Well, another chapter! This one is a bit shorter than my usual chapters, but it's mostly interactions between Luna and Regulus as an apology. Leave your comments!

Recommendation: I was reading 'Last Legacy', a Charlie Weasley fanfiction, and it's already so good. It's still at the start, but I swear that it's amazing. To anyone that likes the Weasleys, I recommend that you go read it. 'Last Legacy by FuerElise-'

Luna had been in Dumbledore's Office once in her life.

It was her very first year, she had been sick for the first time the day before the full moon, so he had visited her in the Hospital Wing to ask after her health. She had felt honoured, thanking him for his worry and telling him that it was just her heart condition, but then remembered that she knew the truth just like Madame Pomfrey. Once the full moon had gone by and she had gotten better (before her brother), he had called her to his office. For almost an hour, he had tried to convince her that she was completely safe in the school and, therefore, needed to go to the Hospital Wing at any sign of discomfort due to her heart and brain – he, too, said that the teachers had been made aware of her condition and the first-aid that she needed to receive in case of a convulsion.

Never again, had he gone to ask after her health.

Now, however, as she looked around, things seemed smaller.

Though the room was still a well-lit, large circular room with many windows and portraits of the old predecessors decorating the walls behind the headmaster's desk, but one held a special place: Armando Dippet, the direct predecessor. However, he never seemed much interested when someone walked in, which could not be said about Phineas Black, who stared at the couple.

"What are you doing here, Regulus Black?" the portrait asked. "Are you in trouble for fighting again? A girl this time? – no matter how dirty you think her to be, one must never raise a hand against a woman."

"I have not hit, nor shall I ever hit a woman, Headmaster Black. Do refrain from calling my parent 'dirty', please," Regulus said coldly. "I'm unsure of why my presence was requested in this office, I can assure you this much."

Luna turned to him.

"Family?" she asked, though the surname already made it pretty clear.

"A great-uncle to some degree," he said, disinterested, though he knew perfectly well his family tree by heart. "Someone that should already be aware to why I was summoned and who you are in my life," he added, staring straight at the portrait.

Apparently, it didn't matter how old a man was, they still happened to pout and sulk when called out. And Luna was comforted at the sight of a very similar sulking that she had seen in her own brother and father; no matter the blood, men were men.

Thankfully, before Phineas Black could recover from the scolding he received from his grand-grand-grand-nephew, Dumbledore walked out of his private bedchambers with a dark leather-bound book of yellowish pages and his phoenix resting on his shoulder, walking towards the headmaster's desk.

"I'm sorry if I took my time, I was writing some relevant information on the school's journal," Dumbledore explained, opening the small drawer under the desk and putting the book in there, locking it in place. "Miss Lupin, Mister Black, I have requested your present in my office because the information of a courtship happening between you two."

"That is true. I don't, however, see how is that any important to the school," Regulus said, narrowing his eyes. "Sir," he added as an afterthought.

Headmaster Dumbledore leaned back against his chair while the phoenix climbed to the chair's back, standing tall on the Jacobean padded chair.

"Speak comfortably, Mister Black. You mustn't worry for formalities with me, if you don't desire to," Dumbledore said kindly. "In usual circumstances, it wouldn't be anybody's business but yours and your families, but it was brought to my attention that my permit of your meetings after curfew for studying might be taken advantadge of. While the idea did occur to me, I thought that no matter the age, two respectful people such as you two would not disdain this school's reputation and scorn at the ideas of a good, healthy traditional courtship. Ergo my calling; I wanted to make sure my faith was well-placed."

Luna cringed at the conversation becoming uncomfortable. While Dumbledore had not been explicit about anything and the couple had never done anything ever – let alone doing their tutoring sessions –, the conversation alone was enough to make her shift nervously in her chair, crossing her arms and glancing at the door, dreaming of nothing more but to run away from there.

Regulus was not as discreet at her, because his cheeks went flaming red and he leaned forward, almost as if ready to jump out of his chair but controlling himself enough to not get up. He leaned back soon after, silently glaring at the man and crossing his arms, until finally he noticed that Luna was preparing to speak. As sudden as it came, the blush disappeared – it was like curtains had been closed behind his eyes, for the light seemed to dimmer a bit and his eyelids relaxed, hooding his grey eyes even more.

"Nothing untoward has ever happened during tutoring hours, sir," Luna promised, glancing at Regulus either for confirmation or for approval. She received a blank face as a response. "Our meetings in the Astronomy Tower are simply for Astronomy reasons and that much I can assure you."

Dumbledore's blue eyes glistened as he watched the couple, jumping from one to the other until he watched majorly just Luna, who blinked innocently at him.

"I believe you," he said.

She forced a smile, still unsure of what was happening around her.

She wasn't a Slytherin, she couldn't understand the second conversation that always seemed to be happening in silence around everything that Regulus did, but she was Ravenclaw enough to know that there was a conversation at all... and it was one that she most certainly did not want to make part of.

"Do you?" Regulus asked, a small mocking tone in the back of his voice.

Dumbledor either didn't notice or just pretended to because he smiled and turned to the boy.

"I can see that Miss Lupin is a very honest girl and I trust you completely to behave while on school grounds, Mister Black," he answered.

Luna tried to dry off the sweat on her hands on her school skirt near her knees, crossing her ankles as she leaned towards Regulus a bit, hoping to get Dumbledore's attention in her again.

"Is that all, Professor? Regulus has Quidditch practice in a few minutes and I'd really like to go to the library," Luna said.

Dumbledore made a little noise in the back of his throat, sounding like hum of someone that had just been reminded of something important that he needed to add to the conversation. He leaned forward, putting his palms on the wooden desk.

"Actually, there was one more thing, naturally," Dumbledore said. "Your lady mother has written me, Mister Black, and announced that has contacted Mister Lupin and Madam Jensen with a date for a meeting in Diagon Alley for luncheon. She has requested both your presences and I accepted it."

"When?" Luna asked.

"In a couple of days, November 6th," he answered. "Are both willing and able to go?" Luna nodded immediately before turning to Regulus for his answer, but he just gave one cold nod, not looking away from Dumbledore's eyes. "Wonderful! I'll write back to warn her. Now, listen – Professor McGonagall will take you both there and leave you in the reserved table five minutes before the said time; behave there and don't leave the table. We'll see to a time that Professor McGonagall is free to pick you two up."

Luna wondered why Professor McGonagall when neither of them were Gryffindors. Sure, the woman was a wonderful professor that worried about all students and cared for them all the same, but it was odd that he had not requested Professor Flitwick or Professor Slughorn to go with them or pick them up. Though Professor Flitwick had been overworked with the children's essays and homework and Professor Slughorn would somehow find a way to join them throughout the whole luncheon, and Professor Dumbledore couldn't afford losing the man just yet.

"Alright," Luna said.

Regulus looked around.

"May we go? I have compromised myself into appearing and helping our Captain with the newly joined members," Regulus said. "Luna, if I may walk you to the library?"

Without waiting for Dumbledore's orders or acceptances, Regulus got up from his chair and marched to the door, pulling it open and casually rest his hip against the door while waiting for Luna to follow him.

Taken aback by his actions, she turned to look at Dumbledore in between a silent apology and a request for dismissal. The man nodded at her, and she swiftly followed Regulus to the door, slipping out before him and waiting for him to close the door before taking a few steps down the stone staircase.

In silence, they walked down the spiralling stone staircase and passed the gargoyle. However, once in the corridor – and completely out of the ear-shot of Dumbledore – Luna turned to Regulus.

"What the fuck was that?" Luna asked.

"What?" Regulus asked.

She glanced at the gargoyle before pointing upwards, towards Dumbledore's office.

"He was getting on my nerves," he said simply and looked away. "I need to go get some spare brooms for the second-years to learn how to fly in bad conditions before using their own, fast brooms," he warned her, pointing towards the end of the corridor.

"You can't just leave it at that, Regulus. Did something happen? – something that I do not know about," she said.

Regulus scoffed.

"There's a lot that you don't know happening in that office," he said, ominously.

She frowned at him, hands on her hips as they walked.

"What does that even mean?" she asked, annoyed.

"It means that Professor Dumbledore is as a lot smarter than he admits himself to be. He hides behind that outlandish and eccentric façade, and he thinks that is enough to hide himself from everybody, but he's wrong," Regulus said. "When one looks at the void, the void looks back."

She just stared at him for a second, not understanding anything about what he was trying to say without actually saying it. Her mouth opened and closed several times before she took a long, deep annoyed breath and closed her eyes before exhaling.

"If I ask, will you explain?" she asked, exhausted.

She had already learned at that point that the chances of her getting a straightforward answer out of Regulus when he didn't want to talk about something were slim to none. It made no sense trying and wasting energy.

"Not today," he said. "If I explain everything to you, you'll want to know more, and I cannot provide all the information you'll thirst to drink once you understand everything that was happening in there. Once I can explain everything well, then I'll tell you."

"Regulus?"

"Not today, Luna," he insisted.

She sighed, but nodded, still walking beside him.

He opened the broom closet reserved for the school flying brooms and quickly took three, shoving them under his arm and closing the door.

"I'll walk you to the library," he said.

She shook her head.

"It would make no sense for you to. You have three brooms with you, I'm sure they're heavy," she said.

"At least part of the way is the same as mine. We'll walk together until we need to part," he said.

Another thing that Luna learned was that Regulus was one of the most stubborn people that she met, and that included Pandora Rosier, who cried when things were not done a very specific way. Regulus would get something in his head and refuse to do anything other than what he had already decided.

"What will you do for today?" he asked.

"Probably study Charms and make company to Pandora. She's been in the library the whole day, so I'll try to convince her to come out and eat something before she faints," Luna admits.

Regulus' lips twitch in something almost like a smile before his face becomes serious once again.

"You know, Evan is really thankful for you taking such good care of Pandora," Regulus said.

Luna shrugged.

"She takes care of me a lot, why wouldn't I do the same for her?" she said. "Besides, Pandora spends most of the time taking care of herself. It's not as if she's a little child."

Regulus looked at her for a moment before continuing his line of thought, but he had to look away to say it out loud, uncomfortable.

"I'm one of the people that most advocates for Pandora's competence of taking care of herself and others, she's wiser and more mature than most people think – and that includes her family. However, not everybody sees it that way," Regulus explained. "People see Pandora as... damaged."

"She's not."

"She isn't, indeed," Regulus said, nodding to himself. "But people still mock Xenophilius Lovegood for accepting a marriage with her after her mental illness was discovered. She was said by the healers to have a complete lack of unconscious symbolic life, they called it 'autism', and they damned her family into living with it without further deserved information." He took a deep breath; they were a few seconds without speaking. "Lord Rosier did what he had to do to protect her. He even went to Muggle healers for better understanding of the situation, which caused revolt amongst the families, it took a while, but I convinced my mother to accept his efforts publicly. Nobody said anything else after it, not in front of us or them, at least, but we know what they say. Pandora's not seen as a woman and she'll not be seen as a woman even after married or a mother, she'll forever be seen as a little girl."

"She's fifteen, she's still a girl," Luna said.

"In the moment Pandora turned fifteen, she stopped being a girl and started being a woman. That's the legal age for marriage in the wizarding world, didn't you know?"

"No."

"You should," he grumbled.

She stopped walking. Regulus took another step before stopping and turning to her.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Doesn't Evan see Pandora as a woman? Does he see her as a little girl?" she asked.

Regulus locked his jaw for a second, looking away and shifting for a moment. Then he turned to look at her again.

"It's complicated for Evan," he said.

"It shouldn't be. Doesn't he see his sister as capable? Because she is," Luna insisted.

"That's not what I meant. For Evan is complicated because he shouldn't see his sister as capable. The hierarchy inside families is very... complicated."

"You keep calling it that. Do you think me stupid? Do you think that I cannot grasp its meaning?" she asked with a frown, voice sharper than she had intended.

Regulus' eyes widened.

"No! Of course not. You're as intelligent as I always expected you to be," he said, shaking his head. "But each family has a different way of managing their assets, and that includes their relatives. I do not understand it completely, because I wasn't raised inside his family or how they intended me to be. My family has a different dynamic than his – in the Rosiers, women are not... capable until marriage."

"That's absurd!" Luna said.

"I agree. I believe Pandora to be a lot more capable than Evan," he said, a smirk in his lips. She rolled her eyes, not thinking it was the correct moment for a joke. "And no matter how much Evan also agrees with it and says it out loud in the meetings, she'll not be seen as a woman or as capable by the rest of the family, so he stays quiet about it, even to Pandora. He sees her as capable; she does not understand that he thinks so and therefore does not see herself as capable – though I hate to say it, Pandora is very dependent of Evan's acceptance and feedback. In response, Evan will take care of her as well as he can until she's married... until after it; she's everything to him."

She pushed her hair out of her face because of strands had escaped her crown of braids, pulling it together at the back of her ear.

"You pay a lot of attention to them," Luna mused.

"Until the year before, I didn't have a lot to do during the summers, so I'd visit Evan a lot. It's easier to observe once you're inside the house," he explained. "Both Evan and Pandora trust me a lot, so I end up hearing or reading a lot about their troubles. Especially now that Evan was pulled into his family's council."

Luna's eyes widened, taking a step back.

"Council?" she asked, surprised.

"As I said, families have different ways to deal with their assets. Evan's old enough, he is supposed to take his father's place once his father steps down," he explained.

"And your family?" she asked.

His face became more serious, his eyebrows lowering and his eyes darkening – she wasn't sure if she should be scared of him or if there was just shadows in his face.

"No. My family's not like that. All power is just in the hands of one person," he explained.

She raised her eyebrows.

"Who?"

"The duke. My father," he said. He looked at her again. "And, one day, it shall be mine."

Nervously, Luna fixed the dress Pandora had offered her and adjusted around her body. She was uncomfortable and she could barely wait to go back to Hogwarts and take off everything, even if she had yet to leave Hogwarts. The dress was floor-length, which was already a problem because she wasn't used to wearing things such as these and she feared to step of in and fall, breaking her front teeth in an embarrassing manner. Thankfully, with Pandora's adjustments, the dress looked beautiful – she was surprised that she looked so good in sage green and wit ruffles in her skirt.

"I have never seen a dress as belonging to a maiden as that one," teased Regulus in Dumbledore's office when the man wasn't looking. "Are you that determinate to gain the acceptance from my family?"

"Maiden," she repeated with a scoff.

"You're unmarried," he reminded her.

Luna pressed her lips together. Regulus didn't need to know that some people would call 'maidens' the virgins, something that Luna wasn't. Though he probably already knew that, given the anger that she felt over Sirius.

"Did you miss morning classes to get dressed?" he teased.

"The last one, yes, I did," she admitted, not blushing. "I know just enough about your family to be somewhat fearful of their reaction if I showed up in jeans and a shirt."

"I'd be fearful of their reaction it as well," he said. "They were already against it when other relatives used it."

By relatives, he probably meant Sirius, but Regulus seemed to be petty enough to be the sort of vengeful person, filled with vitriol, that refused to acknowledge Sirius' position in his House before his sudden... 'awayness' from his position. Either he admitted it or not, Regulus was just a hurt little brother trying to get his brother's attention – sometimes Luna wondered if it had been the reason that he had accepted the fake courtship.

"So..." she started, shifting in the sofa uncomfortable and turning to him as they walked for Dumbledore to come back with McGonagall. "This restaurant that we are going to, have you been before?"

"Yes. Mother quite likes it," he said. "She meets with friends there from time to time when Father is working from home or when I'm home. She doesn't like how her friends gush over me."

"Is she the jealous type?" Luna asked, tensing up.

Regulus hesitated.

"Yes, but I have expressed I'm uncomfortable with how her friends treat me and touch me when Father isn't nearby," Regulus explained. "Perhaps I'm rather sensitive –"

"If you don't like how they treat you, then you're in complete freedom to say so," Luna said, cutting him off. He stared at her for a moment. She turned away, putting her back against the sofa again and blushing. "I'm sorry, I know that you don't like when people cut you off."

He shook his head, not looking away from her.

"I didn't mind it," he said.

Luna shyly looked at him, smiling just enough to show that she thought his reaction was funny nonetheless.

That was when the door to the office opened and McGonagall walked in first, Dumbledore – who was holding the door open – waited and then walked in behind her, closing it behind his back.

"Well, Mister Black, Miss Lupin, you are ready," he said.

Regulus stood up first, fixing his robes around his waist. Luna stood carefully, fixing the ruffles in her dress, and taking a deep breath.

Professor McGonagall looked at her and smiled.

"You look beautiful, Miss Lupin," she complimented.

Luna reached for her dress, mentally thanking Pandora, and then touched the back of her head, making sure the complicated knots of braids were held in place by the pins that she had shoved there. Thankfully, they were untouched.

"Thank you, professor," she answered.

Regulus grin made Luna watch him as he walked closer to the fireplace.

"Are we free to go?" he asked, offering Luna his arm.

Hesitatingly, she took the arm, her hand resting against the space between inside of his elbow and upper arm. He gently flexed his arm to rest in the shape of a closed 'L' against his chest. It seemed tender enough. While it helped their ruse immensely, Regulus wasn't one to offer physical touch as openly, let alone in front of figures such as professors and the headmaster, but he didn't seem too worried about it.

Dumbledore nodded.

"You two go first and wait for Professor McGonagall, she'll walk you to the restaurant," Dumbledore said. "Do you know which fireplace you're aiming for?"

"The public ones in the street," he said, nodding.

Dumbledore offered him the floo powder.

"Take Miss Lupin with you, Mister Black," he said. "Good luck and good lunch."

So, now we know a bit more about Evan and the Rosiers! I know he's becoming a favourite for many here, so I wanted to explain a bit more about him and why he's so closed off against everybody but his friends and his sister, always glaring and all that.

And Luna and Regulus are going to luncheon with their families. What are you expecting from it?