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“I saw you with Potter yesterday.”
That certainly got Regulus's attention. He looked up from his potions essay to see that Snape’s eyes were narrowed and his expression unreadable. As his eyes flicked down to the potions essay he was revising, Regulus couldn’t help but wonder if the older boy was purposefully distracting him from his coursework. Potions was the only subject Regulus was anywhere remotely near remarkable at, and although he wasn’t directly competing with Snape since the boy was a year older, Slughorn had taken notice of Regulus and he could tell that Snape didn’t like to share the spotlight. It didn’t help that Regulus was the Seeker, and a Black, which more than made up for their obvious difference in potions skill. It had become painfully clear lately that Snape was jealous of Regulus, and more specifically than in the generic way the half-blood was jealous of all the Slytherins who could coast by easier because of their blood, so it was only logical to assume that he would turn to sabotage.
Or maybe he was paranoid.
Maybe living in Slytherin for years and, before that, in the House of Black, had made him paranoid. Always being one misstep away from a knife to the back did that to you, Regulus supposed.
So it was perfectly reasonable to assume this was sabotage. Although, Regulus did wonder why Snape would choose to ask him what were, admittedly, extremely distracting and somewhat distressing questions while he was studying in the library instead of doing something like spiking his potions or cursing something of his, which seemed much more the boy’s speed.
Still, Snape was standing right beside his table, looking down his hooked nose at Regulus, as he awaited some sort of response. Regulus sighed internally because really, if he knew one thing about Snape besides the fact that he was incredibly intelligent and powerful, and just as irritating, it was that he wouldn’t let things go until he got what he wanted.
So, Regulus responded, with years of carefully trained practice over his emotions keeping his panic and fear from escaping into his voice, and keeping his tone perfectly even, “Is that so?”
Snape raised an eyebrow ever-so-slightly, and it was only because of years spent with the boy that Regulus knew he hadn’t expected that answer. Regulus envied how effortless he made keeping a blank expression seem. It had taken him years and years of learning the hard way to get to where he was now, and the other boy made it seem easy. He wondered if Snape had had to learn the hard way too. “Yes,” Snape said.
“What of it?” Regulus replied. He only barely kept a tremor from appearing his voice. This was the closest call yet, and if he stopped to think about the implications of it he was sure that he would lose the battle to keep a neutral mask plastered over his face and the emotions and weakness would erupt like a shaken bottle of soda when the cap finally cracked.
“What of it?” Snape repeated, the slightest touch of mockery present in his signature drawl.
“Yes.” Regulus clasped his hands together on the table in front of him. “What of it?”
Snape narrowed his eyes further, and after a few moments, spoke again. “He’s a Gryffindor. And he’s the enemy.”
If Regulus had less self-control, he would have said, “What, Evans says she won’t talk to you anymore and suddenly the rest of us aren’t allowed to exchange words with them?” It was what he imagined Sirius would have said. But he wasn’t Sirius, and, despite what his recent actions would indicate, he did have self-control. Well, he had some.
So, instead, he said, “We all talk to Gryffindors for classwork and the like. They are still students at this school.”
Snape sneered. “So you’re joining up with them now, are you?”
Regulus scoffed. Snape had finally shown some emotion, so he could too — provided he keep the fear and panic well-hidden. “Not at all. I’m merely pointing out that a conversation with a Gryffindor is not the same as renouncing the cause.”
Snape narrowed his eyes again. “You were rather close to each other to talking about classwork and the like,” he said after a few moments. “It looked…intimate.” Regulus could hear the disgust in the last word; Snape didn’t try to disguise it. Regulus took the feeling that came up and put it in a box to be dealt with later. Ah, the joys of Occlumency.
“I said that those were perfectly reasonable excuses for talking to Gryffindors,” Regulus said, his voice restrained and controlled. “I didn’t say they were my excuses.”
“What was your excuse, then?”
Regulus paused, hoping it seemed like it was a tough thing to say while he frantically tried to think of anything. Sirius had always been the one to make excuses whenever they were caught for something as children, and Regulus had never been any good at it. And then it hit him. Sirius. “Potter is Sirius’s best friend,” he explained, talking slowly to try to be consistent with his earlier long, dramatic pause. “I…worry about him, since he ran away. And I can’t just go up to him — he wouldn’t talk to me, or listen, you know?”
To his surprise, Snape nodded slowly. “Yes,” he agreed, and Regulus remembered that the other boy really did, because of the whole (very public) affair with Evans.
“Right,” Regulus said. “Yes, so I can’t talk to Sirius myself, so I thought I would ask Potter if he was alright. And I didn’t want anyone to know that I still care about him — I’m supposed to have cast him aside, but he is my brother.”
It was a risk, and extremely un-Slytherin of him to get so emotional in front of Snape, but he was gambling on the other boy drawing enough similiarities to his own situation with Evans that he would be sympathetic.
And he felt a wave of relief crash over him when Snape nodded briskly, and quickly left Regulus alone at the table to finish his potions essay. Some of the ink had smudged — whether Snape had leaned on the table, or it was Regulus’s own hands, he didn’t know, but a cursory check of both his hands revealed a matching smudge.
Great. Now I have to rewrite the page…
…
“We’ve got to be more careful,” Regulus said as he broke away from the kiss. A heavy weight had been sitting in his stomach since he’d been accosted as his library table.
James’s glasses were already crooked, and as Regulus took a moment to straighten them, which wasn’t an easy endeavor as he was practically pinned to the wall and he had to squirm to move his arms up enough, he just looked amused. “Yeah?”
“Snape saw us.”
James looked like he was struggling not to laugh. “Really?”
“It’s not funny,” Regulus protested, but James had a way of making everything seem so funny that even Regulus had a hard time taking things seriously. There was just something about the boy that made him feel like everything was going to be alright.
Which, obviously, was a rather foreign feeling for Regulus.
“It sort of is,” James grinned. Then his smile fell away. “Well, it’s not, but…”
“He didn’t see anything,” Regulus said. “He just saw us talking, and I explained it away, so…”
James shrugged and gave him a crooked grin. “We’ll be more careful?”
Regulus melted under that grin. “Yeah. We’ll be more careful.”