starlight | forever young

The Yule Ball

Regulus Black's grey eyes stared deep into his own.

Regulus stood before the mirror in the dormitory, resolutely doing up the silver buttons of his dress robes, pushing them through eyelets stitched into the  fabric. Beneath the loose fit robe he wore black trousers, a white oxford with belled sleeves, and a form fitted green silk vest, which shimmered with pin stripes in a slightly darker shade of green - just enough to add a bit of texture to the appearance of the cloth. He was working the cufflinks that held the belled wrists in place.

Regulus's fingers slipped around his neck, checking the black tie he wore was properly under the collar of his shirt, his fingers slipping over the gold chain around his neck, the pendant it held carefully slipped beneath his oxford shirt so that it pressed against his heart.

You are so brave.

He didn't feel very brave at the moment, that was for sure.

He'd never felt so nervous and excited - simultaneously, no less - than he did at that very moment. He wondered what one might call this sort of feeling? Nervited? Excitous? In French, the feeling might be called frissons.

He drew a deep breath and it came out shaking and he distracted the anxiousness building in him by taking a small amount of Sleekeasy from the jar, running his fingers through his hair. Just enough to give  a bit of control, a bit of a shine,  but not enough to slick it back.

He stared into his grey eyes again. He supposed it was a gift - a mercy of the fates - that his face was well able to mask nervous energy even as it coursed through his cells and set his skin to squirming. The only indication betraying his true anxiousness was in the way his nostrils flared. It was his one tell. He drew a deep breath and kept his chin level, nose slightly upturned...

Regulus turned to he desk, where he'd laid his wand, and now tucked it into the small wand pocket stitched into the seam of his trousers.

One last glance at the mirror and Regulus drew a deep breath, then turned quickly to the doorway. If he stood there brooding over his look even a moment longer he'd never end up leaving the dormitory. At some point, a bloke had to call it quits with the preening and prodding and hope for the best.

Regulus was careful to slip out of the Slytherin common room undetected. Barty Crouch Jr. was sitting on the couch, but luckily he was so engrossed in a book called Seduced by the Dark Arts: The History and Origins of Dark Magic & Their Most Powerful Wielders, which he'd nicked from the Restricted Section of the Library earlier that evening, that he didn't even look up from the dusty old thing to notice Regulus as he ducked through the door.

The corridors of Hogwarts were abuzz, even down in the dungeons. People walked past him, dressed to the nines, and chattering lowly. Regulus felt a bit like he was swimming upstream as he made his way through past the kitchens, past the painting of the opal dragon, until he was outside the round door of the Hufflepuff common room.

He was shuffled to one side and leaned against the wall beside a statue of a plump witch with a wide, welcoming smile, holding a planter which had been filled with a plant that had a bunch of long streaming tendrils that touched the floor. The bottom of the plant's tendrils looked like baby versions of the plant itself, and wriggled about like a bunch of puppies on leashes. Regulus stared down at it and inched out of reach of the excitable growths. Regulus kept glancing down at the plant uneasily as the little sprouts tugged at end of the tendrils, trying to reach him, their leaves straining like outstretched arms. He was so busy focusing on the attack-plant that he almost didn't see when Maryrose Jenkins came through the door, but the dreamy colours of her hair and dress caught his eye and then he did a double-take and stared, forgetting all about the funny plant.