❝In which the girl who feels too much gets close to the boy who wants to feel nothing.❞
━━If one would ask Regulus Black to give his opinion on Alera Abbot, he would unhesitatingly tell you that she was a walking hazard to society.
But in his defenc...
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-------------------> "WAIT, SO THE TWO OF YOU ARE, LIKE, CINNAMON'S PARENTS?"
"No, but yes," Regulus replied. "The two of us are basically Cinnamon's guardians until the next weekend, where we'll drop him off with his actual family."
"And where is his actual family?" Walden asked with fascination intertwined in his voice and a savage glint in his eyes.
Iola nodded and said, "Exactly, I'm curious about that as well. Where on terra did you run off to with Alera, who I assumed was someone you didn't like, to stumble upon a bowtruckle named after a spice? Which place should I avoid visiting?"
"The greenhouses," said Regulus with ease, proceeding to explain, "Earlier today when I was preparing for the Quidditch trials coming up, I spotted Alera heading for the greenhouses early that morning. I followed her—"
"Thinking she was going to pick poisonous leaves and mix them into your tea?" Walden jokingly inputted.
"—thinking she was going to pick poisonous leaves and mix it into my tea," Regulus confirmed gauntly, before continuing, "but then, she approached a log and started making odd baby noises at it, and that was when I noticed the bowtruckles. I told her to leave. Those greenhouses were not to be entered without Professor Sprout's presence, after all, and as Head Boy, it was my duty. She babbled fun facts about bowtruckles and during that time, perhaps Cinnamon had climbed onto me. I waited for her to exit before I did, and you two know the rest."
"Still doesn't explain how you knew the bowtruckle's name was Cinnamon though," Iola pointed out, squinting her eyes.
"Of course I knew that Cinnamon was named Cinnamon," replied Regulus. "I named him on the spot at this very Common Room."
"Your naming skills aren't the greatest then," commented Iola.
"I think it's a fitting name," chimed Walden.
"No one asked you," said Iola.
"No one asked for your opinion either," countered Walden, and they descended into another argument.
Meanwhile, Regulus slipped into the dorm room he shared with Walden and carefully transported Cinnamon from his shoulders to his desk. "Don't worry," Regulus told the bowtruckle. "I'm sure Cinnamon is a perfectly respectable name in the bowtruckle community, don't listen to whatever Iola says. She's just bitter because she doesn't like Cinnamon—the spice you're named after. And you know what? If somebody, anybody, teases you about your name again, scratch out their eyeballs. Given how many times and the various ways with which Alera has tried to murder me, I've become an expert of sorts in that art. I'll kill them. I'll burn them alive. We'll scatter their ashes on their loved ones. Nobody will ever tease you again. Everyone will—"
Regulus paused when he heard the faintest sounds of snoring.
He looked down.
Cinnamon was asleep on Regulus' leather-bound potions textbook, hugging himself and all curled up cosy.
