Starry skies and Gardenias

Chapter 186

"You two are still on the self-imposed ban?" Sirius asked, propping up his legs on the little tea table.

"It's not a ban," Regulus rolled his eyes.

"I knew it was for the best," Lily muttered to James, who nodded, patting his wife's back. 

Regulus still got worried, extremely worried about Isabella, but not as antsy and tense when it came to her. But he seemed to get better himself too. 

Izzy did know what she was doing. 

The only thing was, Izzy on the other hand, seemed to be getting worse.

Not everyone noticed this though. She did a good job hiding, but Lily's intuition ould find out centuries-old treasure, obviously, she was the first one to notice that something was wrong.

Sirius had a right fright when he ran into Isabella stabbing a potato aggressively with a knife.

It would have been comical, if only she wasn't clutching her hand and shaking, as though with repressed anger. 

No one had ever seen Isabella like that, and Sirius froze at the doorway, taking time to process just what he had witnessed.

What was even more alarming was that the next second, she straightened and went on with what she was doing as though nothing had happened. 

The first person Sirius ran to was James, and with him came Lily. 

James didn't believe him at all, but Lily said she did notice that Isabella had been behaving differently these days.

And they set up a secret society, looking out for Isabella.

They were startled by the number of instances that popped up to prove them right.

Sometimes the hand holding her cup would shake uncontrollably, sometimes she would drop plates and the look on her face would say that it was not an accident. The newspaper would catch fire, the water taps would explode. 

And when Isabella finally came to herself, she would say, "Oh, I'll fix that," and that was all the explanation there was.

Another thing they had agreed to, was to not tell Regulus.

But Regulus wasn't blind. He had started seeing the signs from the very start. 

It only seemed to get worse now. 

Isabella was locking herself up in her room, skipping meals. She would stay shut in her room for days and then suddenly, she would leave the house for long hours, come back and stay shut in her room again.

He took at least ten minutes to come to terms with the fact that Isabella was making coffee in the morning for herself, instead of tea.

But she did make nice coffee. . .must have something to do with her past life where she worked part-time at a coffee shop.

Regulus didn't say anything about that. Isabella reminded him only of tea.

He secretly missed seeing her bustling around with a kettle, with a pleasant expression on her face. 

She seemed to be changing a lot. 

Isabella liked walking barefoot, but only rarely and if the surface was cool.  Now she just forgot her slippers here and there.

Regulus had gotten used to seeing her in frocks and dresses, now when she pulled on shirts, which weren't his, it just seemed strange.

He still didn't say anything.