LEAVE COMMENTS. I'm learning all the songs from Spring Awakening, and I think I might be auditioning for Wandla. I'm terrified, but I'm so excited!!

Forcing down her breakfast as best as she could, Luna Lupin focused mostly on not throwing up her guts all over the Great Hall table or to not fall asleep over her plate of breakfast (if one could call the half-eaten toast that she had on her plate, breakfast). While she had promised to Remus that she would eat, she had not promised to go to sleep. She slept, at best, three hours the night before.

"Oh, Luna, you got to eat more than that," Pandora said, watching her friend's plate. "At least the whole toast, please. It won't be enough to keep you fed until luncheon."

Luna nodded, looking down at the toast in her place once more.

"I don't want to throw it back up," she whispered. Pandora nodded in understanding, but said nothing else, clearly still wanting her to finish at least a whole toast. Luna did. "What did you tell everybody?"

"The girls and I agreed to only talk to Flitwick and Madame Pomfrey, but they also talked to you brother," Pandora said. "I didn't tell anyone anything, but they lied, saying you were sick. I think that everybody thinks you were sick the last couple of days."

Luna nodded again, rather thankful that nobody would dare question anything that Marta would say because she was terrifying. Other than that, her constant 'being sick' had helped people to actually believe that she was sick even when she wasn't.

Madame Pomfrey had come to visit her the night before, after Remus had forced her to eat something, and said that she was pretending to believe that she had been sick during the past two days and would give her a note, but only if she went to classes the next morning, otherwise she would have to go to detention. That meant that now Luna was sitting in breakfast with some anger against the wonderfully nice matron brewing under her skin. She knew that Madame Pomfrey had done more than many other nurses would do, but there was an egoistical side of her that had hopped that the woman would just tell her to stay in bed for another day or so.

Flitwick, loyal as the Head of House ought to be, agreed not to bring that up to the headmaster, making the man accept Madame Pomfrey's note. He had not gone up to see Luna, after all he had never walked into any of the female student's dormitories for any reason at all, he wasn't going to start to. Still, he had called Pandora, Marta, Rosalie and Amanda for a talk, asking about Luna at the end of classes.

"Come on," Pandora said as soon as Luna had taken her last bite, "we got Herbology first thing."

Luna sighed, getting up and taking her bag from the ground, throwing it over her shoulder. She watched Pandora do the same. They both started walking to the Great Hall's double doors together.

"We're studying this new plant that often allows fungus to grow in the same earth as it, so we'll see a lot of mushrooms as well," Pandora said, happily. "I do love some mushroom, of course. And I think they greatly appreciate that the plant shares its nutrients with them."

"I'm sure they do," Luna said, looking at her bag. Had she gotten everything she needed? "Will we have to dig?"

"Probably," Pandora said.

Luna sighed again, the idea of having to smell the earth already churning her stomach. She hated planting and growing things, but she needed a good enough grade in Herbology if she wanted to go into Alchemy – it was much intertwined with Potions, therefore if one was good in Potions, one needed to be good in Herbology; though if someone was good in Herbology not always was going to be good in Potions, especially in the practical sense, though the theory might be clearer than to someone that wasn't any good in either.

Pandora was good in Herbology, great even, though barely acceptable in Potions due to her constant distraction. Luna usually took over whatever potion they had going on to save Pandora's grades, which Pandora knew and had talked to her parents about (perhaps that was why they had sent beautiful easter eggs to her the year before, now that Luna stopped to think about it).

"Oh, hi, Evan," Pandora said.

Luna blinked, looking around.

Evan was standing near the entrance of the castle with his friends, hiding something behind his back so his sister wouldn't see, but one needn't see the smoke to smell the cigarette. Luna almost smiled at Evan's face. For someone that always looked so moody and angry all the time, Evan's eyes became comical when they were big and scared of his twin sister.

"What are you doing here?" Evan asked.

"We're going to Herbology," Pandora said, raising her eyebrows at her brother's sudden interest. "And you?"

"Cutting class," Barty answered, clearly uncomfortable with the idea. "Regulus had a... passionate discussion with Theodore Jones from Hufflepuff, the professor warned him that if he was in the next Divination class and fight him, he might receive a detention. So we decided not to go."

"We decided to not let Regulus fight someone in the corridor," Evan summarised what his friends had said.

Regulus glared at Evan, clearly disagreeing with his friends' decision.

Luna tried to force herself not to look away and look uncomfortable, but the truth was that Regulus was somewhat intimidating. He was well-known for his fights and the fact that he had never lost one, even when he left the fight bleeding and hurt, the other person was always in a worst state. Contrary to most people that ended up getting in fights with him, he wasn't scared of using any methods of winning – that normally included teeth, sharp rocks near the lake, blunt rocks from the courtyards, branches and anything else that his hands could reach.

"Yes, fighting is no good," Pandora said, nodding solemnly.

"I haven't gotten any detentions yet," Regulus said, jokingly. "But it's just September."

"I'll have you know that my brother cannot say the same," Luna tried to say in a soothing addition to the conversation, but that only got everybody's eyes and not a single pity laugh. "He got caught sneaking into the kitchen a couple of weeks ago after curfew. Got detention for it."

Regulus, who had been leaning against the wall, took a step forward and fixed his posture.

"Are you free today?" he asked suddenly.

Luna blinked, turning to Pandora.

Pandora shrugged.

"I don't know if you're free," Pandora said. "Oh, we have a free period at four."

Regulus cleared his throat.

"Can you meet me in the library for our lesson?" he asked.

"Mate, she was sick," Barty said, uncomfortable with his friend's straightforwardness.

Regulus looked over his shoulder to Barty before nodding to himself almost solemn. He turned to Luna once more and licked his lips, preparing himself to fix whatever mistake that he had made.

"Are you feeling better?" he asked.

"Yes, thank you," she said.

"Good. So, can you teach me today?" he asked again.

"Yes, I can," she answered.

Regulus turned to his friends again, but looks away before Luna decides what he had been trying to see in them. He put his hands behind is back and turns around to walk back to the wall that he had been leaning against, looking like a soldier that had just received an order from a commander.

"I'll see you at four, then, at the library," Luna said, confirming the facts that they had agreed on. Regulus just nodded. "Do you have anything in particular that you wanted to learn?"

"Transfiguration."

Luna had to force herself not to roll her eyes, but Evan didn't hold back his snigger. He received a glare from Regulus.

"When I answer with a single word and don't understand what's happening, I'm 'odd'. When you do, you sound like some badly written character in a book," Luna grumbled before he could control herself. She stops suddenly, aware that she had said so out loud. "Now, what I meant –"

"I know what you meant," Regulus said, cutting her off. He didn't need much to intimidate her, just staring at her was effective. "I'll have it written down."

Pandora held Luna's arm, pulling her gently by her sleeve towards the castle doors, announcing that they needed to go to class and pretending not to see Evan's cigarette behind his back, almost fully burnt away already because of how long they stood there, talking.

Luna looked over her shoulder one last time before the castle's insides were out of view for her, but nobody was looking towards them anymore. Regulus had his back turned to them, Evan was smoking and laughing, Barty was laughing as well, leaning against open doors as if he was only standing because of them.

She wondered what was so funny.

As a bookworm, Luna was well-acquainted with Hogwarts' Library.

The long and thick dark wood of the empty tables was a comforting sight when she walked into the gigantic room just off a corridor on the first floor of the castle, bag in shoulder and a smile on her face to Irma Pince, the young librarian that had taken post just a couple of years before, in 1973.

"Hello Madame Pince," she greeted in a whisper.

"Miss Lupin," she answered as politely and as coldly as ever.

Madame Pince wasn't rude or mean as many had decided to whisper about her in the school. She was taciturn and strict, yes, but as long as one treated the books and the library with the respect it deserved, she was polite enough and even would give small smiles as a greeting when she was making her rounds and saw someone studying hard in the further away tables. She had even been very helpful when Luna had asked for a very old and unused book from the 1600s for an essay – she had stayed nearby to make sure that Luna wasn't mistreating the book, but had smiled when Luna wrote the reference in the correct format at once. The biggest thing with her was that many students didn't respect her or the library as they should due to her young age.

"I'm looking for Regulus Black, have you seen him?" Luna whispered.

Pince narrowed her eyes at Luna.

"The library is not a dating –"

"I'm his tutor," Luna added, knowing exactly what Pince wanted to say.

Pince watched her for another second before nodding in acceptance.

"He's in the back, in the smaller tables near the back window," Pince said, leaning away from the girl and touching her back to the chair's resting space. She looked exhausted. "And if you see that one Gryffindor couple snogging, you go and give me a signal, alright?"

"They're here again?" Luna groaned.

Pince seemed to agree with her groan, because her dark coloured lips twitched in a controlled smile. Still, she answered with nothing but a nod as she looked away to spy on a little first year from Hufflepuff wandering in, clearly overwhelmed and terrified by the sheer size of the library.

Luna thanked her in a small voice and walked towards the back of the library, turning the left once she got to the correct corridor.

Regulus was in one of the three of the small, round tables near the back window. He was reading a book that was far too new to be part of Hogwarts' collection, probably coming with him from home. He didn't seem bothered by the golden sunlight coming from the window and hitting his back, lighting the book in his hand, but not his eyes.

She raised her eyebrows in surprise.

"Your hair's brown," she mused.

That caught his attention, making him look at her in surprise before looking back at his book, carefully closing it and putting on the table.

"Forgive me?" he asked.

Luna pressed her lips in silence, embarrassed that she had said it out loud, but didn't back down.

"I was surprised that your hair is brown. I've always thought that it was black, but well, the sun... it's clearly brown," she explained. She walked closer, sitting down across from him and putting her back on the chair beside hers. "Well, that's not important."

"I suppose," he said.

"You said that you needed tutoring today, whatever happened?" she asked.

Regulus sighed, already not enjoying the fact that he had to learn Transfiguration at all, but was quick to get a small piece of parchment from his bag, offering it to her. Luna took it from him, reading it in silence.

"These are the spells that are most likely to be on the exams, and the first one has been requested for us to learn and write an essay on it," Regulus told her. "I know that we don't have Transfiguration with one another, so I thought it was for the best to bring this up as soon as possible so we would both have time to do our essays."

"Vanishing Spells are easy enough to learn in general," Luna said in the hopes of soothing his worries. "Inanimatus Conjurus isn't all that difficult, either."

"I haven't found the book with is yet, though," he said.

Luna looked around.

"Well, yeah, you're on the History of Magic session of the library," she explained, noticing one specific book. "Madame Pince leaves them in the most well lightened session of the library so the students don't sleep on them when they come to study. The Transfiguration session in closer to the entrance so the students get it and go away to try the spells outside the library."

Regulus watched her for a second without any expression in his face. She feared having offended him somehow, knowing that she made odd friendships with people that were supposed to be in a higher hierarchy, such as professors and other adults. She also hoped that he didn't think that she had implied that he was stupid or anything like that for not knowing how the library was organised – the truth was that the system was complicated and it had taken her a few years to crack it, and she had only completely understood it when Madame Pince made passing a comment as she took Luna towards the Divination session the year before.

"We can start with the essay, then, and then we can go outside to practice the spell," he said, looking away from her again and putting the book that he had brought with him back into his bag.

Luna nodded and got up.

He followed without questioning.

She walked around the tall shelves filled with books without glancing at most of them, knowing exactly where she was going and what she was looking for. Dealing with books was easy, after all, they hardly ever moved from their places, and the ones that did usually went back to their places on their own after Madame Pince invited the spell to keep the library organised as it usually was without students. To her the library was a source of information, it was salvation from the constant torment that her mind put her throat – so she tried to shut it up by shoving as much information as she could, enough to not let her think of whatever it was happening outside of the haven that the library had become.

Regulus followed, not looking around either. While he did come to library often to study, he usually brought his textbooks along and only worked at the table that he could find, hoping that nobody would disturb him. The library to him wasn't a source of information, it was a safe haven from noise and – most importantly – his friends, who would question what was wrong if he showed up in front of them in whatever state he was when he hid himself away from the world in there.

But it was safe no longer.

Luna froze in place, stomach dropping to her feet, heart skipping a beat before racing and skin becoming as pale as marble as soon as she heard the low chuckle coming from the other side of the shelf on her right, accompanied by an airy giggle.

It wasn't the Transfiguration session that she needed (it was the fourth year's session of the subject), she knew, but she stopped where she was either way, peeking through between the books just to be sure of something that she already knew, because that chuckle was Sirius Black's, and the giggle was some Hufflepuff seventh year girl that Luna didn't know.

Silently, Regulus stopped beside her, hands behind his back, but eyes stuck to her in what seemed to be curiosity, he was measuring her reaction and archiving it away like some detective from a book.

Her hands shook when she took a deep breath and continued walking. Regulus followed her, still in silence, but now his eyes were on the ground, head tilted down and jaw locked in place – he glanced to where his brother and a girl snogged against the bookshelves. Still, he said nothing when Luna (breathing quickly and shallowly) walked right up to Madame Pince, several metres away from where the fifth year Transfiguration session was.

"Excuse me, Madame Pince, there's a couple in the fourth year Transfiguration's session, they are indecent," she said, voice wavering a bit, as if she had not drunk water in several days. "It's really uncomfortable."

Madame Pince got up from her chair with a twisted mouth, readying herself to scold the couple as soon as she saw them.

Luna quickly walked towards the fifth-year session in silence, looking over her shoulder only once to make sure that Regulus was following, but not looking again once she saw there was a small smile in his lips as he obediently followed her. As soon as they were in the correct bookshelves, she took the small wooden steps, climbed it and pulled a book, offering it to him.

"You'll carry this one," she told him.

Without arguing, he offered his arms and she balanced the book there. And then a second, and then a third.

"Three books?" he asked, raising a single eyebrow at her.

"Do you want a good bloody essay?" she asked, tone snappy, but didn't give him time to answer. "So, three books and your textbook. We might come back to get more."

Regulus looked at the three books and then at the bookshelf, looking rather suspicious of it all. He had never been the type of student that actually needed to study for exams or read several books to know about the subject – while he liked reading, most of his books were from the Black Family Library or bought for an specific reason while he researched something; to have to search for something seemed rather odd for him, but at least Luna knew where to look for it.

As they walked out from their corridor, they saw Sirius Black smiling at Madame Pince while she wrote a detention slip for him, completely uncharmed by him. The girl beside him was almost purple in the face, which was a difficult task since her skin was so dark. Luna barely glanced at them before turning on the balls of her feet and marching right back to the table that Regulus had been sitting before.

Regulus sat across from her, who had sit before him this time.

"Where do we start?" he asked.

"Search for it," she said, not looking at him.

Regulus looked at her, then followed her line of sight to the empty space near the left of the table. She was distracted by something. Not wanting to get involved, he got the first book and opened at the summary, searching for anything that might help him there. He found the correct page for vanishing spells and searched for it before opening – the book made a loud thud when more than half of it was pushed to one side. He cringed, almost apologising to the book out loud, but held back. The book was old, the pages were already yellow, and the leather-bound cover was starting to peel in some places, but he didn't care too much – it was still a marvellous book. He read the whole chapter before getting the other book and reading it too.

By the time he was done and ready to start writing, it had been more than half an hour.

The sun was starting to come down, the candles around the library were starting to light up. Luna had not looked away from the spot to the left. But this time, when he looked up at her again as he got his school supplies from the bag, she was crying in silence.

Regulus stopped dead on his tracks, unsure of what he should do.

He made several people cry before, he made people beg and plead, but he had never seen someone cry so nonchalantly. If he was completely honest, it looked like Luna had not even noticed that she was crying – perhaps, he thought, she was crying because she had not blinked for a very long time. But still, more and more tears came, and Luna didn't even more to dry them.

When girls cried in plays, they were usually in their beds or in their mother's laps. In his home, the only woman was his mother, who had only cried very few times in front of the children, one of those times being her father's funeral and, at the time, his father had put an arm around her shoulders and offered her his handkerchief.

So, he did what he thought was best.

He threw his handkerchief at her.

Luna flinched when it hit her chest and used her hands to keep it place, whatever it was. Then he took it and looked at it, confused. She looked at him, blinking as if waking up from a trance.

"What's this?" she asked.

"A handkerchief, clearly," he said.

"What for?"

"You're crying," he said.

Luna's hand touched the side of her face, feeling the hot, wet tears in astonishment. She had not noticed; she had not even felt it on her skin.

"Oh," was all that she managed to make before nodding. "Yes, it would appear so. I am. Thank you."

He looked down at his empty parchment.

"I've read the books, thank you for the help," he said. "But I still cannot do it, I can write about it, though."

"Then write your essay before dinner, and I'll help you do the spell after dinner," she said, nodding.

He looked up at her once more.

"You can use it," he said.

"Hm?"

"The handkerchief, to dry your tears. Use it," he insisted.

Luna looked at the handkerchief in her hands once more.

It was made of linen, all in a very light toned beige with a very small detail on the right corner in black and silver, it was something written in cursive: R.A.B. It was so beautiful that she almost felt bad about using it, but took the linen to her face, drying her tears gently and drying the spot of the inner corner of her eyes, hoping that would not let more tears run down her face.

"I'm sorry," she said.

He didn't answer, just wrote on.

"How many inches do we need to have?" he asked, frowning at the parchment.

"Eleven," she answered, sniffing.

He still didn't look at her.

"He's no good for anybody," he said, still writing. She looked at him, feeling like she was freezing in time. "He's not a good son, not a good brother, not a good boyfriend – sooner or later, he'll prove he's not a good friend either. And then, he'll be alone. People like him, selfish like him, are simply born to be alone."

"I don't know what you're talking about," she whispered.

He glanced up so quickly that it looked like a flutter of his eyes. In the next second, he was looking back at his essay – he already had seven inches written.

"Alright, then. Ignore whatever I just said," he dismissed.

Soon enough, he was done with the essay, she read over it, accepting it as it was, but insisting that he wrote down the reference. Since they still had time before dinner, they went to an empty classroom.

It took several attempts from Regulus (with and without Luna's help) for him to get the spell right; it wasn't perfect at all, but it was better than Luna had expected when he said that he wasn't good in Transfiguration.

Luna went to dinner first. Regulus stayed to study a bit more but got in the Great Hall in less than five minutes.

Luna wondered if he, too, just didn't want to be seen with her.

First tutoring session done. Regulus is a sweetheart, but he doesn't know it yet.

For anyone whose wondering, I based Reggie off on Wayne (2019) because I thought it would be funny.