Remember: smiles over scowls, please.
Disclaimer: Blah, blah, blah.
Note: The meeting of Regulus.
Dun dun dun!
Chapter Four.
I walked into that classroom with my head held high, my chin jutting forward, and my back straight as a steel pole. I was confident and feeling unusually strong. Even brave.
My eyes glazed right over it at first, but the second time I looked it was unmistakable.
"What's she doing here?" I heard someone close to the front mutter to their friend.
Bathed in green, faces pinched, mouths foul. Mean, nasty, cruel, unbearable.
My jaw dropped and a dry sound came from my lips that sounded very much like it could have been a squeak of protest against what had already happened, and of course, the problem with things that had already happened was that they were the past, and you can't do anything about the past so you have to do something about the present and the future.
They were all Slytherin. Save one or two in the back who both looked to be from Gryffindor. And while the Gryffindor students were my age, perhaps even older, the Slytherin students looked as though they could be no more than 4th years, maybe 5th if I was lucky.
Er. No, wait, I take that back. The older the Slytherin, always the worse in temperament.
The Professor cleared his throat behind me and I almost shrieked. I slapped my hands across my mouth to smother it in case it even gave one thought of attacking the people around me. I turned to face him rather slowly.
His eyebrows were furrowed and his lips set into a thin line. His face was young for a Professor's, but his hair was already dusted with silver. I let my hands drop from my face and smiled at him sheepishly.
"Why don't you take a seat, Ms. Milne?"
"Right, yes. That's what I should do. Seat." I faced the Slytherins. More of them had piled in while I had been momentarily distracted by my horror. "Erm. Seat. Yes." I mumbled.
I lurched forward, scanning the rows for an empty seat. I tried not to look at people too closely; I didn't want to get glared at or insulted. I finally took a seat next to a sickly looking child with limp blonde hair who didn't look as though he'd be too terrible, but then what did I know about reading people? In any case, choosing to sit next to him didn't do any good.
"Lots of empty space I see." The Professor crossed his arms. "We'll be needing to fill that up." He clapped his hands together. "Hurry up now; chop, chop."
I hurriedly got up as everyone shuffled about—or at least those who cared enough to get up. I ended up more in the middle or so of one table near the back, sandwiched between a girl and a boy, neither of whom I could get a very good look at.
The professor scanned the tables from is spot at the front of the classroom. He smiled after a moment and nodded pleasantly. "Good." He stated. "Now, there are ten of you at each table." He said. "Person at the far right of each row, please look to your left. That's your new partner. For the year."
There were loud grumbles and mutterings as students shifted in their seats and addressed their new 'partners'. "People, people, please. You'll live if you don't like your partner. It's not the end of the world." He ran his fingers through his short hair. "Alright, as for the rest of the groups, it'll be the person on the right next to first group who'll look to the left and find their partner. Keep that going, and I'm keeping a list of who's with who." He said. "So don't think you can just switch partners willy-nilly."
Willy-nilly?
I looked to my left, but the boy—I was sure that one was a boy—was turned away. I blushed a bit and swung to my right, but the girl was engaged in a rather loud conversation with her newly found partner.
The professor pointed to me. "Milne—with Black!" He bellowed. "Go!"
"B—but Professor! I have a partner right . . ." The girl and boy on either side of me ignored me, ". . . here."
"Precisely. With Black you go." He gestured across the room.
How could he do that? Just let them. Just let them. There were probably at least three in the girl's group. He could split them up! But he wouldn't. He just stared at me expectantly, his face frozen in something close to annoyance.
I sighed loudly and struggled to detangle myself from the table. It wouldn't stop wrapping around my ankles. I forced myself to walk, but I was walking through mud and it was unusually hard. I didn't know if the professor knew that I had never met this 'Black' character before, but I suppose that he knew that the Blacks all looked very similar and that I undoubtedly knew another Black with which to base this one off of.
Sirius and I never spoke very much, but there were always dribbles of gossip and tidbits of information that leaked around the school—the fights that Sirius and his family members would get into, that Sirius never went home over break, that he never spoke of his family. It sent the wrong message about a group of people, made others uneasy. A rift in a family like that was . . . well, it was odd. Unorthodox. Unacceptable.
There were two tables in the back, and only one person with black hair and grey eyes. I pretended not to notice him, or at least not to know he was a Black just by his appearance. I paced in slow circles. My eyes flickered to him briefly, and he caught them. He smirked, a twitch of the lips. My face burned.
The professor cleared his throat. "Ms. Milne." He called. "He's right in front of you."
I bit down on my bottom lip. "Right." I muttered. "Of course." I tried to force the overwhelming rush of blood to my face to cool down, but it only made it flare worse as I acknowledged its existence. I heard some snickers from the rows closer to the front, and I could see the jeers in the eyes of my classmates. Even the Gryffindors—people who were supposed to be, if not on my side, at least against the Slytherins—sort of chortled and chuckled. Or, rather, it felt like they were. It felt like everyone was staring me down.
I took a seat next to the Black boy, trying to keep as much space between us as possible. The student on the other side of me sniffed in disdain and gave me a sideways glance. I couldn't help but wonder if he had been the one I had bumped into on the train. I didn't know how many of Sirius Black's family attended Hogwarts, and I certainly didn't know how many of them were male. He just looked like he could've been the one from the train. Maybe.
He was still smirking slightly, though I could tell from the way it was etched deeply into his skin that he was trying to stifle it as I had been trying to strangle my own blush.
"The Gemino curse, as I'm sure you all know by now," The professor said, "is a curse which, when placed on a target object, allows that target object to be multiplied up being touch. These copies are worthless, making this an ideal curse for one who wishes to keep their valuables safe from wandering hands, yes?" He winked at the classes, sending waves of giggles across the room.
"Each of your groups is going to be provided with an object on which to place the Gemino curse. Whoever manages to correctly place it on their respective object first gets a . . . a prize, of sorts." He said. "Objects," he slapped a desk to the right of him that was covered with baubles and trinkets on every spare inch, "are available here. First come, first serve."
I looked at the Black boy to say something—ask his name, introduce myself—but he had already gotten up, smooth as a river current, and was gliding over to the desk. I saw him finger various trifles, touching each one lightly before moving on until he found one he seemed to like the most. I noted his posture; straight and unmoving as a metal rod. He was rather thin, but not sickly seeming, and he lacked the sun-kissed look that Sirius' flesh had attained. Instead, he was a bit on the pale side, with stark black hair that swung into his moss-grey eyes every once in a while. He had nice lips, slightly feminine, but nice; his jaw was strong and his nose was wide, but not in a way that seemed ugly. Oh, and what pretty eyelashes as well . . .
I didn't notice when he had sat down next to me again. He materialized out of nowhere and I nearly fell out of my seat in astonishment or fright or something inbetween.
It must have shown on my face because he gave me a questioning look before plopping down the object he had selected onto our table. He stuck out his hand, waving it right under my nose. It was long and articulate, with each finger poised in such a way as to seem as if they each had their own minds and thought their own thoughts.
"Regulus." He stated.
I stared at his hand for a moment before placing mine in his. "Oh, yes, well," I stuttered. "I'm Isla. Izzy. Er, Isla. Just call me Isla."
He raised one of his blackened eyebrows.k "Isla then? You're sure."
I nodded, and my sandy curls swung forward. I suddenly felt self-conscious of the fact that my hair was probably incredibly frizzy, and I probably looked more like a fuzzy tabby cat than a person.
He—Regulus, I reminded myself—shrugged. "Then show me what you know about conducting this curse." He didn't smile. He hadn't smiled even once, and I felt odd under his consistent, even stare. His frowns were easy and frequent, but he refused to crack even a small grin at my stumbling over words. Normally, I would've been grateful for this, but with him, no response at all was somehow worse.
Oh, fantastic.