 Lovely | Captain Hurted | Ariana's Bane | Resident Antagonist | Unparalleled Delight
Regulus was as quiet as he invariably seemed to be upon joining the Slytherin table for the End-of-Term Feast. On a personal note only, the year had been quiet, and he could not help but attribute that to his half-brother's absence. Regulus did not get regular updates from home, in that regard and most others, other than via Des if the mood happened to strike, but he thought he might have found out somehow, if anything had happened. Certainly, it was nothing he had had to deal with personally, this time.
So that was something, but now Regulus had his usual misgivings about home. It wasn't that he did not want to be there, or with Papā, more that his Papā almost definitely didn't want him around anymore. Or maybe he did. He was a difficult man to read - though Regulus thought he might be the one who could read him better than anyone else could - and the longer Regulus was away at Hogwarts, the more distance seemed to grow between them on a fundamental level.
Perhaps this summer, though, something would be different. Regulus did have things he needed to tell his father, so perhaps that would be the catalyst. If not, he'd just have to find or orchestrate another catalyst.
He was brooding again, Regulus realised, in that way he sometimes had of frowning and staring darkly across the room. As soon as he became aware of it, he smoothed out his expression, fixed a neutral look of polite almost-interest on his face and took a quick look around.
Nothing much was happening, but Regulus noticed one of the first years at the Slytherin table had brought a book with them to the feast. Taking that as a sort of cue, he pulled a book of his own out of the deep pockets of his robes, and lost himself in reading that for a while. |