Don't Tell Anyone About This | Regulus Black

Chapter Five

Once again, Regulus found himself in an utterly foul mood. Of course, the source of his bitterness was very clearly rooted in what had unfolded several weeks earlier. Rooted in what everybody ignored and brushed under the carpet.
But Regulus couldn't do that anymore - pretend everything was fine. He was brimming with this anger. This displeasure at his whole life, it was overwhelming at times.

Everyone around him had picked up on it (they'd have to be blind and deaf not to notice) but nobody said anything.
At first Regulus thought he would get over it eventually - his older brother running away from home and abandoning him. But as time progressed, he was also beginning to realise that all of the people he'd been surrounded with his whole life just didn't care.

His entire family had fallen apart over the summer and nobody had bothered to ask if he was alright.

"Are you alright?"

Regulus lifted his gaze from his empty plate on the table, and slowly looked up at Nerezza Stark.
"I mean..." She stammered slightly and pushed her glasses up her nose, "Not that I care. I don't. Just, you look like you might cry and I have some spare tissues if you need them."

He sighed, simply looked at her for a moment, and then snarkily remarked, "Merlin, you're like my grandmother."

"Forget it then. Oh, and if you could forget to hand in your Charms essay that would really help me out, thanks." She responded.

"Forget to?"
Nera nodded, "I've just finished it and it is not good." she stated simply before departing from the boy and striding down and out of the Great Hall.

"Maybe I need to see a Healer..." Regulus mumbled to himself as he looked back down at his empty plate. Before he could continue to wallow in self pity, the double doors slammed open and obnoxious laughter burst through into the room.

With a sick feeling in the bottom of his stomach, Regulus watched as his older brother and his Gryffindor friends paraded into the Great Hall as if they owned the whole castle.
It was bad enough that Regulus could barely contain his mind from obsessing over his brother, but seeing Sirius all over the place was only making coping with things practically impossible.

Those days, that was all it took for Regulus to head back to bed for the day and abandon any idea of going to his lessons.

Nera, whilst sitting in her seat at the very back of the Potions classroom, stared intently at the one empty seat in the room. Whilst it was only the third week of term, Regulus had been missing more and more of his lessons. If it had been anyone else, Nera most likely wouldn't have noticed. But it was weird for her to leave a lesson without hearing a quip or snarky remark from the boy.

"Something wrong?"

Nera turned around and almost let out a shriek to see Edgar Bones had sat down beside her.
"You'd almost think I was a ghost." The red-haired boy chuckled.

She blinked and then, after a moment, asked under a hushed voice, "What are you doing here?"
"I'm in this class." He explained simply as he opened up his textbook and began flicking through it.
"No, I-" Nera shook her head, "I know that. But you don't sit here. You sit over there." She gestured to the other side of the classroom where most of the other popular students were sat, with one empty seat in the middle.

"Is this seat usually taken?" Edgar asked.
"No." She said.
"Then can I sit here?"
"Well, yes... I-I su-"

"Miss Stark? Mister Bones?" Professor Slughorn called out from the front of the classroom, "Is there something of urgent importance going on at your desk? Or can I continue with my lesson?"