- Day 76 of 366 Days of Writing Challenge: Age

- The Emotion Challenge: Humiliated

- HPFC Royalty Competition / Prompt: (word) Immature

- Weekly Pairings Drabble Competition/Week 10: Barty/Regulus

- September Back To School Event: (action) Catching someone/being discovered smoking cigarettes in a bathroom, (object) Schoolbag

Pairings/Characters: Barty/Regulus

Word Count: 436


Age of Innocence

When I grow up I want to be nothing at all.

Regulus's nose prickled as the suspicious scent of smoke wafted up his nostrils. He followed the smell towards the girls bathroom on the first floor. "Hello?" he called through the door, hearing his voice bouncing around the tiled room. "Is there something burning in here?"

A familiar cackling echoed from within, and a ghostly figure streamed through the door. Moaning Myrtle, her glasses looking peculiarly misty, laughed in Regulus's face. "Oh, he's going to be in dreadful trouble," she said gleefully. "I've already told Peeves what he's doing in here. There'll be a teacher here in no time."

"Who's in there?" Regulus demanded to know, but Myrtle was already floating back through the door.

Taking a breath and hoping he wasn't about to stumble in on a girl, Regulus pushed the door open. The smoke came from the opposite end of the bathroom, in the very last stall. When he reached that cubicle, the door was open, and a familiar boy was perched on the closed lid of the toilet.

"Barty?" Regulus gasped. "What on earth are you doing?"

Barty Crouch was immersed in a book, though he had a packet of cigarettes on his knee and one of the offending items between his lips. At the sight of Regulus, he threw the cigarette to the floor and stamped it out quickly. His face glowed red with humiliation. "Regulus," he muttered, stuffing the packet into his schoolbag. "What are you doing here?"

"I was looking for you," muttered Regulus, rolling his eyes. "Smoking in a girl's bathroom? Are you that immature? Really Barty, when are you going to start acting your age?"

"No one knows, jeesh," Barty mumbled, standing up from his seat on the toilet. A rumble of girlish laughter sounded from the cubicle next door. "Besides Myrtle. But she's just a ghost."

There was a sudden, dead silence, right before Myrtle's head burst through the wall of the cubicle. "JUST A GHOST?" Myrtle screamed, her glasses now entirely fogged over, making it impossible to see her eyes. "OF COURSE, MYRTLE IS JUST A GHOST! THE GHOST WON'T TELL ON THE STUPID LITTLE BOY STINKING MY BATHROOM OUT WITH SMOKE!"

"Barty, we should go," Regulus whispered hastily.

"JUST A GHOST! JUST A GHOST!" bleated Myrtle over and over again, though she was more just shouting in general now rather than directing her anger at Barty. Barty nodded to Regulus, and the two boys quickly escaped the bathroom.

He knew he wouldn't be returning to this bathroom to smoke any time soon.