S O R R Y
xxxiii||rain
"Maria!" James groans as he bangs on the door of her bedroom. It's been a week since their argument and James had — with much difficulty — agreed that he would try to make peace with Maria and be okay with her and Regulus' relationship. Maria and Regulus have been spending more time together in public, half the school now knows about Regulus Black and Maria Potter, it's what everyone seems to be gossiping about. Half of the reason is that they were tired of having to secretly meet on the astronomy tower every night, getting no sleep, and the other half was just to piss James off even more.
"Go away!" Maria yells, flicking through her astronomy book and scribbling down the notes. She hears her brother let out a loud, exasperated groan and hears him slide down the door to sit against it.
"Look, I—you don't need to answer just listen." James tries and Maria stays silent, pausing her homework and James sighs. "I don't care about you and Regulus, I just want you to be careful. Please, I can't bear it if something happens to you again, Mar."
"You promise to not be mad?" Maria says quietly, though loud enough for him to hear through the door and she hears scrambling as he gets up.
"Yes—yeah, absolutely. I can't say I won't do the whole, 'protective big brother thing' but—"
"But that's all, you won't treat him any different to how you'd treat him if he was a muggle-born Hufflepuff?" Maria negotiates and James ponders before nodding and realising she can't see him.
"Yeah." James sighs and Maria quickly opens the door and flings her arms around her brother's shoulders, hugging him tightly and burying her face in his shoulder. "I'm sorry for acting so bad, Mar."
"It's fine." Maria breathes, glad to be friends with her older brother once again.
"Oh, fuck me—you finally sorted?" Sirius groans as the three boys peek out from the corner they were behind and Maria narrows her eyes at them.
"Have you been there the whole conversation?"
"Well, since James starting banging on the door and we wanted to know what was happening." Peter shrugs, hugging Maria, since she wasn't talking to James, she had barely spoken to the three boys also.
"Well, it's good to see you." Remus says sarcastically and Maria rolls her chocolate eyes as embraces her tightly.
"Okay, coming through, move over—" Sirius says, wrapping his arms around Maria's shoulders making her groan into his chest as he almost squashed her. She finally pries herself from Sirius' grasp and the quintet stroll down the stairs into the Gryffindor common room.
"Listen to that bloody rain." Marlene whistles at the sound of the rain thundering into the roof of the castle and Maria sighs as she falls onto the scarlet armchair near the fireplace, Danielle sat with Dorcas and Alice as they gossip about things like Frank Longbottom and the fact that Dorcas kissed Marlene, twice. Lily is sat on the floor on a cushion, leaning on the coffee table to write down her revision for the seventh year's upcoming N.E.W.T's and James sits across from her, resting his chin on his hands that are on the table, just admiring her as she scribbled down her last minute notes. Peter sits with Marlene and they start to talk about the chocolate frog cards they still need and that Marlene would trade Peter her Newt Scamander for one of his Cornelius Agrippa. Sirius slouches on a beanbag near the fire and Remus sits on the sofa next to Maria's chair, flicking through some of his own revision.
"Moony, you know you'll have to teach me, James and Peter the whole term's work an hour before the exam, right?" Sirius says as he messed with the muggle vinyl player that's in the common room for when people are studying, trying to get it to work.
"Didn't expect anything less, Padfoot." Remus says nonchalantly, not bothering to look up from his book, and Sirius grins in success.
Maria sighs as she opens her muggle studies book to do homework, listing things that muggles use electricity for, occasionally calling out questions to Lily who answers with ease, having not only being the smartest girl at Hogwarts, but also living with muggles.
"I'm gonna go see Alyssa." Maria announces, standing up and James' eyebrows furrow.
"Alyssa? Alyssa who?"
"Alyssa Greengrass, of course, she can help with my care of magical creatures homework." Maria says, swinging her bag over her shoulder and strolling out of the room, making her way to the Slytherin common room and leaving the other Gryffindors in plain shock.
The brunette strolls through the Slytherin common room and up the boys staircase to where she knows the trio of Slytherins will be doing homework. Knocking on the door, it's answered by Stan who grins and opens it wider, revealing Alyssa on one of the spare two bed of the room and Regulus lay on his bed with a book blocking his face but he lays it on his chest and his tired grey eyes light up at the sight of the Potter girl.
"Oh my gosh! We were just talking about you—is everything okay? How are things with you and James?" Alyssa bombards Maria with questions as she slouches on Regulus' bed and he moves over so she can sit next to him, seeing that he's finally reading 'Pride and Prejudice' like she's been begging him to for ages.
"Yeah, it's fine." Maria shrugs as Regulus looks away from his book for a second to kiss Maria's jaw before going back to being engrossed in the pages of the story. Maria leans up to his ear, "I thought you didn't want to read it."
"Well, I wanted to make you happy." Regulus whispers back and Stan makes a gagging noise to Alyssa who rolls her eyes at the blonde boy. "Come on." Regulus closes the book and grabs Maria's hand, shrugging a grey hoodie over his t-shirt and pulling her out of the dorm room.
"Where are we going?" Maria asks as they walk hurriedly through the halls of Hogwarts and reach the courtyard where the it's pouring with rain and Maria skids to a stop before he pulls her out.
"Uh, I don't think so." Maria refuses and Regulus rolls his eyes at her.
"Just come on." Maria ponders before rolling her eyes and letting him pull her through the courtyard, her hair sticking to her forehead and their clothes drenched by the time they reach the lake and Regulus twirls her under his arm before bringing her closer to him, smiling and their faces inches apart.
Water drops from Maria's eyebrow onto her nose and Regulus smiles, admiring her and Maria brings her arms to his chest, letting the space between them lessen. Regulus tucks a piece of her dark hair behind her ear as rain splatters on and around them.
"See, it's not so bad." Regulus says over the sound of the rain hitting the ground.
"Tell me that when you don't sound like you're drowning." Maria mumbles against his lips before bringing her hand to his cheek and pulling his lips down to hers in an instant. Their bodies seem to rise in temperature as their lips move softly together, they seem to forget about the torrential rain around them until thunder rumbles loudly above them and they slowly pull apart, opening their eyes and momentarily looking up and seeing the sky flashing with lightening.
"We should go back." Regulus says, taking his hand from the back of her neck and into hers as they begin to run to the castle, narrowly missing a bolt of lightening that struck a few yards away from them, making Maria yelp in surprise and Regulus to laugh at her shock. "Come on, quick!" Regulus says to her when they turn a corner and see Filch, seeing as they're dripping water everywhere if he spotted them he would not be pleased and Regulus drags Maria into the closest door.
"You really like these, don't you Black?" Maria mumbles as their pressed against each other's damp bodies in the small space of the broom cupboard.
"Very funny." Regulus sighs, leaning against the wall, getting his breath back from running around.
Maria sighs and opens the door slightly, seeing Filch stood eating a sandwich against a wall and talking softly to Mrs Norris, making Maria groan silently and gently close the door again.
"Great, now we're stuck here." She folds her arms, leaning on the wall opposite where Regulus is leaning and Regulus smirks at her annoyance.
"We could make it more interesting." Regulus says and Maria raises an eyebrow at his suggestive tone, her eyes following his every move as he stands up from against his wall and places a hand on the back of her neck, making her look him in the grey eyes.
"And, what would that be?" Maria breathes, Regulus smiling mischievously. "Just so you're aware, I'm not the sort of girl who loses her virginity in a broom cupboard."
"You're one of a kind, Maria Potter."
"I know." Maria shrugs and Regulus rolls his eyes as their lips meet roughly, Regulus almost tripping over a bucket, making Maria chuckle quietly against his lips.
Her hands tug at his tousled, damp hair and he hisses quietly against her lips at the small bit of good pain, making Maria smile against his lips. His left hand grabs her hip, pulling her body closer to his and trails his lips down her neck, moving the grey jacket from her shoulder and sucking on the skin on her collarbone, Maria's head falling back on the stone wall.
It's like each touch is a new word on the pages of their story, a new word they've yet to explore, the words getting more confusing as they travel through the pages. Every kiss like a rush of all their emotions and feelings mixed into one simple or heated touch of their lips, a flood that's destroying them mercilessly, yet feels so good.
Their path is set in stone, not even a flood could destroy that.
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Hi! I'm so sorry for not updating yesterday, this chapter was rewritten like three times because I couldn't decide what to do with it.
I was going to make James take a while to give them approval, even though he hasn't fully yet, but he and the others won't be at school with them much longer anyway.
I hope you enjoyed, this was really just a filler chapter but the summer holidays will be interesting I promise!
~ Grace xx