Hero of the Story || James Potter x Hermione Granger Fanfiction

17 | sweetheart, you look a little tired

xvii.

sweetheart, you look a little tired

(Two by Sleeping at Last)

__________

February 14, 1977

"I give up."

Regulus angrily pushed the bundles of parchment on the library table and glared at them liked they'd committed a great offense. Hermione blearily looked up from the notes she was taking and knitted her eyebrows.

"Already?" she asked, briefly glancing at her wristwatch. "You haven't been here for an hour yet."

He irately crammed his things inside his designer satchel and scowled. "I feel like my brain is going to burst," he complained, pausing his attack just to glare at his colour-coded schedule. "If I study for another minute, I swear I'm going to burn something down."

He looked so incensed it was comical and Hermione had to fight back a grin. It wasn't every day a person could see Regulus Black so flustered and out-of-sorts. Judging from the gapes from the three Ravenclaws sitting on the table behind them, Hermione was sure they were bewildered by the Black heir's breakdown too.

"I'm going," he gruffly said, already standing up from his seat and shouldering his satchel.

"But the schedule—"

"Fuck the schedule," he cursed. He turned on his heel and marched out of the library, none-too-gently closing the doors behind him.

"Well, would you look at that," Alex drawled, craning her neck to look at Hermione with a wide grin. "Who knew Regulus Black's feathers could actually get ruffled, eh?"

Michelle slumped down on her table and groaned. "He's bloody right, though," she complained. "If I study for another minute, I might start a fire or something."

"Maybe, we should call it a day," Dorothy offered as she glanced at her wristwatch.

Hermione's eyes widened. "What? Already?" she asked, a tad panicky. "But the schedule—"

"Fuck the schedule," Alex echoed with a small smirk. "Besides, it's Valentine's Day! Don't you have a date with a handsome boy today, Hermione?"

The bushy-haired witch knitted her eyebrows. "It's Valentine's Day?" she asked, grabbing onto her colour-coded schedule. She had been so distracted by the neon green highlighting of her Herbology study lessons that she hadn't even realised what the date was.

"Do you have a date?" Michelle asked the blonde witch, waggling her eyebrows suggestively.

"I wish," Alex said with a scoff, tossing her silky blonde hair over her shoulders. "Boys in our year are such buffoons. Regulus Black is the dreamiest of them all, and he doesn't even know my name, even though we've been studying with him for weeks."

"Except Hermione's," Dorothy pointed out with a smirk.

"Except Hermione's," Michelle echoed with a sigh.

Hermione scrunched her nose at their glinting eyes. "We're just study partners," she corrected. "Why are you so adamant that something's going on between us?"

"Are you sure there's nothing going on between you?" Dorothy asked with a wicked grin. "Regulus Black is notorious in the Slytherin House as someone who never associates himself with people who aren't Pureblood. Granted, you're Half-Blood, Hermione, but your best friend is a Muggle-born and you hang out with the Marauders! You're everything Regulus Black shouldn't associate with and yet, he always seeks you out."