Ink in Paper - Regulus Black

Chapter Three

"Sirius Black is so handsome!" Amanda sighed dreamingly across from Luna at the feast table. She was looking over Luna's shoulder, staring at the boy on the other table, laughing with his friends. "You're so lucky, Luna."

Luna looked up from her plate, taken aback and raising her eyebrows.

"What do you mean? I barely talk to him," she quickly said.

Pandora sipped her juice in silence, eyes stuck on the Slytherin table, where her brother was trying to talk to her from across the room. She couldn't understand him, but she didn't look away from him, narrowing her eyes in concentration.

"I mean that he's such good friends with your brother that he probably knows your name," Amanda said.

"Oh. Yes, I suppose he does," Luna mumbled.

Even in bed, Sirius didn't say her name very often, too lost in his own pleasure. At the first few times they were together, she got upset about it, but after a while, she just tried to take it as a compliment. Not that it worked, but she did try.

"Didn't he help you with your bags today at the train station?" Pandora said, finally looking away from Evan and towards Luna.

Amanda's eyes looked away from Sirius, also looking at Luna now.

Luna looked around the table discreetly, trying to see if anyone else had heard Pandora, but apparently the only person that was interested in their conversation was Rosalie, who was sitting beside Amanda. Thankfully, Marta was too busy with her boyfriend, Morris Koch, to care.

"Well, his mum – I mean, Potter's mum – asked him to help me. You see, my brother had his own bag while the others had already put theirs in the luggage session," Luna smoothly lied. "Sirius just was polite."

Amanda's eyes narrowed, suspicious.

"I mean, it makes sense," Rosalie said. "Still, lucky you."

Luna forced a smile and looked down at her plate again, all her hunger disappearing. She pushed the gravy and the chicken to the side, sticking to the salad in her plate.

People so easily believed that Sirius was just helping her because to think he would ever do anything more to her would be completely unbelievable. She wasn't pretty enough for Sirius, especially when compared with the other girls that he had gone out with in public. Luna was, for everybody else (and maybe to Sirius himself) just Remus' sister. Much like it was at home with their mother, Luna felt like her whole being was being swallowed by Remus' being and who he was (and, sometimes, what he was).

"Luna," Rosalie called once more, making her stop poking the lettuce and tomato in her plate. "If I may ask you a question..."

"Go on," she said, mood already spoiled.

"Is your brother single?" Rosalie asked.

Luna shrugged.

"I guess," she said.

"You don't know?" Amanda asked, surprised.

"I never asked," she admitted.

Pandora glanced at her brother across the room again.

"Do you think my brother is single?" Pandora wondered, out loud.

Luna looked at Evan Rosier as well. He was a handsome man, or he would be if he wasn't always so angry – frowning and glaring at everybody and anything. He had darker blond hair than Pandora almost platinum-coloured hair and his eyes were brown, not blue like Pandora's. Still, they really looked alike, both lanky and just not getting out of the physically awkward phase of adolescence.