Eye of the Serpent | HP MARAUDER ERA [2]

Chapter Fourteen

Whenever we had a holiday or a long break from school and Regulus got to spend a significant amount of time with his family, I had always seen a difference in him. I had noticed it right after last Christmas, when he had seemed so confused and guilty about liking me after the holidays, just before he had kissed me for the first time. If he spent too much time with his parents, he seemed to return thinking all sorts of horrible things about the importance of blood purity and how disgusting Muggle-borns were... or, at least, being puzzled about what he ought to think.

Now, however, it wasn't any of that that was worrying me. We had gotten past the fact that I wasn't a pure-blood long ago. He seemed just as sure of his feelings for me as he had at the end of last year... but there was something else that had changed about him. The fire that his eyes had held before seemed to have gone out. He was as handsome as ever, but in a distant, untouchable sort of way. His face, which had broken out in a grin for a moment upon setting eyes on me, had fallen. It was like there was an invisible barrier between us and for a split second I thought I had lost sight of the Regulus Black I knew.

"Reg," I whispered, "what...?"

He grabbed both of my hands as if he knew I would ask him why he looked so sad and was attempting to dodge the question.

"What's wrong?" I asked anyway.

He held my gaze for a moment.

"Are you going to break up with me or something?" I asked bluntly, wincing as I said it.

"What? No!" he said quickly, his eyes widening. He shook his head frantically. "No, of course not, I... Why would you think that, love?"

I bit my lip, relief washing over me. "You look like something's wrong," I said. "There is something bothering you... I know there is."

Regulus slumped to the floor and I sat next to him. He laid down on his back, his arm cushioning his head, staring up at the ceiling that mimicked the night sky. I folded my legs underneath me and watched him, waiting for him to tell me what was troubling him.

I watched his eyebrows knit together, a crease appearing between them. His face was set and tense.

"Is this about Sirius?" I blurted out immediately, regretting it as soon as the words escaped my mouth. I couldn't help it, though, because I really needed to know what was wrong.

Regulus tore his eyes away from the ceiling to look up at me. I couldn't tell what he was thinking. He bit his lip, hesitating, then sighed deeply.

"Yeah," he admitted. "Yeah, it is."

I didn't say anything more and waited for him to elaborate.

"He left me," said Regulus. His voice sounded broken as he uttered the words almost painfully. Then he continued to speak, the words pouring from his mouth fluently, like he had been hoping to finally say them out loud. "I thought that he loved me, even a little bit... he's my broth—well, I suppose he was my brother... I thought that there was some part of him that could still care about me.

"We bickered all the time, but I had never actually taken any of that seriously. Sometimes, I'd wonder if he truly did hate me... Then I'd remember him reading to me when we were younger, and the liveliness in his eyes back then, and I'd recall the times after Mother had tortured him when I would go to see him, just to make sure he was all right, not speaking, just helping him up... I would remember the look in his eyes when, after I'd gotten placed in Slytherin, some other Gryffindor had made a snide comment... how he just looked like he wanted to protect me from everything, even though he himself was disappointed I hadn't ended up in the same house as him... I would be reminded of all of that, and I would think that even if he wouldn't step in front of the Killing Curse for me, he might've still cared about me, right?"