Hiraeth | Regulus Black

Chapter Sixty Seven

Needless to say, you can only really go on for so long without sleep and Esme was beginning to find that out the hard way.

No matter what she tried, be it tea, meditation, or power naps, the girl could not escape her nightmares. They had now evolved, however, into being the delightful array of ways the Dark Lord would torture and kill her if he discovered what she had been up to.
So that was nice.

"Are you alright?" Dirk asked, dragging Esme's attention away from the bug she'd been watching scuttle across the floor.

"You mean besides being bored and worried and irritated? I'm just peachy." She muttered.
This earned a scoff from the boy as he replied, "Oh, you're right, you seem perfectly fine."

Levi snickered, "You must be really concerned, yeah?" as he cheekily prodded her in the side and then quickly leapt back to avoid being whacked in the stomach by the girl.

The first quidditch match of the year had ended only a couple of hours earlier and it had not ended well, hence the trio stood patiently waiting outside of the Hospital wing.
"Oh, he'll be fine." Esme shook her head.

At long last, as standing out in the hallway seemed to slow the passing of time, the door to the Hospital Wing creaked open and a rather frazzled looking Madam Pomfrey pokes her head around the frame.
"One of you may come in now, but only one. They need their rest."

"See." Esme swatted at Levi again, "If you hadn't insisting on staying behind to congratulate the Gryffindor players then we could have got here earlier and all of us could have gone in sooner."

The boy quickly moved to stand behind Dirk, hoping the Ravenclaw boy would act as a shield, and explained, "Well I had to congratulate them. We haven't beaten Slytherin in a match in years."
"Oh that hardly counted as a win!"

"Anyway..." Dirk shrugged his shoulders, as if shrugging off the conversation topic, "Go on in, Avery. We'll catch you at dinner."

So Esme bid a temporary farewell to her friends and, at long last, entered the Hospital Wing. She hadn't been inside since the last time she visited Regulus there, which was the prior school year.
If Esme hadn't known she was in the Hospital Wing, she would have thought she was down by the quidditch pitch. Each of the beds was filled with a quidditch player, and even more quidditch players were huddled around each of the beds.

At the far end of the room, under the tall stained glass windows, was a raven-haired boy lay on the last bed. He wore emerald green robes and was sat by himself with the curtains drawn almost completely closed around his bed, except with one slither open so Esme could spot him.

"Are you alright?" Esme asked, sitting down in the chair beside the bed.
Regulus grunted uncomfortably, slumping down slightly in his seat, before he sighed, "Yes, I'm fine. Just a broken arm, which Pomfrey already fixed. Still covered in bruises though." He extended his right arm to show it littered with blue and black markings.

She reclined back in her chair and folded her arms, "Did I not tell you last time you got hurt and ended up here to not do it again?
"You're right, Es, I set out on today's match with the deliberate intent of getting injured." He shook his head with a small smile.

"You're not still mad at me about the whole... You know..." Esme shrugged slightly.
"Pushing me into a pond when we were seven?" He raised an eyebrow, "Or that time you convinced me to go into the Forbidden Forest with you and we were faced with a werewolf?"

She stammered slightly before replying, "Alright, but technically, technically, neither of those things were deliberate on my part."

"It's fine, really." Regulus reassured Esme, reaching out to take ahold of one of her hands, "I'm not really sure I can get mad at you, even if I tried."
She snickered, "How sweet."