life is boring in the middle of march.
Regulus Black hates loud people. People who laugh loudly, scream in the corridors, everything they do is loud .
Regulus likes his quiet. He likes knowing that he can hear everything. He can hear people's footsteps, the swoosh of a robe, and the slamming of a door. He likes knowing when something is coming, something he can prepare himself for.
However, when people are exceptionally skilled in the art of silence, Regulus gets suspicious. It means they have practice. It means they're hiding something. He would know, being as talented as he is at moving and breathing so quietly he could go completely unnoticed in almost any situation. It was truly a gift from God that Regulus did not have access to an Invisibility Cloak.
At the surface level, James Potter is a loud person. He yells at his friends in the corridors, he laughs obnoxiously, and Regulus doesn't think he has a quiet bone in his body. Potter's friends feed off of his energy, and they have a habit of constantly disturbing Regulus' peace.
Even when he's alone, Potter is always doing something to make sound. Spending five years at a school with him where he frequents the library late at night proves this to Regulus.
Regulus would define himself as observant. Almost nothing goes unnoticed by him; he is prepared for any situation at any given time.
However, Regulus is not prepared for James Potter.
In all five of Regulus' years at Hogwarts, he had seldom spoken to Potter. The longest he had ever spoken to Potter was on the train to Hogwarts before his first year.
Sirius had dragged Regulus to go meet his friends, and Regulus sat shyly next to his brother.
September 1st, 1972
"Lads," Sirius says, pulling the carriage door open with his free hand, his other hand dragging Regulus by the arm. "Meet my little brother,"
The carriage door shuts behind Regulus, and Sirius drags Regulus in front of him and puts his hands on Regulus' shoulders. All three of the boys looked up at him.
On the left side of the carriage, there sat two boys. The one closest to Regulus was slightly plump and pale, his face dotted with freckles, a short head of sandy blond hair on his head. He had baby blue eyes that looked kind. Sat beside him was a darker-skinned boy, slightly more filled out than Sirius. He had curly brown hair and brown eyes. He was wearing glasses. To the right of Regulus, sat a lanky boy with light brown hair and scars on his face. He had a book open on his lap.
"His name is Regulus," Sirius continues almost immediately. Boy Number Two grins at him.
"Hiya Regulus, I'm James, James Potter," he says excitedly, and Regulus is far too anxious to respond. Boy Number One gives him a kind smile.
"I'm Peter Pettigrew," he says. Regulus' favourite out of the three, Boy Number Three, speaks last.
"Remus Lupin. 'S nice to meet you," He smiles at Regulus, and Regulus nervously smiles back.
Sirius pulls him up to the right side of the carriage and sits down next to Lupin. Regulus sits closest to the window.
"Reg, I will cut your fucking ear off if you don't get out of bed," Barty threatened, ripping open the curtains around Regulus' bed.
Regulus turns over and shoves his head into the pillow, groaning. "Fuck, Barty, that's bright," he squeezes his eyes shut.
"It's seven o'clock. Get up," Evan yells from the other side of the room.
"Seven o'clock? What the fuck?" Regulus grumbles, rolling back over and forcing himself out of bed. "You could've woken me up sooner, arsehole,"
"I tried. Multiple times," Barty retorted, watching in amusement as Regulus rushed to get ready. "D'ya stay up late or somethin'?"
"Lost track of time at the Astronomy Tower again," Regulus admitted, anxiously running his hand through his hair.
"Of course you did," Barty snickered.
Regulus holds a middle finger behind his back in the vague area where Barty's voice originates, and Barty snorts. “Love ya too,”
“I’ll castrate you.” Regulus throws out, a threat that Barty is far too used to.
“You would not,” Barty counters, “you don’t have the balls to,”
“Barty, maybe let’s not challenge Reg on his threats of violence?” Evan suggests. “Also, can you two please not start this at seven in the morning?”
“This is my only source of entertainment,” Regulus says, bluntly, and Evan sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose with his pointer finger and his thumb.
“You must live a very boring life, then,” Barty comments, and Regulus whips his head around to glare at him.
Regulus usually wakes up thirty minutes before Barty and is out of the dorm room before he even wakes up, so it is very unusual for him to see Barty until breakfast. By breakfast, most of Regulus’ morning attitude is gone, and he can lead an actual conversation (albeit stupid) with Barty.
Regulus tightens his tie around his throat, puts on his jumper, and then puts on his coat. He grabs his wand from where he had put it on his bedside table. “Piss off,”
Evan sees that Regulus is done getting ready and walks around Barty to get closer to the door, which is conveniently right next to Regulus’ bed. “We’re gonna miss breakfast if you two keep fucking around,”
“That is entirely Barty,” Regulus claims, “I’m ready already,”
“And Barty has been ready for twenty minutes, Reg,” Evan responds, and Regulus rolls his eyes.
Evan and Barty start chattering about something random while they walk out of the dorm and through the common room, and it’s only when they get out into the hallway that Regulus actually zones into the conversation—partially because Barty started repeating his name to get him to pay attention.
“Regulus Arcturus Black,” Barty sounds exasperated, and Regulus is guessing Barty has been trying to get his attention for a few minutes now and then decided to resort to the full name.
Regulus turns his head to look at Barty, “Yes?” He tilts his head, and Barty looks like he wants to rip it off.
“Did you pay attention to any of that?” Barty asks.
Regulus shakes his head. “Nope,”
Barty groans, and Regulus chuckles. “We were planning our next Hogsmeade visit and Barty was wondering if you were going to be joining us or locking yourself in the library,” Evan explained.
“Depends,” Regulus replies, “though, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to go to Hogsmeade.”
Barty cheers, and both Regulus and Evan shoot him death stares.
A good portion of the school is afraid of Regulus, especially the younger years. Walking through the hallways makes it prominent, he’s pretty sure he once saw a frightened third-year Hufflepuff hide behind a pillar so he wouldn’t see her. Regulus doesn’t entirely mind it, though, because, for him, it means that nobody will bother him. The only people who do are first-years who haven’t heard his reputation (mostly because he’s a Prefect, and he’s never intentionally rude to them like he is older kids), his friends, and idiots.
The doors of the Great Hall are arguably too big, Regulus is very sure he could open it and knock someone out without even realising it. When the too-big doors open, his eyes go immediately to Slytherin’s table, where he sees Dorcas and Pandora already waiting for them (it’s funny—neither of them are in Slytherin).
Pandora spots the three of them instantly, waving and smiling. Dorcas, of course, follows where Pandora is looking and fake vomits, to which Pandora whacks her with a newspaper. Regulus snorts and sits down next to Pandora. Barty sits next to Regulus, and Evan sits next to Dorcas.
“You three took longer than usual,” Dorcas quirks an eyebrow.
Barty sighs dramatically, looking at Regulus very pointedly, “Someone didn’t wake up until seven o’clock,”
“You could’ve tried harder to wake me up,” Regulus states bluntly.
Both Evan and Barty speak in unison, “We tried five times!”
Regulus has zero comeback to that, sadly, “Fair enough.”
“Late night?” Dorcas assumes.
“See, that’s what I said, and turns out he was up sulking in the Astronomy Tower again,” Barty explains.
Regulus looks almost offended, his mouth opening a bit in confusion. He turns his head to look at Barty. “I do not sulk up there,”
“I think you do, actually,” Barty counters. “There is literally nothing else to do up there except sulk,”
“It’s the Astronomy Tower. There are telescopes,” Regulus explains, annoyed.
Barty grabs a piece of toast for his plate. “And it was cloudy last night.”
“Touché,” Regulus admits, grabbing some toast for his plate and buttering it.
Dorcas turns to Evan, looking at Barty and Regulus. “Y’know, usually breakfast is a lot calmer than this,”
“I have a feeling Reg has some morning attitude that we just never see because he’s awake before us,” Evan agrees, now also looking at Barty and Regulus. “Barty is also like a fish taking the bait every time Reg insults him, so that’s not helping,”
Dorcas hums. “I see that.”
“You two are talking about us like we aren’t literally right here,” Regulus says, cutting off a piece of his toast and eating it.
“And you two are gits,” Evan replies, and Pandora ducks her head down as she starts laughing.
“He’s got us there,” Barty admits, and Regulus nods.
“He does, doesn’t he?” Regulus sighs.
When Regulus was growing up, he learned from his parents and every witch and wizard around him how to not treat a house elf. Every privileged person he interacted with would severely mistreat their house elves—starving them, yelling at them, just generally not being kind to them. Regulus always took special care with house elves as a result. Not only were all of his house elves much happier to do what he asked, but they would often go above and beyond out of the kindness of their hearts, and not out of the fear in their guts.
As a result of his kind behaviour towards these house elves, he had easily won over the Hogwarts kitchen house elves. They were willing to help him anyway, but especially so because he was so respectful to them. If Regulus was busy studying and accidentally missed dinner, he could just go into the kitchen and get dinner from the house elves; he also preferred this a lot more than regular Hogwarts dinner.
Regular Hogwarts dinner in the Great Hall was the annoying kind of loud. The kind of loud that made Regulus want to rip his ears off of his head. He found the quiet chatter of the house elves much more bearable than the loud blabbering of hundreds of teenagers.
This particular evening, he’s found himself in the kitchen after spending too long doing his Transfiguration homework and missing dinner. He thinks if his friends didn’t know that Regulus had access to the kitchen, maybe they’d go and remind him to come to dinner. But, they also know that Regulus prefers the quiet of the kitchen compared to the loud atmosphere of the Great Hall.
The best part about having access to the kitchen, Regulus found, was that he could request whatever he pleased. So if he was craving something, all he had to do was ask the house elves and they could make that specific thing for him. He often tended to try new foods in the privacy of the kitchen where there were no other students around (Which happened a lot; Regulus was a considerably picky eater at times. Though, after years of Walburga, he’d gotten pretty good at hiding it when he didn’t like something).
Regulus just wants mashed potatoes and sausage this evening, which takes the house elves a bit to prepare, but when he gets it, it’s delicious. House elves are better cooks than wizards most of the time. Regulus wonders often how Dumbledore treats the house elves—because he must treat them decently well if they all seem so happy to work for him.
The walk from the kitchen to the dungeons is windy and annoying, but Regulus manages, and when he walks into the common room, his friends are all on one of the sofas (well, Barty and Evan are, Dorcas and Pandora are on the floor). Regulus thinks Pandora and Dorcas spend more time in the Slytherin common room than their own.
Regulus sits himself down on the sofa next to Evan, and he’s pretty sure normal hellos are out of the window by now. Barty whips his head around toward Regulus. “Is Marlene McKinnon hot?”
Now, for some additional context here, Regulus’ friends have a habit of basically playing Smash or Pass with random people from school, and Regulus is guessing this one was Dorcas’ idea, given she knew McKinnon.
“I mean, she’s alright,” Regulus shrugs. “Not really my type, but I can see why guys like her,” Pandora gives him a look, but he ignores it.
Regulus notices that his friends have a habit of doing this Smash or Pass thing with Quidditch players more often than not. McKinnon is a year older than Regulus and plays as a Beater for Gryffindor. During games, she’s basically the bane of Regulus’ existence during a Gryffindor vs. Slytherin game.
“Anyways, I’m guessing you got dinner in the kitchen again?” Evan asks Regulus, and Regulus nods.
“Yeah. I spent too long in the library doing that Transfiguration essay,” Regulus runs his hand through his hair. “What was for dinner tonight?”
“The usual white people food,” Evan states, and Regulus snorts.
Regulus inquires, “So I didn’t miss much, then?”
“Other than Barty being a fucking dumbass, no,” Evan says and starts laughing when Barty swats him on the arm.