Chapter 1
Barty sighed as he fell out of his bed and onto the cold, hard floor of his dorm. He rolled his eyes at Regulus, who had pushed him off. “C’mon, we can’t lose to gryffindor, Barty! We gotta beat those motherf*ckers!” Regulus told Barty with an enthusiasm unnatural to humankind at 4:30 in the morning. This just confirmed the fact that his friend was not entirely sane.. His will to beat Gryffindor’s ass most likely came from James, who was probably teasing him about quidditch again. Because that was the only thing the couple would fight over, quidditch. It was honestly disgusting how nice they were to each other.
Barty got off the floor and put on his quidditch jersey, a pair of black dickies, and grabbed his Nimbus 1000 from where it was resting next to his headboard. He laced up his platformed black doc martens and ran out of the portrait hole after the slytherin quidditch captain, his best friend (aside from maybe Evan). Regulus openly smirked at his shoes but didn’t say anything.
Shivering, Barty stepped inside from the pelting sleet 4 hours later. James had definitely taunted Reggie about quidditch because the last time they had 4 hours of practice was when gryfindor won the quidditch cup, and Regulus hadn’t come out of their dorm to shower or eat, he didn’t even want to pull a prank on the gryffindors! He had just laid there, sometimes it just looked like he was taking a dna-changing nap, and sometimes Barty would come into their dorm and Reggie would be in a curled-up like he was having a panic attack, his knees to his chest & arms wrapped around his knees. He stayed that way for 3 days until Slughorn, their head of house, had come to see why Regulus hadn’t gone to any of his classes that day, he had even skipped care of magical creatures, his favorite class. When Professor Sluggy had figured out what was up he made Regulus the captain of the quidditch team & sent Evan and Barty to take Regulus to the hospital wing for a pepper-up potion and some food from the kitchens. They had gone to the hospital wing and got Reggie the potion & got him some fresh baked chocolate chip cookies (that were still warm and gooey) & french onion soup, but with hot, crispy fries instead of bread. The food he ate less willingly, Madam Pomphrey had insisted that the potion must be taken with food.
The unholy trinity had always been there for each other when they needed it, they were always there but this time Reggie had gone to a place neither of them knew how to get him out. He made drowning jokes & unforgivable curses jokes, but he wasn’t sirius about it, was he? Barty snapped back to reality as Filch’s foot steps came walking down the hall.