Hiraeth | Regulus Black

Chapter Seventy One

As the days turned into weeks, and they rolled into winter, Esme was starting to feel somewhat better.
Some days she woke up and felt almost as if nothing could stop her. But other days she felt dreadful, as if she had taken five steps back, and wouldn't even want to get out of bed.
Esme was starting to suspect that those feelings might not ever go away, and she feared she may have to learn to live with it - but Regulus was always there to remind her that she'd dealt with worse.

So as the Christmas decorations were being set up around the castle, and term was drawing to a close, Esme was focusing her energy on things that would make her feel better. That was really how she found herself sat with Levi in the library one early Monday morning.

"Are we ready to do this?" He asked.

The two teenagers were sat by a small table beside one of the large windows. Esme paused for a moment, glancing out at the view before replying, "I was born ready to prank Selwyn."
"That's exactly what I wanted to hear." Levi grinned.

"We better not be late then." She rose to her feet and tugged her bag over her shoulder, "Have you got what we need?"
He reached into his bag and pulled out a carton, "Obviously." he stated.

"Fantastic."

The Great Hall was sparsely filled with a few lone students scattered around the tables. It was so early that breakfast had barely begun, and most of the students there were hurriedly rushing through some last minute work for their morning lessons.

As expected, Esme and Levi spotted a familiar figure at the far end of one of the tables and wasted no time in joining him.
Regulus Black, as usual, was up bright and early and had been enjoying a rather peaceful breakfast. In fact, his favourite bit of the day was sitting down with a nice stack of waffles whilst he browsed through the latest book he'd been reading.

"So which seat is it?" Levi asked as he sat down opposite the others.
Regulus took a sip of water before replying, "Well, good morning to you too. Yes, you're right, what a lovely morning it is."

Esme, noting the neatly arranged stack of waffles on his plate, interjected, "Don't act like this isn't the only reason we've gotten up this early."
"Charming." He muttered, before turning to point at the table at the opposite end of the room as he explained, "Selwyn will be down any minute. He always sits at the end of that table, on the same side as the wall."

"Brilliant, I'll be right back." Levi flashed a grin before grabbing his bag and dashing over to the seat Regulus had just gestured to.

"Oh, by the way..." Esme reached into her own bag and pulled out a tattered-looking book, "Here's my Potions textbook for you to borrow."
Regulus promptly thanked her, but quickly regret the decision as he saw the state of her book. It didn't matter how many times he saw the state in which Esme kept her books, it always distressed him.
Even the cover was battered beyond belief, and the spine was snapped at almost every point. Most of the pages were folded at the corner, so any sense of a bookmark was utterly redundant. The few pages that weren't folded down were often torn in some capacity and there were so many notes scrawled down the margins and in between lines that it became an actual challenge to read the printed words.

Regulus pursed his lips and silently pocketed the book, and as he turned back to Esme he yet again had to bite down on his tongue.
"I look away for two seconds and what have you done?" He complained.

Esme had, in the brief moment Regulus wasn't looking, reached across to grab one of his waffles. Except, unlike most people would, she hadn't grabbed the waffle off the top of the stack, but rather one from the middle.
As Regulus turned back around, he was faced with waffles scattered all over his place at the table, and Esme cramming one of them into her mouth.