Is It Over Now?

Chapter Four

The end of the school day couldn't come soon enough though as Remus separated himself from Mary and Marlene after Care of Magical Creatures with a lie spilling too easily from the boy's lips.

Too trustingly believed as well.

The library was quiet when the teen entered, a stillness laying thickly over it that only came from a strong bout of disuse such as the summer holidays. Madam Pince glared healthily as the boy as the Gryffindor walked past her and a NEWTs student or two, forcefully ignoring the compulsion to flip the witch off. It wouldn't have done him any good to do so, but that didn't mean that the thought hadn't crossed the teen's mind almost every time that he'd seen the ancient witch.

A smile crept across the lion's lips, instantly dispelling his previous mood as Remus saw an achingly familiar stream of blond hair among the old shelves and a mop of black pouring over a book or three at one of the tables not far from the other.

"Took you long enough," Regulus muttered as he turned the page of his book, but there was no bite in the younger boy's words, only the barest hint of relief. As if he had feared that Remus wouldn't have come at all.

"Care," the older boy said as he sat down across from the snake, their feet knocking loosely into one another's under the table from each of their long legs. Remus couldn't wait for the day that the elder Black brother realized that Regulus had outgrown him, though he supposed that it might never come as the pair were hardly ever in the same room as one another outside of meal times. Rarer still to be so close to one another to notice such things.

Regulus only hummed in understanding, but Remus didn't mind. He liked that so many things could be said through so few - words spilling from silent glances and gestures that almost no one else could read.

It felt a bit like a magic all of its own.

Parchment and books were scattered across the table hazardously, the papers filled with Pandora's familiar messy scrawl. Sometimes Remus found himself wondering how he could have ever found Ravenclaws to be of one of the neater houses when this was a product of only one of them - let alone a whole house .

A new book joined the pile, its pages already opened to the needed one by its handler.

"Evening Dora," Remus greeted to the fiercely imaginative girl. The blonde only waved half heartedly at the oldest of the two boys as she quickly scribbled another thing down before discarding the newest book as obsolete.

" Remus ," the girl said with more than a hint of surprise as she lifted her head once more, ink covering her pale finger and somehow smudged onto one of her cheeks. It wasn't an uncommon sight in the days that the Ravenclaw girl became invested in projects heavily.

"Evening Dora," the Gryffindor boy said once more, no heat or animosity in the eldest's voice as he spoke.

"How long had he been here?" The blond asked the younger Black brother, not bothering to whisper as they all knew what the question would be.

"A good minute," Regulus answered in a voice that sounded utterly devoid of anything at all, but the other two could see the slightest gleam in the boy's gray eyes.

Pandora at least had the decency to look relieved that it was such a short time this time, before waving the matter off entirely. "Doesn't matter. I think that I found some spells that we could combine with..."

And just like that, the odd trio spent the next two hours or so working through spells and books, studying Ancient Runes and potential potions to try that could be modified to suit their needs. History books became their friends as the trio studied past delvings into such a subject as theirs as other students came and went.