[Chapter Seven]

Éponine kept a firm grip on Regulus' hand as they left the teashop, leaving Ernest in their wake. The girl was beyond thrilled to escape the awkward predicament, although she was still quite shocked that Regulus had been her rescuer among all people, especially after the way she spoke to him before storming off. He didn't say anything as they walked outside but once they were a safe enough distance from Rosa Lee's, he quickly began shaking his hand loose from hers. It left Éponine completely confused as she released his hand, only to watch him drop his to his side before he continued walking away. 

"Wh-what are you d-doing?" Éponine asked him as she followed, confused by his actions. Surely the boy wouldn't have saved her inside the teashop, only to bring her outside and ignore her. Unless he really was as sick and cruel as those he associated with during school. He didn't answer her as he continued on, walking ahead through the crowd of people. 

"Excuse, I asked you a question, what are you-"

Suddenly, Regulus turned around, no sign of a smile anywhere on his face as he met her gaze. "I wouldn't want you to feel like you're being led around. After all, you said it yourself, didn't you? You're fairly capable of walking on your own."

Directing her gaze to the ground, Éponine pressed her lips together as Regulus took it upon himself to use her words from earlier, against her. She didn't say anything right away, but she could sense that the rescue had not been a genuine act, but a way to rub her own words in her face, even when he had hardly any grounds to do so.

"If you honestly believe that everything is going to be fine between us, after everything you said back there, you are sorely mistaken," he said and all Éponine could hear was an echo of her own words ringing in her ears. " I won't hold hands with someone who claimed they'd rather marry a blood-traitor over something that wasn't entirely my fault!"

Éponine's lower lip trembled terribly, but she would not bring herself to cry in front of Regulus. She had already wasted enough tears in doing so, but with how things were going since her parents dropped her off at the Black household, the girl was feeling incredibly overwhelmed as she stood outside some of the shops. All she wanted to do was go home and not just back to the Grimmauld Place, but to her home, where her parents were, along with the horses. She could survive spending another summer, hiding among the stalls or keeping her face covered with a book. 

It would be far better of a situation than the one she was in currently as she was practically being mocked on the streets of Diagon Alley. Already tears were burning at her eyes, threatening to fall if she didn't do something to take care of them. Quickly, she wiped at her eyes using her sleeves, opening her mouth to just tell Regulus to go away, when suddenly, a voice called out to the boy that made her blood run cold.

As Regulus turned around, Éponine lifted her head, only to see the likes of Andras Avery, making his way over in their direction. In his company was Bran Mulciber, as evil always decided to travel in twos. She swallowed nervously, wishing she could just turn invisible for the time being or wishing that Regulus never came to her "rescue" in the first place. She would be better off in the company of Ernest Nott than the two boys that taunted her without mercy while they were at school.

"Regulus, what are you doing here?" Andras asked the boy. "School shopping?"

"Er, no," Regulus answered, " my parents were meeting up with an old friend and decided to let me and Éponine have the day roaming about here."

As soon as Regulus mentioned her name, the two boys looked right in Éponine's direction causing her legs to wobble in place. She felt so incredibly weak as she came to face those that bullied her and judging by the smiles that appeared on their faces after spotting her, they could probably smell her fear. 

"That is Éponine?!" Andras claimed with a laugh as he walked over towards her. Immediately, just as she had done when Ernest approached her, she backed away. Only this time, she backed into a woman carrying an owl, knocking into the cage and upsetting the bird as it flapped madly around its cage. The woman gave her a scolding looking, telling her to be mindful of her surroundings before leaving Éponine alone with the boys. 

"Well, would you look at that, Andras," Bran said with a smirk, "she actually had a face under there this entire time. What a surprise!"

"Tell us your secret, love," Andras said as he lifted a hand and touched the side of her face. Éponine jerked her head back in response to his touch, looking absolutely disgusted before she looked in the direction of Regulus, who continued to stand there. Even though he wasn't smiling this time around, he wasn't exactly racing to defend her from his friends, which was exactly what she had pointed out earlier. 

Smacking Andras' hand away from her face, Éponine made her way over to Regulus and much to her own disappointment, she could already feel the tears streaming down her face as she stood before him.

"This is exactly why I would still marry him over you," she hissed at him, " at least he has the decency to stand up against others. You're nothing but a coward."

She whipped around to face Bran and Andras, wearing the same cold expression that she had worn when delivering her final blow to Regulus.

 "As for the two of you, you are not to touch me ever again with your dirty grubby fingers! No wonder my face was ridden with horrible marks, it was from standing around complete filth such as yourselves! You lot are just terrible, disrespectful, and possibly the most ignorant batch of people I have ever come to know in my entire life.  You bring your families shame just by existing and I would pity them, but on the other hand, they are the ones who raised you and have not reprimanded any of you for your behaviours. Born from shame and continued to walk in the shadows of it, how lovely!"

With nothing else to say to the group of boys, Éponine stalked off once more, absolutely furious. Of course, Regulus didn't even bother to come after her with an apology, only reiterating what she had told him before. He was a coward that wouldn't even bother voicing a differing opinion in front of his friends and yet, he claimed that he didn't want things to be hostile between them. How were they to be peaceful if he wouldn't even stop his friends from making fun of the girl he was meant to marry? To just stand there, as if nothing was happening but a casual conversation, it made Éponine's rage boil over.

Then to have one of them actually touch her face as if they had permission to do so, she lost it. She completely lost it to the point where she was actually leaving Diagon Alley, not a care in the world where she was headed, but just to escape the area so she didn't run the risk of running into Regulus and his friends again. It would place her among muggles, which was completely foreign territory to the sheltered girl, but she honestly didn't care at the moment because she had been pushed to close to the edge. 

The desperation for her to escape the likes of Regulus and his friends had driven her to leave Diagon Alley and enter the muggle world. Glancing around, she wondered how many of the people she passed were actually witches and wizards walking around in disguise. She didn't have the slightest of clues as to where she was, besides stating the obvious that she was somewhere in London. 

The only thing she really had on her was the money that Orion had given her and Regulus as spending money in the shops and her wand. But her wand was practically useless outside of school as she wasn't permitted to use it underage. However, after walking around for awhile and getting a bit turned around, she was contemplating on whether to use it or not. She wasn't just able to walk up to someone and ask for help, mainly because she wasn't sure how to describe how to get back to Diagon Alley without getting in trouble. 

Finding a small place on the curb, she sat down and observed her surroundings. The street she had chosen was incredibly silent as it seemed to only be a road for delivery trucks to drop off packages for the local restaurants. She wanted to go home, but if she showed up at home, she was certain that her mother was going to be furious with her. After all, Éponine had confided in both her parents that she was being teased at school terribly and their only solution was to just fix her face instead of going to the source of the problem. It's not like her parents didn't know Avery's and Mulciber's parents and it wasn't like they didn't know where they lived. But instead, they made clear that they had to fix Éponine first rather than the real issue. 

When Éponine told her mother that Regulus had been one of the boys that made fun of her, her mother told her that it was Regulus' way of telling her that he liked her without saying it. Éponine didn't understand that kind of mentality at all, as it made absolutely no sense. If she liked someone, she wasn't going to go out of her way to be mean to them, it wouldn't help at all. If she went home, the blame of the situation would be placed on her head, rather than anyone else. 

Once again, she felt incredibly trapped in the situation she was in because no matter how loud she screamed, there would always be someone there to silence her. 

As her sleeve fell over her hand, Éponine lifted her arm up, the same one in which she held her wand in hand. Within seconds, she was startled as a large, purple, triple-decker bus appeared from seemingly nowhere in front of her. Unable to process what had just happened, the girl continued to sit on the curb, with her lips parted in awe. She had never witnessed such a thing before, it left her confused but fascinated at the same time. However, as she scanned the side of the bus, she frowned as she saw the name "Knight Bus."

While it was her first time witnessing the Knight Bus in person, it was not the first time that she had heard of it. Among her family and the others associated with hers, the Knight Bus was often ridiculed. Plenty of pureblooded families had put up quite the protest back when the bus was first introduced, mainly because it drew inspiration from muggle-transportation. However, the Ministry argued that they needed to come up with a safer alternative rather than having wizards and witches depending on sidecars on broomsticks. 

Eventually, the Knight Bus came to be, but pureblooded families, refused to put it to use, warning their children and others to never stand at the curb and raise their wand in the air, because it was how the bus was hail down. Of course, Éponine had completely forgotten about that and found herself summoning the bus by accident as she had fixed her sleeve.

Suddenly, the doors opened and a witch came out, wearing a smile and offering her hand. "Hello, love, ready to board?"

Hesitation swept across the girl's face as all she had ever heard about the bus were negative things, but this was coming from her parents and they were the same ones that defended Regulus' actions of bullying. The witch seemed kind enough, wearing a small tag on her robes that stated that her name was Emsy Shunpike. 

"Wh-where can you take me?" Éponine questioned.

"Wherever you want to go," Emsy smiled, " of course, if you have enough money."

"I have plenty,"Éponine claimed thinking of her book spending money that she never got to use. That seemed to make the conductor quite happy as she offered her hand once more to help the girl up to her feet and help her board the bus. 

"Regulus! This is a very serious matter!" Orion huffed angrily as the boy stood in front of him, along with his wife standing off to the side. "What do you mean you don't know where she's gone? She was supposed to remain in your company for the entire day!"

"I told you, she stomped off!" Regulus attempted to defend himself. "She got upset with Avery and Mulciber and left."

"And you didn't think to go after her?"

"I was with Avery and-"

"You're not marrying either one of them!" Orion spat. "Éponine is to be your wife when you leave Hogwarts and you just allowed her to run off upset without a care? Regulus, I know your mother and I raised you better than that. I have no control over the likes of Avery and Mulciber, but I know you better and I know I taught you better. Do you wish to make me look like a fool?"

"No, Sir," Regulus held his head low. His teeth were gritted together in annoyance that he was getting in trouble for Éponine running off. But he wasn't sure what to do at the time. He didn't laugh at anything that Avery and Mulciber had said and yet she still found fault with him. Still wanting to pick a fight, which she did, and then told all of them to leave her alone. If he had gone after her, he was certain that he would be met with more of a fight. 

"You better hope that she's alright," Orion said, looking beyond furious after what he learned. He had sensed the tension between the two and he thought he could ease it by letting them have a nice day of just freely spending money to buy things they wanted and just enjoying the simple company of each other, but it seemed he was foolish to believe that it would be that easy. Obviously, there was a lot of bad history between the two that led Éponine to run off and the man couldn't ignore how miserable she often looked inside their home while they were there.

He understood that the arranged marriages were not always the easiest matters, while he had found love with Walburga, he had witnessed many other marriages fail or end up wallowing in pure misery until it was over. He didn't want that for his son and Éponine seemed like a nice enough girl that he didn't want that for her either. But there was a lot of work to be done between the two if they ever wanted to make a marriage work in which they would both be happy. 

"Right," Orion said pinching the bridge of his nose as he couldn't look at his son in the moment. He had a missing girl on his hands and if her parents were to find out, he would never hear the end of it. Not to mention, his first priority was making sure that Éponine was alright. "I'm going to take you and your mother home and then I will come back here and look for her."

There was no sense in wasting more time yelling at the boy, knowing very well that he was just wasting time that he could use looking for her. Walburga was clearly upset as well, but she had yet to say a word on the matter, letting her husband handle it before they made their way home. Regulus was simply waiting for further punishment as his father grabbed him by the arm for Side-Along Apparating. 

However, when they all arrived little ways from their home and made their way over, they could clearly see Éponine sitting on the front steps of the home with Kreacher in her company.