[Chapter Thirty-Three]

While Regulus was so paranoid that the date was going to be deemed boring because of what Avery and Mulciber said, he had no idea that Éponine was very much enjoying herself. They had collected their cups of tea from the table and moved closer to the small fireplace within the tea shop. She was more than content with the idea of enjoying the warm atmosphere and being away from the castle for a few hours, ignoring any thoughts of school work and classes. She placed aside any thoughts of the drama that had unfolded and just watched as the flames danced about in the fireplace. Unbeknownst to her, the glow of the flames seemed to shower over her face, leaving Regulus to stare at her as they continued to sit there.

She probably would just see it as him zoning out if she had caught him, but little would she know that he was actually admiring her from where he sat. There was something precious about the way she held her teacup with two hands whenever she took a sip as if she was being extra careful not to drop it. He liked the way she jolted slightly every time some of the firewood cracked or shifted within the fireplace unexpectedly. He also enjoyed watching the small smile pull at the corner of her lips after she scolded herself for being so silly to react to the little noise. There was something serene and peaceful with the way that Éponine carried herself the majority of the time.

Yet, Regulus knew, very much like the fire burning before them, there were flames behind her eyes, ones that dwelt deep in her chest that threatened to breach the surface and burn all those that tried to do her wrong. Already he had been a witness to the flames several times, metaphorically and physically. He had seen her temper flare, he had seen her fiery strength when faced with challenges, and she had also lit his trunk on fire. If that did not speak of the fire that she bore in her spirit, Regulus wasn't sure what else would.

"Can I ask you something?" Éponine's voice dragged him out of his thoughts and Regulus quickly busied himself with a loose thread on his robes to make it seem as though he hadn't been caught staring. "Besides the one, I just asked you."

Regulus peered up and with a small smile, he nodded his head. Whatever question she had, he was willing to answer as he figured there shouldn't be any secrets between them. For a second, she seemed to contemplate whether to ask it or not. He wondered if she thought she was going to offend him with it or maybe she wondered if she truly wanted the answer.

"It's alright, Éponine," he reassured her, " whatever it is, just ask. I promise I won't get upset."

"Well, I-I-I was just wondering, what made you change your mind? You know, about me, about giving me a chance...a real one at that? I thought maybe it had to do with the acne clearing up. My mother told me that once my face cleared that things would get easier for me and I guess she was right because since my face has been clear, things have gotten a lot better. I was just wondering if that played a role in it. Avery and Mulciber have been nicer to me and...well...it was a stupid question, sorry."

Her gaze fell back to the teacup in her hands, the small smile had long faded as her insecurities surfaced once again. Regulus found it hard to understand how something such as the acne could still plague her mind. It had been gone for months and yet, some days, Éponine acted as if nothing had ever changed. But he could understand, all the sudden changes, paired with what her own mother had told her had left the girl with a warped image of herself and everything around her.

"Your mother was and still is wrong," Regulus told her, yet she didn't look over at him still. "She tells you a lot of things, both of your parents do, that aren't right. You know deep down they aren't right, that's why you get upset with the things they say, even if you don't say anything to them. Things have gotten better for you because you assert yourself now, Épi. You are showing more and more people that you are not one to mess with and people respect that. They should respect all people but unfortunately, that's not the case in the world currently."

He scratched his arm awkwardly, knowing he was guilty of it as well.

"But you have shown people this year that you have a fire and if they aren't careful, they could be burned. You stood up to me, to Avery and Mulciber, and even to Emmarentia. You've stood up to my brother and his friends, maybe you haven't seen it, but you've grown a lot in such a short time. Maybe it's because you gained a little bit more confidence with your acne clearing up or maybe you were just tired of people walking all over you. Perhaps it's both, the only person who truly knows that is you."

He caught her peering out of the corner of her eye at him, her grip tightening around her teacup as he continued.

"I-I-I used to think I hated you," Regulus stammered, " but that was because of Sirius. He never hated you, but he hated the idea of marrying you. I guess I mixed up the two and I tried to come up with every reason as to why he didn't want to marry you. I didn't want to place the blame on him because he was my older brother and I looked up to him. So I tried to find everything that was wrong with you and it was hard because you were so nice when we were younger. S-s-so I focused on something I shouldn't have, something that I thought would hurt you and make you go away."

Éponine had to admit, she wasn't expecting such a confession after asking her question, but she felt so intrigued, she had to know the truth before they went any further with their dating. It didn't matter if she were to marry him one day, she wanted to know Regulus, even his faults. One of his faults had been his cruelty towards her and she wanted to know his reasoning behind it even if she didn't like the answer.

"Of course, I was pretty much a coward about it," he continued, " I said all sorts of nasty things but it was only in the company of Avery and Mulciber. They knew how angry I was, but they didn't understand just like I didn't, that I wasn't angry with you, I was just angry at the idea of losing Sirius. He was distancing himself further and further, things were changing within my family but the only consistent thing was that you were still there. I thought it was you driving him away and I wanted you gone. I wanted you gone so badly."

The girl could feel a solid lump develop in her throat as he went on, one that she could not swallow as hard as she tried. Her eyes were welling up, just hearing how much he wanted her gone and how he blamed her for how his family had crumbled. Within seconds, a couple of teardrops went unnoticed by Regulus as they slid down her cheek and right into her tea.

"I thought...I thought if we hurt you enough that you would go away and that things would go back to how they were. That my family would find happiness again, that Sirius and my mum wouldn't argue anymore. The way we treated you, it was the closest way I could think of getting rid of you without physically hurting you."

Suddenly, the clanking sound of the glass teacup hitting the ground caused Regulus to finally look over only to see the spilt tea stain the rug they had been sitting on. It took the place where Éponine had been sitting and the girl was gone. Immediately, Regulus turned his head to catch a glimpse of Éponine as she left the teashop, not even bothering to look over her shoulder to see if he was following. For a moment, he was confused by her reaction as he was only answering the question she had asked him. But perhaps it was too much for her to handle, it did sound horrible but she didn't let him finish.

Abandoning his own tea, Regulus jumped up to his feet to go after her.

Outside, he was able to see that she had not ventured very far, standing at the side of the building, her face covered by her hands as she tried to conceal all the emotions that were brewing at the surface. Guilt filled his chest as he realised that he had truly hurt her feelings but it had not been his intention. He was just trying to be as honest as possible but perhaps he could have worded it better, he would never claim speaking as one of his strengths.

" Épi," he called her name softly, " Épi, you didn't let me finish."

"I think I heard enough, Regulus," she said turning away from him, " please, I just want to be left alone. I'm going to head back to the castle-"

Not willing to let her leave while she was upset, Regulus jumped in front of her, preventing her from leaving just yet.

"Please, I know it all sounded terrible, but you didn't let me finish. Everything I said was in past tense, you heard that, didn't you?"

She nodded but it didn't seem to make things better. " I didn't think you hated me that much...so much that you thought I was the one tearing your family apart. That I was the reason Sirius left your family....that you wanted to hurt me so much to get rid of me-"

"Yes, but I was wrong," he said, " I was so wrong, Éponine, which is what I was getting at. I did all of those horrible things and I thought all those things, but it wasn't your fault. I took my anger on the wrong person and so did Sirius. He wasn't kind to you and I was terrible to you. It was because of me that Avery and Mulciber treated you the way they did. They were doing it to help me because I painted you as this terrible homewrecker...but you weren't any of those things. Don't you get it, Épi? I was wrong, we were all wrong. I realised that this summer and it wasn't because your acne cleared up. To be honest, that wasn't even the first thing I noticed."

"It wasn't?"

"No, the first thing I noticed was the red spot on your hand where you had rubbed your skin raw. The same spot where you told me where Ernest Nott had kissed your hand and it left you that uncomfortable. That was the first thing was that spot, do you want to know what the second thing was?"

"Yes," she whispered softly.

It brought back a faint smile to his face to have her stay and agree to hear more, rather than having her run off upset.

"I noticed your freckles," he admitted, "I noticed you had freckles, something I really noticed because they were always hidden behind-"

"My acne, yes, I know-"

"I was going to say a book," Regulus said cutting her off. "Behind a book because that's how you hide, Épi. You always kept your head down except for that moment, you looked right at me and I was able to see your face. And I thought to myself how did I miss out on that? There are so many of them and I missed out on that. So I had to wonder, what else was I missing out on? What else had I failed to notice or learn because I was so wrapped up in everything that Sirius said?"

Without even being fully aware of what she was doing, Éponine ran one of her hands over her face, her fingertips touching where her freckles were sprinkled across her skin.

"You know, he also said that our parents hated him," she suddenly heard Regulus choke back a sob, " but that's not what I saw. That's not what I saw when he left. That's when I realised that he was nothing but a liar..and he had lied...he had lied to me about so much, like how he would never leave me behind...and he lied about you. All he did was lie and I was nothing but a fool to believe him."

The two of them were teary-eyed, their faces cold and wet as the wind blew around them. Neither one of them had expected their second date to unfold in such a way, and while it had rendered both of them to tears, it felt so good at the same time. It felt good for Regulus to get everything off his chest that he had been keeping to himself for too long. He had carried the pain of his family's problems believing he couldn't talk about them because his family had a status to uphold. However, with Éponine becoming his wife one day in the future, she would be family, and she would eventually learn everything, so he felt like he should have been able to confide in her.

To Éponine, hearing Regulus confess that he had been wrong about her, it left her to feel happy, to know it wasn't something she had done to deserve the treatment she had received. It didn't even have to do with her acne, something that her parents had blamed it on and led her to believe was such a source of her problems when it wasn't. She had been insecure about it for so long because they had convinced her it was caused her to basically be undesirable in every way possible.

Yet, it wasn't true because Regulus, Avery, and Mulciber had only been against her because Regulus was facing troubles at home. She was just one problem on Sirius' radar that he had blown out of proportion because he was stuck in a position he didn't want to be in. He had painted her in a terrible image, but that didn't mean it was accurate. Hearing Regulus say that he was wrong, that Sirius had been wrong, it meant that her parents were wrong and she could finally confirm it in her head.

Without saying anything for a few moments, the two of them had come to the same conclusion as they moved to pull each other into a hug. She wrapped her arms around him and he wrapped his arms equally as tight around her.

"I didn't change my mind about you," he told her, " I just thought for myself for once when it came to you. Of course, it had to be after I hurt you in so many ways, and I'm so sorry, Éponine. I truly am, I don't know how I'm supposed to fix things. If they'll ever be right between us. We can talk and laugh, but sometimes, I see the way you look at me, as if you're waiting for me to turn on you, I can see that fear and I'm so sorry that I've put you in that position."

As he cried into her shoulder, Éponine held onto him, looking off into the distance. "I'm sorry that you were put into that position," she whispered back to him. "I'm sorry that you were put in the position of watching your family fall in such a way. I know how much Sirius meant to you and while he hurt you, I know that you still miss him and I know that it still hurts you that he's not home. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I understand why you did it. You were desperate to get him back by any means necessary and I guess that's what family does for each other. They will do anything for one another, no matter how mental it is."

"He didn't do anything for me," Regulus replied, " he didn't do anything for me but leave me. Because I didn't want to break the rules like him, he left me for others that would. I thought I meant something to him, but it seemed it was only conditional. He'll only come to me if I agree to leave my mother and father behind...if I leave Avery and Mulciber... and if I leave you behind...and I don't want to do that."

"You don't have to, Regulus, you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. It's always up to you in the long run, that's something I've been trying to teach myself as of late. At the end of the day, we are in full control of everything we do."

Pulling away from her for a moment, Regulus used his sleeve to wipe his eyes. When he finally looked at her, Éponine was watching quietly. Once again, his eyes focused on her freckles before he met her gaze again.

"You know, even back then, Avery was right about something when it came to you, you really do have the constellations under your eyes."

She remained perfectly still as he raised his hands slowly and slowly his fingers traced over her freckles as if he was tracing the outlines of each constellation of the sky. For him to take one of the greatest insults that had been directed at her an turn it into a compliment, it caught Éponine off guard. He smiled at her reaction, sniffling again before dropping his hand down to his side. However, before it hit his side, he seemed to change his mind and quickly he reached out and grabbed her hand, leading her forward.

Just like it had been back in the teashop, his hand was still warm as he intertwined his fingers with hers. As each date was topping the last, Éponine had to wonder what was in store for the third one?

The two walked along, neither one of them saying anything else, but they were happy that way, just enjoying walking with each other, hand in hand. Regulus had taken a quiet path when suddenly, Éponine stopped and brought him to halt as well.

"What? What's wrong?" he asked.

"Um, is that Avery and Mulciber over there by the Shrieking Shack?"