"What do you want, Reg?" Sirius sighed, eyes fixed to the ceiling.
Regulus shuffled inside the room and softly closed the door behind him. He fiddled nervously with the cuffs of his shirt sleeves, frowning and pulling at a loose thread as he wondered whether he would ever be able to muster up the courage to tell Sirius what he really wanted to say.
"I wish you wouldn't provoke them so," he said quietly.
Sirius groaned and sat up on his bed, running his fingers through his long tangled hair.
"Can't you just keep it all in or something until we go back to school? It's only a couple more weeks, and then it's not so long until you come of age and then you can leave nicely, normally, and everything will be alright."
"Keep it all in?" Sirius repeated, raising his voice. "Keep it all in? Are you as stupid as those morons you hang out with, Reg? How am I meant to keep it all in when mum's spouting off about fucking blood-traitors and mudbloods and scummy whelps or whatever bullshit terms she's spent the day thinking up. You know she's talking about your cousin, right? Your family?"
"Andromeda —"
"Don't say her name! Don't you dare say her name when you have done nothing to defend her!"
He was standing up now, walking towards Regulus, and then he was shaking his shoulders and shouting in his face and he was just like mother and Regulus felt his insides shrivel and all those clever words that he'd rehearsed saying just floated out of him like dust motes and he'd never be able to catch them again, he'd never be able to make Sirius just stop and listen he was hurtling along like a Gringott's cart and he was going to fall out and smash his head open on a rock and bleed out everywhere and it would be too late. It was already too late.