Harry Potter Oneshots

In the Shadows (Regulus Black)

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Hello there! This one is long and I'm quite happy with the length of it! It shows I'm capable of writing longer oneshots!

This is going to be my late Valentine's oneshot and I'm so sorry it's not as fluffy as you would expect a Valentine's oneshot to be. It's not as upbeat as my other ones.

I messed up the timeline when I began writing this and so I thought Y/N would still be in school, just on Christmas break, when Regulus showed up at her house but I later realized she would've graduated earlier that year so, uhm, if you see anything that suggests otherwise, please tell me.

I also kept forgetting Y/N is living in a flat, not a real home, so sorry if it mentions an upstairs or something. Ignore it.

Hope you all are doing well!

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I twirled my quill between my fingers and switched between staring at my half-filled parchment and the steady light my wand gave me from the lumos I'd cast. The parchment, a letter to my aunt, was one that I was supposed to be finishing. Mum had stated that it was polite to write back and had sent multiple owls reminding me to write to her sister. She then started to add notes that said to stop ignoring her owls as well.

Wasn't living alone supposed to allow more freedom?

Apparently, despite the fact that she had agreed to let me move into a flat alone and let me do my own thing, she thought I was incapable of being polite... and maybe I was. I shook my head at the thought and reached to dip my quill into my inkwell but I was stopped, thankfully, by a quick, loud knock on the door.

I breathed out a sigh of relief and set down my quill haphazardly in the shallow pot of ink. It could stay standing there for a few minutes, right? I thought as I grabbed my wand and pushed away from my dark wood desk.

I padded out of the room and approached my flat's door. I extinguished my wand and hid it behind my back before opening the door. I never really cared about checking for who it was because I could make a weirdo pass out or something else equally amusing if they decided to mess with me. And I could obliviate them afterwards, too.

The door swung open and I sucked in a breath through my nose as the man before me hurried inside, nudging me aside and shutting the door softly behind him. I almost reached out for his shoulder as he passed by me to head into my kitchen but I didn't when I caught sight of the red covering it.

"Regulus?" I called out, incredulous, before following him into the kitchen where the tap had started to run, "What in - what in the name of Salazar are you doing here? And what happened to you?"

He shushed me like a bothersome child, much to my annoyance, and ran the dishcloth he'd picked up from somewhere under the warm water that was coming out of my tap. I approached him and was about to berate him for using my white cloth to clean himself up but, before the words could leave my mouth, he turned around and pressed his palm over my mouth.

"Don't worry, Knight, I'll get you a new cloth," he murmured in a way that would normally be teasing but, in the current situation, was far from it. He met my gaze, "Don't talk loudly."

I had the urge to lick his hand and was about to but he pulled away before I could, probably guessing where my thoughts had gone. I made a face at him and watched as he wiped the cloth over his shoulder then continued to do the same to the many other wounds scattered across his skin.