A/N: This story is dedicated to rainbowpop, one of my most faithful readers and reviewers, and harassers. :D She has requested of me Regulus/OC, and so I have delivered. The plot's still a bit half-baked in my mind as this is not my primary focus atm, but it will come as it goes along. I hope you enjoy, all of you, read and review and tell me what you'd like to see! This story may be tragic. Fair warning. Cheers!

-J

Her books tumbled out of her hands for the fifth time that week and all Jade Alexander wanted to do was scream. If it wasn't bad enough that she had to deal with getting those looks for being a Hufflepuff, the only Hufflepuff in her all-Slytherin family, she was also a regular target of ridicule for the Gryffindor gang called the Marauders, particularly Sirius Black, who had really been picking on her since she was about six, at large pureblood events. She had no idea why he couldn't just leave her alone, like his brother had always done, but maybe it was because their parents had tried to marry them, before they were both Sorted into non-Slytherin Houses. After that they decided it would be safer not to push that particular marriage, but the teasing didn't cease with the betrothal.

It was lucky she didn't have classes with him, she mused as she picked up her books. She did have classes with Regulus, but he didn't ever even acknowledge her. Some of the Slytherins would sneer at her in passing, but Regulus pretended she wasn't there. Maybe he thought it was nicer that what he would have to do if he acknowledge her presence, which was treat her like filth on the bottom of his shoe.

She brushed her blonde hair out of her face and stuck the last of her books on the stack before lifting them all up in her arms again. And then an impossible gale-force wind knocked her over again and the books tumbled out of her hands for the sixth time that week and she groaned with despair. Why couldn't Sirius just leave her alone?

"Sirius, cut it out," said a voice she hadn't heard in a very long time, but there was no response and she heard the sound of someone running away as someone else rushed toward her.

"Are you all right, Alexander?"

It was Regulus, standing over her regally before bending down to help pick up her books.

"I'm fine," she muttered, trying not to look at him.

"You don't look fine," he said softly. "Let me help you."

"I don't want your help," she whispered, knowing that if any of the Hufflepuffs saw her talking to him they would never speak to her again.

Not that they spoke to her much in the first place. Most of them were frightened of her, of her family, of her Slytherin background.

"Please," Regulus said, "I'll help with these books and then I'll leave you alone if you'd like, all right?"

She couldn't argue with that, so Jade nodded, allowing him to sweep up her books and place them back in her arms. Then he turned and brushed her hair back out of her eyes, tucking it behind her ear.

"And I'm sorry," he said. "Sirius is having a rough time of things. He's always taken it out on you, and even though he's got dozens more targets, you'll always be his favorite."

"Why?" Jade said softly, still not looking up into the gray eyes that were so much like his brother's.

Regulus just shrugged.

He walked away and they went back to not talking to each other for years, until their fifth year at Hogwarts, when they were both made prefects. Their parents threw a joint party in the Alexander's garden, and they were expected to behave as a host and hostess, as they were the ones being honored. It was good practice, his mother had informed them, for when they became heads of their families.

Because Sirius had run away the summer before, leaving Regulus to deal with the pressures and expectations of being the heir of the Black family and yet still Sirius teased Jade whenever he got a moment. She had gotten better at ignoring it, which was what she had been doing for years, but the thing that frustrated her most was that she couldn't figure why he teased her, especially as she had never, ever done anything to him.

"Congratulations," Regulus said as she entered the garden to look over seating arrangements for the party.

She looked over at him. He was lounging so carelessly in his chair, hair falling so lazily into his eyes that for a moment she could have mistaken him for his brother. She frowned.

"On what?"

"Being named prefect," he said. "Of course."

"Oh, thank you," she said, sitting down across from him at the circular table. "You too."

"It's absurd, isn't it?" he scoffed, sounding very much like his brother again. "You would think they were holding a wedding, not a simple party for us being made prefects."

She frowned.

Jade hadn't been betrothed again since she was eleven, when she was sorted into Hufflepuff and her betrothal with Sirius broken off.

"Have they found you somebody yet?" she asked Regulus, fiddling with the place card.

"No," he said. "You?"

"Not since Sirius," she sighed.

Jade continued to play with the little place card, noticing that it was for Regulus's mother. She frowned slightly, wondering why the woman had insisted that they celebrate together.

"You look lovely," Regulus said softly.

She looked up at him, mildly surprised that he had said such a thing outside of the proper formal setting. Jade liked to think that she did, in fact, look lovely, in her baby blue dress robes, her long blonde hair done up in a complicated plaited bun on the top of her head. Still, she hadn't expected compliments until the guests had begun to arrive.

She looked over at him in his silvery dress robes, looking like the very picture of a Slytherin aristocrat, perhaps not quite as handsome as his brother but still very much a credit to the Black family, and certainly far less of an embarrassment.

"You look very nice as well," she said, knowing she was required to say such things, but finding herself meaning them, not merely saying them out of propriety.

"Thank you," he muttered, and they sat in an awkward, forced sort of silence until her mother rushed out to the garden and announced that the guests were arriving and she should be up in her room so that she could make an entrance, and Regulus gave her a short little bow before hurrying to the entryway to meet them.

Jade pouted in her room, not wanting to go down and be presented to all the families her parents thought she should socialize with, most on the advice of Walburga Black, who spent half her time scheming at social possibilities and the other half grousing about Sirius and his great betrayal.

When her mother finally sent the house-elf to tell her that enough guests had arrived and it was time for her entrance, Jade brushed out her skirt and sighed heavily. Plastering a modest smile on her face, she walked down the hall steadily, chin held high, and carefully walked down the staircase, knowing that all of the people she had no desire to see would be waiting at the bottom to tell her how pretty she looked. It was so unbearably dull.

Regulus was there, and he kissed her hand ceremoniously, and she noticed their parents exchanging satisfied smiles. She went out to the garden on Regulus's arm, as he was conveniently there.

As it happened, they were seated beside each other at the head circular table, and Jade remembered that this was a joint celebration. Of course the guests of honor would be seated together. It would make it easier for people to greet them with congratulations and to see them as they whispered about them throughout the afternoon. What she hadn't expected was for Regulus to pull out her chair for her, and push it in when she sat. She hadn't expected him to be sitting quite so close. She hadn't been expecting not to mind.

Dinner was the typical stuffy pureblood affair, although the food was quite good, and Regulus and Jade found themselves talking about nothing as if it were the most interesting thing in the world, and avoiding substance like it could only bring bad humor to the atmosphere. It probably would, as the only thing worth talking about anymore was the war, anyway. That never put anybody in a good mood.

Finally, Orion Black stood to address the crowd, as well as Jade's father, who deferred to Orion in all things. Orion cleared his throat and the whole garden grew eerily silent.

"As you all know, this is a day of celebration, of congratulations, for the heirs of our two families, who have both accomplished the first step on bringing lasting pride to their families. However, this is not the only announcement worth congratulating on their behalf today."

Jade tried very hard not to frown. What else had she done? What had Regulus done? She looked over at him, and he shrugged slightly, eyes still trained on his father.

"We are very pleased to announce," Orion continued, "the engagement of my son Regulus and the lovely Miss Jade Alexander. They are to marry upon graduating Hogwarts."

She stared up at her supposed father-in-law-to-be and her father and just blinked at them, hardly noticing the polite applause and excited whispers as Regulus, probably knowing it was expected, took her hand in his and lifted it to his lips, brushing a gentle kiss across her knuckles. She might have noticed that it felt nice if she wasn't so in shock.

Despite the fact that she was still receiving congratulations from the lingering guests, Jade went straight up to her room as soon as her mother left the table to see out one of the more important guests. Her mother called up after her again, but Jade didn't answer, simply sitting in a chair and staring at the bookshelf.

Betrothed, once again, to a Black. She could think of dozens of girls who would kill to be in her place, and might even actually try to once they found out the new heir to the Black fortune was engaged. But she wasn't six years old anymore. She was practically of age, only a little over a year away from coming of age, and her parents didn't even warn her, didn't hint, didn't even ask for her opinion.

Not that she would have had one. Jade hadn't really allowed herself to fancy boys. She could appreciate that the Black brothers were as good looking as anyone could really hope for, but with no more personal interest than appreciating that Lily Evans of Gryffindor was stunning. Noticing the fact didn't make her any more likely to pin her marriage hopes and dreams on them. She hadn't really even had marriage hopes and dreams. She just hoped she wouldn't end up alone or with someone she hated and that she would be left more or less to her own devices when she did her duties to whatever household she was married into.

It wasn't that she wasn't a romantic; it was just that she had seen enough pureblood marriages to know that the odds that she would end up with a beautiful romantic fantasy were so low that she didn't ever dare hope for it in any serious way. It didn't mean she didn't think about what it would be like, but there was no point wishing for something she'd never have. Then maybe, if fate was kind, she would be pleasantly surprised someday.

But it still stung that her parents didn't allow her input into her own future.

There was a knock at her bedroom door and she thought that odd, for her parents would not have left the guests unattended, and they would not have knocked if the guests were gone. More out of curiosity than anything, Jade answered the door and was greeted by the perfectly unreadable face of Regulus Black and his swirling gray eyes.

"May I come in?" he said with all of the propriety required of him, and Jade didn't have the energy or a particularly good reason to refuse him, so she opened the door wider to allow him in, and gestured to a chair he could sit on.

"Are you all right?" he asked softly, and Jade wasn't exactly sure how to answer the question. Was anything wrong with her? No. Was her pride injured? Absolutely. She was confused and disappointed, but also she knew that it was very likely she was making a big deal over nothing. After all, Regulus always seemed to be perfectly nice, if a bit aloof. But then, Jade could certainly be accused of being aloof herself, so could she honestly fault him for that?

"I suppose I'm fine," she said finally. "A bit surprised, certainly. And I wish they would have asked me or at least informed me, but I think they could have betrothed me to a lot of worse people than you."

Then it occurred to her.

"Did your parents talk to you about it?"

He hesitated, but after a short while he said, "In a manner of speaking."

In a manner of speaking. What did that mean? Jade raised a questioning eyebrow and Regulus cleared his throat.

"I actually asked them to arrange it. So if you look at it through that lens, yes, they certainly talked with me about it."

Jade blinked. He asked his parents to arrange their betrothal? After spending almost their entire lives virtually ignoring her existence, he thinks it's some great idea to marry her? What on earth had been going through his head, that he thought she'd be a passive enough wife not to make his life as much of a hell as if his mother picked the second coming of herself?

"Excuse me?"

Regulus sighed.

"Maybe it was stupid. But my parents asked me if I had gotten serious about my role as heir since my brother left, and I told them I already had been planning and they asked me if I'd picked a wife, and I said that I wanted you."

"But… but why?" Jade said, not quite sure of what else to say and certainly not willing to end the conversation until she felt at some sort of peace with this new direction in her life, which she was far from.

"Because," he said. "There were many reasons. I'd rather we talk about them over time, not all at once. As we get to know each other."

"So you acknowledge that we don't even know each other," Jade said sarcastically. "That's a good start."

"I wouldn't say that," Regulus countered. "We know enough about each other that I would say that we can certainly build a solid foundation. But I mean as we get to know each other more intimately." He paused, then continued hastily, "Not necessarily in a physical way right away, that can wait until after we're married if that's your desire."

Jade blinked again.

Had he just said he wanted to sleep with her? What exactly had she not noticed about Regulus Black all those years she was trying to avoid Sirius?

"This isn't coming out right," he sighed. "That's why I wanted it to happen naturally, for us to discuss things naturally as we got closer, not because of trying to sit down and hash it all out at once. I don't say what I want to when I'm nervous."

Jade frowned and said, "Why didn't you just not say anything, then?"

Regulus's eyes widened in surprise.

"I wasn't going to lie to you. You asked me a question. It was only right for me to answer it fully and truthfully."

She frowned even deeper. Why?

"But why did you come up here in the first place? You didn't even have to seek out the conversation. You should have known I would ask."

Regulus seemed to chew on the inside of his mouth as he got up to pace the room. For a moment, a very brief moment, Jade was strongly reminded of Sirius, who would pace in this way when he was frustrated by something that was restraining him… even from a young age. In fact, it was exactly what the seven-year-old Sirius had done when their parents informed the pair that they were betrothed. But this wasn't the case with Regulus. He had done the informing, they had simply done the arranging of his wishes.

Finally, he stopped pacing and looked right at her, steeling himself, and saying, "Because I was sure you were upset with the match and I wanted to get the words from your mouth. I didn't want to hold you to it if you were unhappy. I don't think I could make myself go through with it if you were unhappy."

"But what does my happiness matter," Jade said logically, standing and moving toward him, "when I've got the Alexander fortune to my name and come from a long line of heir-bearing women?"

She tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice, but it seeped through in small amounts.

Regulus looked almost remorseful as he took a step toward her.

"Don't you want more than that sort of marriage?" he challenged. "Don't you want better than what your parents have? Don't you want to marry someone you actually would like to be with?"

"Of course," Jade said impatiently. "But why would what I want actually matter?"

As if something in him snapped, a wild look she had seen only in Sirius's eyes came across Regulus's eyes and she almost took a step back but he grabbed her shoulders and said urgently, "Because I love you," before he pressed his lips firmly and briefly to hers, released her, and stalked quickly out of the room without another word.