ᴛʜʀᴏᴜɢʜ ᴛʜᴇ ꜰᴏᴜʀᴛʜ ᴡᴀʟʟ | ᴍᴀʀᴀᴜᴅᴇʀꜱ ᴇʀᴀ

xvii. confrontation

To say that Regulus could think straight was a lie. He had been pacing around his room in the Slytherin Common Room for quite some time. After hearing his brother and Callie talk in the shack, his mind went haywire. It was something unusual for the Regulus Black.

But who could blame him really?

His brother just made a girl confess that she actually like him. Under normal circumstances, such a situation would be under the rug in a matter of seconds. But that one... that one was different.

Regulus had received quite some admiration from other witches his age—heck even from an older fellow! But from a girl who popped out of nowhere claiming she was from a different world where they were fictional? It was a first.

That wasn't the only thing that separated Callie from the others. She knew him. Not a lot but just enough. She knew he was then a Death Eater and that he then had a Death Mark embedded in his skin around summer.

She also managed to make him betray the Dark Lord, the one he'd been looking up to since he was young. With just a few words, he gave in.

His eyes landed on his left forearm. There it was, the Dark Mark. He traced it with his finger, thinking about what he had been doing.

Truth be told, Regulus was a little unsure about trusting Callie. He met her just a few days ago and then became disloyal to the Dark Lord that fast? But when he remembered what she said about Kreacher, he became more unsure of the Dark Lord than the stranger.

Kreacher had been his greatest companion. Since he was young and especially when Sirius left. Losing him would be detrimental. He'd rather lose his own life than Kreacher's, that was how much he valued the house elf's life.

All that was beside the point! He had to fix the chaos in his head. The fact that Callie liked him kept messing with him. And if he didn't let it out of his system one way or another, he might just go mental.

Callie liking him wasn't such a big deal. He could live with that... probably. But what he wasn't comfortable about was why she liked him.

Technically, she didn't know him. Well, sure, she knew he became a Death Eater and all but...she didn't know him well enough.

Sighing, Regulus knew there was one way to keep his mind at rest and snap her out of how she saw him.

He marched out of the common room and headed to the shack, hoping the Marauders weren't with her. He'd like a private conversation with Callie.

°°°

A knock on the door pulled Callie out of the book she was reading. She looked up from the book laying flat on her bed to see Regulus peeking from outside.

She straightened her posture seeing him; a small tinge of red across her cheeks as her eyes widened at the sight of the young Black. She remembered her talk with Sirius earlier that day. And because of that, she became more aware of the embarrassment she had always felt whenever she'd see Regulus.

"Can we talk?" he asked.

"Oh, uh, um, uh su-sure."

She had no idea what he wanted to talk about. His demeanour was different from his previous ones.

Did anything bad happen while he was spending his summer? Did he fail with the mission she gave him? Or worse, did his parents find out what he had been doing and punished him?!

She hoped not.

Regulus stepped inside the room and made his way to her bed. She took her book away to show that she was ready to entertain whatever he needed. He sat on the edge, a good foot away from her.