Ink in Paper - Regulus Black

Chapter Fifteen

I got my last test tonight, so have this chapter as a premeditated celebration. By the way, the test I had last Monday left me with a maximum grade: my final grade for the bimester is 10! I'm crazy happy, you have no idea. I never felt so smart before.

Leave comments through this chapter. I think you'll like it, I focused of a lot on the Marauders this time with a little moment between Luna and Regulus.

Peter Pettigrew, once upon a time, had taken a fancy for Luna Lupin in third year, when the girl was nothing but a second year, interested in nothing more than her grades and looking at Sirius when he wasn't looking at her. He didn't need to be rejected to know that Luna didn't like him back, so all that he did was watch her from a distance since then until the "fancy" passed – which had been no more than a couple of weeks before the very conversation he was part of.

"Well, you don't know Regulus like I do," Sirius was complaining.

"You said that he's probably just having fun with her, though. You were the one that said that he couldn't date or marry her," Remus said.

"Well, you didn't date nor married Joey Ambrosia," James said from his seat in the Common Room chairs. He messed with his hair while rolling his eyes. "Don't be a hypocrite, Moony. She's grown enough to know who she goes out with. Besides, we don't even know if they are indeed going out, they might just be studying."

"You were there! You saw them!" Remus complained.

"It looked like harmless flirting," Peter dismissed, shaking his head.

Sirius frowned.

"Look, I don't like the idea of them together either, but Regulus won't do anything too bad," Sirius said, voice soft, but firm. "The poor boy is terrified of talking to any girl that not our cousins and, maybe, Pandora Rosier."

"He didn't look terrified yesterday," Remus said.

"Well, then perhaps he really likes Luna. What's the problem in it?" James said. "Moony, come on, they were being so well-behaved."

Moony crossed his arms, lips pressed together so tightly in dismay that they were nothing but lines.

"Luna isn't as naïve as you think her to be, Remus. She can take care of herself," Sirius said.

"You didn't see the state the last one left her, Pads," Remus said.

Sirius looked away, staring at the fire in silence, locking his jaw in place to keep whatever he wanted to say inside.

The boys often underestimated Peter's ability to recognise signals in their body language and the ability he had to keep their secrets under lock and key. Peter was known for knowing a lot and saying very little; James sometimes jokes that it was the very reason he had taken the form of a rat as an Animagus, eating away holes in the stories people told and squeezing through the smallest of places to get where he wanted. He didn't understand how they could joke around about that and then pretend they weren't keeping secrets from him – one look at Sirius and someone could see that he knew something (or did something) that Remus had no idea about, but James did, that was why he was always glaring and signalling in silence to him.

"Whatever it happened with her last boyfriend, at least we know that it can't get worse," Peter said as supportive as he could, but that made Sirius' tense up even more. "For all we know, Regulus is just flirting. He didn't even kiss her in the library, and they didn't notice us there."