Chapter Text
Regulus had had to reluctantly learn to tolerate the intrusion into his alone time. A member of their little friend group was never more than half a corridor away from him. Barty, Evan and Pandora stuck to him like glue in their lessons, and when he wanted to go somewhere, he had one of the others attached to his hip. He had to say that out of all of them, he preferred Pettigrew’s company. He tended to transform into Wormtail and happily sit on Regulus’s shoulder or sleep in his pocket, much more preferable to having Sirius chat incessantly in his ear. Though, of course, the person he would never mind being his shadow was James, and as James would happily watch him watch paint dry for hours on end, he was the one who stayed with Regulus more than the others.
Don’t get him wrong, he was keeping his eyes open to any further attacks orchestrated by his mother, but so far nothing had happened, and Avery and Rookwood and the other attempted kidnappers had given him a wide berth since he attacked them with Evan’s plant.
Evan had, as predicted, not been happy with Regulus over his smushed plant, but after they’d cleaned up the dorm room, using bubble head charms so that they could breathe, to no one's delight but Evan’s, they had found the plant in relatively good shape and Evan had repotted the slightly wonky thing, declaring that it now had more character.
November quickly rolled around, and the countdown to his seventeenth birthday neared.