charity

The fact that Charity was so adamant about swearing that she wasn’t just saying that she was going to the menagerie and that she wasn’t following him made Regulus think that maybe she was just saying that, and she was following him. See, he never knew Charity to be a liar, but then again, he’d probably say that he didn’t know Charity at all, at this point. So he finally looked back at her instead of straight ahead, making it a point to show that he was less than happy with her.

“ You have a few things on that list. It can be your second stop. ” He didn’t even outright dislike Charity. He didn’t dislike her at all, really. He just didn’t like what she could do to his reputation. Him seen hanging out with a blood traitor like her? Narcissa might do it, but Narcissa wasn’t on thin ice. Not to mention the little things she knew about him and could spread around. If he was honest, it was probably a good thing that Charity wasn’t hanging around the wizarding world as much anymore, because that way their interactions were kept to a minimum.

He huffed a sigh and looked away from her again, pushing his hands into his pockets. “ Medicine, ” he responded somewhat curtly, looked up at the sign, and ducked into the doorway of the menagerie. He held the door open, since she seemed fairly stuck on going to the menagerie, and pursed his lips. “ You getting something for your mouse? ” Everything in him wished he hadn’t brought the interaction to show the slightest bit of familiarity, but sometimes he did things that made less sense the more he thought about them.

A lot of things had changed since the years they had been friends (close friends, Charity would continue to argue), but it was a relief to see some of his old personality remained intact– like how weird he could be. One second he was paranoid about her following him, about her presence in general, and trying to get rid of her– and then he was holding the door open so she could follow him into the store.

Confusing as that contrast was and always had been, there was a level of familiarity about it that served as close to reassuring. It was their years at Hogwarts condensed into one interaction, his reception to her swinging from cold to hot sans warning, and settling on lukewarm. She could handle that. Annoyingly persistent and dedicated were two sides of the same coin– should his opinion of her sway more one way than the other, so be it.

“Medicine?” she repeated, closing the door behind her so it doesn’t slam. The first image that came to mind at the mention of Regulus’s cat was a proud creature sporting a (frankly ridiculous) expensive collar. If she melted down all her jewellery she doubted she could cover even half the gold making up Leo’s accessory– any pet that valuable should be immune to common illness. It just seemed like a fact. “Is he okay? Doesn’t him getting sick go against like, some law of the universe?” It’s doubtful her last question made sense without knowledge of the thoughts that had gone into it, but she continued to the next topic too quickly to elaborate.

“Oh, yes, I want to get him something he can use to exercise. He’s getting awfully chubby, and my roommate has a cat so I can’t just let him run around free. I’m worried about his tiny little mouse heart.” She held up two fingers less than an inch apart in an estimation of how small she believed it to be.

It’s hard for anyone to place a face out of context. If asked, Charity would still have to rank herself as worse than most when it came to recognizing someone she wasn’t expecting to see. Without explicit plans to meet somewhere, she’d likely walk past one of her best friends on the street without a thought to their familiarity. Had she been on her way to or from anywhere and not seated on a bench taking a break from her homework, the woman coming out of one of the academic buildings would not have registered as anything more than another student on their way home from class. She especially would not have taken the time to look at the person’s face for long enough to get that click of recognition– but Charity wasn’t going anywhere, she was watching passersby, and since she sat in the front row of her only class she really shouldn’t recognize anyone on this campus who wasn’t her professor. 

From what she could tell the woman was a good few years older than her, ruling out the possibility that they went to Hogwarts together. Still, there was a nagging feeling that she knew her from somewhere before college, placing this semi-stranger firmly in the category of another witch on a muggle campus. With that thought in mind, Charity gathered up her things and set off after her. It only took a few moments to catch up. Falling into step beside her, she cleared her throat before launching right into it. “Sorry to bother you, but– are you a student here?”

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The promise of further intoxication does little to tempt Charity into wanting the drink, particularly once she raises it to her lips and judges it stronger than the last through scent alone. If a weaker drink than this has led her to the point she’s at now, with the clouded edges to her thoughts and an odd desire to sway back and forth in place, she hardly wants to know what will become of her and her inhibitions with more than double the alcohol in her system. On a regular night one drink would be the height of what she would reach. Still, the evening was already headed in a different, more irregular direction than she had expected upon leaving her apartment that morning, so she gives in and takes a sip. Gross.

“I don’t know if hard alcohol is really my thing,” she says after a few moments of swallowing to try and get the taste off her tongue. “Just like getting drunk. Did that make sense?” The last half of her sentence is directed towards herself, yet somehow comes out at the same volume as the rest of it. “I don’t think getting drunk is my thing,” she clarifies, after a brief pause spent going over her own words in her head.

Had she been a touch soberer, or even just a bit more observant as a person, she may have noticed the direction his thoughts were taking based off of the look he’s giving her. As it is, with her being partially drunk and wholly unobservant, the words that accompany his movement into more of her space catch her entirely off guard. She can feel the heat spread from her cheeks all the way down her neck and, without consciously deciding to, presses her glass against the side of her face to try and cool herself down. Really, she should expect this from him by now, but the sentence is still jarring amidst the thoughts she had been having about whether she had watered her plants yet today or if she should when she returns home.

“Well that’s– I mean– Cassius!” She laughs, mainly at her own speechlessness, and puts the glass back on the table. When she speaks again, it’s a bit more thought out. Her blush is still high on her cheeks to her ears. “You can’t just go around saying things like that.” She picks the drink back up and takes a sip in a half-hearted attempt to hide how flustered she’s become.

Regulus didn’t really think of himself as “in the clear”, merely far from the conversation that didn’t really need to take place. He’d seen Charity maybe a handful of times since they both graduated, and each time, they’d at most made eye contact, maybe exchanged a few words, and then he was gone, which he was quite alright with. As he attempted to do the same thing once again, he heard a familiar voice and a slight pant.

Was she following him now? Well, no, but she could have kept her distance. It wasn’t if he was taking his time walking away from her. “ I di – ” She cut him off before he could get away with dismissing her question, and now he had to actually engage with her. He could always… not do that, but at this point he had waited too long to decide what to do, and would probably come off as more awkward or shy than rude.

“ I have to go to the Menagerie, ” he shook his head and gave a halfhearted shrug. “ I’m getting something for my cat, ” he kept his eyes up and focused on the path ahead of them rather than on Charity. The Magical Menagerie was across the alley, but Diagon Alley wasn’t very long, so he didn’t bother asking what she was doing, since they were soon going to part ways.

Thinking about it now, Regulus was different from those other old friends. The two of them hadn’t drifted apart so much as he had shoved himself away from her. Not only that, but she would be wrong to say that graduation was the catalyst. She still had copies of those books they had read third year, fourth year, fifth year. He always folded down the corners of the pages he liked, or that spoke to him, and even now when flipping through a novel she would find a crease here and there and think of him. Muggle books had fascinated him, no matter what he began to claim in their last years of school together.

The Menagerie? She had avoided being the first to say where she was headed to make it harder for him to just name the furthest store from it as his destination. Maybe she should have started off with where she was going– now it would sound like she really was following him, and she would put money on Regulus not being the kind to believe in a coincidence like that.

“Okay, I swear I’m not just saying this, but that’s my first stop too!” To prove her point, she pulled her list back out of her pocket to show him. Obviously she could do any other task first, but then she wouldn’t have an excuse to walk with him. It was her system to start at the back of the alley and work her way forwards– plus, maybe she could squeeze a few more words from him in the process. “What are you getting for Leo?”

“ I didn’t know he was betrothed! ”

“ If I say it out loud does it ruin it? ”

“ Oh stop it, you’ll make me blush. ”

“Did you do this on purpose?!”

“ No! I was aiming at that quill. It’s not my fault Leo got in the way– anyway, I think you should keep him this colour. Maybe he’ll brighten up this whole gloomy look you’ve got going on. ”

“Despite the cliche, it’s not me, it’s you.”

“ You are so overdramatic, Reg. This isn’t life or death. ”

“ I second that! Can we make hot chocolate too? ”

“ I haven’t decided yet! I’ve never taken actual muggle classes before so I don’t know what to expect. Right now I’m taking a history course, and in September I’m going to go in undeclared. ”

“ At this point I’m not sure. I know I want to change people’s minds, but in terms of what I want to do after graduation? In terms of work? No clue. ”

“ I’d like to learn some things and then graduate. ”

“ Ask Regulus why he acts so weird now. ”

“ I went out one night with some friends from my class, came home a little tipsy, and thought it would be sweet if my pet mouse and my roommate’s cat were friends. Realized that was a bad idea pretty fast. Reepicheep was fine, just a bit scared, so I didn’t see the point in telling my roommate. I still feel pretty stupid about it. ”

“ I’d choose… Bellatrix. ”