Black Stag

Football Lessons

AN: Oh my god hello, so it's been decades since I last posted but I'm going to try and post at least 3 chapters within the next few days-- and then some more over the next week as I have half-term and am simply choosing not to revise for my GCSEs... I was precarious to post because I was unsure if anybody would even continue reading, but I'll just post for the sake of myself <333 thanks if u do read :)

They'd drained tepid glasses of water, rheumy-eyed and groggy, with sleep-dusted faces. Regulus lacked the generosity to be pleasant company, so he was relieved when Remus appeared equally uninterested in conversing. He tried to find out whether Remus remembered how James and Regulus ended up in that compromising sleeping position, but Remus claimed he was just as drunk as James and Regulus and couldn't recall what hour he fell asleep, let alone what anybody else was doing.

He had said, though, that at one point at least ten people participated in an exceptionally raucous game of football in the confines of the common room, which was more or less just a jumble of gangly limbs attempting— and failing— to kick the football around with each other, which would explain the spread of a purple bruise flogging on Regulus' ankle.

"Why don't you hate me as much as the others do?" Regulus asked over the top of his glass.

"Eh, not all of them hate you." Remus shrugged, "Lily likes you!"

"Right, James' ex." Regulus nodded, assigning a face to the name.

Remus crossed his arms over one another and his eyes thinned into nothing but slits. "How'd you know that?"

"Know what?" Regulus asked, and blinked half a dozen times in quick succession as the harsh glare of the sun started to feed in through the curtains.

"That those two were a thing. Not even Sirius knew they'd been a thing, and I only knew when Lily told me about it a month after they broke up."

Regulus had assumed it was general knowledge, what with the number of times their faces had bloomed whenever they'd walked past each other in the corridor, or when they'd allowed their fingertips to brush momentarily in public, causing small, delicate grins to spread across their features, "I like observing people." he shrugged.

It was true. He'd enjoyed reading other people's stories because he'd never had the energy to write his own, so at least this way he'd get some elements of a fairy-tale in his life, even if it was someone else's book.

He'd thought that if his life were a book, it would be a tragedy in which the words of the book betrayed him. One problem with that would be that it would require him to possess just one fatal flaw, yet he'd found that he had countless.

Remus had blinked as if Regulus had tossed him across the room. His eyes took time to focus back on Regulus' face, searching, as though he wasn't convinced by Regulus' reply. "Look, I told James this: I don't like you. You're a fucking funnel at times, but I just think being unnecessarily rude to you isn't exactly going to benefit you or Sirius. Hurts Sirius more than it helps him. Sirius doesn't want to hate you, but with you and his best mate constantly bickering and being all chopsy, it's going to make it a whole lot fucking harder for him to stop hating you." Remus was sucking a cigarette with the window ajar but doing little to excavate the smoke.

"Calling me a funnel doesn't sound like you're not trying to be unnecessarily rude." Regulus huffed.

"Offering you a nice glass of water is though." Regulus now knew who was responsible for most of the butts of cigarettes littered outside the perimeter after Remus flicked his cigarette out the window. "James is just too loyal for his own good. Don't go blaming him for being a knob. His fatal flaw, if you will."