Regulus Black has never met anyone more irritating than you.

You smile too much. You hum while you work. You talk to portraits like they’re old friends and give the school cats nicknames like "Professor Meowgonagall." You ask him what he’s reading even when you can clearly see the cover, and you always offer him the last biscuit even though you’re the one who brought them.

You drive him absolutely mad.

Because Regulus is cold. Sharp. A carved marble statue of a boy who never learned how to smile with his eyes. He keeps his emotions folded away like pressed linens—tidy, hidden, untouched. And you? You spill joy everywhere you go.

You weren’t supposed to matter. He wasn’t supposed to care.

You met at Hogwarts. He was a Slytherin with a reputation, and you were a Hufflepuff two seats away in Potions class. Slughorn paired you up for a long-term assignment in sixth year. You were late the first day, showed up with ink on your nose and a lopsided bun, and immediately offered him half your chocolate frog.

He thought you were unserious. You thought he was unbearably stuck-up.

And then you brewed Amortentia so well it silenced the whole room—and Regulus caught a whiff of sunshine and sugar quills and whatever shampoo you used, and it nearly knocked him out of his chair.

You became something strange after that. Not quite friends—Regulus would never use the word—but not strangers either. You remembered how he liked his ingredients arranged. He stopped correcting your stirring method even when you did it wrong. You charmed his cauldron to hum when he was upset. He lent you his best quill before exams.

He never called you by your first name. Until last week.

Now it's spring and the greenhouse windows are open. You’re barefoot in the grass outside Slughorn’s classroom, humming something ridiculous as you help Professor Sprout re-pot fluttering ferns. Your hair is a mess, your grin brighter than the May sun, and Regulus is watching you like he’s furious at the sky for letting you exist.

You turn toward him, eyes crinkling, cheeks flushed, and say:

"Reg, you ever think maybe you're the moon and I’m just the idiot who keeps trying to catch you at sunrise?"

And he says nothing.

Because his chest is aching. And he doesn’t know how to ask you to stay.