Work Text:
On Monday, Regulus wasn’t going to admit it, but he was feeling excited about seeing her again. He knew he had to step up his game. He was already a week in and he was making progress, but he didn’t want to leave this to the last minute, the quicker he got this over with, the better he would feel. And the richer he would be.
He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be friends with her, but he was determined to find out before Christmas which he thought was definitely possible.
“Good morning,” he greeted when she made her way over to her desk. She greeted him back and took off her coat.
For some reason, he watched her do so.
Last week she had stuck to a different pair of trousers and a nice top, but this week she was in a long, tight skirt, that was very tight. She was wearing a loose white top that was tucked into her very tight skirt and Regulus had to force himself to look away.
Okay, he thought. Evan was definitely right. She was hot. Basically, he had everything to win from this bet and not a lot to lose besides maybe a bruised ego, but Regulus could deal with that, and he was also certain that he wasn’t going to feel that.
“How was your weekend?” He asked.
“Good,” she said, “how was your brother’s birthday?”
“Usual,” he shrugged, leaning back in his chair as she sat down in hers. Usual meaning everyone fought and his mother cried and Sirius left in huff leaving Regulus to deal with the damage. But she didn’t need to know that.
She was intrigued as to how this week would go. She thought last week him and Evan would ignore her, but they had tried to make conversation and even though they were their usual arrogant selves, she was finding out that they could be okay when she wasn’t provoking them. Which she wasn’t doing to refrain from getting into trouble at her new job.
“So, what ideas do you have for me?” She took in a sharp breath. For him? As if he was her superior? She wanted to scoff but she bit the inside of her cheek and pulled out her piece of parchment, leaning over her desk slightly to pass it to Regulus.
Regulus’ eyes flickered down as she leant over her desk because her loose top wasn’t doing much to help her.
“I think we add the fairy wings in first and then put in the unicorn hair at the end.” Regulus hummed. He was listening, he swore.
“Yeah, I was thinking that too.” He wasn’t, but he didn’t want to say anything that would make her move from her current position.
Sure, maybe this wasn’t Regulus’ best behaviour, but he wanted to see what he was getting himself into. And with his eyes meant to be focused on the parchment in front of him, it wasn’t too hard to pretend that that was what he was looking down at.
“I was thinking we add in some cat hair in between to hopefully neutralise it.” He said, his eyes flickering up quickly to her to make it seem like this was a normal conversation.
She hummed. “Sure,” she said, not wanting to admit that that was actually a good idea.
“The only thing is, I don’t know how we can target certain areas for hair removal,” Regulus said, his eyes going back down.
“Surely there’s a spell for that,” she said, leaning back in her chair and Regulus sighed, his eyes shooting up as he copied her actions.
“We’ll have to get in contact with the suppliers to see if they want us to do that or if they want the consumers to do so.” Regulus said.
“Okay.”
“I’ll get in contact with Louie and he’ll find out for us.”
There was a beat of silence.
“So, do I just keep trying to come up with my own idea for a potion?”
“Yeah,” Regulus said, “we should find out how many people are trying our healing potion on Friday and hopefully get some results by the end of the month. We might get another request on Wednesday, we’ll see.”
She nodded at him, trying not to get hung up on the fact that he said our healing potion, even though it was pretty much his potion.
“Did you,” he paused slightly, “get any pains over the weekend?” He asked, moving his hand slightly around his face.
“No,” she said, her head twitching to the side slightly, “thankfully it didn’t remove my eyebrows.” She said, the thought just occurred to her. Regulus laughed and she shot him a funny look. She wasn’t trying to be funny.
He cleared his throat and got out some parchment.
“Yeah, lucky,” he mumbled and went to his work. What a weird boy , she thought before getting up and getting a book from the shelf behind her.
Regulus’ eyes drifted upwards. Her skirt was just really tight. He couldn’t help himself. But as soon as she turned around he turned back to his paper, so she was none the wiser.
“Good morning everyone,” a third voice said and they both turned to face Evan.
“You’re late,” Regulus commented, leaning back in his chair once more, the work he was just about to do quickly forgotten about.
“You know what it’s like,” Evan said even though neither of them knew what it was like. She started on her work, Evan wasn’t really talking to her and she didn’t really care what it was like and she really wanted to think of her own potion idea, so she kept her head down and continued working.
“I won’t be home tonight.” Evan was speaking loud enough for her to hear, so she didn’t really count it as eavesdropping considering she had no other option but to listen.
“Why?” Regulus asked, both of them swivelling on their chairs to face the other.
“Got a date,” Evan said and Regulus let out a noise that sounded like he was impressed.
“With who?”
“Guess.”
“Don’t tell me it’s that girl from the Leaky Cauldron.”
“It’s the girl from the Leaky Cauldron.” In her peripheral vision, she could see Regulus shake his head, a beaming smile on his face.
“I thought you’d fucked that up.”
“Oh I did,” Evan said, sounding a little too proud of himself. “But then I saw her on Sunday when I had to pick up something in Diagon Alley and then she came back to mine and then we-” it seemed he had suddenly remembered that Regulus was no longer the only one who could hear about his escapades, so he trailed off, “we, yeah.” He ended and she couldn’t really help but look up at them. Evan was looking at her but Regulus was still looking at his friend, a stupid smirk on his face.
“What, and you were that good you convinced her to go out with you?” Evan suddenly seemed to forget that she was there, or maybe, he just didn’t care about her hearing about his personal life because he went back to looking at Regulus and gave him a lopsided grin.
“Yeah, you don’t understand how good she was mate, need her to come back somehow.” She couldn’t help the scoff that left her throat, making both boys turn to her.
She had no problem getting herself involved in this conversation, they were being gross and they needed to know this. Maybe the other old guy couldn’t hear them talking like this, but she could and she didn’t want to hear it.
“You’re disgusting.” Their grins left their faces.
“Sorry,” Evan said, “I forgot you were the fun police.” That earned him another scoff.
“Sorry I don’t care about your hookups ,” she said, “this is a place of work, it’s hardly an appropriate topic.”
There she was.
Regulus was getting spoiled with her ability to maintain small talk, but this was the ice queen he knew. The one who was never afraid to speak her opinion, even if it ruined literally everyone else’s fun. The one who stuck to the rules religiously because he was sure she would shortwire if she ever got in trouble for it.
“Well it’s just us,” Evan argued, “and if you wanted to talk about it I’d be happy to hear about your hookups ,” he said, mimicking her tone.
Regulus was suddenly intrigued. He knew she wasn’t about to tell them about her hookups , but he was interested to see what she’d say to that and whether or not this would provide any information into her history .
But before she could get another word in, Louie entered and all of their heads turned to face him.
“Hi,” he said, completely unaware of what he had just walked into.
“Louie,” Regulus said, “can you get a message to the company who wanted that hair potion?” He was already standing up and following Louie to his desk, so the conversation ended at that and no one was provided any insight into anyone’s history .
Regulus knew if he did that the conversation would end, but he also didn’t want to have this conversation with Louie present, besides, he had a feeling Evan was going to redirect the conversation to Regulus’ hookups and he knew that if she wasn’t impressed with Evan’s, she wouldn’t be impressed with his and that would set him back which he really couldn’t afford.
Evan shot her a sarcastic smile before he turned around and she did the same before going back to her work.
The morning went by pretty quickly. It wasn’t until ten minutes to twelve that she started to consider what she would do for lunch.
It wasn’t snowing yet, but it definitely looked like it would start soon and she had spent lunch with them on Friday and survived. Barely.
And Louie was in today. Would he sit with them at lunch?
But then she’d have to endure their stupid small talk, or maybe even just their usual stupid talk as what was shown this morning.
She considered it, and it wasn’t until five minutes to twelve that she decided that she would go and sit with them. If Louie showed up then she didn’t want Regulus and Evan telling him how weird she was for choosing to eat outside by herself, and if he didn’t show up, then maybe she could annoy them a bit and make it entertaining for herself.
When the clock turned twelve, everyone started standing up and getting ready to go to lunch and she followed suit.
She sat where she sat last time and watched Regulus and Evan get their food ready. Louie hadn’t made his way in the breakroom yet, and she wasn’t sure he was going to do so. Maybe she could have eaten outside by herself.
Even though, it was a lot warmer in here.
No one said anything, and for a while, she felt uninvited and out of place. Maybe they didn’t want her in here? Especially not after this morning when she had told them off.
But she ate her sandwich and watched as they moved around the room silently.
No one was saying anything and it was awkward and she thought she was going to combust with it all so as soon as she finished her sandwich, she stood up and went to the bathroom.
As soon as the door clicked behind her, Evan nudged his friend.
“I’m jealous mate,” Regulus didn’t respond and so Evan continued, “that skirt.” Evan let out a noise that definitely wasn’t appropriate for work and Regulus smirked.
“You need to start being nicer to her, otherwise I’ll never get to her.”
“Nah mate,” Evan laughed, “this is your bet, I’m happy to get my five hundred if you don’t succeed, and who knows, maybe I’ll try her if you don’t succeed.” Regulus thought that his friend had a fat chance of getting with her.
Regulus had a few things over him. Firstly, his friend was right, Regulus came from a slightly nobler family than the Rosier’s. She was also Regulus’ Quidditch captain for three years and considering Evan could never make the team, he was more accustomed to her control issues. And Regulus had also shared Prefect duties with her for two years and even though they spent most of that time not talking to each other, he had learnt a bit about her and her ways during that time and it seemed she was a lot nicer to him than she ever was to Evan.
Probably because Evan always made a point to get under her skin whereas Regulus only did it when she started it, but regardless, Regulus was feeling pretty confident that even if his friend couldn’t keep his big mouth shut, he had a pretty good chance of succeeding.
It seemed that Evan was going to say something, probably something stupid, but Regulus could hear her footsteps and he gave him a quick nudge, saving his friend from embarrassment as she came out of the bathroom.
She had tried to take her time in the bathroom, but she also didn’t want to spend too long in there, so she came out and took her seat.
“Did you watch the game?” Evan asked, looking up at her and for once in her life, she was thankful for Evan and his inability to shut up.
“Yeah, it was a good win,” she said, placing her hands in her lap and playing anxiously with her fingers beneath the table.
“Yeah, it was easy though, everyone knew they’d win.”
“I don’t know,” Regulus said, and then he started talking about how the Seeker on the other team hadn’t gone a single game this season without catching the snitch and then Evan said that the chasers were just too good though, so it didn’t matter.
They kept talking and she kept piping up every now and again when she felt necessary. It made the hour go quick and before she knew it, she was back at her desk, smoothing down her skirt before she sat down.
She thought she’d mix it up a bit with her clothes this week, but she wasn’t sure if she looked out of place. Regulus and Evan only showed up in slacks and a nice top. She had thought maybe that this was a little over the top, but she was running late and didn’t have time to change. For a third time.
“Do you want to fill out the forms for our second trial on Friday?” Regulus asked as he sat behind his desk.
“Sure,” she said, as Regulus handed over the paperwork to her. He had gone through it with her last week and it was pretty straightforward, so she wasn’t too concerned about it.
“If you need anything, let me know.” He passed over another piece of parchment that had a clear method and ingredients that included the ideas they had gone over this morning and she got her quill out and started filling it out.
It was very straightforward, but she hadn’t realised how many forms there were to actually fill out. She finished with fifteen minutes left before hometime and when she did, she put her quill down and asked, “Do I just hand them in?”
“Yeah,” Regulus said, looking up from his textbook, now also taking the time to start thinking of another original potion.
She nodded and stood up, parchments in her hand as she walked over to the bosses office. Regulus felt Evan’s chair hit the back of his and when Regulus turned around to look at him, he rolled his eyes.
“Careful not to break your neck, mate.”
Evan didn’t respond to him.
The rest of the week went fairly similarly. Although, Regulus and Evan weren’t lucky enough to get another skirt appearance, it seemed she was back to her usual trousers, which were still pretty hot, Regulus thought so at least.
Sometimes they flared out and it made her look cute, but other times they were fitted and it made Regulus’ day just that tiny bit more interesting.
And Evans as well.
On Tuesday Evan came in with a stupid grin on his face and Regulus let out a small laugh.
“I take it it was a good night, then?”
“Mate, you don’t even understand.” She let out a sigh and Evan rolled his eyes. “Come over tonight and I’ll tell you about it.”
It occurred to her that maybe she was being petty, but she really didn’t care. She worked here with them and she didn’t want to hear about it, so they dropped the subject for the rest of the week.
On Friday, they were ready to do their next trial for the hair potion. Her hair was tied back and Regulus thought the glasses made her eyes look bigger as she looked at him with a bored expression when he went through the method that she had already memorised.
When she got the ingredients, she realised this was the last of the unicorn hair, so she’d have to tell Evan to order in some more.
Great.
She brought it over to the bench and started preparing the ingredients. Neither of them talking as Regulus started getting the equipment ready.
When everything was ready, Regulus went to start pouring the ingredients, already knowing that she would make him do it if he prompted her to do it.
It’s not that he was making her do it, it was just that she was still new and he remembered how excited he was to make potions when he first started, but the old man he was partnered with before didn’t let him even touch the ingredients until about two months in.
“I’m so happy this didn’t blow up in your face,” she said sarcastically as he put in the unicorn hair, quickly followed by the cat hair.
“Me too,” he said, giving her a stupid smile that earned him a scoff.
He felt like they were progressing. Their usual banter no longer had negative connotations behind it. Well, he thought so at least.
She just thought this was usual Regulus Black behaviour, she knew he was quick and witty back from their time as Prefects and sometimes it was funny.
In their prepared method they said they’d let the potion rest for half an hour to give the cat hair time to neutralise the unicorn hair and so Regulus leant on the bench and she stood in front of him, in a very similar position to how they were standing a week ago.
“Any plans for this weekend?” Regulus asked.
“Meeting up with some friends.” She didn’t want to explain to him that they weren’t necessarily friends but more children from her parents’ friends who were similar age to her. Similar being anywhere from ten to twenty years older than her.
Her parents were older when they had her and so all of their friends had already had kids by the time she was born. But her parents' friends were some of the only people her parents found respectable and so she was forced to get along with them and try to find the things a ten year old and a twenty five year old had in common.
Even though, friends was a strong word. They weren’t so much friends, but more colleagues who had the right connections and lots of money.
Once a month they met up for a dinner party and this month, it was at their house.
“That’s fun,” Regulus said, “anyone I know?” She shrugged.
“I don’t know who you know.” She had a point, he thought. “What about you?”
“Probably just going over to Evan’s, the usual.” He shrugged, staring straight ahead.
“That’s fun,” she echoed.
There was a beat of silence. Still 27 minutes to go.
“So,” she said, trying her best to make small talk, “what’s your favourite potion you’ve ever made?” Regulus thought it felt like twenty questions. What’s your favourite colour? Your favourite food? But he knew she was just trying to be polite and he respected that.
“We once made one that gave someone the ability to sing, that was fun because nothing like that had been done before so we were really working from nothing.”
“How long did that take you?”
“4 months.”
“Wow.” Her eyebrows had furrowed together and Regulus couldn’t help but smile.
“Yeah,” he said, “these last two potions have been pretty easy, but sometimes it takes ages.”
They hadn’t gotten any new requests in their weekly Wednesday meetings and so both of them had spent the last two days making sure this method was perfect and working on their own potions.
Neither of them having any luck.
“How long have you and Evan been friends for?” She asked, and while they’d been making constant small talk over these past two weeks, this was the most she had ever talked and Regulus couldn’t help but think he was making progress.
Maybe all he had to do to get her in bed was be nice to her and while that was challenging, he could do it for five hundred galleons.
“Pretty much since we were born,” he shrugged, “our mother’s were really good friends and we were only born days apart so they were ecstatic.”
“That’s cute,” she said, slowly nodding her head.
Regulus wanted to ask her who her friends were. She definitely had friends in Hogwarts, all it took was people to know her last name and they were instantly sucking up to her, but he wasn’t sure how sincere those friendships were. Besides, she always chose to sit by herself in class and in the Common Room and while she was surrounded by people at dinner and on Hogsmeade trips, she was never really the one talking so he didn’t think it was an unfair question.
But he didn’t think it was appropriate to come out and ask if she had any friends, so he refrained from doing so.
23 minutes.
Regulus feared it would be awkward having to wait these long times with her. The old guy before her used to tell Regulus random stories about his life and Regulus was happy to mindlessly listen, but now he needed to start thinking of conversation topics, which was hard when the person you were conversing with wasn’t fully human.
And sure, there were awkward moments, like now when no one had anything to say, but it wasn’t entirely horrible.
“I’m glad it’s not snowing anymore,” Regulus said and she agreed, talking about how cold it was last week and how she doesn’t like going out when it snows.
The conversation flowed and ebbed from there and after the half hour had passed, Regulus added in the fairy wing.
She was already about five steps back from the bench, and Regulus couldn’t help but also take a couple steps back after he added it in.
But thankfully, nothing happened and instead the potion turned a light grey and she smiled.
“Another success,” she said and Regulus hummed in agreement.
He got the vials out from the cabinet and this time she helped him put the potion inside them.
When they were finished and he used his wand to clear the bench she turned to face him.
“So is it the same thing now? We send them off, they give it out and we get reports?”
“Yeah,” he said, “Louie should be coming today after lunch to tell us how many people have used our healing potion as well.”
She nodded slowly and they made their way out of the brewing room. And as Regulus said, after lunch Louie was there with a folder that he handed to Regulus after he confirmed that a group of charm specialists would be putting the spell on the potion to target specific areas for hair removal.
He brought it around to her desk and sat on her table. She looked affronted, as if she wanted to tell him to get off her desk, but he started talking before she could get a word in.
“Let’s see,” he said, opening the folder. “We got 49 vials because I spilled one, and 11 people have offered to trial it.”
“Is that all?”
“It’s only been two weeks.” She was forced to look up at him from her chair and she didn’t like the look he gave her as if he knew so much more than her. “Let’s see.” He had the folder placed down on her desk and he ran his finger down the list of patients. There were no names for confidentiality reasons, she presumed, but there were a list of symptoms they had which were the reason for the potion being offered to them.
Headaches, stomach aches, runny nose, weeping eyes, sore throat, fevers. The list went on.
“So what do we do with this?” She asked, not really understanding how all this information helped them make a potion.
“Well, the patients take it to get rid of these symptoms and then a week later they tell the healers whether or not the symptom vanished and we can see if there are certain things it doesn’t work for and what it does work for and we change the potion accordingly.”
“So this could take us ages to actually complete?”
“Yeah,” he said, both of them looking at the other, “it usually does. Especially because we want this potion to do a range of things, but we’ve already had two trials already, so third time lucky maybe.”
“Maybe,” she murmured, as Regulus went back to flicking through the pages and she followed along. “How long have you been working on this?”
“This is going into our third month.” She nodded slowly at him.
When they were finished, Regulus ordered it back in the folder, put it away in the filing cabinet, and went back to his desk.
Both of them continued working on an original potion, with Evan turning around almost every half hour to distract Regulus. Which she was slowly getting used to.
She had perfected the art of training her eyes on her parchment because as much as it annoyed her hearing them talk, sometimes it was interesting and she couldn’t help but be nosey. Especially when she still had no idea for an original potion.
She was even getting better at controlling her facial expressions.
At the end of the day she realised she had forgotten to tell Evan that they needed more unicorn hair, she hoped it wasn’t too late.
She stood up slowly, feeling the eyes of Regulus on her, even though he refused to move his head that was bent over the textbook in front of him, and made her way over to Evan’s desk.
He was also refusing to look up from his parchment, so she cleared her throat and Evan finally looked up at her. He had his arms folded and he leant back in his chair. She hated that position.
“What can I do for you, sweetheart?”
“Don’t call me sweetheart.” She gave him a disgusted look and thought she heard Regulus snicker.
“We ran out of unicorn hair.”
“And you couldn’t have told me this earlier in the day?”
“I forgot, sorry.” She was sorry, but she wasn’t going to grovel for Evan’s forgiveness.
He tsked, “It’s just not good enough sweetheart.”
“Evan,” she said, “if you call me sweetheart one more time -”
“But don’t worry, darling,” she scoffed, “I’ll put the order in, just for you.”
“You’re so kind,” she said through gritted teeth, making Evan smirk as he turned back around and she huffed off to her own desk.
By the time she got back to her desk it was time to pack up.
“Have a good weekend, I’ll see you Monday.” Regulus said, before he walked off with Evan and she smiled at him.
Regulus wasn’t sure how he was going with this all. He felt that they were making progress. Slow progress. But still progress.
She hadn’t really said anything mean since Tuesday and that was to Evan so really it didn’t count. She still had a smart mouth, but Regulus had tried the approach of laughing after it as if she was joking around with him like they were friends. It always got him a funny look, but eventually her face would relax and she’d give him a small smile.
“Do you have to tap your quill on the desk like that, I can’t focus,” she had practically seethed on Thursday afternoon. Regulus bit back a retort about her stupid ticking clock.
“Well it helps me focus,” he retorted, forcing a friendly smile on his face that he hoped looked sincere.
“Sorry, I forgot the whole world revolves around you.” Regulus wanted to point out the logic flaw in that. The world didn't revolve around him, but it didn’t revolve around her either. But instead he laughed until her face relaxed, she gave him a weird smile and went back to her work.
It crossed his mind that maybe she thought he was an idiot and was only giving him a pity smile, but he thought that if he kept going like that, eventually she’d get used to it and she’d start laughing with him.
He was going into the third week of this bet and they were still only in the small talk stage, he really needed to step up his game.