It was supposed to be fun. And it was, but it was unsafe. Regulus Black could never be caught fooling around with a boy. A Muggleborn boy, especially. Basically, everything you are. Yet, he did it anyway. So, he did everything in his power to keep it a secret.

He had said it to you after your breath mingled together in a dark corridor of Hogwarts for the first time. "This doesn't mean anything." You had accepted it, believing that it didn't mean anything to you, either. Just an outlet for the stress the two of you have been experiencing this year. For you, it was school, something you were nearly done with but hated. For him, it was the Dark Mark on his arm, the promise of a lifetime of suffering to come. You both wanted something. A kind of solace. And you found it in each other.

You'd glance at each other across the Great Hall. Play footsie under tables when no one was looking. Comfort one another after a difficult test or a Quidditch practice or, sometimes, in Regulus' case, a demand from his parents or the Dark Lord himself. Curl up against each other in beds after everyone else was asleep.

Sometimes, he opens up to you in vacant balconies, his eyes clouded over with something you couldn't name as he expresses the pressures put on him by his parents. How his Dark Mark still aches under his skin, even when he wasn't being called. How, after all these years, he still dreadfully misses his brother. But it still didn't mean anything. It didn't. It was comfort, nothing else.

But all that indifference changed into pure panic when Barty had given him a small, knowing smile when you entered the room. When his eyes lingered on you a second too long.

"Didn't know you were so smitten with him, mate," Barty had said to Regulus, before sipping his pumpkin juice so casually, unbeknownst to the war he set off. Regulus' insides turned cold. No one could know. Not at all. Not even his best friends.

He had a girl only days later. Some Slytherin whose name you couldn't remember (Addy? Asa?). He announced proudly to the group that he was dating her, a stiff smile on his face, his eyes only briefly passing over you before looking away again. Like you were just a face in the crowd. And you shouldn't have cared. You two were nothing, after all. But something ugly turned in your stomach.

You don't know why he kept inviting you to things with her (and maybe he didn't quite know himself, either). But at least half of the bloody time they were together, Regulus would insist you come. That smile on his face, that glint in his eyes. Maybe he was mocking you. Making sure you felt that he didn't want you anymore. Maybe he felt bad for not telling you privately first. You don't know. And you wish you could refuse to go, say you have something else to do— really, you wish you could cut him out of your life altogether— but you can't. Something makes you say yes every time, just to hear him say "brilliant" and to see him smile at you again.

You think even his girlfriend could feel the tension today. It had been a long week of having to listen to Regulus talk about her, and when he invited you to the Three Broomsticks with them, you said yes, even when you wanted to say no.

You don't talk much. Just sit there and listen to them talk. But when they didn't talk much, it just made the awkwardness you all felt grow. You were the main speaker whenever you guys were together, strangely enough. So when you didn't speak, the other two were left with very little to say. Regulus, finally, shifts in his seat beside you, offering a small smile to his girlfriend.

"Are you alright if we step away for a moment?" He asks, and without hesitation, she nods, seeming just as desperate to get you talking again as he was. He stands from the table and tucks a hand under your arm, hauling you up with him and dragging you toward the door.

The air is cold around you, the wind ruffling his hair just a bit. Suddenly, you hate the wind very much.

"You're off today," he says, turning to face you again. For the first time in weeks, you don't want to pretend.