Diptych

Chapter 6

The decision to look out for his brother in the stands wasn't a conscious one. His eyes simply drifted in that direction as he floated through the sky, gaze landing on the place Sirius always sat during matches. At that moment, he was sitting between Lupin and Pettigrew. Sirius' eyes weren't on Regulus, but nor had he expected them to be. Since he'd left home and renounced his birthright, his blood, he always seemed to make a show of only watching the team Regulus was playing against, cheering for Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw as fiercely as he would if Gryffindor were playing.

Drizzle began to cover the pitch after a while, and his teammates responded by playing with more fervour. Nobody minded playing in the rain, but it certainly wasn't the kind of match they would like to draw out like some of the later games, when things really mattered and the Cup felt ever closer and they would sometimes play well past the sun setting. Instead, both teams made clumsy moves in attempts to score easy points and more than one player found themselves on the receiving end of a bludger. As for Regulus, he tore his eyes from his brother and his friends and looked instead for the snitch.

The victory was eventually his, and his heart was lifted, and he looked to Sirius and... Sirius was already leaving, head turned away from his brother and feet dropping down from step to step like he couldn't wait to be off the pitch and away from the victorious Slytherins. Maybe it was just the rain. Regulus swallowed, turned his attention back to the team and the players who were now surrounding him, hollering and throwing themselves about in the air as Regulus still held up the jittering ball of joy, the moment they had been longing for as they suffered ice-cold fingers and dripping hair. The party that was promised was cemented as a celebration rather than a consolation.

And though Regulus didn't consider himself the party type, though he was desperate to get back to his dorm and to the diary, he did allow himself to be plied briefly with drinks. No sooner had he stepped through the common room door than Selwyn had thrust a tumbler upon him, giving no indication of what it held, only that Regulus should drink it as quickly as possible. He did so, to several cheers. Those brief glimpses into what it would be to be liked, to be popular, would have put him in mind of his brother once more if not for the way he scrunched up his face at the assault of a taste and the burning behind his eyes.

Three hours passed before Regulus finally climbed the steps to the dorm, and he still found himself the first one back there. Flynn had likely found his way into the girls' dorm with Susan Burke, whilst Selwyn and Shafiq continued to drink. Where exactly the contraband firewhiskey and other array of bottles came from, Regulus didn't question. They turned up after Slytherin's matches, and Slughorn turned a blind eye because he remembered so fondly his own days of misadventure.

Regulus couldn't decide what exactly made him uneasy when he opened the drawer beside his bed, couldn't settle on one thing that was out of place. There was just a sense that came over him that somebody had been messing in his things, amplified and more worrying because of the diary's presence. Regulus had thought that Montague was down in the stands for the whole match, but he'd obviously not been watching very carefully. Aside from the snitch, he'd also had the distraction of the trio of Gryffindors. He couldn't think of anybody else who'd have been inclined to go rummaging through his belongings. Luckily for him though, if Montague had been snooping about, it seemed that the diary had proved to be of little interest to him because it was still untouched as far as Regulus could see. The sleeping draught it lay beneath was still in place, and Montague hadn't taken the thing. The magic was impressive enough that he thought it likely his dorm mate would steal it. Anybody in their right mind would probably take it, knowing what it could do. That was the reason Regulus felt so protective over it. It had been a gift, bestowed upon him and there was no way he was going to lose out on everything he'd gained just because he'd been indiscreet. No, he couldn't even think in that moment what he'd have done if the diary had been stolen; it was too stressful a thought.