i. ask the compass

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Chapter I . . . ask the compass

She's wearing jeans

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She's wearing jeans.

Muggle jeans; loose ones that pool around her ankles and engulf the trainers she's got on to combat the cold. A jumper, too—green, the Slytherin kind—that scoops all the way up to her neck and piles together in a knitted collar.

She looks warm, albeit, but nevertheless she's wearing Muggle clothes. Even if Regulus were freezing his balls off, he wouldn't touch a pair of Muggle jeans with a ten-foot pole. The fact that she is even wearing them—and proudly—much less on Hogwarts grounds, is a disgrace. It's blasphemy to everything Regulus holds true. It's also quite possibly the most direct act of defiance to the Dark Lord that Regulus has ever seen; and this girl—this girl he has never spoken to before—is wading through the snow like she owns the world.

But the way she walks, the air surrounding her, the sun shining down from behind white clouds—everything about her is bright. For a moment, Regulus wonders why the snow around her isn't melting. She looks to be radiating warmth, the kind of aura that makes everything around her want to melt into a hug and beam at the rest of the world.

Happiness. Sunshine. Rainbows.

In other words, all things Regulus is most stereotypically Slytherin about: Hateful.

"Do you come down here often?" she asks Regulus when she is close enough to be heard—but something makes him think that wouldn't stop her, normally. Maybe it's the way he has heard her yell over the Great Hall, and how he knows the whole world will stop to listen.

He scowls, not quite grasping the point she is making nor caring enough to ask outright. A scowl is his default retort to most things. This girl is no exception, however much she seems to try to be.

"You're here early," she points out, undeterred by his silence, crossing her arms over her chest—over her green Muggle jumper—and looking unimpressed. Her breath leaves her lips in a white cloud. "I expect that means you come 'round here plenty a'time. Am I wrong, Regulus Black?"

Again, he scowls, and this time he turns his back on her. The aforementioned 'down here' the girl is vehement that Regulus frequents is the outskirts of the Forbidden Forest, where the open field of the abandoned groundskeeper's hut meets the ominous thickness of the woods behind Hogwarts. It's snowing, this late in November, so the forest isn't as looming and dark as it would be without the white powder illuminating it—but it is still the Forbidden Forest, and they are out here alone.

For the record, she's right. Regulus does come down here a lot, but he'll drink goblin piss before he admits to that. Plus, he doesn't come out here when it's snowing—it's bloody freezing. How anybody stomachs this weather is beyond him.

"You look cold," she says, like she can read his mind. He sees her, out of the corner of his eye, glance to the empty groundskeeper's hut. "Wonder if anyone's in? Maybe we could wait for Filch in—"

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