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Rune was sitting in front of Evan and munching down on cereal as she narrowed her eyes at the plateful of doughnuts in front of her.
Damn those doughnuts and damn Regulus.
"Are you okay?" asked Evan, reaching for a doughnut but dropping his hand when he noticed her angry eyes flicker to his.
"I'm perfect."
"You don't look perfect."
"Neither do you but am I commenting on it?" she snapped.
He had done nothing wrong, and she knew it, but he was the person who was speaking to her, so he was the person who would suffer her wrath.
"Regulus fighting with you?"
She poked her cheek with her tongue and chose silence as she spooned up more cereal into her mouth.
"Will you bite my head off if I take a doughnut?" he asked, warily.
She pushed the plate closer to him. "Eat and see."
He lifted a doughnut from the plate but before he could take a bite from it, he rolled his eyes and dropped it. "I don't want it anymore. Feels like you cursed it."
"Good choice," she commented, mentally cursing all the doughnuts on all the plates at Hogwarts and everywhere in the world.
"He's coming," whispered Evan and Rune licked her lips as she braced herself.
She smelled him first and then she watched from the corner of her eye as he dropped down on the bench next to her.
"Good morning," greeted Regulus.
Evan glanced uneasily between Rune and Regulus and when several seconds passed without her reacting, he replied, "It's a morning but it's not good."
Rune kept her gaze on her bowl even as she could sense Regulus looking at her.
Moments of silence passed, and she expected Regulus to give up and leave but he instead knocked her leg with his and asked, "You okay?"
She turned to him. "Do you want to tell me anything?"
He looked at her in confusion. "About?"
She shrugged. "Anything. Anything at all."
"No," he answered plainly.
She nodded and stood up. "Okay. Morning to you too, Black."
As the frown etched between his eyebrows, she walked away.
Since she left breakfast early and had minutes to spare before lessons and no friends to spend them with, she went back to her room.
Her bedsheets were strewn haphazardly from the tossing and turning she'd done the night before.
Rune suddenly remembered something and bent down beside her bed as she shoved her hand underneath it and felt around until her hand hit the cool hardness of leather. She closed her fingers around the book and pulled out the journal she hadn't touched in months.
The journal was as familiar as ever from her years of writing in it, and yet the way she had easily detached herself from it gave it an odd sense of strangeness as she paged it open.
Ink from words that were written months before immediately caught her eyes.
Didn't mean to be an arsehole.
Sorry.
Rune doubted the person on the other side had sentiments to his journal as she had to hers, but since it couldn't hurt, she grabbed her quill and quickly jotted down.
It's fine.
The last thing she expected was for words to pop up on the page not even five minutes later.
Hello there.
Hi.
How have you been?
Fine. You?
Fine.
Did you end up getting a boyfriend then?
She moved her quill to the page and then pulled it away again as she battled her thoughts.
Regulus had said they were a thing.
But that was before.
No.
No?
No.
I see.
Do you have a girlfriend?
I thought I did.
What do you mean thought?
Just that I thought I did but I guess I'm wrong.
Sucks to be you then.
You have no idea how much.
The bell just rang by the way.
Rune was up and out of the door at once. She sprinted out of the common room and up the stairs and then she sped walk her way to History of Magic.
Professor Binns was thankfully so deep in his droning that she managed to slip into the classroom unnoticed and sneak to her desk.
She dropped down in her seat and quickly took out some parchment and ink.
"That's what will be most important for your exam. I do hope you heard carefully."
Rune glanced at the desk next to her where Tatiana Switch, a Slytherin girl in her year, sat and tried to glance at her parchment but an arm slid over it to block her view.
Just then, she felt a few strands of her hair being pulled from behind.
It took nearly every ounce of willpower not to turn because she knew clearly who sat behind her.
After a few seconds, her shoulders and neck tensed as Regulus leaned forward. She glanced at him and swallowed hard, but he thankfully pulled away. When she faced forward again, she noticed a folded parchment on her desk.
She stared at it and when seconds passed without her opening it, he leaned forward and whispered, "It's not a love note. It's an exam breakdown."
Rune straightened her back and slid down her chair, creating a greater distance between them before she unfolded the note and scanned the words until she noted that it was surely an exam breakdown.
For the duration of the lesson, as Professor Binns went through sample questions and essays, Rune kept her attention focused forward and tried to catch onto every detail solely, so she didn't have to think about Regulus.
It was nearly impossible when he was pretty much breathing down her neck.
Whether she wanted to be or not, she was painfully conscious of him.
That sequence of events panned out for the rest of the day. No matter the lesson, no matter the seating, she was aware of him the way he was aware of her.
When the school day ended and most students retreated to their rooms either to rest before studying or to study in solitude, Rune went down to the library. She needed to find reading material on a few more topics and she preferred to do it while the library was less crowded.
O.W.L's were less than a week away.
Rune trailed through the aisles until she finally found her book, and then she pulled it out and rested against the shelf as she paged through it searching for more information on boggarts and vampire bats.
"What are you reading?"
She banged her book shut at the sound of Regulus' voice, realizing that she had been so immersed in the reading that she hadn't noticed his presence.
Her eyes scanned his Quidditch uniform and his mouth and then his hair and then his mouth again until she finally settled on his eyes.
"A Thorough Look at Dark Creatures," she answered emotively before opening the book again and reading in a pretense to seem busy.
He snatched the book from her hands. "Are you okay, Rune?"
"Mmh," she hummed.
His jaw twitched but he smartly chose to ask about something else. "Do you want to come and watch me practice?"
"Hmm mmh," she answered, shaking her head no.
"Have I done something wrong?" He took a step closer to her and she would have stepped away were it not for the gigantic shelves behind her.
"Hmm mmh."
He looked down at her in a mixture of worry and frustration.
Good, she thought to herself. I hope you drive yourself crazy thinking about this.
"I'll see you later?" he asked.
"Hmm," she shrugged.
The conversation was over but since he wasn't leaving, she took the liberty of pulling the book back from him and opening it once more.
A minute passed where he stood unmoving in front of her as he threaded back and forth in his mind in what he could say to her.
Rune looked up from her book into his eyes. Then, she lifted herself onto her tiptoes and pressed a soft peck against his lips.
Regulus was looking at her with a frown as she settled back down.
She licked her lips. "Do you want to tell me anything?"
"No."
"Okay."
Since he wasn't leaving, she took the liberty of walking away from him.