HP one shots

The Merest Feather // StarSeeker

Summary:

Regulus is not quite sure what to make of finding himself the subject of the new Potter's interest.
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"It's only Dumbledore's propaganda." Rosier's voice was a bare breath by his ear. Madam Pince, walking past, would scarcely have registered it. "The Dark Lord wouldn't treat his loyal supporters thus." A pause. "Maybe some traitor or floundering weakling, but nothing to people like us. My father – "

A faint sound in one of the aisles behind them, slightly to the left of Regulus' shoulder. Rosier fell silent. His quill scratched a few lines, as though he had been confirming with Regulus the reason for the extended duration of a standard dose of Felix Felicis brought about by Margolin's changes.

He was not to find out what Rosier's father had said or done. Regulus knew him, unlike his own parents, to have been a supporter of the Dark Lord in those early beginnings, in deed more than mere ideology. Rosier huffed a breath at the ink of his last letters, rolled up his scroll and took up a couple of the books he had taken off the shelves, leaving the others behind for Regulus' disposal, as if to suggest the disruption had been his fault. Standing, he bent down again, one hand still resting on the table between them and said softly, "Potter."

If there was blame to be ascribed to either, perhaps it did fall upon Regulus.

He did not know Potter's loyalties. Selwyn thought he might be Dumbledore's spy, since he had come so late into the school and nobody had seen him Sorted, but when Rosier engaged him in a game of chess, he sat for more than an hour without taking anything to his lips; Parkinson, passing by and ostensibly aiming at her younger sister, whom she was forever chasing about beautification charms, had hit him with a number of spells that ought to have restored his appearance had there been any changes to be made.

What he had noticed, though he was not about to help Selwyn to it, was that Potter did seem to pay particular attention to a few people: a certain set of Gryffindors Regulus tried his best not to think about these days, Snape, Regulus himself.

Even now, his eyes ostensibly on the 1905 amendments to the membership countries of the International Confederacy of Wizards, which he intended to make note of in his essay, he felt himself watched. His stack of books, too far to be identified; his notes, too far to be copied; his immediate opportunities of conversation gone with Rosier; his shoulders, the line of his back... what did Harry Potter expect to see? Even the girls who cast glances at Sirius – not a frequent inhabitant of the library – took care to position themselves so as to see him at least in profile.

All at once, he felt the frustration rise. He tended to control it better, but he was hit at times with the same flashes of impetuosity as Sirius, as Bellatrix. When it came to Sirius, his mother screamed that it was Gryffindor recklessness, the fault of Dumbledore and his halfbreeds; for himself and Bellatrix, she called it a Black trait, the blood of her fathers. After all, why should Potter watch him?

Without much deliberation, he turned. Potter's body was positioned to the shelf, but he had not turned in time. Their eyes met.

A blink, and Potter seemed to give the idea of pretence up for lost. This was another sticking point for Selwyn, who appeared to consider that a wizard of age sorted into Slytherin must perforce come with his Slytherin traits as developed as though he'd attended Hogwarts since the age of eleven. Potter did not dissemble well. He abandoned the tomes on the Lithuanian Wizarding Confederation of 1768 and came to sit by Regulus.

He sat in Rosier's place. For a moment, Regulus could not keep from his mind the impression of Potter leaning over much as Rosier had done, his mouth almost to Regulus' ear, the smell of the scent he used.