Don't Tell Anyone About This | Regulus Black

Chapter Three

Despite not particularly being a fan of her time at Hogwarts, Nera had to admit that the food was unbeatable. That, she would miss.

She was resting her head in her hands and looking down at the still-steaming omelet on the plate in front of her. That morning, the first morning back of the school year, Nera had woken up surprisingly early, which was why she found herself sat in the Great Hall at the very beginning of breakfast when it was still quiet and relatively empty.
Sitting at the end closest to the teachers, she cast her gaze down the table at all the other small groups of friends chattering away under hushed voices.

"Hey, it's Nerey, right?"
Nera lifted her head up and almost jumped out of her seat.

A very familiar boy had sat down across from her, and was leaning across the table so he was a lot closer than Nera had expected him to be.
"Nera." She corrected, "But, yes, sure. You can call me Nerey."

"I'm-"
"Edgar Bones." She finished, "I think everybody knows you."

The boy blushed slightly, his cheeks turning almost as red and his wildly curly hair. "Oh, I don't know about that." He rubbed the back of his neck and flashed a lopsided smile, "But I was wondering if I could ask a favour?"

Edgar Bones was one of the most popular people in the whole of Hogwarts. He was a Hufflepuff in the same year as her. But unlike Nera, Edgar was mostly found surrounded by an enormous group of friends all laughing obnoxiously loud about a bad joke or something.
Appearance wise, he was about as tall as she was - though you couldn't tell while they were sat down - but had a very long, pale face littered with freckles that danced across his skin with every word he spoke or facial expression pulled.

"Nera?" Edgar waved his hand in front of her face and asked, "Are you alright?"

She shook her head, focusing her concentration back on reality, "What? Yes, sorry."
"It's alright." He chuckled warmly, "You completely zoned out for a minute there."

"Um..." Nera tucked her hair behind both her ears, "What was it you wanted to ask?"
Edgar held a hand to his chest and cleared his throat before explaining, "Well, I mean, tell me if you want me to shut up... But, I know you've kind of been left out of things by... A lot of people. That's not right. I was just, I don't know, wondering if you'd like to hang out with me and a few friends sometime?"

"Why?" The word slipped past her lips before she could stop it.

"Why?" Edgar repeated, his voice cracking slightly, "Um... Well I suppose I can tell you. My mum got, erm... She's terminally ill. It's kind of made me realise some things. I thought when I came back to Hogwarts I'd be nice to everyone and help out as many people as I could and I realised I'd never bothered to get to know you. So here I am, trying."

Nera didn't quite know what to say. She could say she was sorry. But that wouldn't help. Whenever she told anyone about her own mother's death and people said sorry, it only irritated her. Perhaps there wasn't anything to say. No words could possibly fix that.

"Well that might be nice - to hang out sometime. I'd like that." She mumbled quietly, now not quite able to get any words past her lips.

"Great." Edgar then abruptly stood up, "I've, er, got to get going. We'll sort something out though, yeah?"
Before Nera could ever utter an 'okay' of confirmation, he'd left and was striding down past the tables and out of the Great Hall.

She turned back to her omelet, which was now nearly cold, and sighed. It was a nice gesture of the boy, out of the blue too, but Nera wasn't sure it was going to work out. She was never particularly comfortable in large groups of people - let alone the popular kind.

Then, a slam.

A stack of large books had been dropped onto the table, shaking her fork onto the stone floor. Nera looked up, half expecting Edgar Bones to be back and half expecting someone to have mistaken her for their friend.
Needless to say, she was wrong on both counts.

"What were you talking to Bones about?" Regulus Black asked her rather pointedly.

His hair was a lot shorter than usual and Nera didn't think it looked half as nice without so many curls. There were also deep set bags under his eyes, clearly from a lack of sleep. His skin was also a lot paler than normal, almost like he was about to fall ill.

"Are you ill?" She asked, pushing her glasses up her nose.
"What?" He frowned, sitting down at the table, "No. What were you doing with Edgar Bones?" He reiterated.

Nera shrugged slightly, "Nothing. Why? If you're here to make fun of me, just go, please."

Regulus scoffed, grabbing a piece of toast and dropping it onto the plate in front of him and then pouring himself a glass of water. "Are you mates with him now? He's not good news."
"You're not good news." She retorted.

Regulus chuckled again. "Good one."

"Is this something quidditch related? Because he's friends with the Hufflepuff captain? I really don't know anything about the Hufflepuff team, if that's what you're after." She explained as she reached down to pick the fork up off the floor.

"No." He replied bluntly, crunching on some toast.
Nera raised her eyebrows sceptically, "Then what are you doing here? Aren't you worried your little friends will see you with the muggle born Gryffindor?"

Regulus set the crust of the toast back down on his plate and took a sip of water. Then he responded, "You talk awful big, but if they turn up you'll just turn into a stammering mess again. That's beside the point." He set his cup down, "I'm telling you, as a one-off good deed, that you should stay away from Edgar Bones."

"Why?" She questioned.
"Merlin, just do it. Or don't. I don't care." He reached for another piece of toast and tore the crust off before starting to eat it.

Nera had absolutely no clue what to make of the interaction. As far as she was aware, Regulus never wanted to be seen anywhere near her. They would bicker quite a bit in lessons as they competed for the highest grades, and sometimes he and the other Slytherins would make snide remarks about her when they passed in the corridors. But that was it. They never properly conversed.
Even if either of them had wanted to talk, Regulus was normally surrounded by his gaggle of Slytherin trolls that couldn't hold a meaningful conversation even if they had a script in their hands.

"You're doing that thing again."

Nera looked up at Regulus, right into his light grey eyes.
He looked back at her.
"You were doing that thing where you zone out." He said.

"Oh." Was all she replied.

It wouldn't have really made a difference what her response was, because a few seconds later the other Slytherin boys arrived.

"Well, well, well..." Avery snickered, "Look who it is on this fine morning."
Mulciber clapped his hands together, "So nice of Black to get the mudblood to warm my seat for me."

Rosier, the shortest and scrawniest of the bunch, grimaced, "Mulciber, that's gross."

"Sit then." Regulus told them, "You guys standing around like that makes me nervous. Bloody sit down and stop lingering."

"Ha!" Avery shook his head and folded his arms, "I'm not sitting down whilst she's here."

Regulus looked across at Nera, and she looked back at him. She'd been expecting him to reply but clearly he was waiting to see what she was going to do.
Part of him wanted Nera to bite back - to shout at the boys. He wasn't quite sure why, perhaps just for the entertainment of it all. He would have liked to see it just once though.

But Nera didn't. She quickly got up from her seat and mumbled a quiet, "I've got to go," and hurried away from them.

There was something about the Slytherin boys that was just so intimidating to her. Perhaps it was not only because they could be so cruel, but also because Nera felt so utterly small and outnumbered in their presence. Even if she dared to stand up to them, she would be but an ant compared to their giant size.

"Three more years. I can do three more years." She muttered to herself as she began scaling the stairs up to the Charms classroom, "I've done four, I can do three more."