Author: shyangell & MorningDawn
DISCLAIMER: All the fictional characters appearing in this fanfiction story are not mine, they're J.K. Rowling's; and they are being used with the only purpose of personal entertainment.
Chapter Twenty - Of All The Ways To Be A Black...
Ear-piercing shrieks fit to shrink the bravest heart shake Grimmauld place, in an implausible attempt, perhaps, to rouse the dead. The portrait of Mrs Black is at it yet again; something which is becoming routine of a sort in the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix. Moody was to blame this time. The really annoying habit the ex-auror has of slamming the door was the responsible, yet again, of a mid-morning shrieking bout.
Steps can be heard coming down the corridor, down the stairs. The soles of good quality shoes against cold marble, steady, unhurried. That's the bad thing about things like this, as crazy as it sounds, overtime you get used to them. And thank God one does, because otherwise you'd lose it.
So Sirius comes up slowly to her; her portrait really, but her personality is so grating even in canvas that one tends to humanize the object in question. And he stands in front of her, looking levelly into her lost eyes; if she'd been alive he could've said he'd overcome the blind rage she causes in him, but only being a portrait it only means he no longer looks like a madman shouting at a piece of paint on the wall. As her screams are only grating, but there is no horribly compelling call to blow her off the wall he is in no particular hurry to shut the curtains. The house is too silent.
"Blood traitor! Abomination, shame of my flesh! Begone from these place, form the sacred solar of my ancestors! You are no better than the scum you rub shoulders with!"
He knows from experience the most hurried you are to shut her up the most struggle she puts forward and the longer you take to bring the house back into silence again. Sirius doesn't flicker; he doesn't even bat an eyelash, that blank his face is. He just looks at her, trying to be imposing from her grave and failing miserably instead making a pitiful scene of a completely insane wasted old woman.
And while he looks at her through half lidded eyes and an indifferent mask he wonders how anyone could take a woman like that regal, commanding, or graceful or for absolutely anything else that is not the old hag he knows she was.
A tap on his shoulder makes him turn slightly around. Regulus is there watching the ongoing battle of wills with no robes on... even when it is freezing cold. He's dirty, and carrying a bucket of murky water which he silently offers to him as some sort of archaic anger management. His offer is only met by stony silence; and it is really curious that one can consider it stony silence with a screeching portrait right before them.
"You know you want to." says Regulus after a good five minutes without response. "You are dying to."
The woman keeps yelling like the mad woman she is, it is possible that she really doesn't take notice of who it is she's yelling at. Sirius moves his eyes imperceptibly, from the bucket to his brother and then to the portrait. Without comment he takes the filthy bucket in one quick movement and sloshes all that admittedly disgusting water over it. The portrait instantly stops screaming, her eyes impossibly open and mouth still open in shock.
She looks from one brother to the other, as shell-shocked as every time she takes notice of Regulus and even more because this surely she didn't expect. Sirius doesn't give her the chance to recover; he takes the cord by the curtains and pulls them closed smoothly over her face. He only regrets vaguely that the mess will need to be cleaned, but he only scourgifies it for the moment.
"You don't know how much I needed to do that." whispers Sirius as they head upstairs.
"I don't?" he returns, and Sirius turns to him with a raised eyebrow.
God only knows why the world makes him to be the impatient and impulsive one of the two. He guesses it is because Regulus doesn't ever actually do something by himself, but gets him to do it instead. It is a perverse dynamic between the two that has already grown old.
"I'd appreciate that next time you want to do something you do it yourself and not talk me into it; we're not kids anymore and no-one is going to slap you." he grumbles. "Otherwise I come out as a crackpot."
"I don't think that suggesting something might actually help you counts as talking you into anything." says Regulus. Sirius glowers at him and he shuts up.
"I'm not talking about now particularly, you see. I'm saying more like..." he gestures. "...somehow every time you do something wrong I get blamed for it.
Regulus bites his lip, and represses a chuckle; as it is true that since their early childhood Sirius has almost always taken the blame for him, sometimes by association and sometimes not. He supposes he should be grateful because every time he has not, the consequences have been disastrous, for him of course. For Sirius they are always disastrous.
"Must I remind you that it is because you give in to me?" he says. "I don't force you at wandpoint."
"I don't give in. I am dragged into whatever mess you've gotten yourself into." he answers.
"You didn't use to complain so much." says Regulus peeved, as they reach the second floor.
"Yes, I was too busy trying to get you out of trouble to complain." replies Sirius acidly as he heads towards the study, leaving Regulus standing there looking at the retreating figure of his brother.
Regulus winces momentarily when he remembers his youthful stupidity is partially to blame for the mess Sirius fell into, and wishes he really, really hadn't been that thick.
It is always been like that time they broke the grandfather clock, for them. Well, he broke it, Sirius realized before anyone else, and when their mother found them he said it'd been him. Of course Walburga Black was no fool and knew Sirius was no klutz and punished them both; him for being a klutz and Sirius for his stupidly overprotective lie to their mother. Or in some other instances; like when he coerced him to help him publicly humiliate Malfoy because he'd laughed at him. It turned out perfect as he'd acted as the bait and Sirius had managed to pull the rug from under him and make him tumble down the stairs, they hadn't even been blamed for it. Only, Malfoy had bullied Sirius from then on. Not that Sirius was one to let himself be bullied. Stinging spells were magic against it.
Regulus had practiced religiously the old adagio that it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt. Something he learnt as he went and got tired to always being compared depreciatively to Sirius' early efforts at magic. Only, that policy made him look a bit glum and invariably dimmer than Sirius; so he looked pretty dumb by comparison. But that way nobody really knew for sure, nobody knew if he was good at this or that, and it gave him leverage over most uncomfortable situations. Later at Hogwarts it had evolved into that distorted image of Regulus in which he was too boringly incapable of any mischief, and no one had found plausible that it had been him who'd hexed Irving's underwear to painfully compress his privates.
But now was a time in which life and death, and adult people were concerned. All very good reasons to watch out, since this is now. So, day in day out, he has to talk himself out of complaining too much about being locked up or trying to rile Sirius up more than usual, because it is a problem they both have and it isn't a valid solution to go and rise Sirius' levels of frustration further. It is a problem they both have and getting Sirius to handle the wrong end of it is terribly bad for the two of them in the long run.
He goes upstairs, up to the fourth floor and stops in front of the door of his old room. Sirius's door is clean and looks lived in. He cleaned it months ago, and hurried out of the room he was sharing with him downstairs when more space was needed. Regulus instead still lives down there. Truth is he hasn't been able to gather enough strength for it. He only rummaged through it the very first day looking for clothes that fit him, even if they were from twenty years prior.
He takes a deep breath when he comes in front of his old room, and he stops with his hand in the doorknob. Then his eyes come to rest over the sign hanging under the brass letters of his name.
Do not enter without the express permission of Regulus Arcturus Black.
He reaches to remove it, but stops himself with his hand hovering in mid-air. He'd written that warning when Sirius was still around; it was supposed to keep his room a sanctuary away from his prying eyes. It had never worked that way, of course. He cringes at how horribly pompous and conceited he sounds judging from that sign alone. If he met his younger self now, they would most likely not be getting along.
It was a stuck-up and presumptuous sign to place there, especially because it was completely useless. It was like placing a Do not eat sing on a delicious apple that is just in front of you, it only makes it more noticeable. If someone had the ability to overcome his hexed doorknob, it was precisely Sirius. And with a wry smile, he has to recognize that he had every right to take retaliation when he, Regulus; systematically caused a whirlwind in his belongings and purposefully dislodged his books from their rightful place.
Shocking as it may seem, Sirius was rather organized, had been since he was a very small child. Now he was so even more, which was a bit irritating. Survival instincts had soon determined that this way you could tell in an instant if your snot nosed little brother snuck into your room and took something away, if you knew where everything was supposed to be. Or if you would hide things from your parents it was best if you knew exactly where they were hidden, just in case. He always knew exactly where all of his possessions were. Probably that's why everyone got a kick out of moving Sirius's things around and seeing how long it took him to notice. And that included Potter because he'd heard once a rather heated argument about this and Potter's laughter... but that's another story, he remembers basically because he'd always felt a special satisfaction when Potter and Sirius had been arguing.
Sirius had a mean streak and hexed your shoes if you weren't careful, so he was thirteen when he'd hung his warning on the door. His hand wavers, and finally leaves it where it is. The paper is old, the ink is a bit faded, but it doesn't hurt to leave it as a warning that the door is still hexed. He could remove it, but then he'd have to worry about itching powder in his sheets if ever those devilish twins lodge in Grimmauld place again. And let's admit it he does like his privacy.
When he was young he'd used to put a secret code on the door in order to keep intruders out, from the moment he figured out how to change it; although it never stopped Sirius from breaking in either. And the worst thing about having a password only you knew, now twenty years in disuse, is that chances are you won't remember. He doesn't remember what it was that worked a few months back. He should write it down. He places the tip of his wand on the lock and mutters a few words in Latin under his breath. The door remains the same; he curses his rotten memory under his breath and tries again with another likely combination. The door creaks open.
In the darkened room across the threshold, the room still is like he left it in1979, plus the mess he made looking for fitting robes last august. Provably his parents never bothered to enter the room again.
The room has a greenish glow to it. Not that it glows green per se; more like the timid light floats ethereally around and reflects in the green coverlet, and on the green banners adorning the room. Coincidentally, combined with the dust of almost two decades it makes it look, at risk to sounding like a dumb Gryffindor, even creepier than it should. Slytherin colours, emerald and silver, are everywhere, over the elegant light desaturated blue wallpaper and the sea-blue curtains. It leaves no room to confusion as to which house he'd been sorted into.
The Black family crest is proudly painted over the head of the bed, along with its motto. Toujours Pur. It is a sad place to have it engraved, looming there in your sleep, he thinks now. Close to his nightstand there is an irregularity in the elegant room that quickly catches the roving eye. He centres his attention on the collection of yellow newspaper cuttings that stand beneath. They are all stuck together to make a ragged collage. They also are all about Voldemort. He remembers having collected them throughout his years at Hogwarts, in fact, he had been quite a fan of him for a few years. Had he only known. He'd fancied himself the powerful and devoted follower, the future right-hand man. How could he had ever thought he'd have stomach for any of this was a mystery. Anyone else could have been fooled, but surely he should've known. Sirius had known, after all. But no-one else had. They'd all assumed when time came he'd do what was required of him as the perfect pureblood-son. Only that he wasn't, and now hates to think about it all. Even if he is Order, the inactivity still allows him to bury his head under the sand. He starts taking them down, one after the other, until only the wall is left there, with the shadows of the contours of the old paper clippings over it.
Then, he turns his gaze towards a picture that stands on his nightstand. It is a Quidditch team formation that is smiling and waving out of the frame. The proud snakes of Slyhterin are emblazoned on their chest. He finds himself sitting in the middle of the front row being very young and very stupid, in the rightful place entitled to the seeker. Back at Hogwarts he had been the seeker and had become the Capitan of the team. He smiled bitterly at the image of himself, he had the same hair, the same features, and the same grey eyes that his brother, but somehow he had always looked weaker, and rather less handsome. He had been thinner, smaller and slighter than him.
He heads towards the window, and opens the curtains, allowing the light to enter through the dusty glass. He looks through the window, down from the cornice projecting from the side of the house and over the great window panelling over the Master room; down at the street. This high up the light is much better, and you can see the meagre trees from the square further below. It is such a dull place. Then he turns to his old desk. It is as tidy as it always had been; nothing on it except an old inkpot and a quill. He grabs the inkpot and opens it to inspect it. From the inside emerges a foul stench that would have been found revolting by Snape himself, used as he is to disagreeable odours.
"This goes directly to the bin." He mutters as he brings it away from his face and shakes his head trying to dispel the repulsive smell. He sits on his old chair and proceeds to open the table drawers.
He knows that they won't be as tidy as the table; if the way no-one has touched anything, is something to go by. The room is not elf-warded, they could have sent one to sort out his things. He knows this basically because his tactic to keep his table tidy has always been stuffing his things inside the drawers. There is nothing of value inside, just old text books, worn out from use, scribbled parchment and other useless mementoes. He even finds one of the toys of his old cat, Snowy.
He sighs and draws his wand, conjuring a big box out of thin air. He accioes the pieces of newspaper and throws them into the box. He surveys the nightstand, but concludes that he won't throw the pictures. They are innocent enough. Going over to the drawer of the nightstand finds an old book and several potions. They used to be part of his medication. They must be well over their expiration date. Now that he thinks about it, he hasn't taken anything for his little problems in very long years. It is an awful risk he shouldn't be taking in his circumstances, if it can be avoided. Maybe he should ask someone that can go out to buy some. But probably he won't because chances are Snape is the one who'd end up being asked. He removes the book and looks at it, he must have removed it from the library because it isn't a textbook. He leaves it on the bed, in order to return it to its place the sooner the better.
He goes back to the table and throws the inkpot in the box. He looks at the quill, it is in a good state and you never know when you'll need one, so he leaves it back on the table. He empties the drawers and starts throwing out all those textbooks that are no use for him, until he remember Sirius is putting them in them up library. Even if they will be duplicated he can at least check if they are in a better condition than Sirius'. At any rate, his brother doesn't have here any NEWT level books. The inkpots, the broken quills, the old smudged parchment, all goes into the box.
Right after emptying the drawers he makes his way downstairs and gets rid of it all. Then he moves his efforts to the closet next to the window. There he kept the more practical part of his robes; therefore it is the one that's partially empty from his raid earlier this year. Only a few are left there and his old broom is resting against the closet wall. There are left a Hogwarts-issued school uniform that is usable, but he is definitely not wearing again; a robe so faded he doesn't know how it survived that long in there and a couple of a colour too ugly to be worn, even if you are locked in your demised parents' house. So he takes them in hand and throws them on the floor for later disposal. In a the inside drawers there are more shirts of white and severe colours, all in good condition, and a few functional ugly jumpers very similar to those worn under a school uniform. All those he sets in another box he just conjures. The photos plastered at the insides of the doors are another matter. He's got them covered with the few photos left of them as children; how can anyone so well off have so few pictures of their own children? Nevermind. Sirius would laugh himself silly if he knew he was keeping this in the closet, even if it was because he felt wrong completely eliminating them, so he hid them from view. How screwed-up is that anyway? It had been ages since Sirius and him had been that close; anywhere near close.
He pulls the broom out of the closet and after a quick inspection it is decided that it is in good repair so he keeps it even if he knows he will never use it again. He throws out everything from his old quidditch robes but from the jumper, because it is a comfortable thing to wear under your robes when the house gets too cold to sleep in simply pyjamas.
He makes sure his job in the small closet is done. He kicks the things out of his way rather than remove them, because he's too lazy, and decides that now that he's done with everything else there is no point ignoring the walk in closet. So he walks in; and audibly sighs... looks like he's going to need another big box.
::::::::::::::
"What on Earth is this?" the petite aging redhead says, rather baffled.
It is not unfair to say that people at headquarters are busy people, and that she complains a bit too much (and she knows it). Nonetheless, there are times when it is well-deserved.
There is a corner in the hallway down to the kitchen, mostly out of view where laundry tends to accumulate. There is a laundry box that is more like a container, which by unspoken agreement everyone uses. So it is normal for it to be smelly, it is normal for it to be rather full and it is normal that no-one empties it. Not unless you'd be able to smell it from three miles around.
When Molly Weasley comes around, she claims she does so to check how things are going. And when she says that, it is just as it sounds, she checks that that bunch of disorderly men haven't got some horrible case of food-poisoning; or a gross case of infestation going on. You could say that she has very little faith in the male sex; but she's got ample experience with those and she's always been under the impression that they're a bit like piglets that like to wallow in their own... waste. And they can't take care of themselves.
She washes the dishes, replenishes the pantry, cooks and occasionally does the laundry. And that's what she's in her way to do today. There is the added bonus that is huffing and spluttering and finally barking at Sirius Black to get his damn shoes down, because the kitchen table is definitely not the place for them to be. Later she pretends not to notice as he dismisses her lecture as soon as she turns her back on him, and returns to his newspaper and his casual sprawl. But she pretends not to see, it isn't as if she is getting walked over. But today the pile of clothing is for one, too big, to dusty and too colourful. She'll rephrase that, it's too expensive. She looks baffled at the clothes, and notes that it isn't something around here should be wearing. She looks critically at the embroidery on the topmost one and sighs.
"Sirius, I'm doing your laundry. Ok?" asks the woman with a weary look.
"Yes, of course Molly, do as it pleases you. It's not even mine in the first place." he says rather indifferently. "It's Regulus'. He's decided to finally clean up his room. I'm not dissuading him from it, but I'm not doing laundry for him either.
"Was this necessary?" she says, with a thinning of her lips.
"Really? I guess no." is his answer. "But then again most of them fit him still. Not that he's wearing them again, but... I guess my solution would've been more to your liking, thrown them all out... but the case is different anyway because definitely none of them fit me anymore."
She is there looking with little fondness at the mound of clothing in the hallway, somewhere between exasperated and horrified at the prospect of throwing away robes that cost more than Arthur makes in a year.
"Told him it would be a great idea to at least have it separated from the useful kind of laundry, but he paid no heed... as usual."
She resigns herself to her chore, thinking that at least Black here's got a reason to be annoyed. She has to hand it to him that he generally makes his own laundry, and he is the one who most often empties the laundry box. The look Sirius gets every time the laundry is brought up makes her think that it is very likely that he's the only other soul there with a slight idea of how to wash clothing without shrinking it to gnome proportions.
"Well, anyway." she mutters. "It is not the kind of laundry I'm used to."
The delicate silk, is definitely not something she sees often.
"Yes, my mother was always a bit classy." he comments the man. She bites her lip before asking why someone would want to have that many clothes. His cool indifference makes her think that he doesn't give any of this much importance.
"So, he's being punished?" she asks him with a small smile.
The wry smile that pulls up at Sirius' lips is answer enough.
::::::::::::::
For Sirius' standards, Regulus spends a ridiculous amount of time sorting out his old room, and it is obvious that he has every intention of moving his things up there once again. He's an animal of habit. And he has ample time to scoff at Regulus' choice of password, mentally and vocally once he gets the chance. Once he changes it, it gives him opportunity to do some mental gymnastics.
Meanwhile his humour balances between irritated, resigned and... resigned.
Sirius knows that there are many outlooks in life. Therefore, he is aware that happy and content, are a mood that is theoretically possible. Nonetheless he prides himself of not lying to anyone, even if that includes not indulging in self-delusion. Which leads to taking a conscious stance, that there are circumstances that don't warrant for any of the above. And whatever people think, he is neither ignorant nor stupid, so... once you are logically aware of how fucked up things are objectively speaking, even if they have been worse, you only can aim for resigned.
The optimist always thinks the glass is half full. The philosopher thinks that the glass is neither half full nor half empty. The futurist thinks that the liquid should be on the other half of the glass. The shrink asks what people's mothers think about the glass's quantity. And somehow the drinker thinks that the glass needs more ice. One can choose our perspectives, but to him the sanest answer among these is that it's half empty. If that makes him a pessimist so be it.
It has finally become obvious that his physically deteriorated state was not meant to be permanent, even if he's still slim. People come and go with a little bit more frequency, and his levels of tolerance for human stupidity are high enough that he doesn't feel the burning need to make scathing comments to anyone that comes in sight just as often, which in turn makes people stop avoiding him so much. Life should be good. Should be enough.
Nonetheless currently he holds a grudge with mirrors. He knows it's childish, he knows it's insane... although he's been told that too many times to care. He should be glad to see how he no longer is a famished fleabag with sunken cheeks, but when he's in a particularly bad mood he thinks he'd rather see that that an almost exact replica of his father frowning back at him from the smooth surface of the mirror.
Maybe, he thinks wistfully, if he wasn't forced to dress in the old man's clothes, he wouldn't look so dour. Wistful thinking he has to recognize.
He does have a grudge with all those stupid enough to forget not to confuse him with his brother, though. He can come with many awfully good explanations for that; from being that they forget Regulus exists at all, to sudden blindness. He doesn't care, even if he's being irrational. Who said smart people weren't allowed to be irrational, anyway?
There are noticeable differences, although some may argue with you. They do have more or less the same build; both are tall and have long hair too. But Sirius is taller and Regulus has a somewhat thinner face, if you squint. They also have trademark facial expressions that aren't quite the same, so there are no grounds for confusion. Besides, Sirius' voice even after losing its Azkaban hoarseness is deeper, and resounds easily as he speaks. Regulus' is higher pitched, and somewhat scratchier from years of smoking.
When he was young, he made it a point to look the least like a Black that he could get away with. He turned twenty and he still wore the children's pure-blooded hairstyle, short and neat and closely cropped at the back of his neck. And he's always maintained that people were stupid for taking that as grounds for him childish. I was a perfectly normal muggle hairstyle after all. How can you judge a person immature by their looks anyway? But at the time they'd looked and said, oh well, it walks like a Black, talks like a Black, but must be something else. Nonetheless, time and age, and a short temper may be the reason that now many think it walks like a Black, talks like a Black... so it must be a Black after all.
Lupin at least hasn't made that mistake ever, but he's a werewolf and thusly gifted with a prodigious sense of smell well over and above the normal human spectrum, so he's not entirely convinced he deserves the medal.
He's convinced Mad-Eye and friends to let him do something, even if it is only research and other such prospects. After all he's a perfectly good, capable member, who can do it quicker than most and has no other duties; so the question to him is why they didn't want him to do that earlier. It is not as if there's reason to enter into the policy forbidding them from knowing the details of the missions they aren't in, because he's been the middle man for Dumbledore for a year and he knows everything there is to know anyway.
"Sirius!?" Sturgis comes running down the corridor dogging him down. The dark-haired man turns around wearily.
"Yes, Sturgis?" the answer nonetheless come from behind himself. Sirius looks exhausted, and like Regulus his collar is half open. He leans in the kitchen doorframe with a look that dares you to make that mistake once again. He seems to be infinitely pleased with himself when he sees Podmore flinch.
"But my friend, a Black doeth not a Sirius make." he says in an awfully mocking tone and Sturgis looks at him wearily.
"Sorry, Mad-Eye wanted to tell you..." he says.
"I know what he wanted to tell me." is the scathing reply. "Unlike some people who are apparently deaf I do hear conversations carried out shouting in my own house which manage to awake my own damn mother."
"You know Mundungus is half deaf." he says, peeved.
"Yes, and you all are apparently a useless bunch of slobs." Sirius scowls. "I might have to tell him it's because you particularly need glasses."
Sturgis stutters and disappears with a suitably offended look about him. Nymphadora shakes her head ruefully, and nudges Shacklebolt on the ribs, who's been looking on with a blank face.
"If I have a sudden, burning desire to be strung by my toes remember I should confuse my dear cousins." she says, and Sirius scowls.
"There is no ground for confusing me with anyone." he says with his haughty tone. "He's shorter than I, uglier than I; more stupid than I… you count." These affirmations are followed by a soft coughing, that is ignored in favour of his rant. "Younger than I, more disagreeable than I, and far more unpleasant than I!"
He stops off to his usual haunts.
"He was a bit over the line, wasn't he?" Hestia says when his footsteps fade away.
"I don't care as long as he's not lashing out at me." says Regulus calmly. "But he's a bastard and people do have a tendency to be that annoying."
His wry smile gives him away, and the tension seems to lessen somewhat. Most have come to at least respect Regulus, as he so far seems able to deal with Sirius with some ease; even if his presence prompts bursts of temper like the one they've just witnessed. Even as an adult, the combination of his shrewd intelligence and prickly personality puts most people off before they ever get a chance to know him. The thought of being the only one having to withstand a child with that keen eye and those verbal gymnastic skills would have been more than enough grounds for a sympathy from anyone; and Regulus is probably the only one to know he doesn't deserve it... much.
"Whatever, I've gotta go." Kingsley says, rolling his eyes, which oddly it only makes them stand out in the middle of his dark face.
"Yeah, we probably should..." says Tonks. "Seeya later Reg. Are you coming Remus?" She asks the man, who's remained pretty quiet through it all, although to his credit he has remained unflappable; as if it were normal, which it probably is inside the cannons of their strange friendship.
"Of course." he tells her with a charming smile. "Where are you going tonight...?"
And of course both are pretty unaware of the remaining set of eyes watching them, as well as the furrowed brow.
::::::::::::::
The door of the study rebounds rather dramatically against the door and slams shout with just as much force. And there has been no knock. Sirius raises his head momentarily to ascertain that he has the identity of the body that's just thrown itself dramatically over an armchair correct.
"Arrgh…! I can't stand it anymore!" Regulus says as he throws a hand over his eyes, and rubs his face tiredly.
"What the heck are you talking about this time?" asks Sirius, slightly amused, but he's not likely to let it show this early into the conversation. "What are you rambling about? Wait, I forgot that you speak a foreign language most of the time."
"Lupin and Tonks!" cries out the younger brother indignantly, with a roll of his eyes.
"What about them?" he says disinterestedly returning his eyes to an old issue of Transfiguration Today. Switching Spells Revisited – A Critical Assessment of Switching Techniques for Inanimate Objects. It is a long boring article about some more or less useless piece of knowledge, but at times like this it is best that the inane chatter of some people.
Most people outside of the academic wouldn't bother reading something like this because while in the theoretically it might be very interesting, the results are really not worth the bother. Most people lose sight of them when they pass their NEWTs. When he'd taken them, they'd had to switch between two animate objects, which is one of the more difficult applications in that field. He remembered how he had, just for fun, switched a hamster in its cage and a large goldfish in its glass, standing several feet apart on different examiners' desks, after the simple, boring intra-species switch between the brown and the white hamster in front of him they had asked him to perform. His examiner had been astonished, and Roderick Garland never talked to him again after his switching went awry when his goldfish disappeared. This article is bent over proving how the author found a more effective way around switching spells, although if that is true he yet has to make his point.
He absentmindedly notes that whatever Regulus was saying, his long winded speech is coming to an end rather imminently, and that contrary to most people, who when ignored properly just shut up and leave him the hell alone; Regulus seems to not care one bit if he is indeed listening.
"They are so disgustingly…. "no, you first"... "no, really, you first"..."No, I insist, you first"…" says in a high squealing voice. "Erg! It's sickeningly sweet, no matter how you look at it."
Sirius sighs, and finally closes his journal, resigning himself that the quicker he asks all the proper questions the sooner will the imminent death of this rather one-sided conversation come to pass.
"What did they do this time?"
"I had to call Nymphadora for the coffee pot six times before they even noticed I was in the same room." says Regulus', exasperation and frustration is rolling off of him in waves. Of this late, the forced house-arrest is taking its toll harder on Regulus, who is a bit cranky, and definitely needs to steam off. Being generally annoying normally cuts it.
"Oh, your attention-seeking personality must be really hurt." says Sirius sarcastically.
"I mean, will they ever do something about it or will they keep torturing the rest of the humanity for an indefinite amount of time?" he says.
"Provably… eventually." Sirius says laconically, but has to berate himself for mentally sniggering at the thought.
"I must recognise that Lupin seems pretty oblivious." comments the younger brother. "Either he is the greatest actor ever, or he's a total idiot. Because no one can be as clueless." Sirius snorts.
"He's a master at playing the fool."
"Why can't he go and shag her already?" asks Regulus, with a rare infantile whine. Sirius raises an eyebrow.
"Do you realise you are talking about your cousin?" Sirius says, almost shocked out of his boredom for a few seconds.
"My interest in my own sanity overrides any concern I might have about her well-being." Regulus sneers, and extracts a dull chuckle out of Sirius.
"Nice." he comments.
"Not that Lupin would do too wrong by her, he's too much of a disgustingly honourable Gryffindor to even think about it." says Regulus.
"That's the reason he doesn't do it in the first place." adds Sirius. "And you got it all wrong. If there's anything that might make this not work is precisely that."
"Well, he's your friend." said Regulus. "Talk with him or something."
"That would be counter-productive." he says rather unhelpfully. Basically because he would realise that he's being very obvious, be horrified by the fact, stop altogether and take a self-imposed exile to the Antarctica. Although it hurts to think that the fact that he's stuck living with two of the most observant people ever might not clue him into him not being that obvious either.
"I never thought you'd fall for the matchmaker thing." Regulus glares at him.
"Well, we are stuck here. It's boring as hell, and there isn't anything better to do than talk to the portraits or watch the people." explains Regulus. "And I'd rather watch the people, you can actually learn something from them. On top of it all, the people around here are just exasperating." Sirius looks at him with a bit of contempt.
"Is that it? Have you already spit everything out?" says Sirius with false solicitousness.
"Yes." Regulus says glaring rather pointedly.
"Then get your ass out of this room and go bother someone else!" says as he retakes his reading with a parsimonious look.
Regulus knows he should do better; he's losing his touch if he can only get Sirius to look bored. He used to be able to extract a rather more healthy raging mood. Oh, well... one must keep trying.