If Only I Were A Marauder

Chapter 5

Warnings - abusive parents, sibling rivalry, touched starved, coping mechanism, self obsessed teenagers

It was my first time doing rounds with Regulus. I was nervous for some reason. I wasn't quite sure how I felt about him. My initial reaction to him had been fondness, he'd stood up for me, he'd been interesting, but I also trusted Sirius. Of course, Sirius knew his brother. If he told me to stay away, it was probably a good idea. Yet I felt an odd kinship with the curly haired boy, that I couldn't explain. There was an emotion in his eyes I'd often seen in the mirror. Desire, I didn't know what for, I knew for myself, but for him, I had no clue. What were his dreams? His goals? His wants?

"How have classes been for you?" I asked as we walked, his wand illuminating the way.

"Pretty standard," he said, rolling his neck. "And you?"

"I'm struggling with advanced transfiguration. No matter how hard I try I can't turn a rose into a peony, they seem too closely related for it to work. I mean, they're both flowers."

"The trick is to think about all their differences, even if it's down to shades of pink," he explained.

"Oh, thank you," I said.

"What about that 30th question on the last Charms quiz, it threw me for a loop," I laughed awkwardly. I watched Regulus's lips quirk upward.

"I know my thing is kinda that I'm this brooding nerd, but I can talk about things other than school work," he said.

"Oh, sorry," I said, and I was quiet for a bit. "It's just I find you intriguing, so I wanted to make conversation."

"Intriguing, how exactly am I intriguing?" He asked.

"People don't usually have a friend who has a brother they're so closed lipped about," I explained.

"Ah, this is about my brother, as usual," he said and I felt my heart drop.

"No, I mean I'm sure you're interesting in your own right, but it's just mysterious is all, I'm sorry."

"If you want the truth," he said after a while. "You intrigue me as well."

"I do?" I asked, my heart doing a back flip.

"I can't understand why you chase after those four idiots. when your magical ability is superior to all of them, and from what I've seen, you're pretty on par with James in the Quidditch skills department."

"Oh, Um, thank you," I said, my cheeks heating. "To be frank, I'm lonely. They're just so, so, cool. They do life so easily where as I feel like I'm slogging through. I haven't really got any friends."

"I know how that feels," Regulus mumbled. "Sirius poisoned everyone against me before I even arrived."

"Oh, I'm sorry," I said slowly. I didn't know if I was or not. On one hand, a child didn't deserve that, on the other, if Regulus was as awful as Sirius said, had he deserved it?

"At least your parents like you," I said. "Sirius says you're their golden child. That's Peter in my family. My parents didn't even sign my Hogsmede permission slip."

"Being the golden child, with certain parents, is not all that it's cracked up to be. Our parents are difficult and Sirius and I cope in different ways. I self isolate and give into perfectionism, he stops caring and treats everything like a competition he has to fail to prove what a fuck up he is."

I had never heard anyone describe Sirius Black that way, but thinking about it, it was true. Sirius crowed about poor grades, he relished losing house points and getting in duels. He'd always beamed at howlers. He was desperately trying to be the exact opposite of what his family expected and required.