quick flick of her wand.

After that we worked diligently to finish the cookies, Effie keeping an eye on us as we did so. When they were in the oven I took Lily to my room, banning the boys from coming in, and we finally had some one-on-one time.

That was interrupted, not by the boys, but by an owl pecking on the window. I got up and went to the window, recognising the owl as Regulus's and hurried to untie the letter on its leg. As soon as I got it the owl flew away, not waiting for a response, which was strange.

I ignored Lily's questioning look and opened the letter, feeling panic claw at my throat as I stared at the single word hastily scribbled onto the otherwise bare parchment.

Help.

I felt my hands shake, looking up at Lily with fear plastered across my face.

"Y/n?" she asked. "What's wrong?" She moved towards me and checked over my shoulder. "Oh no."

Without another second thought, I ran out of the room, bounding down the stairs with Lily close behind me. We reached the marauders, who looked alarmed at our frantic state, and I shoved the letter in Sirius's hand.

"Regulus needs our help," I said.

Sirius read the letter, as did the other boys, until it was silent as everyone thought about Regulus and what might be happening to him.

"We need to save him," Sirius spoke.

Remus's eyebrows shot up. "Wait, what?"

Sirius looked me in the eye, both of us knowing how important it was to save Regulus, someone who was equally important to us both.

"We're gonna break him out of there."

A/N:

the would u rather questions and discussion afterwards is one I actually had with my sister, and the movie Within is a real thing that terrified me and now i'm always worried there's a David in my attic 😔

edit: for everyone who's asking, the movie Within is on netflix (watch at your own risk) <3